2.1 Studies on Persian phatic communication

Among the few publications in Persian are Yaqubi et al.'s (2014, 2015) investigation of phatic communication in Persian movies. Other studies (e.g., Derakhshan, Eslami Rasekh & Chalak 2020; Jahanbakhsh-Nagadeh, Feizi-Derakhshi & Sharifi 2020; Jalilifar & Hoseini 2021) focused on functions, strategies, lexical resources or formulaic expressions in speech acts. As shown in the few studies on this topic (e.g., Kazemi 2019; Khadem & Eslami Rasekh 2012), in Persian, similar to other languages, small talks are used mainly in opening a conversation, such as greetings, or closing a conversation, such as leave-taking. The main goals of using small talks are to create “familiarity, kinship, social hierarchy, group integration, etc.” (Yaqubi, Abdul Rahman & CheOmar 2014). In a study of phatic expressions in Persian, Yaqubi, Abdul Rahman & CheOmar (2014) analyzed Persian expressions according to Nord's (2008) framework and classified the corpus based on the setting and their (non)conventionality in Persian language. They reported some culture-specific categories such as ta’arof which is an Iranian ritual system of politeness, qorban sadaqe (expressing emotion in the form of pleading someone), praying expressions as well as (in)formal register markers in Persian.

Furthermore, Yaqubi, Abdul Rahman & Che Omar (2015) used Nord's (2008) framework of phatic communication in examining the use of expressions of apologies in Persian language in ten Iranian movies and series. Results showed that apology expressions can serve phaticfunctions in Persian language depending on where they occur in the conversations. These functions include thanking (e.g., bande rāzi be zahmate shomā nabudam ‘I didn't want to trouble you'), mitigating of request/questions (e.g., bebakhshid ye lahze tashrif miārin? ‘excuse me, could you come for a second?’), attention signal (ābji sharmande Felan bekhātere taghire dekorāsion tatilim ‘Sorry ma'am, at present, we're closed for the redecoration’). The study has also found some Persian strategies not proposed in Nord (2008) framework (e.g., āghā bebakhshid poshtam be shomās ‘excuse me sir, I'm sitting in front of you’). Their study showed that linguistic and culture-specific features of phatic communication vary across languages and cultures.

Yet in another study, Khodaei Moghaddam, Elyasi & Sharifi (2014) explored the function of Persian word bebakhshid (excuse me/sorry) among Persian speakers of different age and social groups and reported that the Persian word bebakhshid can perform several functions such as apologizing, phatic communication (as a kind of address term), turn taking signal, and making complaints. When acting as phatic communication, bebakhshid is used in formal settings where the interlocutors do not know each other and are supposed to make polite communication.

Several studies have also researched Persian telephone opening and closing conversations performing phatic functions. For instance, in her cross-cultural study of the interactional organization of the ritual “How are you” sequence in telephone conversation openings between Iranian and German, Taleghani-Nikazm (2002) found that Iranians expand the “How are you” move to inquire about the well-being of their respective families, while Germans do not perform “How are you” ritual on the phone, and if they do, they are not reciprocated.

In a study of Persian speakers' telephone-call closing, Khadem & Eslami Rasekh (2012) noted that Persian speakers use conventional patterns at the end of their speech performed by the mutual contribution of speakers involved in the telephone conversation. They use some pre-closing sequences such as movazebe khodet bash (take care of yourself), salam beresoon (say hello), khoshal shodam sedato shenidam (nice hearing your voice), followed by closing sequence. Moreover, their findings showed that Persian speakers refer to various topics in the closing conversation, the most frequent of which is thanking the other party for the telephone call. They added that ta’arof (Persian politeness system) is widely used by Iranians, and they apologize many times for calling the other party. The findings also suggested that salam beresoon (say hello) is the most frequently used closing sequence in Persian closing telephone conversations. Most of these ritual realizations of different speech acts used at the opening and closing section of telephone calls can be considered examples of phatic interaction.

