Impersonalizing Strategies as a Mechanism for Mitigating the Imposing Force of Propositions in Qabus-nama

Politeness in ancient Persian texts means honor and shame; in addition to its individual aspect, it often has a group aspect, denoting the mutual relationship between the speaker and the hearer. Today, it is called face, which means the public self-image that every member of a society claims for themselves. Language, in the form of propositions, is the most important indicative element and tool for evaluating the level of the addressee's face in literary texts. One of the most effective mechanisms for maintaining the addressee's face and mitigating its threat is the impersonalization of propositions using various syntactic structures. Qabus-nama is an instructional text with a simple and intimate language, and its author's main goal is to advise his son as the addressee. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this study has investigated impersonal structures and their semantic functions in mitigating the imposing and threatening force of propositions in Qabus-nama. Based on the results of the study, the Merkhame (truncated) and complete impersonal structure, with a frequency of 80.41%, is the most widely used impersonalizing strategy in Qabus-nama due to its prescriptive nature and the stylistic features of fifth-century Persian prose. This result confirms the view of most Persian grammarians who have considered only this type as an impersonal structure. The upgraded structure, with a frequency of 14.41%, ranks second, and the application of syntactic pattern B: compound predicate + ke (that) + subordinate clause, is more than four times higher than pattern A: raising verb + ke (that) + subordinate clause. The formulaic impersonal structure, with a frequency of 3.61%, ranks third. Due to its inclusion of involuntary experiences and psychological reactions, the formulaic structure is not very suitable for Qabus-nama, which is based on voluntary actions and conscious acts. The impersonal passive structure, due to its conflict with explicit expression, is the rarest impersonalizing structure in Qabus-nama, with an application of 1.55%.