Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Speech Act of Greeting in Persian and English

Abstract

The present study investigates the sociolinguistic aspects of the speech act of greeting and its differences regarding expressive or productive forms of greeting in Persian and English. Contrastive studies of speech acts of different languages could help to overcome the gap that might happen in interpersonal communication among the speakers of various languages. The current paper focuses on the descriptive sociolinguistic analysis of the speech act of ‘greeting’ and the style of greetings in the mentioned languages. We have used different methods like questionnaire, observation, interview, introspection and statistical analysis to collect data. The materials, which were analyzed, involve Persian greetings that take place in real-life situations and English greetings recorded in audiovisual materials downloaded from the internet. The results show that social contexts have their influence on expressing the speech act of greeting in both Persian and English, and that each language has its own peculiarities and even some similarities with the other one. We have defined how greeting operates in our life.