Despite the valuable information the few studies done on Persian small talk provide, none of the above-mentioned studies provide a detailed analysis of how small talks take place in naturally occurring conversations among Persian speaking university students. Our study aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed analysis of small talk in Persian natural interactions based on House & Kádár's (2022) analysis framework. We use the proposed typology of speech acts suggested by House & Kádár (2022) and take a pragmalinguistic approach to phatic interaction. As stated by House & Kádár (2022), in this approach the recurring elements of phatic interaction in an encounter are broken down into distinct and finite speech act categories occurring in specific slots of an interaction (Edmondson & House 1981; Edmondson, House & Kádár 2022). Phatic cluster of speech acts, according to House & Kádár (2022) proposed framework is composed of Remark and Disclose speech acts. When making a Remark, the speaker shows favorable disposition towards his interlocutor (Edmondson & House 1981) and, in Disclose speech acts, the speaker provides biographic information about himself to let the hearer know him/her better (Edmondson & House 1981). For example, when the speaker performs the Remark speech act by stating what all participants already know (It's raining hard, isn't it?), the expression of the obvious, serves as a rapport-building device. Furthermore, in addition to prototypical speech acts belonging to the phatic cluster, some other speech acts can also fulfill a phatic function when they move into the phatic position in certain settings. Speech acts with highest frequency in the opening and closing phases of interaction most likely perform a phatic function, have fixed structure, and are highly conventionalized, called also as the ‘ritual cluster’ (House & Kádár 2022).

2.2 The study

The current interpretive study aimed to characterize the (non-)ritual, phatic clusters of speech acts that conventionally recur around the opening/closing phases of social encounters or occur during the core (or ‘business’) phase of natural interactions as small talk in Persian. The study was conducted in Iran's Persian linguaculture where considerable social-cultural-economic changes have taken place over the last decade or so impacting the form and content of phatic interaction in all sectors of the society. In brief, the following research questions guided this study:

1. -What ritual speech acts conventionally recur in the ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ phases of Persian speakers' social interactions as phatic talk?
2. -What other (non-ritual) speech acts can phatically occur during the ‘core’ phases of Persian speakers' social encounters as small talk?

3.1 Data and participants

The participants of the study were 37 Persian-speaking university students attending a state-run university located in the southwest of Iran. There were 31 undergraduate students of English Translation as well as TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) majors (aged 19–24) and 6 graduate TEFL students (aged 25–29). They included both genders (M = 9, 24%; F = 28, 76%). The second researcher was the instructor of all the four (under)graduate classes. After explaining the process of audio-recording their natural Persian interactions in different social encounters for research purposes, 37 students consented to the data-collection requirements. They were required to audio-record their natural interactions in four different social encounters varied based on the standard sociolinguistic parameters of Social Distance and Power (+/−SD, +/−P), as will be described below. Explicit instructions in both oral (voice messages in their WhatsApp groups and face-to-face explanations) and written (see the Appendix) forms were given to the students to ensure participants know how and in what situations to collect the data. The whole process of data collection lasted about 45 days, and all the volunteer students turned in their audio-recorded data plus the transcriptions one week after the final exams in July 2022.

3.2 Data-collection procedure

University students taking different classes were invited as volunteers to record their daily conversations in natural situations at different encounters of their daily lives. Before students embarked on data collection, the instructor introduced phatic communication (Small Talk) and shared instances of small talks as they naturally occurred in Persian social interactions. Then, the volunteered students were asked to collect audio-recorded interactional data in their daily encounters.

The researchers shared the written instructions (Appendix) they had prepared to further clarify the procedures to be followed for data collection. In the instructions, definition of small talk based on the literature (e.g., Coupland 2014; Kádár 2017) was included and some interactional instances of phatic language use (small talk) were provided. More clearly, the blueprint asked the students to audio-record their social encounters across four different contexts differentiated based on the standard sociolinguistic parameters of Social Distance and Power [+/−SD, +/−P] (see the Appendix). The contexts comprised the following: (i) on-campus student-professor (class or office) [+P, +SD], (ii) student-workplace/service encounters (e.g., the student and a doctor, bank-teller, shopkeeper, or cab driver) [−P, +SD], (iii) on/off-campus student-student [−P, −/+SD], and the optional (iv) student-parent/sibling/relative social encounters [−/+P, −SD]. The student-family interaction recording was optional as we assumed that some students may not feel comfortable recording their family interactions. The option of student-friend interaction was offered to those students who did not feel comfortable recording family interactions. Students were asked to get their interlocutors' consent for the recording to be shared for research purposes after the conversations were completed. If the consent was not granted, students were asked to delete the recordings. Student participants were also required to provide demographic information about the interlocutors involved in the interactions, describe the setting of each interaction they audio-recorded, transcribe, and finally translate the recorded talks in English at their earliest convenience. The reason for asking students to transcribe the talks themselves was to avoid probable misunderstanding resulting from the quality of the recordings and due to their familiarity with the situations.

