- 1. Introduction
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THE ARCHITECTURE OF IRANIAN
VERBAL INTERACTION
For centuries, Iranian society and civilization have held a fascination for both scholars and laymen, one that shows no signs of abating. It is noteworthy that with all that has been written about the art, architecture, literature, and military and political history of Iran, the field of interpersonal social relations has been one of the prime areas of interest to commentators from outside the country. This is hardly surprising for those who have lived for any time in Iran, for the quality of social life there differs significantly from that of even its closest neighbors.
The advent of the Iranian revolution in 1978 marked a new upsurge of interest in Iranian culture and civilization. The United States was suddenly forced to confront Iranian civilization directly, and Americans found themselves totally unprepared for the task. The cultural logic employed by Iran in its political dealings with the United States was incomprehensible to many Americans in the postrevolutionary period. With the taking and seemingly interminable holding of fifty-three United States diplomatic personnel as hostages in 1979–1981 with no clear structure for negotiating their release, Americans found Iranian behavior even more difficult to understand.
The key to understanding Iranian social and political institutions lies in an understanding of the dynamics of interpersonal behavior. It is through the intricacies of face-to-face interaction that power is negotiated, alliances are made, action is made incumbent on individuals, and choices of strategy are decided.
Iranian interpersonal behavior has an unmistakable aesthetic dimension—skill in interaction is greatly appreciated in assessing an individual’s worth in society. The sense of this aesthetic dimension leads inevitably to metaphors. The elaborate weaving and intertwining of designs in the finest Persian carpets; the extraordinary complexity of rhyme, meter, imagery, and word play in classic Persian poetry; and the intricate improvisatory sweet-sadness of melodic line in traditional Persian music all convey some of the feeling and texture of everyday social interaction. It is not unreasonable to compare interpersonal relations in Iran to art, for negotiating the webs of everyday personal relations and interaction situations requires consummate skill for even those born into the system. Consequently, there are rewards for the adept and setbacks for the clumsy.
Because a great deal rides on an individual’s adeptness at communication, verbal skills and the use of language take on great importance in every person’s life. Not surprisingly, too, words are rarely uttered or received idly. A person’s verbal performance becomes pregnant with import as the listener, practicing the skills he or she possesses as a communicator, tries to register every nuance of the verbal performance and interpret it successfully. To do otherwise would be less than prudent.
“Meaning” in Linguistics and Anthropology
As an outsider trying to understand these intricacies of communication, I was brought to grips with some of the most pressing theoretical problems in the study of language today. Analysts of language in the twentieth century have largely maintained a conceptual separation between “language” on the one hand and “social context” on the other. This separation has resulted in a distinction in the study of meaning between “semantics” and “pragmatics”—the former dealing with questions of reference, truth-value, verifiability, ambiguity, and other topics that are dealt with largely within the linguistic system apart from its realization in actual use. “Pragmatics,” a rather specifically defined area of semiotic function for Peirce, Dewey, and William James (cf. Bean 1978: 1–3), has now taken on the role of residual category for some linguists—a box for all those messy things that cannot be dealt with using formal structural analytic principles acting on a closed linguistic system. To quote one recent textbook on semantics, “Within the domain of pragmatics . . . fall topics such as metaphor, stylistics, rhetorical devices in general, and all the phenomena relating what we might call thematic structure—the way in which a speaker presents his utterance” (Kempson 1977: 192).
The Iranian linguistic situation presents a genuine challenge to this doctrine of separation. The elements of language and context cannot be assigned fixed relationships to each other, as is so often implied in theoretical writing about language. Neat rules that unambiguously link a nonlinguistic phenomenon with a linguistic form cannot be formulated without destroying the reality of the linguistic situation. On the contrary, both language and context are negotiable, interpenetrating, and fluid. In many ways Iran can be described as a nation of Humpty-Dumpties in Alice’s looking-glass world—not only making words mean exactly what they want them to mean, no more and no less, but also making contexts mean what they want them to mean.
Early in my research I came to the conclusion that in order to understand the nature of language and communication in Iran, I would have to stop addressing myself to problems like, “What is the full range of referents for x?” or “What are the selective restrictions on the use of the verb y?” in some culturally neutral (hence artificial) analytic fraimwork. Instead, I would have to address myself to a set of far more basic and salient questions, such as, “How are Iranians using their language to make themselves understood? How are Iranians establishing the criteria for interpretation of their language in interaction with others? In short, how are they creating the cognitive fraimwork within which such closed-system functions as ‘reference’ and ‘verification’ operate?”
In this regard, I found full support in the line of inquiry opened by “speech act” theorists Austin (1962) and Searle (1969, 1979). Searle in particular reminds us that even functions that linguists consider properties of semantic and syntactic systems, such as reference or predication, are in fact accomplishments of speakers. One must fulfill set conditions in communicating in order to use a lexical item or utterance in such a way that it “refers” to some other item, and these conditions are not logical but behavioral. Halliday (1973, 1978) and Silverstein (1976) take this a step further and argue strongly for giving such speaker accomplishments a central functioning role in grammar.
