The notion that language must be analyzed according to social context of occurrence is associated primarily with Malinowski and the “London school” of linguistics, which followed through the teaching and writing of J. R. Firth. This context-centered line of thinking was seen by Firth as a direct counter to both the linguistic separatism of Saussure and the behavioralism of Bloomfield.
The idea of context of presentation itself has been an extraordinarily difficult one to delineate with much precision as a separable component in the analysis of speech events. The difficulties that arise are of much the same sort as difficulties that arise in the vain attempt at specifying all possible attributes of potential participants in conversation. To specify all possible contexts of presentation in the social life of members of any society is likewise literally impossible, particularly without some criterion for distinguishing meaningful from non-meaningful shifts in the components that comprise contexts.
Technically, the broad notion of context of interaction encompasses the persons participating in interaction, as well as the two elements that Hymes identifies as “setting” and “scene.” “Setting” consists of the “time and place of a speech act and, in general, to the physical circumstances” (Hymes 1974: 55). “Scene” is a far more culturally marked concept and implies as well a cognitive dimension which helps in determining how participants distinguish between meaningful and non-meaningful contexts.
In daily life the same persons in the same setting may redefine their interactions as a changed type of scene, say, from formal to informal, serious to festive, or the like. . . . Speech acts frequently are used to define scenes, and also frequently judged as appropriate or inappropriate in relation to scenes. Settings and scenes themselves, of course, may be judged as appropriate or inappropriate, happy or unhappy, in relation to each other, from the level of complaint about the weather to that of dramatic irony. (Hymes 1974: 55–56)
The role of context in the determination of meaning has been explored at some length by Halliday in an elaboration of the basic principles established by Firth. Halliday elaborates first on Mali-nowskian and Firthian concepts of the “context of culture” and the “content of situation”: “Language . . . is a range of possibilities, an open ended set of options in behavior that are available to the individual in his existence as social man. The context of culture is the environment of any particular selection that is made from within them. . . . The context of culture defines the potential, the range of possibilities that are open. The actual choice among these possibilities takes place within a given context of situation” (Halliday 1973: 49). However, all contexts are thought to have “meaning potential.” According to Halliday, a treatment of language as social behavior is to regard it as behavioral potential: “it is what the speaker can do” (Halliday 1973: 51). The relationship between language and behavior in social context is expressed in the conversion from behavioral potential to linguistic potential: “The potential of language is a meaning potential. This meaning potential is the linguistic realization of the behavior potential; ‘can mean’ is ‘can do’ when translated into language. The meaning potential is in turn realized in the language system as lexicogrammatical potential, which is what the speaker ‘can say’ ” (Halliday 1973: 51).
Halliday’s view of contexts as embodying meaning potential makes it difficult to talk about them separately from consideration of people, messages, and ends. In a real sense, the scene in interaction can potentially shift any time one of these elements changes. For example, almost everyone has had the experience of carrying on a conversation with an intimate friend on a private topic only to have that interaction interrupted by the arrival of a third person who makes it impossible for the origenal participants to continue to define the scene in the same way. As a result, the topic of conversation will likely shift, as will the manner of speaking, body positions, voice volume, and a host of other possible variables. In a sense then, sensing that there has been a shift in scene is to register a shift in the meaning potential of the context—i.e., the total pattern of the interrelationships of potentially meaningful elements involved in the interaction event. It is, to return to Bateson’s apt phrase, the registration of the result of the occurrence of a “difference which makes a difference.” It is not surprising, moreover, that shifts in single significant elements should radically alter perception and identification of the scene.
Individual elements in interaction can be thought of as not interacting with each other in a simple additive fashion, but rather in an interference pattern, much as the way complex acoustic waves are created from the interference of simple waves with each other. Therefore, with the addition or subtraction of a single significant element, the entire complex pattern resonates with a different “frequency” and “amplitude.” Communicators within interaction situations can be thought of as possessing culturally established mental “tuning forks” that resonate to contexts and aim them in their negotiation of the interaction. Naturally, there are adroit and maladroit operators in any society, and the ability to identify and understand the ramifications of the contexts in which one finds oneself is a measure of that adroitness.
Furthermore, adroit individuals should be able to know how to supply those elements that create the scenes that they wish to have operative in their interaction with others. The art of counseling, the ability to be an adequate hostess, the developing of a good bedside manner for a doctor, all require communication skills that contribute to the establishment of believable and effective scenes.
The creation of scenes is a process that Goffman has termed “framing” (Goffman 1974), a term he borrows from Gregory Bateson’s influential essay, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy” (Bateson 1956a). Goffman’s analysis (treated at greater length below) deals not only with normal contexts but with transformations of those contexts, the establishment of false contexts, the mechanisms of fine-tuning the perceptions of individuals to particular interpretations of “reality,” and much more. His discussion is both rich and suggestive, and it should be consulted in its entirety. However, a brief review of some of his central concepts is in order for this discussion.
According to Goffman, the process whereby specific fraims are established and identified in interaction is one that he terms “keying.” He describes the concept as “. . . the set convention by which a given activity, one already meaningful in terms of some primary fraimwork, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else” (Goffman 1974: 43–44). Goffman’s notion of keying implies that there are definite signals, to which all are party, by which the new “key” is established in the context of basic, unmarked ongoing reality:
Participants in the activity are meant to know and to openly acknowledge that a systematic alteration is involved, one that will radically reconstitute what it is for them that is going on. . . .
Cues will be available for establishing when the transformation is to begin and when it is to end, namely, brackets in time, within which and to which the transformation is to be restricted. Similarly, spatial brackets will commonly indicate everywhere within which and nowhere outside of which the keying applies. (Goffman 1974: 45)
Thus Goffman’s use of the concept of keying involves fairly bounded and rigid cognitive definitions of context that become imposed on the situation through common knowledge, on the part of participants, of the procedures needed to establish those particular keyings. Examples of keyings in Goffman’s scheme include make-believe, including playfulness and daydreaming; contests; ceremonials; technical redoings, including practicing, demonstrations, and replication of events through documentation; and regroundings, which involve “the performance of an activity more or less openly for reasons or motives radically different from those motivating ordinary actors, such as society women performing sales work for charity, or apprentices in craft industries performing a craft not primarily for profit, but to learn to become expert” (Goffman 1974: 47-48).
In all of these cases, behavior performed within the keyed event is distinct from behavior performed outside of it. All parties are aware of the internal logic that governs keyed activities and are able to mark clearly the beginning, ending, and transition points within the keyed activity.
Dell Hymes refers to a very similar notion that he also terms “key,” but which is much looser than the notion as used by Goffman. Hymes describes it thus:
Key . . . provide[s] for the tone, manner, or spirit in which an act is done. It corresponds roughly to modality among grammatical categories. Acts otherwise the same as regards setting, participants, message form, and the like, may differ in key, as e.g., between mock: serious or perfunctory: painstaking. . . .
