Use of Cultulings in Business Communication: A Case of Flattery

Abstract

Since business without appropriate language use is impossible and language is an inseparable ‎part of a culture, knowing about the cultural patterns of communities can also be valuable. ‎Considering language as an essential component of any given culture, studying linguistic ‎expressions can reveal a society’s hidden cultural patterns, a concept known as cultuling ‎analysis. The current study looked at the “flattery” cultuling demonstrated in Persian and ‎English films. To achieve this, excerpts of dialogues from 100 Persian and 100 English films ‎were taken and analyzed by means of cultuling analysis (CLA) methodology from linguistic, ‎cultural, and psychological angles. The result showed that flattery can happen in formal and ‎informal situations among people from both equal and unequal status. Moreover, Iranian ‎people’s use of flattery displayed cultural patterns of overstating, high context, power ‎distance, low trust, and collectivism, while English people’s use of this cultuling revealed ‎their hidden culture, including low-context, high-trust, understanding, individualism, and ‎power distance.‎

Keywords

• language
• culture
• cultural patterns
• flattery
• business communication