Abstract
This study examines the speech practice designated as hāzer javābi (literally, ‘ready response’ in Persian (Farsi) using an ethnopragmatic approach; that is, it attempts to capture the ‘insider’ understandings of the practice by making use of semantic explications and cultural scripts. It is one of only a few papers about the Persian language that employ the ethnopragmatic approach. Section 5.1 introduces the practice, offers some classical and contemporary examples, and draws attention to differences in similar-but-different speech practices in English and some other languages. Section 5.2 describes the analytical framework, i.e. ethnopragmatics. Section 5.3 provides historical and cultural contextualization, aiming both to scaffold a more precise understanding of the concept and to explain its cultural prominence. Section 5.4 presents a script for hāzer javābi. Section 5.5 discusses broader issues and provides concluding remarks.
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Notes
- 1.
Based on a search on http://www.vajehyab.com/.
- 2.
Original source URL: http://www.cloob.com/timeline/answer_124707_1421948.
- 3.
Original source URL: http://gizmiz.com/خاطرات-شما-از-حاضر-جوابي-ها/.
- 4.
Original source URL: http://daneshgahezendegi.com/حاضر-جواب-بودن-؛-یک-فن-سخنرانی-خاص-برای/.
- 5.
Original source URL: http://telegram-channels.blog.ir/1396/08/04/کانال-حاضر-جوابی.
- 6.
Original source URL: http://sahebkhabar.ir/news/26308515/چگونه-با-حاضرجوابی-کودک-مان-مقابله-کنیم.
- 7.
- 8.
The most notable and influential one was J. J. Morier’s The adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824).
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Literally Saturday–Sunday; means ‘dishevelled, not matching’.
- 12.
Literally hitting six; means ‘being nuts’.
- 13.
- 14.
All corpus examples from BNC have been accessed using https://sketchengine.co.uk from May to June 2018.
- 15.
To the best of my knowledge, the label ethnopragmatics was used by Alessandro Duranti as early as the 1990s as an approach to blend ethnography of communication and pragmatics (cf. Duranti 1993, 1994, 2015). Peeters (2016) lists different approaches with an ethno-perspective and the ‘ethno-prefix’ at the beginning of their names (such as ethnolinguistics, ethnolexicology, ethnosyntax). He defines ethnopragmatics as “the study of culturally salient communicative behaviours [that] relies on linguistic as well as non-linguistic evidence, with a view to discovering whether any cultural values, previously known or newly discovered, underpin these behaviours” (Peeters 2016: 151).
- 16.
The online resource https://nsm-approach.net/ shows that Persian has been previously studied using ethnopragmatic techniques. See, e.g., Sahragard (2000), Karimnia (2012), and Hashemi (2013).
- 17.
In addition, Appendix 4 offers the list of Persian exponents of semantic primes.
- 18.
The expression repartee of confabulations has been used by Lie (2012) while discussing Hegel’s idea “Philosophy is always late”, i.e. every thought is an after-thought.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian Linguistic Society (ASL) conference in December 2017 at University of Sydney. Part of the examples and arguments presented in this paper was used in another presentation at the Australasian Humour Studies Network (AHSN) conference at CQ University in February 2018. I am indebted to Cliff Goddard for encouraging me to write this paper and also for his helpful comments on the first draft. I also appreciate insightful notes and enlightening comments by Parvin Delshad, Jan Hein, Kerry Mullan, Michael Haugh, Jessica Milner Davis, and Gizem Milonas. I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their critic and the editors of the Festschrift for the opportunity. Any inadequacy and errors in the current version of this paper are entirely my own.
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Appendices
Appendix 1—Persian Transcript of the Interview with the Little Girl
Appendix 2—Persian Transcript of the Dorehami Television Show
Appendix 3—Ethnopragmatic Script for Hāzer Javābi (Persian Version)
Appendix 4—Persian (Farsi) Exponents of Semantic Primes
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Arab, R. (2020). Ethnopragmatics of Hāzer Javābi, a Valued Speech Practice in Persian. In: Mullan, K., Peeters, B., Sadow, L. (eds) Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_5
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