Discourse Markers in Political Interviews: A Contrastive Study of Persian and English

Abstract

Due to the significance of multiculturalism in politics, and the central role linguistic devices play in organizing the political discourse, this text-based qualitative study was carried out to compare political interviews in the Iranian and English contexts to find out the probable similarities and differences in the use of discourse markers (DMs) between the two cultures. To this end, three sets of interviews were selected, and the DMs used in those interviews were identified and classified based on the framework proposed by Fung and Carter (2007). The results revealed that along with the similarities, some differences were present in the use of DMs among the interviewees. Such differences can be attributed to the cultural differences between the interviewees and their communicative purposes. The findings of the study help us understand the importance of DMs in organizing institutional discourse and intercultural inconsistencies that exist between Iranian and English-speaking politicians.