Cultural Conceptualizations Behind the Use of Address Terms in Emails Written by Persian-Speaking Students

Th present study applies the newly developed framework of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, Cultural linguistics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2017) to the study of address term to examine the degree to which the practice and perceptions of address terms in academic email communication is grounded in the cultural conceptualizations of interlocutors. Previous research has revealed that the choice of address terms may often be influenced by factors such as the interlocutors’ relationship, speakers’ intentions, formality of the context, topic of conversation, as well as other social variables such as gender, age, and education. However, the influence of culture on the choice of address terms has only been marginally investigated. As such, this proposed study adopts Cultural Linguistics as a framework to explore terms of address in emails sent from Persian speakers (mostly Ph.D. applicants) to a Persian-speaking academic based in Australia. English was the language of these emails. The choice of these emails for close analysis is based on the researcher’s familiarity with the norms of email correspondences in Persian. The study relies on naturalistic email threads as data, as well as semi-structured interviews, with both the students and the lecturer. The email communication data was used to examine the patterns of use of address terms, and the interviews explore the participants’ perceptions of the use of various address terms, as well as their personal attitudes toward being addressed in certain ways, in their capacity as academics.