Exploring the variability dynamics of wedding invitation discourse in Iran

Although the literature on invitations is abundant, there are few studies on wedding invitations in general, and on Iranian wedding invitations in particular. Additionally, studies on the pragmatics of non-Western languages, such as Persian, are scarce (Eslami, 2005). Further, studies on speech acts suffer from an astonishing ethnocentricity (Wierzbicka, 1991). This research on Iranian wedding invitations was carried out to include non-Western languages in the studies of pragmatics and to extend this scope to wedding invitations. The study probed discourse and social variability evident in wedding invitation texts collected from 150 (mostly recently wed) couples in the south-west, north-west, and center of Iran. The findings showed that, besides religion, other socioculturally emerging factors such as (tertiary) education, feminism, socioeconomic status, profession, and age have massively impacted the young couples' preference for a certain type of still prefabricated though modern discourse. More important, modern couples have created various discursive discourse practices to serve their own interests largely inspired by the newly emerging societal influences or agendas. The findings of this study shed light on the sociocultural aspects that influence the communicative behavior of Iranian youth and provide insight into innovative wedding invitation texts in Iran as shaped by sociocultural beliefs and values.