A Sociopragmatic Study of the Offer Speech Act in Persian

The present study aimed to identify strategies used to realize the speech act of offer in Persian. To do so, 195 male and female native Persian speakers were selected from diverse age ranges, educational backgrounds, and social classes, and were assigned a 36-item Discourse Completion Task (DCT) to elicit the speech act of offer. Thirty field workers also recorded naturally occurring interactions containing the speech act of offer. The responses were coded using 12 categories to determine the strategies used. Factors of age, gender, offer type, social distance, and relative power did not prove to be significantly effective in the choice of the offer strategies. It could be concluded that Persian speakers tend to be more indirect and Locution Derivable, Query Preparatory, and Hedged Imperative are favorite strategies among them.