Refusal strategies in persian

bs_bs_banner International Journal of Applied Linguistics ◆ Vol •• ◆ No •• ◆ 2014 Refusal strategies in Persian Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie Abadan Branch, Islamic Azad University This study investigates how Iranian speakers of Persian realize the speech act of refusals to the initiating acts of offers, suggestions, invitations and requests Two hundred and eight acts of refusals were naturally collected and classified according to the refusal classification scheme proposed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz The results showed that Iranian Persian speakers employ indirect strategies and a combination of direct and indirect strategies more than direct ones in refusals, in communication with the interactants with whom they have ongoing relationship ‘Reason’ and ‘gratitude’ were the most frequent strategies in the data Returning the act was found to be a new strategy Finally, the socio-cultural implications of the variety in the production of refusals are discussed Keywords: speech act, refusal, Persian, strategy Introduction The central notion around the speech act/communicative act is that language is used to perform actions (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) Austin (1962) observed that performing communicative actions in everyday life required employing the necessary words under appropriate circumstances According to him, when we say something we automatically perform a communicative action via the use of words in life Examples of speech acts are requests, refusals, apologies, expressions of thanks and many others Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) claim that speech acts are realized by universal rules; that is, speech acts are produced in different languages in similar ways But some research (Blum-Kulka 1987; Wierzbicka 1991) supports the idea that every culture and language has its own way of speech © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd doi: 10.1111/ijal.12065 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie act production The latter group also claims that social factors influencing linguistic variations of a given speech act, say, a refusal, are culture-specific Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) call for expanding the research on speech acts to a variety of languages to make claims about universality or culture specificity of the speech acts more valid Among the various speech acts, the speech act of refusal was selected for the present study Refusals are noncompliant/dispreferred (Levinson 1983) responses to an initiating act such as request, invitation, suggestion and offer Refusing someone is a demanding verbal behavior and its realization requires a host of linguistic strategies to be employed The linguistic coding of refusals is largely dependent on the socio-cultural awareness of a community in which participants live For example, to refuse a person of higher status requires awareness of the nature of power relations, distance and many other factors (Eslamirasekh 2004; Afghari 2007; Atasheneh and Izadi 2011) Many studies on refusals (Beebe et al 1990; Felix-Brasdefer 2006) have linked this speech act with the notion of ‘face’ (Goffman 1967; Brown and Levinson 1987) They have postulated that refusals are very sensitive to face Refusals have the potential to threaten the speaker or hearer’s face or both (Brown and Levinson 1987) Therefore, they have been categorized as dual face threatening acts (FTAs) by Brown and Levinson Their realization requires the speakers of any language, not only a grammatical and lexical knowledge of the language, but the socio-cultural awareness of the underlying pragmatic rules of the given society Depending on the context and the situation of occurrence, speakers use a variety of direct and indirect strategies to communicate a refusal successfully; that is with the minimum threat to face Brown and Levinson (1987) discuss face in the context of politeness Although the association of face with politeness has been questioned enormously in the subsequent research (see Eelen 2001, for a detailed review), research has postulated that indirectness and implicitness in speech act production are associated with politeness, which in turn has consequence for face (Blum-Kulka 1987) A direct refusal to, say, a request is highly likely to be evaluated as impolite (Locher and Watts 2005), and consequently face threatening between Iranian speakers of Persian An important exception to this rule is one particular kind of refusal which are responses to insincere acts of offers and invitations (see Pinto 2011 for a discussion of insincerity) These invitation-refusals and offer-refusals are considered part of ritual politeness known as taarof in Persian (Beeman 1976; Koutlaki 2002; Sharifian 2007) The present study investigates the speech act of refusals to the initiating acts of offer, suggestion, invitation, and request produced by Iranian Persian speakers using naturally occurring conversations as its source of data While a considerable number of studies have addressed refusals as their main focus, they have mainly relied on hypothetical methods of data collection such as discourse completion tests (DCTs) (Beebe et al 1990) or role plays (Felix-Brasdefer 2004; 2006) for data collection This study, however, makes © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ use of authentic natural data to cast a deeper look at the nuances of sociopragmatic variables affecting refusals Face and politeness The notion of face is now a well-established research topic in pragmatics Face was first used in sociolinguistics by Goffman (1967), but later introduced by Brown and Levinson (1987) in the theory of politeness In attempting to provide a scientific conceptualization of politeness, Brown and Levinson argue that face and facework is the main motivation for people to be polite Brown and Levinson say that face has two components: positive face is our want of being admired, approved and complimented by others, and negative face is our want of being free from imposition from others (Brown and Levinson 1987: 67) The two