A Sociolinguistic Study of Mark Negotiation Discourse in Iranian Universities

Ideology, power, and identity are truly reflected in people’s daily discourse including mark negotiation discourse of students. Peculiar power relations in Iranian academic settings and the unique features of politeness in Farsi extending up to Ta’arof motivated the researcher to statistically analyze a total of 50 mark negotiation discourse samples of Iranian university students from diverse disciplines. Data analysis revealed patterns of initiating and closing, persuading through lexical items, using politeness markers, intensifying, and consequencing. The goal is finding out how both male and female students from various disciplines buy their respective professors’ favors in their online mark reconsideration appeal to increase their mark and avoid failure.