Afroozeh Heidari - English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
Abbas Eslami Rasekh - Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Shahla Simin - Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Speech act of disagreement is one of the least attended among all the other types ofspeech act. The present study seeks to find out the ways in which this inherentlythreatening act is expressed by young male Persian speakers. To gather the neededdata one hundred participants randomly selected from among a population of BA andMA students of Isfahan and Najafabad universities were asked to complete adiscourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researchers. The respondents wereto read six natural situations, and react to them via making disagreements. As themajor focus of the study was the role that gender and power play in the application ofpoliteness strategies, the participants were expected to disagree with two higher powerinterlocutors (one male and one female), two peers (one male and one female) andtwo addressees with lower power status (one male and one female). In order toanalyze the units of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1995) wasemployed. Students’ responses were further compared with Brown and Levinson’spoliteness strategies. The results revealed that respondents use confrontationalstrategies more frequently whenever expressing their oppositions to a person with thesame sex which could be explained with regards to the effect of social solidaritywhich can potentially over rule the effect of power and gender differences.

Speech act, Disagreement, Gender, Power, Politeness strategies