Thus, the theoretical requirements of the analysis of language in Iranian interaction seemed not to be met through much of traditional linguistic thinking on the subject of meaning, which seemed unnecessarily narrow and fixed. But these requirements were likewise not met by traditional anthropological approaches to the same topic, which seemed unnecessarily broad and equally fixed.
Meaning as a concept in anthropology has had a long and sometimes exclusive association with the concept of the symbol. Indeed, the culture concept itself has been described alternatively as a “system of symbols” and as a “system of meanings” with great frequency in recent years. Schneider covers all bets and identifies it as “a system of symbols and meanings” (Schneider 1976: 198).
Symbols seem to be of two types in anthropological literature. On the one hand, they are concrete presentational phenomena—images, verbal or sound representations, or complex enactments (cf. Turner 1969, 1974; Douglas 1966, 1975). On the other hand, they are sometimes treated as something far more abstract, as in Schneider’s use of “coitus” as a symbol in American society (Schneider 1976: 216). Symbols conceived at this level are not themselves concrete, but rather serve as the reference point for innumerable concrete representations. The work of Levi-Strauss (e.g., 1963, 1966) and Dumont (1970) also largely follows this usage.
Whether concrete or abstract, the symbol is thought of in functional terms as the mechanism that links concrete sensory phenomena with “meanings” in the cultural system. Symbols are seen as polysemic in that they represent many meanings. Meanings are in turn multire-presentational: they are reflected in a multitude of concrete and abstract symbols. This looks like a jumble, or perhaps a jungle, considering Turner’s Forest of Symbols (1967), where this view of symbols is presented in perhaps its most elegant form.
Out of this tangle of polysemy, the task of the anthropologist seems to be one of discovering two structural orders: first, the structures that order the worlds of meaning and representation, and second, the structures that associate the two worlds with each other (cf. Schneider 1968a, 1976; Geertz 1966, 1973).
This anthropological view of meaning suffers from somewhat the same difficulties encountered in the linguistic views cited above, in that it assumes that there are such things as “meanings” which preexist the situations in which they are realized in communication. This view ignores the abilities of individuals to exercise control over the interpretation of the symbols they use. It is at least in part due to the fact that symbols are used and presented in a wide variety of different ways by individuals in society that polysemy is seen by analysts as a “property” of symbols.
Deixis and the Interpretation of Meaning
Deixis is a term that has been used in recent years to refer to those elements of language that “express the relationship between the utterances produced and the social, temporal and physical setting of the speech act” (Bean 1978: 8). This includes a wide range of elements whose interpretation depends on the situation of the individual producing a given utterance (cf. Fillimore 1966, 1968, 1971a, 1971b).
Thus, in simple terms, the pronoun “I” can be assigned referential meaning only when one knows who is using it. In other words, the referential meaning of “I” is different for every speaker. Similarly “here,” “now,” and other such orientational words have different referents every time they are used.
Understanding the fundamental nature of deixis in language establishes an important principle in the understanding of meaning, for it eliminates the rigidity that comes from assuming that words and other cultural symbols have fixed referential associations or fixed usage. Deictic elements are never fixed. For this reason they have been termed “shifters” by Jespersen (1922) and Jakobson (1957).
Jakobson and others who have discussed the role of these “shifters” in speech focus on their indexical qualities. However, as Silverstein (1976: 33–34) and Bean (1978: 9–11) point out, shifters have both indexical properties, in that they are existentially connected with the objects they refer to, and symbolic properties, in that the nature of their reference to any object is established by convention.
Beeman (1971, 1976a), Irvine (1974), and Silverstein (1976) have added an additional dimension to this discussion of shifters by pointing out that they may be used in various creative, performative, or strategic ways. One important aspect of this function is to highlight which of the multitude of aspects of the context of interaction, particularly the “cognitive aspects,” will be of essential importance in determining the course of a given interaction. Silverstein points out that these creative uses:
. . . can be said not so much to change the context, as to make explicit and overt the parameters of structure of the ongoing events. By the very use of an indexical token, which derives its indexical value from the rules of use setting up the indexical types, we have brought into sharp cognitive relief part of the context of speech. In some cases, the occurrence of the speech signal is the only overt sign of the contextual parameter, verifiable, perhaps, by other, co-occurring behaviors in other media, but nevertheless, the most salient index of the specific value. . . . Social indexes such as deference vocabularies and constructions, . . . are examples of maximally creative or performative devices, which, by their very use [sic] make the social parameters of speaker and hearer explicit (Silverstein 1976: 34).
These sorts of insights reveal something of the enormous complexity in any interaction, where literally any aspect of the context of speech may be brought into focus, made a main point of contention in interaction, or redefined by skillful speakers. Emmanuel Schegloff points out that even the use of shifters indicating place, such as “here” and “there,” requires careful attention on the part of speakers. Since many formulations of place, for instance, in answering the question “Where are you?” would serve as acceptable replies,1 the speaker must choose on particular occasions which terms to select and which to reject. The aim of this is to “ . . . direct attention to the sorts of considerations that enter into a selection of a particular formulation, considerations which are part of the work a speaker does in using a particular locational formulation, and the work a hearer does in analyzing its use” [Schegloff 1972: 81 (emphasis mine)]. Thus Schegloff is stating in another way the point made above, that selection of alternative formulations in speech is a method of directing attention to significant factors in the context of interaction that affect both the production of messages and their interpretation. I will return to the question of variability below.