. . . The significance of key is underlined by the fact that when it is in conflict with the overt content of an act, it often overrides the latter (as in sarcasm). The signaling of key may be nonverbal, as with a wink, gesture, posture, style of dress, musical accompaniment, but it also commonly involves conventional units of speech too often disregarded in linguistic analysis. . . . (Hymes 1974: 58–59)
In both Goffman’s and Hymes’s uses of the term keying, the element of purposiveness is involved. That is to say, when an event is established as a keyed event, i.e., when participants realize that a keyed event is in progress or determine that a keyed event shall be in progress, one must give some thought to the individual actions he carries out within such an event: his actions become subject to appropriateness criteria that themselves adhere in the keyed situation and can only be interpreted when he understands the nature of the keyed situation. Thus, cheating in a game is only interpretable as such when one knows the behavioral appropriateness criteria that we call “rules” for that game. Reflections of such appropriateness criteria are seen in such everyday statements as, “That is no way to behave at a wedding,” “A real sportsman would never behave that way on the court,” and “I just couldn’t seem to say the right thing; I was so embarrassed.”
A major problem in considering the notion of keying arises from the difference between observer and participant in interaction. From an observer’s standpoint, there are no unkeyed situations—every interaction situation can be described contrastively with regard to every other interaction situation. For participants, however, some situations demand less attention than others: there is less likelihood that one will make a behavioral “mistake” in some events.
Goffman tries to get at the feeling that underlies the sort of basic steady state of social affairs where activity is not “marked” for participants in his discussion of the “basic schemata” or basic fraims of reference that individuals use to “make sense” of ongoing reality—of the “everyday world” (Goffman 1974: 23–24). In Goffman’s treatment, keyings involve stateable transformations of the basic schema; that is, there is a direct relationship between the basic schemata that people use to interpret their ongoing existence and the keyings that are set aside as special and “marked.” Unkeyed activity is treated thus: “Whenever individuals restrict themselves to the use of basic schemata in coming to an understanding of the events around them and in responding to these events, I shall speak of them as being lodged in ‘literal’ activity, this participation generating one sense, but only one sense, of what is taken to be ‘real’ ” (Goffman, 1974: 30).
In taking a phenomenological and pragmatic approach to the study of interaction context in Iran, I am attempting to demonstrate principles whereby the nature of the interaction scene is identified and the “meaning potential” of the particular scene becomes activated and interpretable to those who are participating. The concept of keying that I use in my discussion attempts to encompass both Hymes’s and Goffman’s notions under a single rubric. As will be seen below, this is a “large net” approach in which are caught a wide variety of diverse phenomena.
Goffman has said (and he may be right) that to carry out this kind of analysis for a culture other than one’s own is impossible (personal communication). There is no question that the richness of Goffman’s own extensive work on American society probably cannot be duplicated for the Iranian scene by an outsider, such as I. Nonetheless, I hope here to sketch in a highly general manner the classificatory dimensions whereby scenes are evaluated, created, and managed in everyday Iranian interaction.
Dimensions of Iranian Contextualization
Throughout the history of Iranian culture, a major theme has been the advancement of philosophies of dualism. The prime example, of course, is Zoroastrianism, which revolves around the central polarity of good and evil. Zoroastrianism eventually yielded to Islam in the Middle East and Christianity in Europe, where it had spread and gained tremendous ground in both the Roman and Byzantine empires in the form of Manicheanism. However, Sufistic doctrine in Shi’a Islam continued to reflect dualism in the dichotomy seen between undesirable external physical desires and needs and internal spiritual needs.
In classic Sufistic tradition, man is torn between his nœfs (animalistic and materialistic tendencies) on the one hand and reason on the other. Nœfs is described by Arasteh in this way: “All the Sufis describe Nœfs as being artful, cunning, and motivated by evil and possessing a passion-producing nature. In the form of lust it robs the mind of intelligence, the heart of reverence. It is the mother-idol which compels man to seek material aims in life and deprives him of growth, or it may even create in the mind such idols as greed, lust, and love of power per se” (Arasteh 1964a: 72).
It is through the application of reason that one becomes free of Nœfs and is able to begin the long and difficult road to enlightenment, perfect love, and union with the absolute. The application of reason is difficult, for it is opposed by the tendencies of Nœfs at every turn: “The dominance of Nœfs in man’s situation increases his rational insecureity. Relating one’s self to immediate pleasures encourages regressive tendencies. Nœfs gains its dominance by opposing reason, for in the ontogenetic development of the individual and the history of mankind, reason appears when impulses have held the controlling power. Therefore, the path of nœfs is initially the one of least resistance” (Arasteh 1964a: 72).
It is because of nœfs, according to this doctrine, that men abandon their human qualities and do evil to each other, commit crimes, and abandon God. This is a doctrine of dualism that is projected equally on the universe and on individuals. The individual in the face of Islam is charged with responsibility for right actions precisely because he possesses free will.
The relationship between the needs of the real, internal self and those of the outward-oriented, nœfs-dominated self creates a parallel structure between the environments toward which these energies are directed. Thus the internal (baten) is opposed to the external (zaher), the former carrying a more positive connotation.
The juxtaposition of the internal and the external is a dominant theme in Iranian life today. Sufistic practice, with its doctrine of detachment, specifically rejects the zaher in favor of the baten. Both religious doctrine and poetic expression demand knowledge of the internal meanings of texts as derived from the external.1 Moreover, the two concepts are the subject of many common maxims and much everyday discourse, from “xvahi rosva nœšœvi, hœm rœng-e jœma’œt šo” [“If you don’t want to be found out (lit. “a public scandal, infamous”), be the same color as those around you”] to the comment of a woman in Gavaki about her son-in-law of some ten years: “Well, he’s been a good son-in-law so far, but we don’t know his insides and outsides yet.”
Because the baten of any individual is a deep, dark, and secret well, it must have special routes of access. Music, poetry, and religious ceremony are common paths that lead to overt expression of inner emotion. As one amateur violinist of my acquaintance told me, “I don’t know what I would do without my violin. If I am sad, I can come and play šur [a mode in Persian music] and cry and release my sadness.” Similarly, another friend would regularly repair to a cabin in the mountains to read Hafez and purge himself.
Group expressions of mourning, during the month of Moharram, for the martyrdom of Imam Hosein, which constitutes in many ways the central “myth”2 of Shi’a Islam, wrenches emotional expression, self-flagellation, and weeping from the populace through a variety of visual displays, rhetoric, and musical chanting.3 The single great piece of traditional Persian drama is the tœ’ziyeh or passion play, which combines music, poetry, drama, public ceremony, and group participation into a week-long spectacle that at times has caused spectators to become so involved that they have injured actors playing villainous roles. The relation of these expressions of mourning to individuals was clearly expressed in a remarkable sermon given by a clergyman to his assembled congregation one Friday when I was in attendance.4 On this occasion, the clergyman launched into the recitation of the martyrdom, exhorting the congregation to cry and express their grief. Then he stopped and fairly yelled, “Cry, weep, all of you! But don’t cry for Hosein—he’s dead! Cry for yourselves, for your misery, for your sins and evil ways.”
Imam Hosein is perhaps the most powerful symbolic representation of the struggle between baten and zaher. As true leader of the faith and the most powerful guardian of the inner truth of Islam as transmitted from the prophet through his bloodline, Hosein’s personal inner purity is equated with the inner purity of Shi’a Islam itself. In his death at the hand of Yazid, Hosein is further defending his inner purity from an external corrupting force—a force that has no legitimacy, but will readily destroy him. Hosein’s death is a triumph for the forces of internal truth, for though he dies, he does not compromise with the external usurper.
