A Contrastive Analysis of English and Persian Native Speakers' Use of Gambits

Conversations contain spontaneous use of routine formulas which lets speakersinteract with each other to express opinions. Gambits, as one of these formulas,act as an opening remark and help speakers to maintain the smooth flow of aneveryday conversation. The lack of mastery of using gambits in maintaining theconversation leads to breakdowns in speaking. This paper aimedat comparingtheuse of different categories of gambitsby native speakers of English and Persian.Toachieve this end, a corpus of 40 hours from Persian Native Speakers (PNSs) andEnglish Native Speakers (ENSs) with an equal number of participants was selectedthrough recordings of conversations from different TV Channels. Following theliterature, the frequency of gambit tokens was counted and their functions wereclassified. Chi-square test revealed significant differences between PNSs and ENSsregarding the occurrences of gambit categories. The findings of this study canhave implications for language learners and practitioners in the field. The presentresearch demonstrates to language learners the need for learning gambitexpressions as elements to improve the quality of their speaking and also to use thelanguage in meaningful interaction with others.

کلیدواژه ها:

Routine Formulas ، Gambits ، Gambit Tokens ، Gambit Categories