Corey Miller / Hooman Saeli
University of Maryland - Oklahoma State University

Second-level Pluricentrism in Tehran, Iran

Keywords: Persian, Farsi, Attitudes, Phonetics

While Persian has been discussed as a pluricentric language (Spooner 2012, Miller, Strong, Jones & Vinson 2013), this paper investigates second-level pluricentrism within the Iranian national variety, also known as Farsi.  Farsi is to some extent diglossic (Jeremias 1984, Perry 2003), and this paper will focus on its spoken (L), or colloquial, variety.  The dialect of Tehran is often taken as the basis of the standardized colloquial variety (Ferguson 1959), and this paper will explore variation within Tehran in order to clarify the features, both linguistic and attitudinal, that characterize the varieties found there.

Stilo et al. (2007) distinguish between a standardized colloquial variety of Farsi and what they refer to as Tehrani on the basis of several phonetic features.  Recently, Saeli (2015) has distinguished between Tehrani (T; following references to Tehrani will refer to the speech community as a whole) and Jonoub Shahri Tehrani (JST, south city Tehrani), considering phonetic, lexical and pragmatic features.  Based on a language attitudes survey, he found that JST, predominantly spoken in the southern parts of the city, evokes more solidarity in T speakers, but less status than their own variety. He also observed that code-switching between T and JST gave rise to different patterns of covert and overt prestige among men and women.

This paper will lay the groundwork for understanding the varieties of Tehrani within a pluricentric languages framework.  The dominant standardized colloquial variety, T, will be described both with respect to its linguistic features, attitudes ascribed to it by Tehrani speakers, its functions in the society as well as perceived sociopolitical associations.  This urban variety will be compared to a national standardized colloquial variety, along the lines of Miller (2014). JST will be explored as a non-dominant variety; the factors which distinguish it from T linguistically, attitudinally and functionally will be clarified.

This study will include a tentative geographical description of the location of the Tehrani varieties in question, along with a discussion of minority groups in Tehran (e.g. Kurdish, Azeri, Afghan) and how their Persian fits into the scheme described. In addition, the relative role and strength of factors such as colloquial grammar, politeness, intonation/accent and particular phonetic features will be examined with respect to their constitutiveness of the dominant and non-dominant varieties discussed here.