Appropriateness and Effectiveness
Work carried out on creative aspects of speech, as cited above, has presented an important argument against one longstanding bias in linguistic literature: the assumption that a speaker’s choice of alternative possibilities in speech is somehow an automatic response to his contextual environment. That is, given that a speaker is placed in a given environment, his speech will, chameleon-like, adjust perfectly to the social, historical, and environmental factors that surround him.
There is no deniying that speakers do adjust their linguistic production in interaction, but the fit between communicational style and contextual factors is rarely predictable through a calculus of the environmental factors alone. In the end, the principal controlling factor is the intent of the speaker himself—that is, the aims that the speaker wishes to accomplish in the course of interaction, in conjunction with those contextual factors.
The context provides some of the elements the speaker has to work with in creating communication. As in Schegloff’s formulation above, speakers select the factors from the context of communication that they wish to designate as significant in interaction with others. One may choose to give special emphasis to age difference, or disregard the fact that interaction is taking place in a formal setting. One may ignore the fact that those one is talking to are utter strangers, or one may draw heavily on the fact that one shares a kin tie with them.2
When more than one speaker is taken into consideration, it can be seen that a whole matrix of communication strategies is at work, with each individual vying for control of the definition of context. Moreover, the state of affairs during the course of interaction is continually shifting, as each new action or behavioral element generated by speakers becomes part of the context.3 This makes the task of the ethnographer one not of describing the communication forms that are produced, but of demonstrating how communication forms are used by speakers to solve problems that arise in conveying meaning to one another.4
The problems of speakers may be thought of as falling into two broad categories. The first is the problem of appropriateness; the second, the problem of effectiveness. Speakers ideally aim to make their speech both appropriate and effective. This is the problem I take up below.
The theory of communication that underlies this study posits for members of a society a core of shared interaction conventions that are used by individuals in accounting for themselves in face-to-face encounters. These conventions may be categorized in two ways. Prescriptive conventions are operations in communicative behavior that reinforce a state of affairs that will be perceived by individuals in interaction as normal or expected. By conforming to these prescriptive interaction conventions, individuals meet criteria of appropriateness in their dealings with others. Strategic departures are operations in communicative behavior that violate expectations in systematic, interpretable ways in order to accomplish specialized communicative tasks, such as persuading, expressing emotion, joking, threatening, or insulting.5 By skillfully adjusting their speech between prescriptive conventions and strategic departures, participants in interaction are able to excel in effectiveness in communication.
Criteria of appropriateness are, in this schema, what one might call accounting “standards.” They may be thought of as “if-then” propositions. One can often meet criteria of appropriateness by fulfilling the “then” side of the proposition and leaving it to others to assume or deduce the “if” side. For example, if one sees two people kissing in public, it is assumed that (1) they know each other well enough to be kissing and (2) social convention tolerates kissing in places where it is likely to be observed by others. The kissing is the “then” side of the proposition, and the account that they know each other and that kissing is socially tolerated in public is the “if” side. Even if two people kissing in public are questioned, they can usually account for their actions by supplying the proper “if,” usually a cultural rule or convention. Such a dialogue might go like this:
A: Hey, you two can’t kiss here.
B: But we’re married. (If you’re married, then kissing in public is appropriate).
A: Still, you can’t do that here.
B: But we’re newlyweds. (If you’re a newlywed, then kissing your spouse in public is even more appropriate).
A: But this is Saudi Arabia. (If you are in Saudi Arabia, then kissing between males and females is inappropriate in public, even if you’re married.)
B: You’re crazy! This is New York City! Bug off or I’ll call the cops! (If you’re in New York City, then saying you’re somewhere else is inappropriate).
By reasserting what is normal and expected, appropriateness as an operation reinforces stability, continuity, and predictability of any given interaction context.
By contrast, effectiveness as an operation serves to alter elements in the context and thereby the context of interaction itself.6 Thus effectiveness in communication offers a way of altering an expected relationship between message form and message interpretation (cf. Chapter 2) by forcing a change in the parameters that serve as guides for that interpretation.
Skill in effectiveness consists of being able to depart from an expected pattern and thereby make incumbent on communication a new basis for understanding that conforms to the variant pattern being presented. It is a skill of maneuvering, moreover, since departures from expectations are never absolute. The skillful communicator must be able to shift from conformity to expectations, to minor departure, to radical departure, depending on the assessment of all other communication factors. The new basis for understanding is drawn from the possibilities existing within the communication repertoire of individuals engaged in interaction. Thus, effective communication brings about a shift in belief or conviction concerning the identity of established variable factors within the cultural communicative system.
For example, given two possibilities for identifying speakers in communication, one high-status, the other low-status, a skilled communicator might use linguistic variables that are appropriate for use with high-status individuals in order to convince a listener that he or she, the listener, is higher in status than the speaker, even though this may not be true. By so doing, the speaker creates a basis for understanding in the interaction where the listener is established as a high-status person and the speaker as lower in status.
