A comparative sociopragmatic analysis of wedding invitations in American and Iranian societies and teaching implications

Wedding invitations (WIs), as a uniquely socially and culturally constructed genre, provide a distinct opportunity  to  compare  the  sociocultural values of different  speech  communities  as reflected  in  the  textual  content  and  organization  of  the  different  moves.  Students  can  be exposed  to  this  genre  and  its  different moves  using  a  genre-based  pedagogy. Genre-based pedagogy can be used to provide the learners with an opportunity to study well-known genres in  their  first  (L1)  and  second  language  (L2)  and  to  be  able  to  observe  the  common  and distinctive moves  from  a  cross-cultural,  cross-linguistic perspective. This  study was  carried out  to  investigate  the  wedding  invitations  in  American  and  Iranian  societies  through  two complementary  approaches:  genre  analysis  and  critical  discourse  analysis  (CDA).  One hundred wedding  invitation  (WI) cards  (50  from each  society) were  collected and analyzed comparatively. The  findings  from  the genre analysis showed  that  the WIs of  the  two  speech communities enjoyed both similarities and differences in their generic moves. Results of CDA indicated  that  traditional  orientation,  religious  affiliation, masculine  power  and  educational status were the most influential factors affecting WIs in both societies but the intensity of the effect  of  these  factors were  not  similar  in  the  two  speech  communities. The  results  of  this study  sheds  light  on  sociocultural  forces  dominating  Iranian  and  American  language communities.