The Effect of Social Variables on the Use of Linguistic Variables of Persian in Nehbandan: Syllable Structure, Morphological and Syntactic Elements

    The Effect of Social Variables on the   Use of Linguistic Variables of Persian in Nehbandan: Syllable Structure, Morphological and Syntactic Elements     Abbas Ali Ahangar [1]   Mahboobeh Shahsavar [2]       Received: 2011/09/11   Accepted: 2014/01/19       Abstract   Language as a social phenomenon always changes under the influence of different factors among the most important of which we can refer to gender, age and education, as social variables. Due to the significance of these variables in creating linguistic variations, this paper aims at examining and analyzing the effect of mentioned social variables on the use extent of some linguistic variables including Persian syllable structure, morphological and syntactic variables by Nehbandani informants. To this end, a number of twenty four qualified male and female informants including an equal number of literate and illiterate adolescents, youths and adults were interviewed and the linguistic variables under investigation were extracted from their speech. The investigation and the analysis of the relationship between the socio-linguistic variables in the gathered linguistic data from the informants’ speech indicated that, in spite of the important role of education in making distinctions in the speech of the informants, in some variables, it did not have any role in distinguishing the speech of literate speakers from illiterate ones. In the young and adult groups, it was observed that, as to most variables, gender had a decisive role in making a distinction between female and male speech. An increase in the age of the literate young and adult groups led to an increase in the use of standard forms . In addition, the research results showed that, in most of the variables, gender played no role in making a distinction between the speech of the male and female adolescents. It was also observed that the speech of adolescents with literate parents is closer to Standard Persian, compared with that of adolescents with illiterate parents.     Keywords: Gender, age, education, syllable structure variables, morphological variables, syntactic variables, Nehbandan     [1] Associate Professor and Member of Faculty, English Language & Literature Dept., University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. ahangar@english.usb.ac.ir  [2] MA General Linguistics, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. shahsavar_mahboobe@yahoo.com