As noted above, about 68 volunteers returned audio-recorded interactional data along with transcriptions out of which the data of only 37 students fully met the criteria of quality of recording and naturalness of the interactions (not elicited). The audio data and the transcriptions were turned in during the second week of July 2022, and two of the researchers, started checking the transcriptions of the interactions and their correspondence or accuracy with their related audio talks. After making some minor needed repairs in the transcriptions and the translations, all the acceptable written data were turned into a connected corpus interspersed with relevant demographic information about the setting and the interactants for each section. The resultant corpus was then subjected to subsequent coding and interpretive analysis.

3.3 Analytical framework

We adopted Edmondson, House & Kádár's (2023) pragmalinguistic and speech act-anchored model of phatic interaction to code the (non-)ritual realization patterns of small talk around the opening, closing, and core phases of interactions in Persian linguaculture. In fact, this model tries to explore different recurring constituents of phatic language use (or seemingly erratic small talks) in a particular linguaculture in terms of distinct and finite categories of speech acts as they occur (or recur) in certain phases of social encounters. The following figure (Figure 1) represents this typology of speech acts based on House & Kádár (2021, 2023).

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A typology of speech acts (House & Kádár 2023)

Citation: Acta Linguistica Academica 70, 4; 10.1556/2062.2023.00692

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This approach essentially draws upon the interactional typology of speech act proposed by Edmondson & House (1981) and House & Kádár (2022) in which speech acts are categorized into two main components: substantive and ritual. Whereas the former refers to the more fluid, ‘meaningful’ parts of social interactions, the latter refers to the ritual, ‘structural’ elements through which interactants may open or close an encounter. The ritual cluster of speech acts which are mostly frequented in the opening and closing of encounters, such as Greet, How are you, Welcome, Wish-well, and Leave-taking, can particularly perform phatic functions. The archetypes of phatic speech acts in the typology include Remark and Disclosure dynamics whereby the speaker evinces favourable disposition or reveals excessive biographic information, respectively, to build rapport with the hearer. Interestingly, various speech acts, which by default do not ‘belong to’ the phatic cluster, can also fulfill a phatic function when they ‘migrate’ into the phatic slot in certain contexts (House & Kádár 2022). In other words, non-ritual attitudinal or informative speech acts may ‘transfer’ across the higher-order categories in the typology and adopt phatic roles to play in the evolving social encounter. In such seemingly erratic cases, both the participants and the bystanders of an encounter would most probably recognize that phatic interaction is unfolding in time rather than off-topic breaches of politeness or aggressions (House et al. 2021).

3.4 Data analysis

To analyse the corpus and code instances of phatic, following Miles, Huberman & Saldana (2013), a composite holistic-process coding method and a second-order subcoding scheme were adopted to: (i) extract and assign interactional episodes in the data (and each social encounter) holistically as phatic language use, (ii) categorize each observable, conceptual small talk related episode under one of the three phatic processes of opening, closing, and core-building, and, finally, (iii) further indexing and classifying the constructing elements of each small talk as (non-)ritual clusters of phatic speech acts. To this very last end, as noted, a bottom-up speech act-anchored pragmalinguistic approach was employed by drawing upon the aforementioned typology of speech acts (Edmondson & House 1981; Edmondson, House & Kádár 2023). Four virtual online standardization meetings were held between the two coders (Faculty members in applied linguistics) focusing on four different small talk related episodes for each phatic process before coding the data. After pair-coding the corpus, intercoder Kappa Measure of Agreement was examined and found to be 0.78, representing a good estimate of coding consistency.

4.1 Small talks in opening phase

Descriptive summaries were obtained characterizing the recurring patterns and frequencies of small talk at the three standard phases of social encounters in the dataset where speech act clusters were used for phatic functions. Table 1 depicts the distribution of small talk at the opening of participants' daily encounters in Persian.

The frequencies shown in Table 1, as well as the speech act realizations shown in Table 2 below, clearly reveal that the opening phase of social encounters in Persian linguaculture is highly ritualized drawing upon the ritual speech acts of Greet, How-are-you, and Welcome. In general, what can be gleaned from the audio-recorded social interactions is that the higher the values of the sociolinguistic variables of Power and Social Distance in Persian, the more compulsory the use of ritual, ceremonial opening small talks. To illustrate, the common expressions used by Persian interactants as small talk to open their social encounters are summarized in Table 2 below.

As to the different interactional scenarios, for the potentially face-threatening student-professor situation, for instance, only 16 students (from the total 37 respondents) turned in audio-recorded encounters with their professors. Meanwhile, all the recorded encounters with professors enjoyed some ritual opening small talks encompassing Greet + Addressee + Health Inquiry (e.g., Salam Ostād, Khaste nabāshid!/khoob hastin enshāllāh? ‘Hello Professor, More power to you!/Are you feeling well, God willing?’). Two of the interactions took place immediately after the class, which represented non-ritual forms of opening address such as Alerter + Preparator-Permit (Bebakhshid Ostād, mishe ye daqiqe vaqtetoon ro begiram ‘Excuse me/Sorry Professor, can I take your time for one minute’). The following episodes represent two of the audio-recorded encounters in which the opening small talks are underlined.

