Politeness Strategies in Conversation Exchange: The Case of Council for Dispute Settlement in Iran

Focusing on the socio-cultural aspects of conversation, the present study focuses on politeness strategies in conversation exchanges in the Council for dispute settlement in Esfahan, Iran. This study attempts to find out what strategies are more frequently used by Iranian interlocutors in the context of dispute settlement. For this purpose, three council meetings were tape-recorded and transcribed. The primary focus is on the talk, but it also integrates the nonverbal aspect of exchange in the research design. For analyzing the data, the model of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) was employed. It was found that the strategies of “Notice, attend to H”, “Seek agreement”, and “Avoid disagreement” were most frequently used. The significance of this investigation is that it is among the first attempts on researching politeness conducted in Iranian judiciary context. Finally, the implications of the findings are discussed.