Fatemeh Bahrami
Abstract
The structure and use of languages reflect the society and culture in which they are used. The present study sought to delve into the pragmatic characteristics of Persian kinship terms on the basis of McGregor (2012) model, in order to discern the sociocultural elements that has influenced their formation ...
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The structure and use of languages reflect the society and culture in which they are used. The present study sought to delve into the pragmatic characteristics of Persian kinship terms on the basis of McGregor (2012) model, in order to discern the sociocultural elements that has influenced their formation and usage. The data were collected from Great Sokhan Dictionary (2004) and the usage was checked via selected contemporary Persian films, plays, and novels. It was found that the figurative use of Persian kinship terms to refer to closeness is dominated by ideology. For instance, “paternal guardianship” and “privity” has overtly shaped distinctions in the choice of terms referring to mother’s family versus father’s family. The commonality of the use of the term “amu” (referring to one’s uncle; father’s brother) versus “dâyee” (uncle; mother’s brother) while referring to male friends for the purpose of conveying a sense of closeness is a function of “privity”. In other words, a male friend should be associated with the same gender parent (father) and not with the opposite gender parent (mother). Furthermore, there are sets of Arabic kinship terms sometimes parallel to the Persian ones which could be selected and used to convey a sense of religiosity. It can be concluded that closeness and informality versus distance and formality together with age and social status are variables that have expanded the number of Persian kinship terms.
Zari Saeedi; Mahsa Arianpouya
Abstract
In the present paper, the influence of such variants as speech context, age and gender on code-switching of Turkish-Persian bilinguals were studied. To do so, 40 participants from two age groups of 20-40 and 40-70 years old, and two gender groups of males and females were randomly selected using the ...
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In the present paper, the influence of such variants as speech context, age and gender on code-switching of Turkish-Persian bilinguals were studied. To do so, 40 participants from two age groups of 20-40 and 40-70 years old, and two gender groups of males and females were randomly selected using the convenience sampling technique. The research data were gathered by recording the naturally-occurring daily conversations in the two contexts of home and workplace, and were categorized based on the research variants. The data analysis procedure was carried out both quantitatively (statistical analysis) and qualitatively (descriptive analysis). Eventually, the results showed that the participants" total code-switching differs in the two mentioned contexts, and the relationship between code-switching and speech context was significant (0.04) at the level of (p<0.05) with the effect size of 0.01. The relationship between the total code-switching and age was also significant (0.003), i.e. the age factor was an influencing variant with the effect size of 0.047. The next variable scrutinized in the study was the gender factor for which the findings of the total code-switching data did not display a significant relationship (0.7).
