A Sociopragmatic Study of the Offer Speech Act in Persian

The present study aimed to identify strategies used to realize the speech act of offerin Persian. To do so, 195 male and female native Persian speakers were selected fromdiverse age ranges, educational backgrounds, and social classes, and were assigned a36-item Discourse Completion Task (DCT) to elicit the speech act of offer. Thirtyfield workers also recorded naturally occurring interactions containing the speech actof offer. The responses were coded using 12 categories to determine the strategiesused. Factors of age, gender, offer type, social distance, and relative power did notprove to be significantly effective in the choice of the offer strategies. It could beconcluded that Persian speakers tend to be more indirect and Locution Derivable,Query Preparatory, and Hedged Imperative are favorite strategies among them.