The Persian Cultural Schema: Compliment Response Strategies on Social Networking SitesAmong Persian EFL Learners

Abstract

Introduction of Cultural Linguistics in the modern ages of communication can address the issue of cultural schema transfer in online communication. Despite a good number of studies on a compliment, this pragmatic behavior has not been examined in the context of online communications such as social networking sites where compliments are commonly paid and received. The present study aimed to examine the realization of Persian cultural schema of Shekaste-nafsi (Sharifian, 2005) on compliment responses uttered by Persian EFL on Facebook. To do so, 30 Persian EFL learners were selected through convenient sampling, and their compliments and compliment responses were recorded as data. Herbert's (1986) taxonomy was used to identify the strategies' types and the Persian cultural schema of Shekaste-nafsiwas served as a model to gloss the samples. The interpretationssuggested that participants applied their Persian cultural schemas and expressed their modesty while they tend to be polite and appreciate the compliments. The findings indicated the importance of cultural schema and highlighted the pragmatic knowledge transfer both in Persian and English while online communicating. The results of the present study may contribute to the issue of pragmatic transfer in the process of foreign language learning and can benefit the EFL learners in identifying the source of miscommunication.