The investigation of the role of speech acts in the representation of an authentic image of Iranian culture in the textbooks for Persian as a foreign language

Abstract The aim of this article is to discuss speech acts as the central core of authenticity in the representation of a real image in Iranian language and culture. The main goal of foreign language teaching is nowadays to develop intercultural communicative skills between the learners. In order to achieve this, a special status must be assigned to authenticity in order to be able to convey an appropriate and authentic picture of daily life in the target language country. The textbooks play an extremely important role in this.After the basic terms "authenticity" and "speech acts" have been defined and determined for the whole article, the Persian translation of two central speech acts "greeting" and "introducing oneself" is analyzed in detail in a dialogue from a German textbook. Furthermore, the results from the entire article are summarized in order to design the criteria catalogue for the analysis of the speech act sequences in the Iranian textbook "Mina 1". The overriding goal of this analysis is to show to what extent this textbook has been used successfully in presenting a real picture of Iranian language and culture. It should not be left unmentioned that the results of this study as well as the catalogue of criteria developed for checking the Persian speech act sequences may be helpful in the future, especially in the conception and production of new Persian teaching materials and textbooks.