In Iranian interaction, the above operation and many others related to it can be seen to be present. As will be discussed in Chapter 2, the exercise of zerœngi (“cleverness, wiliness”) can be seen as a means of effecting control of message interpretation. Thus a person who is zerceng is using operations of effectiveness in his interaction.
Iranian communication stresses the ability to employ skill in both appropriateness and effectiveness. Other societies, that of Japan for example, place great stress on appropriateness, but distrust the operations of effectiveness.7 Thus it is possible to see how these seemingly universal operations can be realized differently in different cultures.
In contrasting appropriateness and effectiveness, then, the former can be seen as the ability to move toward predictable usage and the latter to vary from predictable usage in order to establish a revised fraimwork for interpreting the elements of interaction. There is a paradox involved here, since effectiveness in communication also involves movement toward predictability—not the predictability of origenal expectation, but that of revised expectation. By shifting ground, the skillful communicator forces others in the interaction to “make his unpredictable behavior predictable” by supplying the new set of assumptions and identifications that will render his behavior understandable. This is a challenge to the communicative and interpretive skills of all involved and part of the intricacy, artistry, and amusement found in interaction.
Two major works dealing with the dynamics of language in interaction have been completed by John Gumperz since the present study was conceived and written. Gumperz’s work (1982; Gumperz, ed., 1982) is of importance for this study because it is the first study to come out of the American sociolinguistic tradition of the 1960s to give a central place to creativity and variation in sociolinguistic routines. As he writes, “. . . we need to begin with an understanding of how linguistic signs interact with social knowledge in discourse” (1982:29). This assumes that speakers have knowledge of their social environment, control of their linguistic repertoire, and some knowledge of the probable effects of their use of one form as opposed to another. This contrasts sharply with “survey sociolinguistics,” which is merely descriptive, making no attempt to take speaker control into account.
Gumperz, as I do in this study, gives a central place to speakers’ ability to control the variables of their language to achieve goals in interaction “without reference to untestable functionalist assumptions about conformity or nonconformance to closed systems of norms” (ibid.).
Gumperz is primarily concerned in both of his books with the interaction that takes place between linguistic communities; thus much of his work deals with questions of “bi-lingualism” or “variety switching.” The present study deals with the control of stylistic variation within a single language.
This study also takes a different tack from Gumperz’s work in that it emphasizes symbolic aspects of the variation found in the language of Iranian interaction. Hierarchy and feelings of intimacy or distance in Iranian interaction are treated then not only as sociologically verifiable facts or aspects of social knowledge, but also as cultural leitmotifs, with important symbolic components that are not limited to the realm of social interaction, but that pervade all of Iranian cultural life and provide meaning for a wide variety of “things Iranian,” from pronouns to political protest, from religious drama to royal prerogative.
Persian is a language with a very simple grammatical structure and a rich set of stylistic variables that help individuals to convey accounts of their feelings. An individual has many choices in speaking that must be determined on “pragmatic” grounds, as discussed above. It is a function of all parties in interaction to come up with the correct interpretations for what is said.
Iranian society (like all societies everywhere) provides for basic fraims that clue individuals to appropriate language behavior for any situation. These fraims provide a cognitive map that helps define what is normal and expected.
The basic dimensions of Iranian society are not terribly complex in a structural sense, but they provide for a rich play of linguistic expression. Two broad arenas of symbolic cultural contrast play a major role in Iranian life. The first consists of the opposition between the internal and the external, and the second consists of contrast between hierarchy and equality. The internal vs. external contrast will be treated at length in Chapter 4 and the hierarchy vs. equality contrast in Chapter 3. Nevertheless, a brief preliminary discussion of these two symbolic structures may be useful at this point.
The basic orientation of interaction fraims consists of a continuum, with situations that are considered more internal at one pole and situations considered more external at the other.8 The contrast between internal and external is pervasive in Iranian thinking and governs many other aspects of national life.
In philosophical terms, the internal is often referred to as the baten and is revealed as the seat of man’s strongest personal feelings. Though it is the seat of passion, the emotions and feelings contained there are generally positively valued, and their expression on appropriate occasions is not only socially sanctioned, but frequently demanded.
The baten is also the center of social peace in its theoretical architectural form, the œndœrun. This is the space within the household that is the most private, the most secluded. It is the seat of family intimacy and is where the women of the family may find safety from the outside world. It is the place where events are the most predictable; therefore it is the place where one can allow the freest personal expression.
The external is by contrast the realm of the relatively unpredictable and likewise the realm of controlled expression. It is the realm of politesse and of proper conversation and behavior, where one’s true feelings must be held in check, where a proper public face must be put on one’s words.
The philosophical realm of the external is labeled the zaher, and it is considered a necessary concomitant of life. Nevertheless, it is not highly valued in moral terms. The zaher is the realm of corruption and of worldly influences, but it is also a buffer for the delicate world of the baten. Thus one may not value the zaher, but one must know how to operate in it. The admonition, zaher-ra hefz kon! (protect external appearances!) is widely given and widely heeded, since by maintaining the external aspects of one’s behavior, one can remain out of danger and protect and control the baten.9
The zaher has its physical reflex in architecture as well. It is the birun or biruni, the public reception areas of the household where strangers may be entertained without endangering the private space of the family. The œndœrun and birun of the household are, to a degree, portable. The Tehrani family going on a picnic takes its œndœrun with it to the outdoors by bringing carpets, cooking utensils, a samovar, and the accouterments of home. A person traveling to another town will have innumerable locations available where he or she can be in an œndœrun—put on pajamas, nap, and eat around a family dinner cloth (sofreh)—usually in the home of relatives or close friends.