categories play a crucial role in the development of politeness Another pillar of the theory is the assumption that “some [speech] acts are intrinsically threatening to face and thus require ‘softening’ ” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 24) According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 60), individuals involved in communication constantly evaluate the potential threat to either their own or addressee’s face (or both) based on the three social factors of power, distance and the rank of imposition and mitigate the possible threat to face, using either positive or negative politeness strategies or a combination of both Later research, however, questioned a number of assumptions in Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, including the linkage between face and politeness and more importantly, the definition and conceptualization of face Particularly, scholars in Eastern languages and cultures claimed that Brown and Levinson’s notion of face is too individualistic and represents a Western style of thinking, rather than being applicable to Eastern cultures, where social indexing plays a more important role in motivating politeness than facework (Matsumoto 1989; Koutlaki 2002) Research also challenged Brown and Levinson’s notion of face on the grounds that it has deviated from its original definition by Goffman and suggested the return to Goffman’s concept of face Goffman (1967: 5) defines face as “a positive social image a person effectively claims for himself by the line others have assumed he has taken during a particular contact” but “is only on loan to him from society” (Goffman 1972: 322) Face is therefore, a social and psychological concept, since it is a concept of ‘self’ that relates one to the society Facework involves the work that individuals invest to keep/ enhance or threaten/attack each others’ face in interactions Research in pragmatics argues that face in terms of Goffman is more viable to cover complexities of interpersonal communication that Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (see for example, Locher and Watts 2005) Face in terms of Goffman considers the social aspect of communication as well as cognitive More importantly, it is not categorized as two components of negative and © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie positive A more recent approach to face is also proposed by Arundale (2010), who views face as an emergent property of relationships between interactants, defined as one’s relational connection with and separation from others Face in this sense is not only relational but is co-constituted in the interactions However, such an approach to face requires conversation analysis to be the theoretical base of the study, which is not the case in the present study The second theme followed by research after Brown and Levinson is that face is not the same as politeness and should be conceptualized in its own right (Haugh and Bargiela-Chiappini 2010; Haugh 2012) Face is present in every communication, while politeness is inadequate to explain many aspects of relational work Locher and Watts (2005) define politeness as ‘positively marked’ subjective evaluations of linguistic and non-linguistic behavior by the participants in a particular context based on the norms of the community of practice and their own expectations They argue that politeness is only one kind of evaluation that arises in the relational work Others are impolite, politic, and over-polite Politeness in this sense, therefore, is subject to cultural and even individual differences (Felix-Brasdeer 2004) Whether or not a speech act is face threatening and/or evaluated polite, politic or impolite is not something inherited in the act (as in Brown and Levinson 1987), but is the discursive evaluations made by members of a particular cultural group Regarding refusals to ostensible offers in Persian, for example, Koutlaki (2002) writes that they are not face threatening, and even face saving, since they indicate the speakers’ awareness of the societal conventions, which is part of politeness Research on refusals Studies have addressed refusals from three different perspectives: The first category of studies includes those studies which have attempted to compare and contrast the realization of refusals in two or more languages These studies are in line with cross-cultural pragmatic research Among such studies are refusal studies by Kwon (2003) on Korean and American English, Liao and Bresnahan (1996) on Mandarin Chinese and American English, Nelson, Carson, Al Batal and El-Bakary (2002) on Egyptian Arabic and American English The second group of researchers was concerned about reception and production of refusals by language learners The majority of the studies in this category which is known as ‘interlanguage pragmatics’ have focused on the comparison of learner refusal with native speaker refusals and have looked for evidence of pragmatic transfer as the source of similarity and dissimilarity between the learner language and the native speaker of the target language (mainly English) Examples of these studies are the groundbreaking study of Beebe et al (1990), Takahashi and Beebe (1987), and Wannaruk (2008) Some of the studies in this category have also addressed cross-cultural comparison © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ of the learners’ first and target language (Beebe et al 1990; Wannaruk 2008) on refusals The third group of research deals with refusals in monolingual/ monocultural settings This group of studies has more relevance to the present study which attempts to look at refusals in one language, Persian The most important of these studies are Felix-Brasdefer (2006) in Mexican Spanish, Oktoprimasakti (2006) in Indonesian, Garcia (1999) in Spanish and Beebe and Cummings (1996) in American English An influential study on refusals is that of Beebe et al (1990) The results of the study revealed that there is an interaction between the status of the participants and the directness of refusals Americans usually employ indirect strategies in refusing regardless of the status of the interlocutor, whereas the Japanese