Strategies of Topic Termination: A Contrastive Study of English and Persian

An interesting area within conversation analysis on which few studies have been done is strategies employed by interlocutors for topic termination. Not only non-native speakers, but also native speakers have difficulty in order to develop the tact required for topic termination. This study aimed to examine strategies which Persian speakers employ for terminating a conversation. The participants were two groups of 30 graduate native speakers of Persian and English and the natural data collected via various means in English. The data incorporated male and female speakers with an age range of 20-33.Spontaneous interviews were used to gather data, then an open-ended DCT was formed based upon the results of the interviews. According to the results of data analysis, native Persians were observed to use a greater variety of pre-closing and closing devices in comparison with native English speakers as there are radical cross-cultural differences between Persian and English accepted norms of politeness. Using fewer and more limited pre-closing sequences by native English speakers is explained by relating it to their tendency to be direct and individualistic, while Persians made use of more such sequences due to their culture which tend to be highly publically oriented.