A socio-pragmatic comparative study of

5.4. Limitations of the Study 
A good number of social factors such as culture, ethnicity, and generation are not easy 
to process. Researchers, therefore, usually keep aloof from them. In other words,
sociolinguists indulge in the study of manageable factors and variables. For the same 
reason, the present study has limited its scope to such parameters as sex, age, and social 
class. 
A second limitation of this study is related to the methods of data collection. The 
abstract nature of pragmatics is such that makes the utilization of a good number of 
methods of data collection impossible. The painful fact is that the remaining methods 
are not without restrictions. Observation, for instance, is influenced by the so-called 
observer paradox. Interview, on the other hand, is subject to inaccuracies of many types. 
The data of this study include instances of ostensible invitations from a variety of 
speech communities (i.e. Yazdi, Shirazi, Tehrani, etc.). Therefore, the study is not 
limited in terms of the speech community to which it applies. However, making any 
generalization on the basis of the results of the study calls for a bigger repertoire of 
samples and instances. 
5.5. Suggestions for Further Research 
This study was primarily designed to find out whether Farsi ostensible invitations would 
function in consonance with the universals of pragmatics. Other similar studies, 
however, could be carried out with a set of different focuses. The following list outlines 

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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 
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some of the domains that call for research. 
1) Evaluation of ostensible invitations in the regional dialects of Farsi such as 
Kurdish, Turkish, etc; 
2) Evaluation of ostensible invitations in terms of the implications they endeavor to 
effect; 
3) Evaluation of ostensible invitations with the aim of outlining their semantic and 
syntactic patterns; 
4) etc. 

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