Cross-cultural differences between English and Persian compliments

During the 1980s, scholars started to describe speech acts as they were manifested in speech. Using various methods including observation of naturally-occurring speech, open-ended or multiple-choice questionnaires, dialogue completion tasks, role plays, interviews, and protocol analyses, they managed to detect some pragmatic gaps between two different languages that sometimes lead to miscommunication (Yuan, 2001). In this study, the researchers have tried to investigate the common patterns of complimenting behavior among adult Persian speakers in Iran; this would include the topics, and functions of compliments in Persian with regard to the gender and status of the interlocutors. By choosing the method of the observation of natural speech, the researchers have tried to get instances of every-day compliments exchanged among Persian native speakers. Moreover, the results of this observation are compared with the results of several observations in the United States and New Zealand. The comparisons would help us identify some of those cross-cultural differences in the realization of compliments, as well as the demographic features of the compliment givers and receivers.