As the values of P and SD decreased in the other encounters, students showed a tendency to initiate the talks with less ritualized opening speech acts, such as Remark (Student-Passenger: Che qad garme! It's so hot!, in a taxi) or Alerter + Request/Permit (Student/Customer: āqa, mishe oun kif o az nazdik bebinam? Sir, can I have a close look at that bag? and Shopkeeper: Salām/Khosh omadin! Mitoonam komaketoon konam? Hi/Welcome! Can I help you?). Nonetheless, the opening small talk structures for the most part (Average = 88%) remained ritualized employing some form of the Greet speech act. The following examples further illustrate this recurring pattern.

One noticeable pattern for opening intimate talks [−P, −SD], while at home or hanging out with friends, was that no ritual speech acts were used to break the silence or shift the topic. Still, in most cases, one of the following forms were used to alert, attract attention, or simply prepare the hearer for the topic shift: an Address Term (e.g., the hearer's first name or first name + the sweetener Joon, meaning Sweetie/Honey) or the Alerter Migam! I say.

4.2 Small talks in closing phase

Similarly, the closing small talk in Persian linguaculture is so highly ritual that any breach of the acceptable patterns would convey lack of propriety and even display of displeasure or aggression. Table 3 characterizes the recurring patterns of closing small talks in Persian as well as their pertinent frequencies at the end of the social encounters in the corpus.

As shown in Table 3, almost every interpersonal encounter in Persian linguaculture is expected to be collaboratively brought to a smooth end through small talk on parting. More clearly, the ritualized speech acts of Extractor (e.g., Bishtar az in mozāhemtoon nasham! Let's not bother you anymore!, Khob, man bāyad beram! ‘OK, I should be/get going!’), Thank (e.g., Mamnoon/Kheili mamnoon/Tashakkor/Sepās ‘I'm very grateful/Thanks’), Wish-Well (e.g., Dastetoon dard nakone ‘May your hands never get pain/Wish you health’, Salem bashid ‘Stay healthy’), and Leave-Take (e.g., Bā ejazatoon/Khodā hāfez/Khodā negahdār ‘With your permission/God keep you safe/Goodbye’) are commonly used in various forms or combinations depending on the social settings and the interlocutors. The phatic pragmalinguistic structures used as small talk to close social encounters in Persian are categorized in Table 4 below.

To further illustrate, in a [+P, +SD] encounter with a professor, for instance, a student-interactant, after tacitly alerting the intention or the need to terminate the talk and leave (e.g., Ostād, kheili vaghtetoon ro gereftam/kheili estefādeh kardam Professor, I took much of your time/I've benefited a lot from your insights), might opt for various combinations of the three speech acts of Thank + Wish-well + Leave-take to close the encounter, for instance:

1. -use all the three, e.g., Kheili mamnoon Ostād! Dastetoon dard nakone, Bā ejāzatoon! ‘Thanks so much Professor, Wish you health’, (with your permission)/Goodbye!
2. -employ a two-tier parting move, Thank/Wish-well + Leave-take, e.g., Sepāsgozāram Ostād, Khoda negahdār ‘Thank you Professor, Goodbye’, or
3. -use the Extractor + Leave-take speech act, e.g., Chashm Ostād, Khodā hāfez shomā, OK Professor, God keep you safe/Goodbye.

In response, the hearer equally has a range of pragmalinguistic structures available to choose from and ‘phatically’ close the talk or the encounter while still maintaining the face and the relationship for future interactions, such as, Khāhesh mikonam ‘Not at all’, Khosh āmadin ‘You're welcome!’, Be omide Khodā ‘Godspeed’, Khodā hāfez/Khodā negahdār ‘Goodbye/Bye’, or Salām beresoon ‘Give regards’. Two student-professor closing small talks are presented below:

It is important to note that although the closing phase of social encounters in Persian is highly conventionalized using a ritual cluster of speech acts, as demonstrated in Table 4, there is still some considerable variability in terms of the intensity of the ‘pre-leave taking’ Extractor (e.g., House & Kádár 2023) plus Wish-well/Thank speech acts as well as the number of parting or Farewell moves employed by interactants. That is, as the sociopragmatic values of the social settings decrease and familiarity or intimacy increases, interlocutors seem to use less elaborate closing moves (lower number of moves) or a jaunty parting (e.g., in friendly settings among the youth, Felan! Bye for now! or Aqa ma raftim! Guys, we're gone!). The following are closing extracts from different settings in the corpus.

