An investigation of face in taarof

Taarof is among the most important components of Persian cultural identity, dominant in almost every instance of social talk, and is considered the backbone of Persian ritual politeness (Beeman, 1976; Koutlaki, 2002, Izadi, 2015, 2016). Given this capacity, taarof has a great potential for intercultural mis/communication between Iranians and non-Iranians, and has direct implication for Iranian’s ‘relational connection with and separation from’ (Arundale, 2010) each other and the outer world. While building on the earlier studies on taarof, this paper examines the notion of face, understood as “relational connection and separation” (Arundale, 2010; 2013) in the interactions which reflect this concept. The data come from the transcriptions of audio-recorded natural every day conversations as well as video-recorded professional academic talk. The results show that, using face as relational and interactional, one can imagine certain amount of connection and separation simultaneously.