The Impact of Gender, Age, and Education on Language Attitudes Among Kurdish Speakers in Mahabad: A Matched-Guise Approach

Document Type : Research

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Urmia Campus, Urmia, Iran

2 M.A. in Linguistics, Department of Educational Sciences, School of Medicine, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran

Abstract

This article examines the impact of gender, age, and education on the attitudes of Kurdish speakers in Mahabad towards standard Persian and the Kurdish language. Since people’s emotions towards their own or others’ languages are related to their language attitudes, this important component plays a significant role in measuring success in language planning, learning speed, language selection and use, and predicting the extinction or sustainability of a language. The study’s statistical population consisted of 80 Kurdish-Persian bilinguals in Mahabad who were randomly selected. This study is situated within the theoretical framework of sociocognitive linguistics, and the research perspective was measured through an indirect method (matched-guise test). After distributing the questionnaire and conducting the matched-guise test, the collected data were analyzed. The results of the statistical analysis showed that the variables of gender, age, and education in Mahabad had no significant impact on the attitudes of bilingual Kurdish speakers towards standard Persian and the Kurdish language. The Kurdish speakers of Mahabad exhibited numerically positive attitude towards the standard Persian language compared to Kurdish language, but no significant difference in terms of any of the mentioned variables was observed between the two languages under study.

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References

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