Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages, Arak University, Iran
2
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages, Arak University, Iran
Abstract
In this paper attempt is made to shed light on the conceptualization of ehterām (‘respect’, ‘deference’) as a cultural keyword in a corpus of written Persian, using ethnography of communication. 717 tokens of the uses of ehterām and its cognates mohtaram (respected), mohtaramāneh (‘respectably’, ‘respectfully’), and hormat (roughly ‘reverence’) were extracted from the Persian Linguistic Data-base corpus and were semantically and pragmatically analyzed in their respective contexts. Findings indicate that ehterām and its cognates are primarily employed in relation to the 9 contexts of power, manners, qualifications, subjugation and submission, age, hospitality, caring, wealth and beauty. Drawing on research on social stratification, it is argued that the concept that unites all these contexts and concepts is sha’n or social status, in the sense of a person’s position in the social hierarchy. Furthermore, it is suggested that the concept of hormat is less dependent on the situational context and is a form of respect that is paid primarily to the position occupied by an individual according to the culturally defined system of values. Hormat is a special form of ehterām in the Iranian culture based on the culturally defined intrinsic or absolute status of categories and individuals.
Keywords: ethnography of communication, corpus-based pragmatics, respect, deference, social status, Persian culture
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