Cover not available
Article published In:
The Conceptualization of ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Ugly’ across Languages and Cultures
Edited by Anna Gladkova and Jesús Romero-Trillo
[International Journal of Language and Culture 8:1] 2021
► pp. 128–146

Conceptualizations of ugly and beautiful

An analysis of im/politeness metapragmatic markers in Persian

 | Aston University, UK
The aim of this paper is to study conceptualizations of two Persian evaluative terms, namely zesht (ugly) and zibâ (beautiful), by focusing on their uses at the metapragmatic level in evaluations of im/polite act. To achieve this aim, by drawing on natural and authentic examples from Persian, the relationship between the use of the metapragmatic markers zesht and zibâ and the im/polite (non)linguistic act is addressed and the types of im/polite behaviours that licence the use of these metapragmatic markers are further explored. It will also be argued that conceptualizations of im/politeness seem to be expressed predominantly in terms of aesthetic terms which are situationally constructed and are morally informed. The examples reveal that the use of the aesthetic markers as metapragmatic markers originates from a set of cultural conceptualizations, which are part of the moral order, and in fact, shape and are, over time, shaped by the norms of im/politeness that exist at multiple levels of society. These socially and culturally shared conceptualizations greatly influence the practices by which judgments and evaluations of im/politeness arises in different types of interaction.
Keywords: aesthetics, im/politeness, metapragmatic, culture, Persian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review: Im/politeness metapragmatic markers
  • 3.Data and corpus
  • 4. Zibâ (beautiful) and zesht (ugly): Polysemy and meanings
    • 4.1Zibâ (beautiful)
    • 4.2Zesht (ugly)
  • 5.Analysis: What is ugly in Persian?
  • 6.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00038.tay
References (54)
References
Asdjodi, M. (2001). A comparison between Ta’arof in Persian and Limao in Chinese. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1481, 71–92.Google Scholar
Beeman, W. (1986). Language, status and power in Iran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bjerke, R., & Polegato, R. (2001). Cross-cultural meanings of healthy and beautiful in words, beauty types, and products. Journal of Promotion Management 7 (1–2), 117–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, D. (2004). Out of the bottle: The social life of metalanguage. In A. Jaworski, N. Coupland & D. Galasinski (Eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives (pp. 311–321). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J. (2009). The metalanguage of impoliteness: using sketch engine to explore the Oxford English Corpus. In P. Baker (Ed.), Contemporary corpus linguistic, (pp. 66–88). London: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
(2010). Conventionalised impoliteness formulae. Journal of Pragmatics, 421, 3232–3245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, M., Roberts, A., Barbee, A., Druen, P., & Wu, C. (1995). Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68 (2), 261–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daniel, T. C. (2001). Whither scenic beauty? Visual landscape quality assessment in the 21st century. Landscape and Urban Planning, 541, 267–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davis, J. E. (2008). Moral order. Culture, 2 (1), 17.Google Scholar
Dehkhoda, A. (1931). Dehkhoda Dictionary. Tehran: Dehkhoda Dictionary Institute.Google Scholar
Demonte, V. (2011). Adjectives. In V. Heusinger, K. Maienborn, & C. Portner (Eds.), Semantics: An International handbook of natural language meaning, (pp. 1314–1340). Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Domenici, K., & Littlejohn, S. (2006). Facework: Bridging theory and practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Eco, U. (2004). History of beauty. New York: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
(2007). On ugliness. London: Harvill Secker.Google Scholar
Eelen, G. (2001). A critique of politeness theories. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Evans, N., & Wilkins, D. (2000). In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in australian languages. Language, 76(3), 546–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feld, S. (1990). Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli expression. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14 (2), 219–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gladkova, A., & Romero-Trillo, J. (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 601, 140–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howes, D. (Ed.). (1991). The Varieties of sensory experience: A sourcebook in the anthropology of the senses. Toronto, Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A., Coupland, N., & Galasinski, D. (2004). Metalanguage: Why now?. In A. Jaworski, N. Coupland, & D. Galasinski (Eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives, (pp. 3–8). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. (2017). Politeness, impoliteness and ritual. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, D. Z., & Haugh, M. (2013). Understanding politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, D. Z., Parvaresh, V., & Ning, P. (2019). Morality, moral order, and language conflict and aggression: A position paper. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 6–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 193–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koutlaki, S. A. (2002). Offers and expressions of thanks as face enhancing acts: Tæ’arof in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics, 341, 1733–1756. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 11, 9–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008). Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguistic behaviour. In D. Bousfield & M. A. Locher, (Eds.) Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice, (pp. 77–99). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Majid, A., & Levinson, S. (Eds.). (2011). The senses in language and culture. Senses and Society 6 (1) 5–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, L. (2006). Beauty Up: Exploring contemporary Japanese body aesthetics. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mo’in, M. (1972). Mo’in encyclopaedia. Iran: Amirkabir Publication.Google Scholar
Moshiri, M. (2004). Persian Dictionary (Alphabetical and Analogical), 5th ed. Tehran: Soroush.Google Scholar
Parvaresh, V. (2019). Moral impoliteness. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 79–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parvaresh, V., & Tayebi, T. (2014). Vaguely Speaking in Persian. Discourse Processes, 51(7), 565–600. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 1321, 91–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020). Taking offence at the (un) said: Towards a more radical contextualist approach. Journal of Politeness Research, 11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sartwell, C. (2004). Six names of beauty. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualizations and language: Theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015). Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian, (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture, (pp. 437–492). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2017). Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharifian, F. & Tayebi, T. (2017a). Cultural linguistics and impoliteness: A case study from Persian. Pragmatics and society, 8(2) 231–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017b). Perceptions of Impoliteness from a Cultural Linguistics Perspective. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, (pp. 389–409). Switzerland: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2011). Conceptualising ‘the relational’ in pragmatics: Insights from metapragmatic emotion and im/politeness comments. Journal of Pragmatics, 431, 3565–3578. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tayebi, T. (2016). Why do people take offence? Exploring the underlying expectations. Journal of Pragmatics, 1011, 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018a). Impoliteness in Persian: A cultural linguistics perspective. (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). Monash University, Australia.Google Scholar
(2018b). Implying an impolite belief: The case of tikkeh in Persian. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(1), 89–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020). Heterogeneous distribution of cultural conceptualizations and (im) politeness evaluations. International Journal of Language and Culture, 7(1), 84–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tayebi, T., & Parvaresh, V. (2014). Conversational disclaimers in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics, 621, 77–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (2001). Politeness in Cypriot Greek: A frame-based approach. (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). University of Cambridge: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Verschueren, J. (2004). Identity as denial of diversity. In F. Brisard, M. Meeuwis & B. Vandenabeele (Eds.) Seduction, community, speech, (pp. 171–81). Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, R., Ide, S., & Ehlich, K. (Eds.). (1992). Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory and practice, 1–20. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar