Metapragmatics of Maze (Taste) in Persian

This chapter looks at maze-related [lit. taste] concepts in Persian as metapragmatic labels in use (Haugh, Corpus-based metapragmatics. In: Jucker AH, Schneider KP, Bublitz W (eds) Methods in pragmatics. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, pp 619–643, 2018) to shed light on what Sharifian (Cultural conceptualizations and language: theoretical framework and applications. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2011; Cultural linguistics. In: Sharifian F (ed) The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London, pp 473–492, 2015) defines as their cultural conceptualizations, i.e., the cultural basis and ways encoded in, and communicated through features of human language (Sharifian, Cultural linguistics. In: Sharifian F (ed) The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London, pp 473–492, 2015). It further argues that it is part of the shared knowledge (ethno-epistemology) of Persian speakers to be bāmaze [lit. with taste] when they are participants in an interaction. If it is successfully or skillfully done, it makes other participants feel good. The ethnopragmatic model of analysis (cf. Goddard, Ethnopragmatics: understanding discourse in cultural context. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2006; Goddard and Ye, Ethnopragmatics. In: Sharifian F (ed) The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London, pp 66–83, 2014) is leveraged to describe and explain Persian speakers’ cultural conceptualization of maze-related concepts.