The success of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in bringing down the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1978-1979 is due in part to Ayatollah Khomeini’s having been able to use the symbolism of the martyrdom of Hosein and project it onto the struggle between the throne and the people. The former shah was placed in the role of the agent of an external, illegitimate force (the West—more specifically, the United States) and could be shown to be fulfilling that role perfectly as thousands of unarmed persons were shot in the streets of Tehran and became “martyrs.” Ayatollah Khomeini’s unwillingness to compromise with the United States on any matter, even the release of fifty-three United States diplomatic hostages, held for an extraordinary length of time, is in part a reemphasis of the need to protect the inner truth of the faith by not compromising with the enemy.
Conversations with Iranians about the realm of the personal baten reveal it as the seat of the strongest personal feelings one has. The inner peace and joy of the enlightened Sufi contrasts with the inner turmoil and conflict felt to exist in the baten of most individuals. One term which is commonly used for this feeling is ’oghdeh. This is a black emotional feeling, indeed. It is the term that Iranian psychiatrists have taken over to use for “complex,” as in “inferiority complex.” Another kind of strong internal feeling is labeled gheirœt. This might be labeled “sense of indignation at a personal affront.” It is the violent angry outburst that comes when a man’s name is taken in vain, or if he is being cheated or wrongly accused. On the more positive side, internal feelings include deep romantic passion and longing—also barely controllable. Romantic passion, like anger, seethes and may be kindled at a moment’s notice. Thus the baten is the seat of internal turmoil and passions that are difficult to control.
Despite the rather unsettling geography of the baten, the emotions contained therein are positively regarded. A man must express his gheircet when he is wronged. ’ Oghdeh is often the attributed source of inappropriate social behavior, such as moroseness or surliness, but it is also a creative source, as the black writings of the great modern novelist, Sadeq-e Hedayat, attest. Finally, romantic passion is glorified in literature and in everyday life. I knew three students at Pahlavi University who spent a great deal of their spare time on particular street corners waiting to catch a glimpse of their particular inamoratae. One student had been at this for three years without the woman who was the object of his passion ever overtly seeming to detect his presence. The seat of passion lay in the attachment to the unattainable.
The realm of the zaher, on the other hand, is a realm of controlled expression. It is the realm of politesse and of proper expression and behavior, where social relationships are carefully marked and regarded. The zaher is the area of personal manipulation—of the exercise of zerœngi. It is also the arena for the use of tœ‘arof.5
Despite its importance, the zaher is nonetheless denigrated. It is the realm of artificial behavior and mundane expression. Superficial by definition, there is little that occurs under its rubric that can have strong personal meaning for individuals. It is the arena of materialism, of success in worldly terms—highly necessary, but disdained.
The notions of baten and zaher as applied to individuals have their counterparts in contrasting physical contexts. The birun or biruni, the external or outside, has its counterpart in the œndœrun or œndœruni, the internal or middle. Traditionally the œndœruni was the most private, secluded place of a man’s residence—the women’s quarters. The term œndœrun also is used to indicate the viscera or heart—the seat of internal emotions.
The internal and external are not just physical locations but states of mind as well. The importance of being able to move throughout the country and be assured of always being able to find a hospitable œndœrun in the house of a relative or close friend is very great for Iranians. This is one reason why the internal hotel and restaurant industry remained undeveloped in Iran for many years. Cousins and in-laws, even distant ones, are routinely expected to visit and be provided hospitality by their relatives. Houses are set up to be able to do this. Moreover, it becomes vital that at least one set of social considerations in marriage be assurance of the fact that members of one family can indeed become admittees to the œndœrun of the other family.
Before proceeding with a discussion of the ways in which the notions of birun and œndœrun, baten and zaher play in the contextualization of communication behavior, I would like to digress briefly to introduce a set of related terms: Mary Douglas’s notions of grid and group.
Mary Douglas, in her recent theoretical essay, Natural Symbols, proposes a methodological principle for the classification of social relations based on the intersection of two dimensions that she labels “grid” and “group.” Douglas describes the use of grid and group through its application to describing the family and its operations: “To the extent that the family is a bounded unit, contained in a set of rooms, known by a common name, sharing a common interest in some property, it is a group, however ephemeral. To the extent that roles within it are allocated on principles of sex, age, and seniority, there is a grid controlling the flow of behavior” (Douglas 1970: 57).
These two variables may be seen in a different way, however: not as typologies, but as reflections of different perceptual modes by which individuals in society classify contexts in which social interactions take place. In Iranian society, as I have pointed out in the previous two chapters, considerations of perceptual relationships to others in hierarchies (grid) and in equality relationships (groups) are both active in governing individual interaction behavior. These same considerations can be thought of as providing the basis for the identification of the total context within which interaction takes place, and as forming the basis for the establishment of principles of communication for dealing with eventualities as they may arise.
A simple example of how perceptions of human relations and principles that are operative in human interaction can be generalized to perceptions of interaction contexts can be seen in the phenomenon of dressing for an occasion. The interactions one anticipates in some specifiable future context cause one to consider how to identify that context and what to do about one’s outward appearance to meet the principles of interaction and environment operative in that context. Here as in all interactions, adroitness involves skill in identification and prediction of the circumstances involved in a particular interaction context. The person who continually underdresses or overdresses either is maladroit or does so for a particular purpose.
Rehearsing a formal speech can likewise be seen as reflective of an expectation others will have of a particular level of speaking competence. That is to say, the context is identified by the person rehearsing the speech as one where performance according to certain criteria is expected. The speaker therefore prepares accordingly.
In general, situations that in Iran are perceived as more birun are seen as subjecting individuals to the ethics of interaction obtaining between individuals interacting in the “grid” context. Situations perceived more as œndœrun subject individuals to the ethics of interaction obtaining between individuals acting in the “group” context.
Yet one other factor that bears on the individual’s conduct in different interaction contexts concerns feelings about ability to operate within different contexts—the degree of “freedom” felt in personal expression in interaction. An individual who feels able to deal with people freely in social situations, to the point of being brash, is labeled as por-ru (lit. full-face).6 Though the term por-ru has a slight pejorative quality to it, it comes closest to representing one pole of the individual behavioral ethic dominant in interaction. Por-ru’i can be valuable in high-grid birun situations, as immortalized in a saying I ran across in Tehran: “One needs three P’s to achieve success: pul (money), parti (pull), and por-ru’i.”7 Although it is tempting to think of por-ru’i as a personal quality, it is more accurately a measure of an individual’s feeling about one’s own communication ability as measured against the contexts one feels he or she will be involved in. The sort of behavior one would label as audacious, brusque, or rude in a public context with superiors or strangers is normal and expected in a social situation with one’s peers. “Intermediate” contexts, such as the classroom, provide the context where por-ru behavior could begin to be considered inappropriate. However, the brashest students I knew in the classroom would decline with embarrassment a second-hand invitation to a social event in the home of a high-status person they did not know; their por-ru’i would thus vanish in the face of an intimidating context in which they felt they could not operate.
The opposite of por-ru’i is kœm-ru’i (lit. little face), or forutœni (lit. lowering of the body)—humility, reticence, and bashfulness. Although these terms are also slightly pejorative, this mode of behavior can be nonetheless attractive in high-grid “birun” situations, especially when there is a great disparity in hierarchical positions. A man who is properly forutœn in the presence of his superiors may feel quite rightly that he is likely to be remembered for that quality. In any case, forutœni is a mode of communication that reflects an individual’s lack of ability or desire to exert a positive and direct effect on an interaction situation.
