Iranian Wedding Invitations in the Shifting Sands of Time

As a distinct socially constructed genre, wedding invitations (wis) offer a fruitfulsite for investigating how two areas of genre knowledge (i.e., form and content)change over time under the influence of sociocultural forces. through theexamination of 100 iranian wis dating from 1970s to the present time, the studyinvestigated the trajectories of change through time within the social semioticsframework. findings revealed that although the generic structures of iranian wishave remained the same, their mode contents have undergone remarkable changesacross time. these changes are discernable in the nonverbal features of color, size,design, and typography as well as the verbal features including text length,formality, reference terms, and mood. findings suggest that in today’s socioculturalclimate of iran, creativity prevails over conventionalization, informality is favoredover formality, and solidarity tends to replace power in the hierarchical dimensionsof gender differentials and parental domination.