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The appropriate employment of language by politicians can settle many of the current global problems and crises. Iran's nuclear deal with all its complexities and subtleties is one of the most contentious global issues that demands a lot of tact and prudence on the part of the politicians to be resolved. Politicians could draw upon different politeness strategies to employ appropriate speech, save the face of others, gain their trust, and resolve problems. Considering the significance of this issue, this corpus based descriptive research investigated the politeness strategies employed in the editorials of Iranian and American newspapers. Fifty news articles from the Tehran Times and New York Times published from May 2019 to June 2022 were investigated according to Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness strategies. These news articles were relevant to Iran's nuclear deal. The findings indicated that the most frequent politeness strategy in the Tehran Times news was the positive politeness strategy and the most frequent politeness strategy in the New York Times news was the negative politeness strategy. Finally, the results of the chi-square test revealed that there is a significant difference in the frequency of politeness strategies use in both newspaper articles. The findings highlight the sociocultural dependency of the politeness concept and imply that cultural differences affect preference for the choice of types of politeness strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human beings utilize varied linguistic politeness to facilitate interaction and minimize the potential for conflict. With the advancement of the Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and the introduction of new social networks, studying how politeness operates within human communication opened up new avenues for research, particularly within diverse cultures. For this reason, the current study sought to report on the "whats" and "hows" of politeness strategies identified in Telegram messages delivered by EFL Learners in Iran. Data were analyzed based on Leech's (Leech, Geoffrey. 2007. Politeness: Is there an East-West divide? Journal of Politeness Research 3(2). 167–206) Grand Strategy of Politeness, considering the purpose of communication, politeness strategies, and context. The corpus for this study encompassed 1,413 text messages sent via Telegram by 9 EFL learners during one year. Findings indicated a number of different politeness strategies in Iranian culture, specifically the modesty constraint – the speaker maximizes dispraise of himself – which can be construed as one of the unique features and influences of Islamic teachings. Moreover, the Leech's model might appropriately describe politeness principles in Asian contexts, including Iran, and how cultural dynamics manifest themselves in interpreting the concept of politeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the issue of politeness in compliment responses (CRs) among Iranian female university students. Using naturally occurring talk, 235 compliment-response exchanges were recorded during focus group interviews. The findings revealed that to mitigate impoliteness the interviewees displayed five extreme culture-specific politeness strategies as (1) tarof, (2) shekasteh-nafsi, (3) hyperreciprocation, (4) sha'n, and (5) double positive response. In femalefemale CR exchanges, interviewees attempted to foster a good impression by resorting to politeness strategies of tarof, hyperreciprocation and double positive response whereas in male-female CR exchanges, interviewees tried to undermine the appraised impression imposed by the opposite-sex compliments through politeness strategies that are anchored in sha'n and shekasteh-nafsi. This article concludes that Iranian women respond diversely to compliments by virtue of interaction among integrated components: the compliment topic, the complimenter's sex and cultural burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper investigates pragmatic competence by considering some corpora of 2013 Iran presidential debates. The Fararu news source was used for sampling third debate. The present study examined two aspects of pragmatic competence for analyzing the materials. First, Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory was used to examine the positive and/or negative politeness of each candidate's speech. Then, the study used the Pearson chi-square formula to examine the frequency of politeness strategies used by candidates. Second, Arundale's (2010) face theory was used to analyze criticism responses exchanges between the candidates. The researchers assumed that, following the theories, pragmatic competence might have a great effect on election's outcomes and mitigate the threat to candidates' face. The findings showed a statistically significant difference between the frequencies of politeness strategies used by Iran's 2013 presidential candidates. Moreover, there was one by one relation between the mitigating of face threatening acts and face constituting strategies used by candidaes. We hope the findings could add to the body of knowledge in both pragmatics and presidential election context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Unlike politeness which has greatly been studied by researchers, the impolite or rude language has mostly been neglected. The current study is an attempt to examine this neglected aspect of the language. The study has focused on whether the impoliteness aspect of language should be taught in an Iranian EFL context? To this purpose, four groups of participants, namely, language learners, language teachers, Iranian language experts, and non-Iranian language experts were surveyed for their ideas toward the impolite language. No significant difference was found in the ideas of the four groups concerning "the importance of impoliteness as compared to politeness", "the equal treatment of genders in teaching impoliteness", and also concerning "the context of teaching impoliteness". Significant results were; however, found in their ideas concerning "the general significance of impoliteness in everyday language", "teaching impoliteness in language classes", "methods of teaching impoliteness (direct vs indirect)", and "the level of proficiency required for teaching impoliteness". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]