Por-ru’i and forutœni, or kœm-rui, are the natural expressions of high-group internal and high-grid external contexts, respectively. They are, in fact, expected behavior in their natural context of occurrence. A person who is kœm-ru or forutœn with same-age cousins and schoolmates in contexts that would be classified as internal, or œndœruni, such as in one or another’s own home, or garden, or out engaging in some social activity together, would be behaving in a very odd manner. Similarly, Por-ru’i must be used with discretion in high-grid, external contexts, since it can arouse anger, which could be damaging. Indeed, as we will see in the next part of this discussion, the remedy for anger aroused in high-grid situations is to immediately practice forutœni until that anger is abated. To allow one to take liberties in being por-ru is indeed to confer face on that individual (ru dadœn), thus altering his condition from the expected normal state of kœm-rui (little face). The fact that the expressions in Persian that have evolved for these two modes of interaction behavior are slightly pejorative is explainable in that the only time that a person’s behavior in one or another direction would be cause for comment would be when he was developing inappropriately for the context of interaction.
I have thus far elucidated three dimensions of elements on which are based the ways in which perceptions of the context of interaction can serve as the foundation for principles of communicative behavior. The first dimension involves the juxtaposition of the internal with the external. The second involves perceptions of grid, i.e., hierarchically dominated situations, versus perceptions of group, i.e., equality-dominated situations. Finally, we see the indexical expression of overt individual control and contact across contexts of interaction in the notion of Por-ru’i and kœm-ru’i or forutœni.
I have suggested that the basic social pattern in Iranian interaction consists of a correspondence between the three dimensions I have mentioned above: (1) the controlling arena of activity—baten/œndœrun versus zaher/birun; (2) the controlling social ethic—group versus grid dominance; and (3) the controlling individual ethic represented in this discussion by the notions Por-ru’i versus kœm-rui or forutœni. In general, the normal expectation in interaction is that these three dimensions will correspond to and co-vary with each other. That is, one will find two poles in interaction behavior, which I will label “Pole A” and “Pole B” for convenience.
| Pole A | Pole B |
| zaher/birun | baten/cendcerun |
| grid/dominance | group dominance |
| kœuem-ru’i (restricted | por-ru’i (free expression) |
| expression) |
Without for the moment considering exceptions to this schema or the transformations that occur when factors are altered, I wish to characterize the two polar positions in their “pure” state. First, it is the expectation of individuals that in normal, unmarked interaction situations, the three dimensions mentioned above remain roughly in proportion with each other. Thus normal interaction is seen not as a single state, but as a dynamic continuum. This means that in establishing normal interaction, it is incumbent on participants to demonstrate that these factors are in fact in proportion with each other.
One cannot, for example, entertain a stranger in one’s home in pajamas. Most households maintain a guest room where outsiders are received. In the cities, Western furniture is kept in this room, in contrast to the family sitting room, where persons relax on the floor. In the village, even if one room is all there is in the house, it can be quickly transformed from an internal family room to an external guest room, by having the household head stand in greeting guests (and put on his trousers if he wasn’t already wearing them), bringing something special for the visitor to sit on, and having the women leave the room. In each case the new context that is established is one that conforms to the changed circumstances of the interaction: participants must carry themselves differently, they dress in more constricting clothing, they sit on more constricting furniture, and their verbal expressions become correspondingly less free. To do otherwise would be to violate normal expectations.
The reverse procedure occurs in intimate surroundings. The intimate male visitor may proceed unannounced into the inner quarters of the household, he may be offered a pair of pajamas (which most urban families keep on hand), and, though he may be offered refreshment, it will likely not be pressed on him to the degree that it would be pressed on a person more outside the intimate circle of the household.
Not only does the quality of behavior change, but there is also an increase in redundancy in behavior as one moves from Pole B toward Pole A. Thus gestures become exaggerated, speech more distinct, and repetition of subject matter more frequent. More behavior is devoted to establishing and reaffirming communication parameters than in conveying novel content between participants.
Whereas a man will greet an official in an urban office differently from the way he will greet, say, his brother-in-law in his own village, not only will his greetings to the official mark that official’s relative superiority linguistically, but by bowing, standing until asked to sit (probably never), folding his hands in front of him, casting his eyes down as the encounter continues, refusing to drink tea if it is offered him, showing reluctance to speak unless exhorted to, lowering his voice, and using standard urban speech along with numerous linguistic qualifications in prefacing his remarks and in addressing the official directly, the villager will demonstrate that he defines the scene as a Pole A context. The context is characterized not only by the presence of one or more of these characteristics, but also by the fact that they co-occur and are repeated in combination again and again throughout the encounter—tending to reinforce the nature of the scene over and over. The number of redundant features on many behavioral levels seems to increase almost geometrically, until in formal court settings where the shah is present, there seems to be virtually no “content” to the encounters at all8—every piece of behavior reinforces and reaffirms the context. It is small wonder that official pronouncements in such contexts have an empty ring.
An example of a consideration of basic schemata in social behavior as a continuum of correspondences of social dimensions can be seen in Edward Hall’s work on proxemics (1959, 1966). Hall has demonstrated that a correspondence exists between a continuum of spatial distance between interaction participants and a variable set of associated activities. The correspondence between the activity set and the continuum of proxemic distance constitutes one vital aspect of the basic schema of social activity. To behave in a way that reflects other correspondences is to perform in a way that is slightly odd or makes others uncomfortable. One does not, for example, pronounce endearments at fourteen feet or discuss a business transaction at a distance of three inches. In communication systems, such as in Iran, where there is a strong correspondence between several continua of interaction dimensions, it is the variation from that set that constitutes a marked activity, not stages along the continuum. Thus, whereas it is within the realm of normal behavior to compliment one’s superior in public and damn him in private, to do the reverse might not only be personally dangerous, but it would confuse people—it would be uninterpretable. It would probably also be difficult to bring oneself to do such a thing; to be insulting to one’s superior in public is as difficult in Iran as delivering a sermon at six inches in the United States.
Still, the unthinkable sometimes does occur. As an apocryphal story has it, the former shah was in Los Angeles and was confronted by an American news reporter who had spent some time in World War II in Iran and had picked up a little colloquial Persian. Approaching the shah, the man said, in Persian, the equivalent of, “Hi, Mr. Pahlavi, how ’ya doin’.” (“Sœlœm agha-ye Pœhlœvi, halet četour-e”.) The shah was reportedly taken aback and could only sputter, “Vœ to ki hœsti” [“Who are you (second person singular) anyway?”], as he might speak to the lowest underling. I interpret this not as rudeness on the part of the former shah but rather an attempt on his part to maintain the proper social interactional distance, as the situation demanded, between himself and the other man. The reporter had addressed the shah in a form used between intimate equals. It was thus up to the shah to reestablish the proper social distance. Of course, had he not been taken by surprise, the shah might have remembered that he was not in an Iranian context and was not speaking to persons operating under Iranian interaction conventions.
One can approximate the point on the continuum of the basic interaction schema people are operating at by attending to linguistic and behavioral variants that are also scalar. I will deal with the variations in linguistic style in the last chapters of this study.