tend to use more direct strategies when addressing a lower status person and more indirect strategies when refusing persons of higher ranks Beebe et al (1990) also created a discourse completion test (DCT) and a comprehensive categorization of refusals which have been used in many later studies carried out on refusals (e.g Felix-Brasdefer 2004; 2006; Von Canon 2006) The present study adopts their classification of semantic formula used in refusals which are known as ‘refusal strategies’ in refusal research This classification of refusals includes the following categories: direct refusals; indirect refusals; and adjuncts to refusals Two major classes of refusals are direct and indirect which have their own sub-classes Also, there are strategies which are not considered as part of refusals, but are adjuncts to them Adjuncts to refusals may precede or follow the main acts of refusals The work of Chen and Zhang (1995) investigated Chinese native speakers’ refusal strategies Fifty male and the same number of female speakers of Mandarin Chinese who had lived in the US for 2.4 years on average at the time of the research performed refusals to requests, suggestions, invitations and offers A questionnaire consisting of 16 questions was used as the data collection device of the study The first part of the data analysis involved studying the relationship between subjects and addressees in terms of social status The second part of the analysis described the subjects’ strategies used to interpret and respond to offers The findings of the study revealed that Chinese people consider refusals as acts having a potentially negative influence on future interaction As a result they use implicit, indirect strategies to avoid threatening the face of the ones involved in the interaction Beebe and Cummings (1996) studied refusal responses collected with two different data collection procedures Eleven ESL teachers completed a questionnaire while another 11 teachers were asked the same questions on the phone to be answered verbally The comparison of oral answers and DCTs indicated that DCTs are an efficient data-eliciting device for quick collection of a large amount of data The oral data, however, resulted in more lengthy responses that were also deeper emotionally and psychosocially On the other hand, role plays allow the researcher to extend the turns of the interaction so that a speech act is finally accomplished The methodological comparison in © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie this study suggests that oral data like role plays and naturally occurring data should be privileged in pragmatic research Nelson et al (2002) applied a modified version of the DCT for studying similarities and differences between Americans and Egyptians in making refusals Arabs tend to show more awareness of status differences in refusing of a person in higher status than Americans They found refusals in Arabic language and culture even more ‘face’ threatening than what is perceived in American culture In hierarchical societies in general and Iranian society in particular, people tend to be more aware of status differences, as these differences are more vivid Also similar to Arabic culture, refusals in Persian (in case they are not responses to insincere acts) are very likely to cause offense and communication breakdown As people rely heavily on group membership (Eslamirasekh 1993), they not like to be refused Kwon (2003) examined the use of the refusal strategies among Korean speakers and American English speakers Kwon has also used Beebe et al.’s (1990) classification of refusals The data were gathered by using DCT The results revealed that despite the fact that both groups have used similar refusal strategies in their languages, cross cultural differences were obvious Kwon suggested that negative pragmatic transfer is indeed a potential source of miscommunication due to the inadequacy of ESL learners’ knowledge of sociolinguistic rules Felix-Brasdefer’s (2006) study was another relevant study to the present research in that it used Beebe et al.’s (1990) classification of refusal strategies as an analytical tool The study explored refusals only in one language which is Mexican Spanish It was, however, different with the present research in that it used open role plays complemented with retrospective verbal report for data collection In her study, too, social power and social distance played an important role in selecting the linguistic strategies by Mexican speakers of Spanish Studies on Persian refusals (Shokouhi and Khalili 2008; Izadi and Don 2011; Atasheneh and Izadi 2011) have also supported the findings of other studies on refusals that a variety of indirect strategies are preferred in order to make refusals Reasoning has been found to be the most frequent strategy However, these studies have focused on learner language and the possibility of pragmatic transfer and have used DCT for data collection (with the exception of Atasheneh and Izadi 2011) The study of Atasheneh and Izadi (2011) drew upon role play scenarios to collect refusals While their data represent lengthier and more elaborated refusals, they still portray the most prototypical refusals, as responses to hypothetical role play scenarios All studies in Persian refusals have pinpointed the influence of power and social distance on the linguistic choices of refusals The reviewed studies have mostly used either DCTs or role plays in order to elicit refusals While these two instruments are very useful in pragmatic research, they are often criticized for simplifying the speech act in interactions, since they lack contextual stipulations (Nelson et al 2002) Many © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ participants would provide only prototypical responses to DCT situations or role play scenarios To be able to look at the full account of refusals in interactions, the present study investigates them in naturally occurring conversations Method Participants The population of this study consists of a large group of Iranian Persian speakers The total number of participants is 393 of whom 121 participants are male and 272 participants are