A Comparative study of Sympathy and Condolences Use by Iranian and English Native Speakers in Ceremonies: (a conversation analysis study)

The basic objective of this study is to report a descriptive comparison of expressing condolence and sympathy in terms of conversation analysis (CA) used by Persian and English native speakers’ side to determine whether and to what extent inter-language realization of speech acts of condolence and sympathy resemble or differ among them. Put another way, this study is an attempt to investigate a comparative analysis of giving condolences and sympathy across English and Persian speakers. Anyhow, one’s sympathies are the formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. In second language acquisition research area, speech acts studies including condolence and sympathy are often conducted to measure SL learners’ pragmatic (in) competence. Unlike other speech acts, the speech act of giving condolences and sympathy has not yet been the subject of cross-linguistic or cross-cultural studies across Persian and other languages. So, this qualitative study attempts to investigate a comparative analysis of giving sympathy and condolences across English and Persian. Henceforth, a total of twenty bereaved families (ten from Iran and ten from America) were selected for the purpose of comparing condolence and sympathy expressions. The results of obtained data of the study indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups. There was only a bit difference in the amount of emotional expressions and the length of expressions. Overall, this showed that Persian speakers were more emotional compared to their US counterpart families in the speech acts of sympathy andcondolence.

کلیدواژه ها:

Condolence ، Sympathy ، Persian speakers ، Speech act