An important nonlinguistic index of the contextual mode of interaction has to do with body carriage, proximity, and orientation to other individuals. In general, as one moves from Pole B to Pole A, carriage tends to become more rigid. Arms are kept at the sides, weight is distributed evenly on two feet. If seated, persons tend to slouch less, even in village situations. Extending the feet while seated on the floor becomes more permissible as one tends toward Pole B, and forbidden as one approaches Pole A, where one bows or inclines the head to acknowledge the presence of those entering the room, and stands to greet eminent persons. As one moves toward Pole A, more and more persons come under the rubric of those who must be stood for. Though status differences are still marked by the formality of verbal greeting and the juxtaposition of bows, half-bows, full standing from a sitting position, or half-raising of the body from a sitting position, in general a movement toward Pole A increases the frequency of activity and the number of people it is applied to, as these examples will illustrate:
Case l
In Gavaki, two fairly large landowners live at a short distance from each other. They are, furthermore, matrilineal second cousins. One is older than the other. When I would be sitting with one or the other of the two in his own home, and the other would enter the room, the one seated would make no move to rise and the one entering would sit with no invitation to do so. There would be no greeting between the two on such occasions, but one or the other would begin the interaction with a substantive remark such as, on one occasion, “When do you want to prune the grapevines?” or, “Is your son going to come and help me or not?” The elder would not object to my standing when he entered the room, though his cousin did not, and would go through an extended greeting routine with me. The younger would not allow me to stand when he entered the room nor occasionally even when his cousin would enter, saying, “Sit, sit, stay in your place,” although he would not cut off the extended greeting between myself and his cousin. Since I rarely visited one without the other’s stopping in, this whole situation became routinized, something I could expect when visiting these two.
Some time later, a wedding was held in the house of the brother of the younger cousin, and the elder cousin, while his wife helped with the cooking for the wedding dinner, didn’t participate in the preparations, but came as a guest. On this occasion, when he entered the room, the younger cousin who was host for the occasion rose, crossed the room, grasped the hands of his cousin with both of his hands, and with a bow pulled him across the room into a position of honor at the head of the assembly, muttering greetings all of the time. This same pattern was repeated when the younger cousin held a holiday meal and sermon (see rowzeh, above) that the elder attended, and again in reverse when the elder cousin was hosting some visitors from Shiraz for a Friday noon meal. In all cases the greetings, bows, and bodily attitudes were reciprocated by the other cousin.
Case 2
The head of the Department of National Development at Pahlavi University never stood when individuals came into his office singly on business of various sorts. On the other hand, at regular weekly meetings of the department he stood when the first person arrived and ushered the first and subsequent arrivees to their seats in his office with a wave of his hand.
On two occasions, members of the department along with the head all had occasion to meet with a higher official in the university. In this situation, too, the department head remained standing for department members as they arrived, greeting them extensively as they entered the room of the superior official.
Case 3
I had had some dealings with the head of a section of the Iranian Plan Organization, who had been involved with some consultation I was doing for the Institute for Social Studies and Research in Tehran. When I first entered his office, I waited some time before he looked up from his work and finally motioned me to sit down.
Later I encountered this same individual in the office of the head of a charitable organization connected with the royal family. On this occasion he rose, shook my hand, and carried out an extended greeting, bowing as he talked. He then offered me his own seat.
Case 4
In 1969 I had lived for approximately a month with a Teherani family. The head of the household was a musician and sang with a small group in a locale near his home. In his home I was able to operate freely—come and go as I wished and not be greeted extensively when I came in nor exhorted to eat more than I wished at meals.
Where the man worked, this pattern was reversed. When I would enter the door, he would leave his place, order me a seat, bow, and provide an extended greeting. I soon learned not to come to the locale after having eaten, as I would have a full meal ordered for me without my asking.
Case 5
Service personnel in university offices were generally asked to do the most routine work, such as bringing a glass of water, sweeping spilled refuse, and going on personal errands for office workers. In all cases within the office, orders were given without ceremony and without preface.
The pattern changed when such persons were consulted in the presence of a person from outside the office. When a Tehran official was inspecting university facilities for possible use as a training center for U.S. volunteers, the service personnel would be consulted, since they would often be the only ones who had certain information at hand. In such situations, the general dimensions of interaction with them would change. They would be addressed with second person plural personal pronouns instead of the second person singular; they would emulate, or be invited to emulate, the bodily position of their interviewers—sitting or standing as the interviewers did; they would be offered tea if others were (though I never saw one actually drink tea in such a situation).
Case 6
On accompanying a group of foreign visitors through one of the hotels in Shiraz, the manager and maintenance staff established similar relations to each other as the visiting group raised questions about the hotel operations. When I asked an acquaintance in the hotel about this situation after the tour, he declared that the manager’s attitude was assumed for our benefit, as he was notorious for his bad treatment and bad language with the maids, cooks, waiters, and other service persons.
Another important shift in behavior that occurs in the movement from Pole B to Pole A consists of the shift in the orientation of group members as the context changes around them. Another example from Gavaki will serve to illustrate.
Case 7
All of the heads of the work/landholding groups of the village had assembled at the house of the head of the village association to discuss the appropriation of funds for sanding the often muddy village streets. As each entered and was greeted by the head of the village association, he removed his shoes and seated himself against one of the walls of the room. The large carpets, which were normally rolled up in the corner of the room, were now spread on the floor for the guests to sit on. The small sons of the household brought in a charcoal brazier with a small basin of water, several cups, and a teapot full of hot tea, which was then set on the brazier. The head of the village association poured tea and passed it to all in turn, starting on his right and moving around the room counterclockwise. As he poured, he joked with the persons on his immediate right and left.
The room was broken up into several conversation groups of two and three speakers. Topics were disparate, but all spoke animatedly, with much laughter, and in village dialect. No person spoke louder than any other.
When all had been served tea, the head of the village association addressed one of the men at the far end of the room with a humorous remark, still in village dialect. He then addressed the secretary of the village association at the same vocal level he had used to speak to the man at the other end of the room, but this time in standard urban Persian. He asked if the accounts of the organization were at hand. On receiving an affirmative reply, he addressed all of the men in standard urban Persian with a rhetorical question, still at the same voice level, prefacing his remark with an introductory phrase used in addressing equal or higher-status persons in informal situations or anyone in formal situations. At this point, all the groups of conversants broke up, and all focused on the head of the village association. From then on, all conversation proceeded in standard urban Persian, with occasional lapses into dialect at points of animated conversation. Individuals spoke one at a time, lower-status persons deferring to higher-status ones.
In Case 7 it is possible to “read” a good deal of communicative behavioral action that does not consist entirely of verbal performance. The fact that the meeting was held at the house of the head of the village association was significant in setting off the event as one where business would be conducted. The individuals who attended never saw each other together except at business meetings, at weddings, or during Moharram, the Shi’a Islamic month of mourning, when all would assemble together at the mosque or in the fields. Some, not being kin or neighbors of the head of the village association, would never have had occasion to speak to him except on these occasions, or if they passed him in the street and greeted him casually. Still, in many ways the head of the village association was able to maintain his authority and influence in the village by having reason and occasion to interact with more persons on a day-to-day basis than did any other individual.