female Their age ranged from 20 to 45 The participants include undergraduate students, academics and non-academic staff of the university The student participants of the study were in different majors including, Accounting, Engineering, Management, Nursing, Architecture and Chemistry The non-student participants’ level of education ranged from Bachelor degree to PhD All participants are monolingual speakers of Persian Data This study is based on 208 refusals in spoken Persian which were collected in a university in Iran over the two months of March and April 2010 The data were collected through an ethnographic approach to observation (Manes and Wolfson 1981; Holmes 1990), either audio-recorded or field noted Two MA students in linguistics helped the authors to gather data They were told to take note of demographic information of the interactants, to focus on the speech act of refusals, and to write down on their data collection form these phenomena They were trained to identify and list all exchanges They walked around the campus vigilantly from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM every weekday to field note any refusals they heard Upon hearing a refusal, they did their best to take notes of that refusal as well as its initiating act Then, they asked the refuser and the refusee for their demographic information and permission to use the noted refusal for a research purpose The second author was audio-recording refusal interactions in different student gatherings in the university campus and dormitory These recorded refusals were of two kinds: (1) the naturally occurring refusals to naturally occurring initiating acts; and (2) naturally occurring refusals to the acts which were deliberately initiated by the second author/audio recorder to elicit refusals The permission was elicited after the recording was made There were five cases of refusal of permission for recording Therefore, the whole exchanges were deleted from the recorder at once to address the ethical considerations of the research © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie Generally, the refusals were gathered in different contexts in university such as student gatherings outside the classrooms, canteens, dormitories, departmental meetings between lecturers, lecturers’ offices and library For example, in the university canteen, either of the researchers was standing near the payment counter with his/her voice recorder on This is the place where many refusals take place because there are many friends who offer (be it sincerely or insincerely) to pay for their friends’ food and drink When a refusal is made and captured by voice recorder, the researcher approached the informants to elicit permission and demographic information Overall, the recorded data resulted in two hours of talk out of which 97 chunks were identified as refusals 111 refusals were gathered through field noting technique Out of the 97 audio-recorded refusals, 36 were gathered through deliberate initiation, and 61 acts occurred naturally Data analysis The present study consists of qualitative analyses supported with some descriptive statistics The audio-recorded interactions were transcribed orthographically The unintelligible chunks were discarded The intelligible identified refusals along with those refusals which were elicited from field note observations were classified and analyzed according to Beebe et al.’s (1990) classification of refusals The classification scheme with the examples of strategies from the present research is reproduced here The frequency and percentages of the strategies used in each category are manually calculated Direct strategies a b Performative: (no example from the data) I refuse you Non-performative na (No) Negative willingness/ability: nemitunam (I can’t) Indirect strategies Statement of Apology/Regret: ozr mixa:m (I apologize) Wish: Ka:sh mitunestam bemunam (I wish I could stay) Excuse/Reason/Explanation: Ye qara:ri da:ram (I have an appointment) Statement of alternative: chera nemiri az osta:d beporsi? (Why don’t you ask the lecturer) Set condition for future or past acceptance: age tunestam (If I can, I’ll sure it) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ Promise of future acceptance: Dafe dige anja:mesh midam (I’ll it next time) Statement of principle: ma’mulan tanha dars mixunam (I usually study alone) Statement of philosophy: a:dam nemituneh inhame mova:zeb bashe (One can’t be too careful) Attempt to dissuade the interlocutor: bixia:lesh sho (take it easy) 10 Acceptance that functions as a refusal: Behet khabar midam (I’ll let you know) 11 Avoidance: Mitunam farad: sobh beyaym va in ka:r ro anja:m bedim (I can come tomorrow to it together) Adjuncts to refusals Statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement: tabrik migam ke emteha:net ro qabul shodi vali (Congratulations on passing your exam, but ) Statement of empathy: xob masa’leh ine ke xub darket mikonam vali (Well the thing is I understand you perfectly but ) Pause fillers: e::h, vallah (Uh, Well, Umm, eh) Gratitude/Appreciation: Az da’vatetun motshakeram amma (Thanks for the invitation but ) Results Types and frequency of refusal strategies In the first step, the total number of 208 refusals were recognized and broken into their constituent strategies Refusals were varied according to their length and the number of strategies they were made up of These strategies were coded and classified according to whether they were ‘direct,’ ‘indirect,’ or ‘adjuncts to refusals’ (Beebe et al 1990) The results yielded 869 strategies, since the majority of the refusals were made up of more than one strategy Of the 869 identified strategies, 165 strategies were ‘direct’ (18.98%), 628 were ‘indirect’ (72.26%) and 76 were ‘adjuncts to refusals’ (8.74%) See Table Direct strategies In the direct category, there were three strategies: (1) no (11.62%); (2) negative ability (5.17%); and (3) negative willingness (2.18%) Direct refusals happen when the participants are very close to each other, like a two close friends or when the relationship between two individuals are so distant that the speaker © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 