Speech Act Disagreement among Young Men in Iran
Speech Act Disagreement among Young Men in Iran

Summary/Abstract: Speech act of disagreement is one of the least attended among all the other types of speech act. The present study seeks to find out the ways in which this inherently threatening act is expressed by young male Persian speakers. To gather the needed data one hundred participants randomly selected from among a population of BA and MA students of Isfahan and Najafabad universities were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researchers. The respondents were to read six natural situations, and react to them via making disagreements. As the major focus of the study was the role that gender and power play in the application of politeness strategies, the participants were expected to disagree with two higher power interlocutors (one male and one female), two peers (one male and one female) and two addressees with lower power status (one male and one female). In order to analyze the units of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1995) was employed. Students’ responses were further compared with Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The results revealed that respondents use confrontational strategies more frequently whenever expressing their oppositions to a person with the same sex which could be explained with regards to the effect of social solidarity which can potentially over rule the effect of power and gender differences.

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