An Experimental Study on the Effect of Age and Gender on the Use of Compliments in Persian

Compliments are universal categories which are found in all languages but they are more common in some languages like Persian. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of social variables of “age” and “gender” on the amount of usage of compliments by Persian speakers. To do this, a questionnaire including 15 questions was given to 100 male and female Kermani participants in different age-groups. The research theoretical framework was Brown and Levinson’s (1978) politeness theory. Static analyses indicate that there is significant difference (P