The Study of Kinship Terminology in Language Varieties of Tehran and Salt Lake English: An Ecological-Typological Approach

Kinship terms are one of the universal features of languages, and in addition to being a suitable indicator in sociological studies, they are of interest to linguists in terms of semantics and lexical structure. Koweldge of the ecological and taxonomic characteristics of language kinship relations can introduce us to their social structure from the past to the present time. In this research, the kinship terms of the Tehran Persian variety and Salt Lake English variety were investigated based on typological and ecological approaches. Ecological linguistics is a practical approach which explores the relation between language and the environment. The research method is descriptive-analytical. The data were collected through library research and field study. Library data were collected from the Academia website and the Dictionary of Slang Terms of Tehran and field data were collected through interviews with 9 informants in each variety. Findings show that from an ecological approach, the kinship terminology in these varieties are influenced by the environment and its surrounding factors such as geographical, cultural and sociological variables (including gender and kinship). The results show the presence, absence or diversity of kinship terms depend on the above factors, and when the language users differentiate these terms from a sexuality or ethnic viewpoint, the diversity is created. From a typological viewpoint, the findings suggest that the terms in the entire corpus mainly have a morphological concatenation strategy, including affixation and compounding. So in both language varieties, the morphological structure of the compound is more than simple and simple is more than affixation. In terms of compounding construction, juxtaposition is visible, but fusion is not seen.