Taarof in Iranian speech etiquette

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of correlation between models of etiquette behavior in Iranian and Russian communicative cultures. We focus on the attention in the article is paid to taarof – the system of etiquette behavior in Persian culture. Taarof plays a fundamentally important role in the life of modern Iranian society and in the communicative interaction of Iranians with foreigners. The article deals with the main postulates of the theory of politeness and the problems of national specifics of speech etiquette in Persian culture. The crucial point for Persian culture is the concept of ceremony, ritualized behavior in everyday communication. Ritualized communication also existed in the patriarchal Russian society, however, modern Russian everyday etiquette has largely lost the features of ceremonial and has become less formal. In the article, we analyze real everyday conversations of Persian culture. We list important characteristics of the ceremonial nature of everyday communication in Iran. There are two situations of an unexpected meeting and a related invitation to visit to be considered. What we are interested in is the stereotypical invitation and refusal formulas, which are idiomatic and figurative. We plan to describe the pragmatic nature of the etiquette formulas of Taarof and to compile the Russian-Iranian dictionary of speech etiquette in future.