Religious Arabic exclamations in Persian talks-in-interaction: a micro-analytic approach to contexts and senses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through centuries many Arabic expressions have been integrated into Persian. Islamic Arabic exclamations also made their way into everyday Persian and social life of Iranians, to the extent that today few might even note their origin and distinction. The current study was purposed to investigate the illocutionary meanings religious exclamations have acquired in the modern society of Iranian Shiites. It also aimed at examining how different functions are served by the same exclamations but with various articulatory suprasegmental features. Adopting an inductively micro-analytic qualitative approach to the study of talks-in-interaction, naturally occurring conversations in vernacular Persian were observed and recorded. A sample of thirty actual conversations were systematically transcribed and analysed using Jefferson’s guidelines. The results indicated that the religious exclamations are noticeably context-bound, and Iranian Shiites regularly yet variously employed them to perform different speech acts and communicative functions, which are essentially different from the original religious purposes of the exclamations. In addition, it was revealed that the exclamations with different illocutionary meanings are clearly marked in terms of suprasegmental features. The findings are showcased and discussed pointing to illustrative conversations.