Abstract:
This study aimed at extracting and categorizing the range of strategies used in performing the speech act of apologizing in Persian. The first objective was to see if Persian apologies were as formulaic in pragmatic structure as inEnglish apologies are said to be (Wolfson, 1983; Holmes, 1990; Bergmanand Kasper, 1993). The other issue explored in this study was theinvestigation of the effect of the values assigned to the two context-external variables of social distance and social dominance on the frequency of the apology intensifiers. To this end, Persian apologetic utterances were collected and analyzed. The research findings indicated that Persian apologies are as formulaic in pragmatic structures as are English apologies. Also, the values assigned to the two context-external variables were found to have significant effect on the frequency of the intensifiers in different situations
Machine summary:
Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) project, initiated in 1982 (see Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989), was an attempt to analyze speech acts (in this case requests and apologies) across a range of languages and cultures aiming at investigating the existence of any possible pragmatic universals and their characteristics.
) 1JAL, Vol. 8, No 2, September 2005 7 The first three sub-formulas are all shared in CCSARP (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989, and Olshtain and Cohen 1983) in their coding system of apologies and are only entitled under slightly different headings.
The following figure illustrates the sub-categorization of the main formula of an acknowledgement of responsibility used in this study: Table 2 The sub-categorization of RASP formula An Acknowlegement of Responsibility Explicit Implicit Explicit self blame Lack of Justifying the hearer Statement of intent offense Expressing Concern for self deficiency the hearer 8 Apology Speech Act Realization Patterns in Persian The definition of the other apology formulas, namely, EXPL, RESP and FORB are similar to the ones presented in the CCSARI) coding system.
In other words, In Persian, as in the other thirteen 10 Apology Speech Act Realization Patterns in Persian languages studied in the CCSARP project, people apologize either directly or by using one of the performative verbs such as (mazerat mikham) "1 apologize" or indirectly by accepting the responsibility for the offence, offering repair for the damage caused or finally promising the forbearance of the offense to ever happen again, The most frequent apology formula used in Persian, as in the other languages studied (Olshtain and Cohen, 1983) was an IND or the most direct apology formula.