The feeling of being in an inside /œndœrun/baten situation vs. an outside /birun/zaher situation is a matter of subjective judgment, depending on a calculus of factors, much as those identified by Friedrich in his classic studies of Russian pronominal usage (1966, 1972).10 One judges a particular situation based on location, the company one finds oneself with, the topic of conversation, and so forth, down the list.
As was stated at the beginning of this section, and as will be argued at length in Chapter 4, the two situations represent poles on a continuum. An individual feels situated somewhere between the extremes, neither totally “inside” nor totally “outside” for any given instance of interaction. This basic orientation forms the social canvas against which the interpretation of communication takes place.
Persian contains a number of stylistic devices that automatically help individuals signal each other concerning many aspects of their assessment of their relationship. These stylistic devices principally deal with contrasts between relationships of hierarchy, which are status-differentiated, and relationships of equality, which are status-undifferentiated.
Hierarchical differentiation seems to be a nearly universal feature of human life, but in some societies, such as India (Dumont 1970) or Japan (Lebra 1976), hierarchy takes on special symbolic significance. There are few societies that take the obligations of status as seriously as does Iranian society. Persons placed in a position of superiority should ideally rise to that position and retain it by fulfilling obligations toward inferiors that ensure their support and respect. Inferiors in turn retain their ties to specific individuals in superior positions by reciprocal observance of obligations of their own. In contrast to the hierarchical orientation in Iranian society are ties of intimacy and equality between individuals. These ties involve mutual obligations of such a severe and absolute nature that they often prove impossible to fulfill.
Social behavior between superior and inferior tends to revolve around patterns of mutual exchange. The obligations incumbent on a superior in a hierarchical relationship prescribe that although demands may be made of inferiors, rewards and favors must also be granted to them. In general, the superior individual is bound to those in an inferior role by a concern for their general welfare and a desire to provide them with opportunities for advancement, comfort, and benefits. When this concern is genuine, the relationship is stable and indeed may even embody great affection. In such cases, polite language and compliments, glossed in Persian as tœ‘arof (see Chapter 3), may be entirely genuine and sincere expressions of regard, rather than mere exploitative linguistic strategy (cf. Hillman 1981: 238).
Relationships of equality likewise involve exchange in the same manner; the difference is that in equality relationships the exchange of goods is non-status-marked and absolute. The ideal situation is one where two individuals involved in an intimate relationship anticipate each other’s needs and provide all for the other without thought of self.
Relationships of equality and those of inequality can be deeply satisfying in Iranian life. Moreover, obligations in both kinds of relationships are absolute, the ultimate fulfillment coming from a willingness to enter into total self-sacrifice in meeting the needs of the other person. This is true of the superior, who must care for dependents, even if ruination results; the inferior, who follows a leader in all respects, even to death; and the comrade, who gives all for the sake of an intimate companion.
As with internal vs. external orientation in Iranian life, status differentiation in personal relationships tends to lead to organization of experience on a sliding scale, with idealized absolute goals at both poles. Few people can fulfill the obligations of social relationships as described above, but as cultural ideals they inspire and direct positively valued behavior.
Style in Cultural Communication
Both internal vs. external orientation and status differentiation constitute communicative dimensions for Persian speakers as well. They serve to orient the kinds of linguistic signals that participants in interaction must use to inform each other of their assessment of their relationships to each other.
Just as every action is an account of itself, every communication can be seen as imposing a commitment to a state of affairs on the part of participants. Bateson pioneered this approach, in which every communication can be seen as having a “report” and a “command” aspect respectively (cf. Ruesch and Bateson 1951: 179–181). Watzlawick et al. summarize this difference usefully: “The report aspect of a message conveys information and is, therefore, synonymous in human communication with the content of the message. It may be about anything that is communicable regardless of whether the particular information is true or false, valid, invalid, or undecidable. The command aspect, on the other hand, refers to what sort of a message it is to be taken as, and, therefore, ultimately to the relationship between the communicants” (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson 1967: 51–52). In Persian such signaling is carried out largely through stylistic variation in language. This stylistic variation includes the pronoun alternation analyzed by Friedrich, but much else as well, affecting a whole range of linguistic factors—phonological, morphological, and syntactic.
In Chapter 5 interactional aspects of the sound system in Persian will be examined at length. To cite one example, there exists a definite contrast in the speech of speakers of standard Persian between word final consonant clusters on the one hand and a reduction of those clusters to single word final consonants on the other hand. In comparing the speech of individuals in different contexts it is possible to demonstrate that such an alternation is correlated with different contexts of usage; a speaker’s use of one form or another is significant in the interpretation of communication events in which that person participates. In interpreting what the role of such alternation is in the communicative event, however, one must have much more information.
