The Socio-Pragmatic Role of Proverbs in Learning Persian Language

Persian proverbs are Iranian previous generations’ wise thoughts usually in short melodic linguistic and literary especially poetic form. They often have simple meaning and structure that makes them more memorable and easy to use in oral and written communications. Many articles have investigated Persian proverbs from different points of view. But not enough attention has been paid to the importance of these proverbs in enhancing sociocultural literacy and sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences as parts of Persian learners’ communicative competence. In this article, by the documentary method, it is paid to the role of proverbs in representing and learning some sociocultural features of Persian language (politeness, compliments, collectivism, etc.). Then, two things are suggested, a proverbial categorization from easy to hard, and Richmond’s (1987) revised model for comparing the similarities and differences between Persian proverbs and learners’ mother tongue proverbs. The results of a comparative study between Persian and Arabic proverbs in the Persian class of Arab learners are discussed.