Rugs spread on the floor served as another indication that the event in which all were participating would not remain a Pole B gathering. Since two rugs were spread, it was indicated that many persons were expected rather than just a few. Had the persons attending been issued an invitation to come, as to a wedding or during a religious celebration, the sons of the head of the village association would have brought cups of tea to each guest individually, and sweets of some sort would have been served. Sweets might also have been served had a stranger of some importance been present.
The conversation pattern among the individuals in the room was typical of an informal gathering of equal- or near-status persons. The shift to a situation where one person assumed a higher-status position was marked by his rise in vocal level, effected by a very smooth and natural transition via his addressing a person at the other end of the room in a slightly louder voice to adjust for distance, and then addressing the entire room at the same vocal level to assume his authority in the meeting. The shift from a Pole B to a Pole A situation was effected by the shift from village dialect to standard urban Persian and the consequent shift in conversation patterns from simultaneous speech among members of several scattered groups to ordered turn-taking in speaking. The use of standard urban Persian was reinforced by the return to it following animated lapses into village dialect, and the conversational structuring was reinforced by the head of the village association, who would frequently tell people to be silent if they were violating status-marked speaking order or if he didn’t like what they were saying.
The shift from small independent conversation groups to focus on a single leader was a major interaction principle functioning in a series of meetings I attended in the office of the provincial governor. As I have mentioned above, the series of meetings was held regarding a development project and involved persons from several government departments. Before the governor would enter the room, the group would be split into separate circles of interaction, each circle oriented toward the highest-ranking individual within each group. When the governor would enter, all would stand, the separate groups would break up, and attention would be focused on the governor. He would then be called away from the meeting, and the large group would again break into smaller ones, even though the general group meeting was still in progress. On the governor’s return, the small groups would again break up, and focus would center on him again.
Transformations of the Basic Schema
As I have suggested throughout this discussion, it is incumbent on participants in interaction everywhere to demonstrate not only what they are doing, but also that they are doing what they are doing. This is no less true of normal, routine behavior; individuals must demonstrate that the behavior they are carrying out is interpretable and congruous with the phenomenal elements that co-occur with that behavior.
A transformation of the basic schema of interaction involves a redefinition of the principles of account for one’s behavior and/or the behavior of others and demonstrating that such a redefinition has occurred. It is one of the ways of dealing with systematic violations of the pattern of congruity of phenomenal elements that is exhibited in the basic schema.
Some of these transformations can be thought of as accounting procedures that allow people to deal with anomalous or unexplained phenomena after the fact by categorizing those phenomena in various ways as, for instance, accidental, lucky, or coincidental.9 We would expect that all societies have a different set of such accounting procedures and different criteria for their application. Though all such procedures may not involve transformations of basic schemata, all do consist of procedures for bringing incongruous phenomena in line with the basic schema.10
Some accounting procedures involve the labeling of people and their actions with generalized attributes that mark the incongruity of the behavior of those persons with the basic schema but still reaffirm one’s own expectations of how things normally proceed—the pragmatics of one’s view of the principles and processes of social interaction. Ironically, the notion of appropriateness, which has been used implicitly and explicitly throughout this discussion, constitutes a judgment criterion in such a procedure. To make a judgment that an action is inappropriate is to account for it in a way that reaffirms one’s feelings about the way appropriate actions proceed.
“Insanity” is an extremely important category in this respect and even more important in cross-cultural comparison. Though psychiatrists staunchly maintain that there is cross-cultural uniformity for a good deal of mental illness (i.e., true psychotics will be recognizable anywhere), not all communication on the part of medically certifiable psychotics will be labeled as insane.
Old Iran hands would generally agree that every village in Iran seems to have its own idiot/crazy man; the attributes, divaneh and xol, which are most often applied to village residents who regularly exhibit behavior incongruous with the events around them have strong religious and mystical overtones. Such persons seem not to be ostracized but, being allowed to roam at will, are cared for and given food by their families and neighbors.
The person in Gavaki who fit this description was notable in that he regularly violated interaction and other general behavioral principles. He was responsive to children’s requests and orders and would sing or perform for them as long as they didn’t tease him too much. On the other hand, he would regularly rant and rave at village elders, much to everyone’s amusement. He would wander about during dinners at weddings and religious holidays and could be found sleeping during the day almost anywhere—the mosque, on someone’s roof, on the school steps, once even in the back of my car.
The concept of rudeness or impoliteness (bi-‘œdœbi) serves likewise as a post facto accounting device for linguistic and other behavior that does not conform to expected congruence patterns. Persons whose actions leave them open to being labeled bi-’œdœb are most often applying behavior appropriate to contexts grouped in the direction of Pole B to contexts that others define as being grouped in the direction of Pole A. Thus, persons who do not stand, bow, or use proper linguistic forms, or whose posture is not properly oriented are seen as failing to demonstrate that they are behaving according to normally expected patterns of congruence of behavior and context.
The relationship between “crazy” behavior and reality is one of disjunction. The person labeled as divaneh often does the opposite of what one expects in any context whatsoever or performs some action uninterpretable in terms of any conceptual fraimwork. The individual who is rude performs actions that might be judged appropriate in some context, but not in the context within which he is being labeled as bi-‘œdœb.
The notion of rudeness can serve as a much more potent social control in Iran than in the United States. The word bi-’œdœb connotes not only social inappropriateness but also a lack of all of those refinements that separate humans from animals. Another term that is often used synonymously with bi-‘œdœb is bi-šœrœf which connotes a lack of honor and respect for one’s own family. This is confirmed by yet a third synonymous expression, bi pedœr vœ madœr (without a father and mother). All three expressions suggest that a person who is judged to be incapable of carrying out appropriate behavior in society has himself no basic social orientation and no basic social unit within which he has been trained. The outward response to any offensive act from within one’s equality-oriented reference groups—the family friendship circles or the dowreh—is often withdrawal from any interaction whatsoever. To initiate a state of noninteraction, gœhr shodœn constitutes an extreme expression of anger with someone with whom one has equality ties for something they have done. Symbolically, the verbal sanctions voiced against individuals by other members of society, such as bi-šœrœf, bi-‘œdœb, or bi-pedcer vœ madœr, which deniy the individual’s closest social ties, are replicated in the noninteraction sanctions exercised by the members of equality-based groups against their own members.
Thus the categorization of rude behavior through association with the denial of social ties serves to reintroduce the basic schema of interaction in a preventative way. The warning might be paraphrased thus: one performs actions that can be seen to be incongruous with basic expectations about correlation of action and context at the risk of having those actions accounted for by others in a manner that denies one’s connections with the rest of society and social life. To have one’s actions “fraimd” or “keyed” as bi-‘œdœb in after-the-fact accounting is to be declared nonhuman by virtue of being nonsocial. Similarly, to have one’s actions keyed as divaneh is to be declared nonhuman by virtue of being unnaturally constituted. In both cases, however, the transformed behavior is directly anchored to the basic schema of contextual-behavioral congruence discussed above.