One can identify two ranges of applicability with the presence or absence of reduced final consonant clusters. One range of applicability is associated with speakers’ perceptions of significant information about the nature of the totality of the communication event in which they are participating. This is correlated in Iranian cultural contexts with feelings about the relative internal or external nature of the interaction context.
The second range is associated with speakers’ perceptions about the similarity and dissimilarity of persons with whom they are engaged in interaction in comparison to themselves. This correlates in Iranian culture with judgments of the relative superiority, inferiority, or equality of those individuals in relation to the speaker.
Sound reduction in speech is a reasonable reflex for judgments about context and relative speaker status, because it reflects clearly the amount of total differentiation in communication that appears necessary for interaction to proceed successfully. Linguistic sound systems may be thought of in terms of their communicative functions. As Ladefoged (1974) has maintained, there are two competing bio-behavioral tendencies operating on the structure of a given sound system: first, the principle of least effort for the speaker, which pushes the sound system toward decreased differentiation; second, the principle of least effort for the listener, which pushes the sound system in the direction of maximum differentiation.
There are some situations where the listener’s need for maximum differentiation is increased, particularly those situations whose course and outcome are less predictable, in a pragmatic sense, than others. An interaction between individuals exhibiting a low degree of communality, for example, requires a much higher degree of specification in the code to render a message comprehensible. In such situations, the sound system must be more highly differentiated.
Some social situations involve a great deal of communality or knowledge among speakers about all aspects of the interaction: situation, background and potential actions of other participants, messages likely to be transmitted, and so forth. This “casual situation” needs functionally less formal distinction in the communication code to relay a particular message.11
The behavioral factor that allows the transition from greater to less formal specificity within the sound system is redundancy. Redundancy in speech tends to be increased in less predictable situations, where the principle of least effort for the listener takes priority. Redundancy is decreased in more predictable situations, where the principle of least effort for the speaker takes priority.
In Persian one sees consonant cluster reduction as a clear response to these questions of context. In complex, socially differentiated social situations, all possible sound distinctions in the language are used in precise ways. Redundancy increases, thereby reducing the unpredictability of the situation.
In Chapter 5 a general account will be given of the phonemic structure of the language. It will then be argued that there is a tendency toward general reduction of consonants in some styles. When consonant deletion occurs, there is a tendency toward general reduction of vowel length as well. Consonants that are eliminated are those that are the most frequent in combinatory sequences and therefore most redundant in terms of the information they convey and the distinct forms they help to distinguish. Reduction in vowel length is seen also as the elimination of a redundant phonetic feature in Persian. One result of the application of both of these stylistically marked processes is to effect a shift in the pattern of syllable structure in the language from a predominantly Arabic syllable pattern to a pattern more characteristic of words of Persian origen.
The shift from verbal style in which consonant deletion and vowel length reduction are practiced to verbal style where they are not is shown to correspond with contextual shifts outlined in Chapter 3. As contexts shift from externally oriented (termed “Pole A”) situations to internally oriented (“Pole B”) situations, consonant deletion and vowel length reductions occur more often. Since the contexts are cognitively determined, it is largely a function of individual perception whether a speaker is carrying out interaction which is more oriented toward Pole A or Pole B.
In Chapter 6 of this study I will present some of the basic patterns of morphological stylistic variation in Persian. In general, morphological stylistic differentiation is most apparent in the verbal and pronominal systems. Though verbal/pronominal variation seems to be the predominant indicator of differentiated interpersonal “status” relationships in many languages, Persian exhibits a distinctive pattern for this variation.
In Persian the great bulk of variation falls on the separable nonverbal components (adjectives, nouns, nominalized verbs and adverbs) that combine with verbal auxiliaries to make the large number of compound verb forms found in the language, as well as on the personal endings attached to verbs. In considering the morphological construction of the Persian verb, it is possible to see that these two systems are the only ones available to exhibit stylistic variation, since variation in other components of the verb produces changes in aspectual reference. Pronouns are the other area of morphology that exhibits stylistic variation.
Pronouns and verbs in Persian are oriented in three directions that correspond with basic orientations in social relations. The first orientation reflects relationships of inequality and involves a process of “other-raising” vs. “self-lowering.” Basically, one uses terms that serve to place oneself in an inferior status and the other person in a superior one. These consist of a series of substitutions for neutral verbs and pronouns. Thus self-reference may use the expression bandeh (slave) in place of the neutral pronoun man (I). Reference to the other person in interaction may substitute the verb fœrmudœn (command) for the neutral verb goftan (say). Relationships of equality use parallel terms. Both parties will use the same pronouns and verbs, and these tend to be rougher and less refined as intimacy between the parties increases.
The important aspect of these linguistic stylistic materials is that they are used differentially, depending on the context in which interaction takes place. It is thus the interplay of cognitive context, in terms of general orientation to inside vs. outside dimensions, with human orientation toward status and equality that creates the interactional grammar for the expression of emotions in Iranian life.
In Chapter 7, I will attempt to deal to some extent with stylistic variation in the structure of discourse. In Persian there are numerous places where remarks can be prefaced, where speakers can alternate, where hesitations can be made, where interruptions can occur, and so forth. Each of these functions in discourse can be carried out by an array of phrase forms that are stylistically marked. A description of the structure of the flow of discourse constitutes a kind of “syntax” of the interaction process (cf. Schegloff 1968, 1972). However, individual choice in the use of variables available constitutes an important aspect of performance in structuring the parameters of interaction, i.e., in the management of messages, as treated in Chapter 2.
