Iranian ta’ârof and Italian cerimonie: on the semiotics of politeness

In many contemporary societies, globalization is creating more and more occasions for encounters between different cultural traditions. The concept of hospitality, conceived as a semiotic exchange between a host and a guest, can be fruitful in order to analyze many of the phenomena which take place as a result of these encounters. In fact, hospitality can also be defined as a series of communication tactics which a given cultural tradition displays in order to minimize misunderstanding and maximize understanding in its relations with what is different. Yet, the semiotic laws of hospitality also change from culture to culture, what paves the way for paradoxical situations: techniques of understanding can ironically become the cause of a misunderstanding. Through a comparative analysis of different cultures of hospitality, with a special focus on the tradition of Italian “cerimonie” and Iranian “taarof”, the paper seeks to disentangle some of the knots which emerge from the current intercultural panorama.