10 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie Table Number of direct, indirect and adjunct strategies Strategies Number of strategies Percentage Direct Indirect Adjuncts to refusals Total 165 628 76 869 18.98 72.26 8.74 100 does not care for the hearer’s face The following example is a direct refusal of a close friend and colleague Speaker (a male 34-year-old lecturer) is talking about his need of help with his exam session His words can be taken as an implicit request Speaker (S2) (male, 32) takes speaker (S1)’s words as a request and refuses directly: (1): Transcript A (28) L115.S1: donba:le ye nafar migardam jalase emtahanamo ye sar bezaneh chun xodam nistam L115 S1: I’m looking for someone to give me hand in my exam session because I myself won’t be present L116.S2: ru man hesa:b nakon [S1’s first name] L116 S2: Don’t count on me [S1’s first name] L117.S1: na na be to nemidam chun midunam gereftari L117 S1: No no I’m not giving it to you because I know you are busy In this exchange, although S1’s words are very ambiguous in terms of the speaker’s intentions, and if it is meant as a request, it is done implicitly, S2 refuses this tentative request very bluntly and directly by saying ‘don’t count on me.’ In line 117, S1 denies meaning to request and emphasizes that pragmatic function of his words is other than to request Direct refusals also happen when people are distant and not mind offending each other For example in the following exchange, a student who has left his calculator and is about to sit for his exam is requesting another student whom he doesn’t know for his calculator: (2): Transcript C (6) L10 S1: bebaxshid ma:shin hes:ab da:ri L10 S1: Excuse me! Do you have a calculator? L11 S2: a:re da:ram L11 S2: Yeah I L12 S1: mishe bedi beram emtaha:n bedam ba’de emteha:n behet pas bedam L12 S1: Can I borrow it? I have an exam I’ll give you back after the exam L13 S2: na nemitunam L13 S2: No I can’t © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ 11 Table Types and frequency of direct strategies Direct strategies Frequency Percentage No Negative ability Negative willingness Results – direct 101 45 19 165 11.62 5.17 2.18 18.98 The two students in this exchange have no ongoing relationship with each other They are just students of the same university Student (L10) makes such a request because he is in urgent need of the calculator and sees a calculator in student 2’s hands Student 2, however, refuses directly by using two direct strategy ‘no’ and ‘negative ability’ (L13) Table shows that the strategy ‘no’ has the most frequency (101: 11.62%) among other direct strategies One possible reason for this is that the strategy ‘no’ accompanies other indirect strategies very often, as in ‘na nemitunam bebaxshid’ meaning ‘no I can’t sorry.’ Here ‘no’ precedes two other strategies ‘Negative ability’ comes second in this table which is realized in the Persian language as ‘nemitunam’ (I can’t) Indirect strategies Indirect strategies which are used in the present study are depicted in Table Generally, the participants of the present study preferred either indirect or a combination of direct and indirect strategies to perform refusals Of the three categories of refusal strategies mentioned in the previous section, indirect strategies favored the highest frequency (72.26%) Out of 165 direct strategies, 158 accompanied some other indirect strategies, especially reasoning and gratitude The third common strategy, however, does not belong to the ‘indirect’ category It is a direct category strategy; that is, ‘no’ (11.62%), which in almost all cases has prefaced indirect strategies As Table shows, only two indirect strategies show a remarkably high frequency They are ‘reason’ (31.76%) and ‘gratitude’ (13.46%) Other indirect strategies were not considerable and had a very low frequency compared to the first two One can conclude that providing reason and expressing gratitude are two prominent features of refusals in Persian The following example reflects a conversation between two female students (in their 20s) who are having a snack at the campus: (3): Transcript D (6) S1: (esm) jom’e tavalodame dust da:ram to ham beya:y (name) Friday is my birthday, I’d love you to come © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 12 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie Table Types and frequency of indirect refusal strategies Percentage Frequency Indirect strategies Reason *Gratitude/appreciation Statement of principle Statement of regret Statement of alternative *Ask for more information Promise of future acceptance Unspecific reply Criticize the request/requester Set condition for future/past acceptance Self defense Repetition of part of request *Returning offer *Returning the invitation Conditional acceptance Hedging Attempt to dissuade the interlocutor Silence Wish Joke Request for help, empathy, & assistance by dropping the request Let the interlocutor off the hook Results – indirect 276 117 45 32 28 24 21 18 12 11 5 4 3 2 31.76 13.46 5.17 3.68 3.22 2.76 2.41 2.07 1.38 1.26 0.92 0.69 0.57 0.57 0.46 0.46 0.34 0.34 0.23 0.23 0.11 628 0.11 72.26 Note: The strategies with asterisks are the new strategies which were identified in the present research S2: Eeee sa:’at chand Oh what time? S1: shab be ba’d PM afterward S2: tavallodet mobarak azizam vali xob man ba:ba:m eja:ze nemideh shaba: birun ba:sham Happy birthday darling but well my father doesn’t let me stay out at nights S1: xob zeya:d tul nemikeshe Well it won’t take long S2: Na aslan kolan ejazeh nemide shab birun beram No my father never lets me out, whatsoever In this conversation, upon hearing the time of the birthday, S2 refuses her friend’s invitation using the strategy ‘reason’ (her father does not let her go out at nights), which follows two adjunct strategies (next section) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ 13 Table Types and frequency of adjuncts to refusals Adjunct strategies Frequency Percentage * Define relationship Statement of positive feeling Pause fillers Results – adjuncts 35 26 15 76 4.02 2.99 1.72 8.74 Note: The strategy with asterisk is a new strategy which was identified in the present research Adjunct strategies to refusals The adjuncts to refusals which are used are ‘statement of positive feeling,’ ‘define relationship,’ and ‘pause fillers.’ The following is the list of adjuncts to refusal which have appeared in the data of the present research: ‘define relationship’ (4.02%), ‘statement of positive feeling’ (2.99%), and ‘pause fillers’ (1.72%) Table shows types, frequency and percentage of the adjunct strategies to refusal The most frequent adjunct to refusal strategy was ‘define relationship.’ An example of such a strategy is na mersi azizam (no thanks dear) The third strategy in this refusal to an offer; that is azizam (dear) shows an endearment relationship and belongs to strategy ‘define relationship In excerpt three above, S2 expresses positive feelings by wishing S1 a happy birthday, followed by azizam (endearment) She makes ‘expression of positive feeling’ and ‘define relationship’ (endearment) adjacent to her refusal which is indirectly uttered New strategies found In addition to the above-mentioned strategies which are reported by previous studies on refusals (Beebe et al 1990; Kwon 2003; Felix-Brasdefer 2004; 2006; Shokouhi and Khalili 2008; Wannaruk 2008; Izadi and Don 2010), the present study found four new strategies which were not reported by previous research These strategies are ‘returning the act,’ and ‘expression of good willing’ which are indirect strategies These strategies were added to the list of strategies proposed by Beebe et al (1990) Returning the invitation/offer Returning the act occurred 10 times in the data (five times; i.e 0.57% for offers and five times; i.e 0.57% for invitations) An example of ‘returning the © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 14 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie invitation’ is shoma biain xuneye ma: meaning ‘you come to our house’ in response to an invitation ‘come to our house for lunch.’ The strategy ‘returning offer’ is also very common in refusing offers, especially food and drink offers In these cases a typical response to the offer which is linguistically coded as befarma:eed is the same linguistic code; that is, befarma:eed which could be translated in English ‘help yourself (plural: respectful).’ The strategy ‘returning invitation’ is shown in the following example: Two friends and colleagues are the participants: The interaction is rather informal, which shows the intimate relationship between the two participants (4): Transcript A (22) S1: jom’e biain samte ma: L90 S1: come to our side (our house) on Friday S2: mersi va:lla:h ye xorde gerefta:ram va ella: L91 S2: Thanks well I’m a bit busy otherwise S2: SHOMA:1 biain onvar L92 S2: You (plural) come that side (my house) S1: nobate shoma:st L93 S1: It’s your turn As the example shows, S1 (L91) thanks the inviter, followed by giving a reason (ye xorde gerefta:ram: I’m a bit busy) The third strategy (L92) is returning the invitation with emphasis on SHOMA (YOU plural) This returning the invitation is often accompanied by farq nemikoneh (doesn’t make any difference) or che farqi mikoneh (what is the difference) This implies that it does not matter who invites whom The guest and the host’s houses are taken as the same The important thing is that they meet each other somewhere in either of the houses Expression of gratitude/appreciation The second finding of the present research regarding the strategies is that ‘expression of gratitude/appreciation’ (13.46%) which was categorized in previous studies as ‘adjunct to refusals’ was among the indirect strategies Many a time, this strategy functions as the only strategy used to refuse an offer It is quite frequent in the data of the present study that, a response to an offer such as ‘help yourself’ be merci (thank you) Discussion and conclusion Findings of the present study support the findings of previous research (Beebe et al 1990; Kwon 2003; Felix-Brasdefer 2006; Wannaruk 2008) in that © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ 15 refusals in Persian operate by the general preference of indirect over direct strategies in communications between the people who have ongoing relationship (Blum-Kulka et al 1989) The majority of the informants avoided a direct refusal a (mere no) and tended to provide reasons, explanations or excuses as a way to imply their lack of ability or unwillingness It seems that considering others’ face in refusals is morally expected of social members regardless of their culture And this leads to “certain commonalities across the world’s language communities” (Och 1996: 425) With regard to the type of strategies, expectedly, ‘reason/ excuse or explanation’ was the most common strategy in Persian refusals (Eslami 2010) Since it was the most frequent strategy present in all the studies mentioned in the review section, this strategy type can be considered as another universal feature of refusals The third seemingly culture-general feature of refusals, as supported by the present study, is the expression of gratitude Thanking the interlocutor before expressing the face threatening acts of refusals works as a mitigating strategy which softens the unwelcome effects of the refusal on the interlocutor Iranian people are generally collectivist in nature (Koutlaki 2002; Eslamirasekh 2004) and depend heavily on the social groups they belong to Hence, requests are very common among them based on the social expectation that people have to help and support each other When these expectations are not met by a refusal, a threat to the face of the addressee is incurred and the interactants’ long term ongoing relationship is likely to be damaged Amouzadeh and Tavangar (2005) state that in intercultural settings, Iranians are often labeled as ‘demanding’ due to a large number of requests they make While some cultures might be tolerant of frequent requests, others may view it as an instantiation of an impolite behavior (Locher and Watts 2005) Similarly, invitations, suggestions and offers abound in Iranian culture Invitations and offers are taken as a sign of hospitality which is highly valued However, refusing is not a social expectation That is why very frequently when Iranians finds themselves in a situation that they have to refuse they use ‘mitigating strategies.’ Refusing offers and invitations (unless they are ostensible) are very difficult, because in a way a refuser is responding to a socially valued act (hospitality) by a socially unacceptable act of refusal Such a refusal can be highly face threatening and subject to impoliteness judgment Overall, respondents of the present study attempted to soften their refusals with softening strategies like the statement of regret, providing explanations, and gratitude to show their considerations of their addressee’s face and hence to avoid evaluations of impoliteness As Beebe et al (1990) indicate such softeners are expected in face-threatening acts to save the face of the speaker, hearer or both It could be argued that in Iranian society because people depend more on each other as members of social communities, refusals may even be more face threatening than in cultures where people are more individualistic and independent (Eslamirasekh 2004) A refusal potentially runs the risk of impoliteness evaluation that can damage the face of the refuser © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 16 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie The strategy of ‘gratitude’ was the second most frequent The main justification for this finding could be that ‘gratitude’ frequently occurred in refusal to offers that reflect the ritual politeness act, which is known as taarof These offers are generally ostensible, not genuine offers, and hence one is socially expected to refuse the act or at least refuse a few times before accepting it Refusing these offers is also part of the convention of taarof and is usually made through ‘gratitude’ to conform to the social ritual norms of Iranian society Recurrent schematic use of ‘gratitude’ is part of the ritual Considering the fact that in many cases of offer-refusal and invitation-refusal interactions, the strategy ‘gratitude’ is repeated many times in the interactions, the high distribution of ‘gratitude’ in Persian refusals is not something unexpected Many non-Iranians who have communication with Iranians find this aspect of taarof confusing Iranians repetitively refuse an offer to show their politeness by conforming to the ritual norms of taarof At the same time, the other party is expected to insist on his/her offer to persuade the interlocutor to accept the offer This insistence is just another side of Iranian ritual politeness system These refusals are less likely to be interpreted as face threatening by the interactants (Koutlaki 2002) The complexity of taarof makes its understanding problematic even for Iranian themselves Taarof includes both real and ostensible offers/invitations/refusals However, the in/sincerity of the act is not something inherent in the linguistic utterances Hence, it is incumbent on the interactants to work out whether an act is genuine or insincere Regarding the strategy ‘returning the act’ which was mainly found in refusals to invitations and offers, the study argues that this strategy is a culture-specific feature of Persian refusals Offers and invitations are two socially favorable acts in Iran, and constitute the mainstream of ritual politeness Therefore, to appreciate this adherence to the ritual, individuals redirect the acts to the speaker to appreciate them being kind enough to such favors And this returning the act is another aspect of taarof These acts are also attached to the cultural schema of hospitality which is highly valued among Iranians These acts, regardless of sincerity or insincerity, are part of ritual politeness Therefore, it is considered polite to return the invitation and the offer to the speaker to appreciate his politeness and hospitality The findings of this study can help foster the interpersonal/intercultural communication by introducing the indirect strategies which are needed to refuse More importantly, a special kind of refusal which functions as taarof has potential for intercultural miscommunication These refusals are not usually taken as serious Therefore, insistence on offers or invitations is required on the part of act initiators Also, the findings provide a baseline for future cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics research in Persian and other languages The study also has implication for (im)politeness research by supporting the view that politeness or impoliteness does not reside on the linguistic act of refusals (Koutlaki 2002) but on the ways a discourse © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ 17 community evaluates the acts in different situations As for face, while a refusal to a request may be considered face threatening, refusal to taarof offer may not Likewise, as (im)politeness is situation-specific judgment, participant may evaluate a refusal in one context impolite, but polite in another.2 Notes Words in CAPITALS represent emphasis In a culture where indirect refusals represent the norm, a direct refusal is highly likely to be evaluated as impolite However, the expectations that participants bring into interaction are also important One may even be intolerant of an indirect refusal, if he/she does not expect a refusal at all References Afghari, A (2007) A sociopragmatic study of apology speech act realization pattern in Persian Speech Communication 49.3: 177–85 Amouzadeh, M., and M Tavangar (2005) Sociolinguistic transfer: the case of Persian speakers in Australia International Journal of Applied Linguistics 147.1: 63–78 Arundale, R B (2010) Constituting face in conversation: face, facework, and interactional achievement Journal of Pragmatics 42.8: 2078–105 Atasheneh, N., and A Izadi (2011) Refusal in English and Persian: a pragmalinguistic investigation Iranian EFL journal 7.2: 111–34 Austin, J (1962) How to things with words Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Beebe, L., and M C Cummings (1996) Natural speech act data versus written questionnaire data: how data collection method affects speech act performance In S M Gass, and J Neu (eds.), Speech acts across