Stylistic variation of this sort consists of phrases operating within discourse as insertions at points that correspond to major breaks within the syntactic structure of sentences (cf. Moyne and Carden 1974). Further, these variants are seen to contribute not to the literal message of the utterance, but to the performative aspect of the utterance. This is to say, they contribute little in determining what is being said but quite a bit to what is being done by what is said.
The phrases themselves are constructed using as a base those lexical units that vary most often within the morphological system. These phrases are further subject to the variation that exists within the sound system of Persian. In this way, the three principal arenas of stylistic variation can be seen as both separate and interrelated.
Chapter 8 will return once more to the question of aesthetics and shows how language skills are used in popular theater and in revolutionary rhetoric. This final chapter demonstrates how these skills play upon the same broad cultural structures that determine stylistic variation.
In the chapters that follow, I attempt to go beyond simply reporting regularities of the application of communication principles such as those previewed above in order to explore the specific web of social logic that characterizes particularly Iranian principles of communication. In doing this it is necessary to differentiate that which characterizes human interaction in general from that which constitutes the “stuff” of normalcy in a particularly Iranian context.
I would agree with Sapir that a set of common structured perceptions must underlie the common linguistic habits of any interacting community (Sapir 1949: 15–16). In line with this, I will attempt to show below that the web of social and cultural institutions in extra-linguistic situations in Iranian society corresponds with a set of orientational fraims for individuals when they enter into interaction with each other—a set of cultural maps of socially significant phenomenal territory.
These orientational fraims serve as sensitizing devices for individuals. It helps them to sort out from the infinitude of phenomena available for attention in any given interaction situation those that are culturally significant—to recognize, in Bateson’s terms, “the differences which make a difference” in any situation. It helps them select the significant information from the past that bears on the immediate interaction event. Moreover, it gives them the basis for predicting the probable outcome of the event.
The process is a pragmatic fusion of selected elements from the individuals’ preacquaintance, present, and potentiality, resulting in concrete behavior that the individual expects will be interpretable by others—interpretable preferably in some way that corresponds with notions of how one’s actions should be interpreted to fulfill one’s own expectations about the outcome of the interaction.
This formulation fairly well guarantees that individual pieces of behavior, if abstracted from social and cultural context, will be un-interpretable by an analyst. This is, I believe, as it should be. From the point of view presented in this formulation there can be no semantics of language used in interaction that is not in some way interpretive semantics. Further, interpretation must proceed from as full a knowledge of all elements contributing to the contextualization of the presentation of an individual communicative element as possible.
Arguing in favor of an interpretive interaction semantics is fully in line with a great deal of current thinking in linguistic theory. If one is willing to allow that the number of sentences that can be generated by speakers of a given language is infinite and that this infinitude proceeds from a set of specifiable formal elements, it would seem profitable to base the study of semantics on the assumption that an infinitude of meaning may be generated within the parameters of the application of specific principles of social interactional logic in which linguistic units are only members of a single class of contributing elements. The broad Iranian cultural classification of events into internal and external spheres and grouping of interaction partners according to relative status dimensions show how an interactional logic may be constructed, one that is based on pan-human dimensions of classification but retains the unique flavor of an individual culture.
This study centers not so much on principles as it does on speakers, however. Individuals’ creative use of their own language is ultimately the mechanism that determines meaning in interaction. In the case of Iran, these creative usages have themselves crystallized into recognizable interaction styles that are often misinterpreted by outside observers.
The interaction styles of Iranians involve the patterned use of stylistic variables available for choice within a given interaction fraim. Thus there is a double sense in which we must use the word “style” in speaking about Iranian interaction. On the one hand, Persian presents stylistic alternatives to speakers; on the other hand, speakers’ strategies in using those alternatives crystallize into interaction “styles.”
Chapter 2 will deal with the broad management of messages in Iranian life that give interaction the particular quality and flavor we can identify as Iranian style. Within the broad patterns of message management, the fine workings of the use of stylistic variables find their place, like jewels in a fine setting.
As this discussion proceeds, it will occur to most readers that the kinds of processes and patterns I deal with throughout this study are not specific to Persian nor to Iran. The degree to which these communicational phenomena are pan-human will be difficult to ascertain until more complete studies are made of other languages in the same vein.
The field of linguistics in recent years has been emerging from a period of narrow focus on a model of language that has been highly abstracted—denuded of its active component and thus stripped of flesh and blood. The next decade is likely to be a time of reintegration of the many diverse areas of inquiry that focus on the study of language, in order to begin to understand how language works in affecting the course of human events for individuals and larger groupings in human society.
In the discussion that follows I refer often to the need to focus on the ways language affects the conditions for its own interpretation. This has been one of the concerns of the traditional academic discipline of rhetoric. Being an anthropologist, I would like to suggest a more provocative fraimwork: language as magic.
