نفیسه تدین چهارطاق

This study investigates the use of apologizing strategies by speakers of Azerbaijani Turkish in Iran. One hundred and twenty (60 male and 60 female) randomly selected speakers of Azerbaijani Turkish from Tabriz participated in a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and returned 2400 apology speech acts. The DCT included 20 scenarios representing 10 discourse situations. The acts were analyzed based on the categorization suggested by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), which included Illocutionary Force Indicating Device, Taking on responsibility, Explanation, Offer of repair, Promise of forbearance, Concern for the hearer, and Nonverbal strategies. The findings indicated that the highly preferred apology strategies among the participants are explanation and offer of repair. Moreover, there was a statistically significant association between the independent variables (the participants’ age, gender, and level of education) and the choice of apology strategies. However, such an association was only significant for some discourse situations; e.g., in interaction with relatives that are in an equal status with the participant and in an adult-child interaction where the participant has a superior status.

Code switching, as an outcome of linguistic contact, can be seen in most of the multilingual societies. The present field study was conducted in Urmia, a multilingual city of Iran. The purpose of the study was to compare the frequency and direction of code switching among female elementary and high-school students representing high, middle, and low social classes. Applying a non-participant observation method, the required data was extracted from the casual conversations of the students through voice recording. The extracted data was then, exposed to statistical analysis using SPSS software. According to the findings, there was a statistically significant relationship between the direction of code switching and social class of the participants, i.e. the dominant code switching direction among high-class was Fasri-Turkish, while students in the low and middle classes mostly switched in the reverse direction. Furthermore, the results showed no significant relationship between sex and frequency of code switching. Also, no significant relationship was observed between sex and direction of code switching neither.