The meaning and concept of compliments in Persian language and the study of foreign Persian learners' perspectives on this subject

The term "Ta’arof" is one of the most important components of the cultural identity of Iranians and the main element of Persian ritual literature, which plays an important role in the communication between Iranians and intercultural communication between Iranians and non-Iranians. Identifying "Ta’arof" is one of the major possibilities and conditions in identifying the state of Iranian culture and daily life. Using formal sociology (Zimel, 1971) and speech act theory (Austin, 1962) in linguistics, this article examines the position of "Iranian Ta’arof " in Persian language teaching and its verbal complexities. ‘Iranian Ta’arof’ has many different aspects and vary according to the position, age, education and social level of people. The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of knowledge of foreign Persian-language learners in learning ‘Iranian Ta’arof’ in different situations and conditions of conversations and daily life. The statistical population was foreign Persian- language learners of advanced and supplementary courses at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran and Ferdowsi University in Mashhad. Among them, 9 people, aged 21 to 39, were selected by simple random sampling. The research method was done in the form of face-to-face interviews with foreign Persian-language learners through a questionnaire. The results showed that the level of knowledge of foreign Persian learners in learning ‘Iranian Ta’arof’ was high and they considered the teaching of ‘Iranian Ta’arof’ necessary to improve the quality of learning Persian language. Also, the findings showed that familiarity with the cultural mechanism of Ta’arof leads to a better reception of Ta’arof messages by Persian learners, so that they can consciously take advantage of it in strengthening social communication.