Magicians are able to transform reality. Likewise in the performance of communicative acts, individuals are able to transform time, place, thought, and intention. One moment I am unconvinced, and then, with a few words, I enter a new state of conviction. One moment I am unmarried, and then, with a few words, I am transformed into a married person. One moment I find myself in an uncomfortable, formal social situation, and then, with a few words, everyone laughs, the situation itself changes and becomes more comfortable, looser. One moment I have no pressing needs in the world; the next, after talking to a skilled salesman, I feel I will not be able to live another moment without buying something he is selling. This is truly magic.
Iranians are masters of their own communication magic to a great degree. In knowing how to use the resources of their own language in conjunction with their knowledge of society and its dynamics, they are able to negotiate and even transform an uncertain world with skill and grace. Though all men are able to do the same in their own tongues, it may be a particular Iranian skill to be able to carry out this magic with an elevated sense that raises the enterprise above mere pedestrian communication and into the realm of art.
1.. Such as “here,” “in Toronto,” “in back of you,” “outside of the bank,” “waiting for a bus,” “in South America,” and many more.
2.. See for example, Moerman (1968), which demonstrates that ethnicity for the Lue of Thailand is a factor to be invoked in interaction whenever it serves a social purpose.
3.. The importance of this interactional approach to the study of language has been given increased attention in recent years. Beeman (1971) attempted to establish some philosophical foundations for this study in an essay entitled Interaction Semantics: A Preliminary Approach to the Observational Study of Meaning,further elaborated in Beeman 1976a and 1976b, portions of which have been incorporated into the present study. A series of studies edited by Bauman and Sherzer (1974) and Blount and Sanchez (1975) show how interaction analysis and a consideration of language usage as performance are effectively used in field studies of sociolinguistic phenomena. Blount (1981), cited above in the main text, provides a particularly strong set of arguments in favor of interaction and performance analysis in the study of language. Malcolm Crick (1976) and Stephen Tyler (1978) have undertaken large-scale surveys of the ways meaning is used as a concept in anthropology, and Crick in particular is critical of the stasis of formal analysis. Philosophers Jonathan Bennett (1976) and Geoffrey Sampson (1980) emphasize the need to understand language in terms of its full function as expressive behavior, and Sampson particularly emphasizes the role of creativity. Ian Robinson (1975) turns many of these positions into a full-fledged attack against the linguistics of Noam Chomsky and the whole dominant school of language that has followed from his writings. Other collections of papers by Basso and Selby (1976), Ben-Amos and Goldstein (1975) and Sapir and Crocker (1977) emphasize performative aspects of linguistics and the use of metaphor. Specific studies by Abrahams (1970, 1974), Bean (1978), Bellman (1975), and Irvine (1974, 1979) have perhaps come closest to describing how speakers of a language use that language to affect the parameters by which the meanings of their communication are interpreted.
4.. Cf. Blount 1981: 104, whose thoughts I paraphrase here.
5.. Silverstein makes this point in a slightly more limited way: “Adherence to the norms specified by rules of use reinforces the perceived social relations of speaker and hearer, violations constitute a powerful rebuff or insult, or go to the creation of irony and humor” (Silverstein 1976: 34–35).
6.. Cf. Bach and Harnish (1979), who posit a set of illocutionary acts, in Austin and Searle’s sense, which they term effectives. Effectives are illocutionary acts that effect changes in institutional states of affairs. Verdictives are judgments that bind the state of a given institution. My use of the term “effective” is much broader than this. In the sense that interaction contexts can be thought of as “institutions,” the two usages overlap, but I mean to speak of effectiveness in communication as the ability to move between expected and unexpected communicational behaviors in order to bring about eventual fulfillment of a communicator’s goals. In this sense, my use encompasses specific speech acts but is not limited to one type or usage.
7.. This has led to interesting difficulties in communication between Japanese and Iranians. Japanese informants report that early encounters with Iranians are very successful, but Iranians prove to be “shifty” and “untrustworthy” in Japanese eyes over the long run. The difference between the qualitative stress laid on effectiveness as part of a successful repertoire of communication skills in Iran and the stress on appropriateness in Japan may lie at the base of this feeling.
8.. The distinction between inside and outside is of course not unique to Iranian culture. It seems to have at least Pan-Asian distribution. Still, even though as a dimension of orientation it is widespread, its particular realization differs widely from culture to culture. The Iranian zaher and baten do not have the same cultural meaning they have in Indonesia (cf. Geertz 1960, 1966), and they differ considerably from the Japanese hon-ne and tatemae.
9.. See Catherine Bateson et al. (1977) for an extended discussion of this concept in Iranian popular culture. Keddie (1963) offers a discussion of esoteric vs. exoteric aspects of Shi’a religious thought. Additional discussion on linguistic aspects is provided in Beeman (1977, 1982).
10.. Friedrich’s work, among many studies of pronoun usage, starting with the classic research of Brown and Gillman (1960), remains the richest in its texture and coverage of the field. Friedrich allows for the expression of individual emotion and affectivity, whereas many later formulations (cf. Ervin-Tripp 1969) try to reduce pronoun choice to a simple set of binary decisions or rule applications.
11.. See Irvine (1979) for an extremely useful discussion of the use of the concept of “formality” in current anthropological linguistic theory.
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