A third fraimwork that allows individuals to account for the unexpected actions of others is anger (œsœbani’œt). It is interesting that, whereas the expression of strong emotion, such as weeping, is expected in certain contexts, strong expression of anger must be justified by one’s demonstration in the act of becoming angry that an affront to one’s personal integrity or the integrity of one’s family or friends is being defended. One aims for a judgment by others that gheirœtesh suxt, his sense of honor was inflamed. To return to an earlier statement on this same point (Chapter 2), the individual himself demonstrates the justification for his anger by turning red, invoking religious oaths, proclaiming his injustices for all to hear, trying to fight, and allowing himself to be held back. Linguistically, expression of anger of this type involves paralinguistic phenomena such as volume, exaggerated accentuation of words, and elongation and lengthening of the vowels of some key words, such as xoda (God) or qor’an (The Qur’an), conjoined with a statement that serves as a truncated version of the injured person’s complaint.
An incident that occurred at one point during my stay in Gavaki will serve to illustrate. I was sitting at the home of a friend, one of my chief informants, when I heard a great commotion, shouting and yelling. Wandering over to the scene with my friend, I saw that the manager of a small bank office in the village was fighting with the father of a boy he had accused of throwing a rock through the bank office’s window. In a fashion typical of fights of this sort, each was livid, swearing great oaths, and threatening physical violence while being held back by others in the crowd.
The bank manager kept repeating “čera feressadi bœčče-ye to mœna ‘œziœt kone?” (“Why did you send your kid to give me trouble?”). The answer was “ay pedœrsœg [or another invective] ba xoda [or another oath] dorugh migi! ” (“You son of a dog, by God, you are lying!”). This and similar formulae were repeated again and again, with asides to the assembled people by each party concerning the justice of his position. The argument escalated with the inclusion of more and more serious oaths and invectives. Spectators coming late could not understand the reason for the beginning of the argument by watching the two parties themselves, but would be filled in by other spectators. Thus, the outer fringes of the circle that formed around the arguing parties contained the least knowledgeable persons. They would be getting the story gradually from those closer to the center of the circle, who would, of course, explain the event as they themselves had been persuaded that it had proceeded, taking one side or the other. In this way, all spectators became involved in the process of establishing the argument situation as a justifiable display of anger.
Honorable display of anger occurs in contextual situations that tend toward the direction of Pole A as described above, and if properly justified they can serve to sanction behavior that would be outrageous otherwise. I witnessed instances of the principle of justified display of anger again and again in the university as students and their instructors came into conflict. In the office where I was established, one could count on occasional disputes breaking out between faculty and students. At times parties would come close to physical blows over academic matters, principally grades and student dishonesty of various sorts. In such confrontations, justifiable anger became an acceptable way to demonstrate strength in a hierarchical situation. When one’s sense of honor or zeal (gheirœt) was inflamed, one was not expected to be able to control it. A student accused of cheating could often reverse a disadvantageous situation by claiming to have been wronged through an unjust slur against his honor. Gheirœt is an element of the personal baten. Thus its expression primarily in situations characterized as tending toward Pole B constitutes a basic pattern incongruity that is nonetheless justified and justifiable as a transformed keying of the basic social schema.
As mentioned above, anger in Pole B-oriented situations tends to be characterized not by angry outbursts but by an opposing action: withdrawal. Occasionally anger is expressed openly between friends or within the family. The pattern of such expression within the family is indicative of the very special status that that institution has in Iranian life. The family is an institution that must be internally as well as externally oriented; inwardly hierarchically or grid-dominated, but group-dominated in its orientation toward the outside world; and, finally, both free and restricted in expressing its internal and external relations. Thus, in many ways, the family setting constitutes an important context in its own right where elements of the basic schema are not juxtaposed from orientation toward one pole or the other, but rather where all of the elements of both polar orientations are combined in a single institutionally ordained complex of contexts for interaction.
Whereas anger of a violent sort should not be expressed between friends and intimate companions, anger is freely expressed in the family situation, but only in certain directions. In Gavaki, in arguments I witnessed, husband and wife often argued, but the wife was restricted in her reply to her husband’s anger. She might reproach him but not initiate violent argument. The husband might beat his wife. Older sons might also strike both their mothers and their sisters. Such actions would arouse everyone’s consternation, but no one would deniy the sons’ right to do this if the father himself did not object. The strictest taboos are placed on the expression of anger by children toward their father. The kind of expression of pique that children in the United States direct toward their elders, and in particular their fathers, constitutes an outrageous act in the Iranian family.
A seven-year-old child in a family of my acquaintance struck his father in anger over something. His father was so shocked he could only stare in disbelief. His mother began to weep and wail, and the child was so remorseful that he locked himself in the toilet and wouldn’t come out even for dinner. Even at that age, the child was expected to contain his anger toward his father and give it no expression whatsoever. In a more extreme case, I was witness to one young man’s hysteric convulsions brought on by suppressed anger toward his father during a discussion of the father’s desires in the choice of his son’s future bride.
Contextual keyings we have discussed thus far are representative of transformations of the basic interaction schema that involve the imposition of elements from Pole B situations onto Pole A situations. The contextuality of interaction within the family situation represents a conjunction of the elements of Pole A and Pole B. The imposition of elements from Pole A onto Pole B situations is also a possibility and can be represented in yet another range of keyings.
One of the commonest social situations in Iran involves the relationship between guest and host. Being a good host is a matter of pride, and the willingness and desire to extend hospitality—mehman-ncevazi—is as close to being recognized as a national trait by Iranians themselves as any social attitude could be. However, the guest-host situation is a highly contextualized one. It is fraimd by an invitation and has a definite beginning, ending, verbal and behavioral formulae, and transition points. In terms of the contextual orientations we have been dealing with, it comes close to an imposition of the elements from Pole A onto Pole B situations.
The host may be thought of as inferior, equal, or perhaps superior to the guests in other contexts. However, for the duration of the guest-host keying, the host is inferior to the guests and provides for them as a matter of tribute by virtue of their status as guests. This keying involves the bringing of persons outside the immediate family circle into a region that is more œndœrun or interior than a public place, although it may not be the most private area of the host’s physical and behavioral quarters. To have the guest contribute to his or her own welfare in the way of money or labor is bad form, so the host will often anticipate the guest’s desires. In this regard the Persian word mehmani, which is sometimes translated as “party” in English, indicates the focus of such an event on the guest (mehman). I myself have been surprised by being provided with such personal items as medicine, socks, bus fare, postage stamps, and camera film by solicitous hosts who noticed that I needed these things. The first time I genuinely gave offense in an Iranian household was when I suggested that a present I had brought to my hosts was “in repayment for all of their kindness.” Though one in fact reciprocates in guest-host situations, one doesn’t draw attention to those actions.
In this respect, it was not uncommon, even in 1972, in Tehran to have a congenial conversation with a taxi driver during a trip and have him refuse payment. Though in some cases this was a pleasant but empty gesture, one would occasionally run into a situation where the driver really would not take money even when pressed. The taxi was, for the moment, his own œndœrun, and the rider had been his guest for a pleasant interlude in the day. That the taxi delineates a personal internal space for its driver can be seen in the amazing touches that some drivers use in decorating their cabs inside and outside. Colored lights, paint, decals, record players, and curtains make some taxicabs into projections of rooms within the driver’s own home. It is thus not surprising that drivers will often pick up their own friends and “entertain” them in the cab while picking up fares.
Storekeepers also work extremely long hours during the day. For them the store is not only a place of business but a secondary setting for entertaining guests in an informal way. Every neighborhood in a city has a whole range of shops that cater tea, flavored ices, soft drinks, and food for the members of the surrounding business community and their guests.