In the last episode, a mother's parting moves brim with affection and prayers for her daughter's safety, which is basically rhetorical at this phase, a discursive feature which currently characterizes most of intimate child-parent and family leave-takings discourses in Persian linguaculture.

4.3 Small talk in core phase

Contrary to the highly ritualized small talks at the opening and closing phases of social encounters, the core (or ‘business’) phatic interchanges within interpersonal interactions in Persian are dynamic and emerge based on macro (i.e., sociocultural) and micro (i.e., contextual) changes in the situation. Therefore, it might be a type of simplism to encapsulate the fluidity of core-based phaticity during social interactions in terms of generalizable figures or fixed recurring patterns. Further, it is equally futile to try to impose any order, in terms of frequency or pragmalinguistic structures, on the use or emergence of discursive small talk chit-chats across diverse social settings. Nonetheless, it would be valuable to explore what speech acts, sequences of talks, or themes may be discursively ‘migrating’ into phatic slots in interpersonal contexts in a particular linguaculture (House & Kádár 2022). Table 5 represents the types of speech acts and related functions that were used by the interactants in the social encounters transactional talk for phatic purposes. These speech acts are used to build or maintain rapport, engage in gossiping, seek or maintain companionship, avoid taciturnity, affirm politeness, establish common ground while maintaining focus on the main topic, scaffolding other main actions such as bargaining, or offering ‘phoney’ invitations, etc.

As seen in Table 5 as well as the following extracts, the inspection and coding of the corpus yielded an interesting observation in term of the discursivity and ubiquity of small talk distributed at the medial stage of most sustained-for-a-while social encounters in Persian in the form of chit-chatting, gossiping, socializing, and rapport-building. It can be argued that any subject of common interest or any cause of common concern, associated with the situation or the shared activity, can seamlessly give rise to non-serious small talk in Persian, as evidenced in our data. For instance, one of the pervasive themes that is highly frequented in small talks in the modern society of Iran is showing dissatisfaction with socioeconomic status quo, the perceived need to curb inflation, or the nationwide desire for (social) reform. Therefore, just a slight dissatisfaction stimulated by any interactional or transactional element in context may provide interactants with a shift frame to engage in chit-chatting or social talks about inflation or even politics. The following episode represents an example, in which the parts functioning as phatic talk are underlined.

In Episode 12, the public awareness of high inflation, the prevalence of grumbling about it during most service transactions across the country, and other contextual clues prevented the cashier's misinterpretation of the customer's apparently conflictive comment in terms of displeasure with the chocolate or himself. His reference to ‘market’ in reply suggests that he aptly read it as a complaint about the rapidly rising prices, in general. Interestingly, although core-based small talks are largely non-ritual in Persian, there are medial instances in social encounters when interactants feel sociopragmatically obliged to engage in ostensible inviting or offering behavior, namely ta’arof in Persian (e.g., Eslami 2005), and use stock phrases such as Ghābeli nadāre or Mehmoone mā bāshid, meaning ‘No value’ or ‘Be my guest’. These ostensible phatic patterns are (and should be) appropriately dismissed or declined by the respondent (through thanking). The following episodes further demonstrate the use of other substantive (non-ritual) speech acts for phatic effects at the medial phase of the social encounters in Persian.

In Episodes 13 and 14, student-student chit-chatting small talks function simply as time fillers (e.g., Holmes 2000; Jin 2018) or silence filling strategy (Jaworski 2000) and, also as rapport-maintenance or co-construction of socio-relational frames. Similarly, in the following off-campus extracts, student-oriented phaticity efforts are evident on the sideline of transactional or professional encounters.

In Episode 15, the student reminds the salesperson of their previous acquaintance and hints at her confidence in the purchase (i.e., both the product and the price), thereby tacitly demanding customer-level care and service, a type of win-win bond which usually forms between a vendor and a regular customer in Iran.

Finally, Episodes 16 and 17 represent instances of students' simultaneous off-campus small talks while working as language teachers in private institutes. In Episode 16, the student tries to enhance collegial ties by talking about a colleague's self-made instructional tool by realizing the congratulation speech act. Similarly, in Episode 17, a teacher maintains camaraderie with her student by commenting about a probable problem, and, this way, tries to use small talk as a breather or a warm-up frame for subsequent activities.