The interface of syntax and sociolinguistics: sociolinguistic analysis of some Persian syntactic structures based on Labov variation theory

Sociolinguists consider language variation as one of the inherent characteristics of languages. They believe that social factors including gender, social class, education, age and ethnicity are playing a fundamental role in creating and distributing language variation. In this research, the effects of social class, education and gender on frequency and distribution of syntactic variation in every day and scientific colloquial discourse of Persian are investigated. Men used scrambling, cleft construction and focus adverbs more than women in every day colloquial discourse and contrarily, women used scrambling and cleft construction more than men in scientific colloquial discourse. Upper social class people used scrambling more than middle and low classes and low class people used cleft construction and focus adverbs more than other social classes in every day colloquial discourse. In scientific discourse, high social class used scrambling more than other social classes. M.A and B.A educated people used scrambling more than diploma educated people in every day colloquial discourse and diploma educated people used cleft construction more than other educated people. Also, M.A educated people used scrambling more than other educated people in scientific colloquial discourse.