The Persian Cultural Pragmatic Schema of mehmân-navâzi (Hospitality): Rituals and Linguistic Formulae

Abstract

The aim of the present paper was to explore the cultural schema of mehmânnavâzi (hospitality) in Persian. An ethnographic approach was utilized to collect data from a number of sources including online and naturalistic data gathered from movies and daily conversations. The constant comparison method (Creswell, 2013) was then employed to analyze the data for the rituals and linguistic formulae used to enact the schema. The results indicated that the rituals in the practice of this cultural schema can be divided into three categories of welcoming, serving, and leave-taking. The examples of linguistic formulae and expressions used in the enactment of the schema revealed that the realization of this schema was closely associated with other cultural schemas underlying many aspects of communication in Persian including tâ’ârof, âberu, rudarbâyesti, shekastehnafsi, adab va ehterâm, and tavâzo’. The findings are then discussed with reference to the implications the study has for intercultural communication and more specifically, crosscultural politeness research, as well as for teaching English as an international language.