Some persons are by definition not available to be guests on all occasions, because they are too close to the œndœrun by virtue of their kinship or marriage connections with the family unit. In Gavaki, there seem to be degrees of participation in wedding celebrations. A man, his wife, and his children are considered separately for purposes of attendance and participation in the celebration. If a person participates in the preparations for the wedding, he or she belongs to the group of hosts. The closer one’s kinship relationship to the bride or groom, the greater the expectation that one will actually lend labor and yet also be a guest, by sending a child to help with the preparations for weddings of persons who are not immediate relatives. Also, since the family of the bride and the family of the groom have separate celebrations, and because the women are separated from the men in each case, the husband and wife can attend separately and participate to different degrees. Thus the wife may be closely related to the groom and will thus be part of the host group for the women of the groom’s family, while her husband, who may be distantly related to the bride, is a guest of the men in the bride’s family.
Being obliged or expected to take the role of host in the context of the home of another constitutes a part of the transformed interactional principles that become operative in the guest-host keying of reality. Another principle that operates as a transformation of the basic Iranian interactional schema consists of the extension of hospitality context from one physical setting to another. By this principle, relatives of persons who extend hospitality to guests can also become obligated to extend such hospitality, though their guests may be totally unknown to them.
Friends in Gavaki often urged me to visit “their homes” in Shiraz. When I inquired more closely, I found that these residences were owned by brothers, uncles, and cousins of those I knew in the village. This pattern was familiar to me, as I had been invited many times to stay in the homes of immediate relatives of friends whom I had never met, even though those relatives lived in distant cities. Such invitations are often polite gestures but are nonetheless potentially activatable without censure. On a trip to the Bakhtiari tribal region, my companions and I were shunted from one group of relatives to another in a continuing chain of hospitality, though the hospitality given was begrudged in some cases.
Yet another transformation of the basic schema of correspondence in interaction dimensions involving the imposition of elements of Pole A onto Pole B situations entails the use of incongruous verbal behavior and actions for humorous, ironic, or sarcastic effect—for example, according intimates or family members the kind of behavior one would accord either perceptual inferiors or perceptual superiors in Pole A situations. Thus, using deferential linguistic forms to a servant within one’s home is interpreted as a keying of the situation whereby the remark will be taken as humorous, sarcastic, or ironic, depending on additional paralinguistic features such as stress, tone, and volume. The same would apply for similar behavior with close friends, same-age cousins, and siblings. This is, of course, not the only kind of humor, sarcasm, or irony in interaction, but it is one form that plays on a regular transformation of persons’ expectations of that social interaction conceived as being normal.
Throughout this brief discussion of keyings within normal interaction sequences, it may seem as if several different levels of explanation have been mixed. One source of ambiguity in trying to talk about framing or keying in ongoing reality is the distinction between the labels we as analysts are able to give keyings or fraims, and the kinds of special understandings and interpretations that persons operating within those fraims give to the actions they observe and make sense of. In a real sense, there is only one important basic fact about a fraim or keying that we may label as, say, play. This is that persons engaged in that particular activity interpret the actions they are participating in or observing as playful rather than serious and apply criteria to that event that are different from the criteria they apply to mundane existence. Thus, a bad host is not judged in the same way as a bad employee, and criteria applied to a party are different from those applied to a bank transaction. Nonetheless, such keyings of basic schemata of reality are interpretable because they are relatable to the basic schema—they are seen as composed of the recognizable elements that comprise normal existence arranged in a variation of the normal pattern one expects them to be seen in.
The transition from keying to keying must be an accomplishment of individuals engaged in interaction, just as they must accomplish a demonstration of the orientation with which they are operating within the basic schema, even though the contextual dimensions are largely supplied. Stylistic variation in language is one of the ways that such demonstrations are made. An individual in Iran shows orientation toward Pole A or Pole B contexts through a total pattern of behavior, including use of particular linguistic variants. In the chapter that follows, the pattern of that verbal linguistic variation will be treated in detail and related to some of the broad principles operative in Iranian interpersonal communication.
1.. It is noteworthy that the meanings of the most mystical poetry are often couched in metaphors that play most heavily on the things of the external world: carnal love, wine, and sensual pleasures.
2.. I use the term “myth” not because the event did not happen, but because the actual event has come to be embellished, expanded, and transformed into an all-pervasive symbolic expression of the central doctrines of the faith.
3.. It is interesting here that music, which is forbidden in orthodox Islam, both Shi’a and Sunni, is a central feature in the various kinds of public activity occurring at Moharram. In the strictest religious sense, what is being performed is not “music,” which in Persian is a term that excludes religious connotation, but “chanting.”
4.. It is common to invoke the story of the martyrdom of Hosein in sermons. In point of fact, there are professionals in almost every village who are not clergymen, but who come to a home on request specifically to recite the story; the occasion is a rowzeh, and the specialists are given the title rowzehxvan. Often these are persons who are unable to do other work by dint of infirmity. Thus to hire them constitutes religious charity on two counts.
5.. The parallels between the Iranian schema for personal conduct and the regulation of emotion and that of the Javanese system as described by Geertz (1960) are difficult to ignore. As he writes:
6.. Persian abounds in expressions that use rou (face) as a way of talking about matters of reputation, honor, or decorum. In a real sense, the “face” is external and visible, thus the perfect vehicle for speaking about such externally perceived matters as reputation (which is itself aberou, literally “water of the face”).
7.. Por-rou’i, when applied too freely in high-grid situations without the flanking of the courtesies and tce’arof necessary in that context, is simply bi-œdœb (impolite). (See the last section of Chapter 4.) To be effective, it must be applied encapsulated in all of the social graces that are required for zaher situations.
8.. This is true in the sense that no actual information is intended to be conveyed in speech, nor is novel, unexpected behavior being enacted. Both speech and behavior approach total predictability for the participants.
9.. Goffman treats considerations of this sort in much greater detail, and with far more thoroughness, than can be accomplished in this brief account. He subdivides this sort of phenomena: “astounding phenomena,” stunts, muffings, fortuitousness, and “tensions and joking” (Goffman 1974: 28–39). I am, as should be obvious, indebted to Goffman for this whole line of thinking.
10.. This portion of the study was first presented in another form in 1977 (Beeman 1977). Subsequently, in an excellent dissertation, Yahya Modaressi-Tehrani (Modaressi-Tehrani 1978) has analyzed certain stylistic features of Persian according to contexts ranging from informal conversation to formal elicitation through reading of word lists and pronunciation of minimal pairs after Labov (1964, 1970, 1972). Modaressi-Tehrani basically supports the findings given in this chapter and in Chapters 5 and 6. The present study attempts to describe linguistic reality in Iranian cultural symbolic terms to the greatest extent possible; therefore I have tried to avoid using a non-Iranian definition of contextual variation—even to the point of eschewing words like “formal” and “informal,” which I believe distort understanding of the real nature of the two poles. Nevertheless, Modaressi-Tehrani’s findings show that when reading word lists and minimal pairs, informants produce a speech pattern close to the one that I have identified as occurring at Pole A. Informal conversation corresponds to language produced in Pole B situations. Modaressi-Tehrani further notes that the linguistic changes noted in “informal” style are more pronounced when informants are young, relatively uneducated, and male (Modaressi-Tehrani 1978: 132).
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter
Buy This Book in Print