culture Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 65–86 — T Takahashi, and R Uliss–Weltz (1990) Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals In R C Scarcella, E Anderson, and S Krashen, (eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language New York: Newbury House 55–73 Beeman, W O (1976) Status, style and strategy in Iranian interactions Anthropological Linguistics 18.7: 305–22 Blum-Kulka, S (1987) Indirectness and politeness in requests: same or different? Journal of Pragmatics 11.2: 131–46 — J House, and G Kasper (1989) Cross-cultural pragmatics: requests and apologies Norwood, NJ, Ablex Brown, P., and S Levinson (1987) Politeness: some universals in language use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Chen, X L., and Y Zhang (1995) Refusing in Chinese In G Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i 119– 63 Don, Z M., and A Izadi (2011) Relational connection and separation in Iranian dissertation defenses Journal of Pragmatics 43.15: 3782–92 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 18 ◆ Ahmad Izadi and Farzaneh Zilaie Eelen, G (2001) A critique of politeness theories Manchester: St Jerome Publishing Eslamirasekh, Z (1993) Cross-cultural comparison of the requestive speech act realization patterns in Persian and English Pragmatics and Language Learning 4.2: 75–90 — (2004) Face keeping strategies in reaction to complains: English and Persian Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 14.1: 181–97 Eslami, Z R (2010) Refusals: How to develop appropriate refusal strategies In A Martínez-Flor and E Usó-Juan (eds.), Speech act performance: theoretical, empirical and methodological issues Amsterdam: John Benjamins 217–36 Felix-Brasdefer, J C (2004) Interlanguage refusals: linguistic politeness and length of residence in the target community Language Learning 54.4: 587–653 — (2006) Linguistic politeness in Mexico: Refusal strategies among male speakers of Mexican Spanish Journal of Pragmatics 38.12: 2158–87 Garcia, C (1999) The three stages of Venezuelan invitations and responses Multilingua 18.4: 391–433 Goffman, E (1967) Interaction ritual: Essays on face to face behavior Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company — (1972) On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction In J Laver and S Hutcheson (eds.), Communication in face-to-face interaction Harmondsworth: Penguin 319–46 Haugh, M (2012) Epilogue The first order distinction in face and politeness research Journal of Politeness Research 8.1: 111–34 — and F Bargiela-Chiappini (2010) Face in interaction Journal of Pragmatics 42.8: 2073–77 Holmes, J (1990) Apologies in New Zealand English Language in Society 19.2: 155–99 Izadi, A., and Z M Don (2011) Interlanguage pragmatics: strategy use in English and Persian refusals by Iranian EFL learners Journal of Teaching English Language and Literature 2.1: 1–25 Koutlaki, S (2002) Offers and expressions of thanks as face enhancing acts: tæ’arof in Persian Journal of Pragmatics 34.12: 1733–56 Kwon, J (2003) Pragmatic transfer and proficiency in refusals of Korean EFL learners Ed.D Dissertation, Boston University Levinson, S C (1983) Pragmatics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Liao, C., and M Bresnahan (1996) A contrastive pragmatic study on American English and Mandarin refusal strategies Language Sciences 18.3–4: 703–27 Manes, J., and N Wolfson (1981) The compliment formula In F Coulmas (ed.), Conversational routine: explorations in standardized communication The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter 115–32 Matsumoto, Y (1989) Politeness and conversational universals – observations from Japanese Multilingua 8.2–3: 207–21 Nelson, G L., L Carson, M Al Batal, and W El-Bakary (2002) Cross-cultural pragmatics: strategy use in Egyptian Arabic & American English refusals Applied Linguistics 23.2: 163–9 Locher, M., and R Watts (2005) Politeness and relational work Journal of Politeness Research 1.1: 1–25 Och, E S (1996) Linguistic resources for socializing humanity In C Gumperz and S Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 406–37 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Refusal strategies in Persian ◆ 19 Oktoprimasakti, F (2006) Direct and indirect strategies of refusing among Indonesians Journal of Language and Literature 10.2: 103–16 Pinto, D (2011) Are Americans insincere? Interactional style and politeness in everyday America Journal of Politeness Research 7, 215–38 Searle, J R (1969) Speech acts Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sharifian, F (2007) L1 cultural conceptualization in L2 learning: the case of Persian– speaking learners of English In F Sharifian, and G B Palmer (eds.), Applied cultural linguistics Amsterdam: John Benjamin 33–52 Shokouhi, H., and M Khalili (2008) Pragmatic transfer in learners’ refusals: a case of gender distinction Journal of the Faculty of Literature & Humanities, Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz 2.1: 215–52 Takahashi, T., and L M Beebe (1987) The development of pragmatic competence by Japanese learners of English JALT Journal 8.2: 131–5 Von Canon, A L (2006) Just saying ‘no’: refusing requests in Spanish as a first and second language Ph.D dissertation, The University of Iowa Wannaruk, A (2008) Pragmatic transfer in Thai EFL refusals RELC Journal 39.3: 318–37 Wierzbicka, A (1991) Cross cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction Berlin: Walter de Gruyter email: izadi53fa@yahoo.com Farzanehzilaie@yahoo.com © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd [Received 13 August 2013] ... formula used in refusals which are known as ? ?refusal strategies? ?? in refusal research This classification of refusals includes the following categories: direct refusals; indirect refusals; and... Taarof includes both real and ostensible offers/invitations/refusals However, the in/ sincerity of the act is not something inherent in the linguistic utterances Hence, it is incumbent on the interactants... audio-recording refusal interactions in different student gatherings in the university campus and dormitory These recorded refusals were of two kinds: (1) the naturally occurring refusals to