The role of object distance and gender in Persian compliment responses

Abstract

Abstract This study investigated the effect of the distance of the object of the compliment from the complimentee on compliment responses in Persian. A further aim of the study was to understand whether gender of the complimentee made a difference to the response pattern. To this end, 2652 Persian compliment responses were elicited through Discourse Completion Tasks from 563 BA students majoring in twenty disciplines at a university in Iran. The findings revealed that the distance of the object of the compliment did not influence the degree of acceptance or rejection of the compliment. It was also found that Iranian university students’ compliment response behavior, mostly characterized by the rejection or evasion of compliments was shifting toward accepting compliments. This observation is attributed to increasing chances of exposure to and interaction with foreign media such as satellite TV, the Internet, foreign films, series, etc. among Persian university students.