Cultural Conceptualizations in Persian Language: Implications for L2 Learning

Intercultural communication is concerned with communication across cultures. Since cultures as well as languages differ from one another in significant ways, speakers conceptualize the world around them in different ways. These cultural conceptualizations form part of the collective cognition of a speech community or cultural group. This paper is an attempt to delineate some cultural schemas in Persian cultural conceptualization which are quite prevalent in Iranian culture and language which may crop up in everyday conversations. For this purpose, cultural schemas of maram , marefat , and gheyrat are selected based on their frequent use in Persian language and Iranian culture. These schemas are elaborated and some implications for L2 learning are suggested.