sociology of language

Linguistic landscape is a relatively new area of research that has attracted many researchers in recent years. In their seminal work, "Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality," Landry and Bourhis (1997) state that the linguistic landscape is: “The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration" (p. 25). Since Landry and Bourhis utilized the concept of Linguistic Landscape (LL) as the "visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region" (p. 23), researchers in the fields of sociolinguistics, sociology, language policy, social psychology, geography, media studies, and cultural studies have been interested in uncovering the nuances and disparities in the languages used in the public space.

To find out which languages are present in the linguistic landscape and how these languages are represented, linguistic and semiotic properties of the signs were investigated. The codification of the signs relies on that developed by Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) and Cenoz and Gorter (2006), such as the languages used on the signs, languages of signs (monolingual, bilingual, multilingual), order of languages on a sign, and the types of signs (top-down and bottom-up signage). Using Excel, the signs were coded according to the following variables: 1. Language of signs: for every sign, the type was coded. The categories include: monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signs. 2. Number of languages: the number of languages present on the signs was counted. The appearance of a language may consist of an entire text or of only one word. The main languages counted in all sites were: Persian, Kurdish, Arabic, and English. 3. Order of languages: by the order of languages, we mean in bilingual or multilingual signs which language is more dominant. In doing so, the languages written in larger fonts were considered dominant. 4. Types of signs: both top-down (governmental) and bottom-up (private sector) are regarded in this study.

A total of 772 signs were photographed and later categorized according to the top-down (governmental) versus bottom-up (private sector) distinction in Kermanshah, Sanandaj, and Ilam. Out of these 772 photos, 578 were related to bottom-up and 194 were related to top-down signs. The results showed that among bilingual signs, Persian-Kurdish has the highest frequency in Sanandaj, while Persian-English signs are more prevalent in Kermanshah and Ilam. In all of the cities, Persian-Arabic signs have the lowest frequency among bilingual signs. Sanandaj was the only city in which Kurdish was dominant in Persian-Kurdish signs.

Observing the signs and signs in the respective streets of the studied cities led to interesting results. From the display of languages displayed (used) in the public space, one can realize the possibility of identifying their performance, credibility, position, and expansion. The distribution of minority languages in the city limits can be considered an indicator of the language status in an urban area. Linguistic perspective also expresses the existing political and cultural views and approaches to the position of national languages in multilingual societies. Another important finding of this research is the spread of the Persian language and also the presence of some signs in English, which shows the importance and influence of the English language as a global language. This study shows that the linguistic landscape has both communicative and symbolic functions. A linguistic perspective can be used as a tool to legitimize national identity. Although the language policy of the country insists that all languages should not be given equal rights, the Kurdish language is given attention in these cities, especially in Sanandaj, but this attention is very insignificant compared to the dominant language (Persian), and it is not good news for Kurdish speakers

This study explores the use of nicknames among trilingual youth, investigating the influence of identity, culture, language, and attitudes on their propensity to assign nicknames to others. This research is cross-sectional and uses survey research. Results reveal that nicknames mirror the intricacy of social relations in a trilingual society. Young people’s attitudes towards others’ titles are predominantly negative, while their views on their own titles are more positive. Physical attributes form the basis for the most common nicknames. In this trilingual village, nicknames are primarily given to incapacitated individuals, those with differing religious beliefs, and those who do not share commonalities with the dominant language (Georgian, the native language of the dominant group) and ethnicity. The dominant language group is more inclined to assign titles. Most titles are based on descriptive phrases rather than verbal, prepositional, or adverbial phrases.

In conjunction with other research methods, cultural anthropology is employed to investigate social and cultural transformations. It involves examining the ideological aspects of texts and speeches and the vocabulary and elements that imbue them with meaning. The selection and usage of specific words and phrases in proverbs reflect people's perspectives, attitudes, and thoughts toward various events, phenomena, situations, and social issues. In orally transmitted stories, the geographical and environmental culture of the narrator and the primary storyteller, whether known or anonymous, play a pivotal role in shaping the narrative's structure. This article compares two versions of the Sheikh San'Aan story (the Kurdish narrative by Mam Ahmad Lotfi Mahabadi and the Persian narrative by Attar) from a cultural anthropological standpoint to explore the cultural similarities and differences between the two works. The analysis reveals that both narratives feature Sheikh San'Aan and his daughter as the main characters, with disciples playing subordinate roles. Customs and traditions are mentioned in both works; however, a distinction lies in the presence of a character named Hazrat Ghaws, rooted in mystical and regional beliefs concerning spiritual leaders. The role of the father figure is also significant, reflecting the influence of fathers on the institution of the family and patriarchy, particularly evident in the Kurdish narrative where the Christian daughter introduces herself and Sheikh to her father. Both narratives contain customs related to Christianity, which Sheikh San'Aan must adhere to for conversion. Nevertheless, there are variations in customs and traditions between the Kurdish and Persian narratives, such as the Khanqah ceremony and wedding rituals. Clothing is another cultural element featured in both works, described as Kurdish attire in the Kurdish narrative and Sufi clothing in the Persian narrative due to its literary nature.

Within the Persian language, various resources exist for deriving and compounding words to express occupations and professions. These resources generate compound and derivative nouns that convey agentivity and agency when combined with nouns and adjectives. This study aims to investigate the syntactic elements "-Chi," "-Kar," "-Forush," and "-Gar" within the framework of Morphological Construction Theory. The research provides a foundational analysis of how words formed with these suffixes and free morphemes are constructed. Morphological Construction Theory is a recent morphological approach that employs "construction" to describe the systematic relationship between form and meaning in word formation. According to this theory, non-simple words are considered constructions, and each word functions as a linguistic sign, representing the pairing of form and meaning. Each word encompasses three types of information, which are represented by three signs in the lexical approach: PHON (representing the phoneme dimension), SYN (representing the morpheme-syntax dimension), and SEM (representing the semantic dimension of the word). This research takes an empirical corpus-based approach and is theoretically grounded in a cognitive framework. The study data consist of 212 derivative and compound words formed using the suffixes "Chi" and "Gar" and the free morphemes "Forush" and "Kar," extracted from Persian corpora such as Bijankhan, Moin Encyclopedic Dictionary and Dehkhoda Dictionary. The words derived from these elements exhibit 4, 3, 4, and 3 schemas, conveying agentivity and agency in their overall meaning. However, they differ in terms of their reference to the concept of occupation or their basic syntactic role to which each of these four elements is attached. Another significant finding of this research is establishing a bidirectional relationship between construction and meaning, whereby the construction of a word determines the meaning and conceptualization derived from the word as a whole.

This study aims to investigate language attitudes among Kurdish speakers in the western part of Iran. A questionnaire was adopted for collecting the data. Then the final version of the questionnaire was distributed among people in target cities. 450 people participated in this part and answered the questionnaires voluntarily. The results of language attitude showed that the Kurdish language has a very high social status among people in Sene (Sanandaj) and Kermashan (Kermanshah) and a high social status among people in Ilam. Regarding its institutional support, people believe that the Kurdish language, though vital and widely used with a positive attitude among its native speakers, requires more institutional support. Regarding Kurdish vitality, the results showed that, unlike Sene, the Kurdish language may die out in the future in Kermanshah and Ilam. Finally, the results showed that there was no significant difference between males and females in their attitude to the Kurdish language in Kermashan and Sene, but there was an obviously significant difference between males' and females` language attitudes in Ilam. Finally, some suggestions for further research were proposed by the researcher.

Since antiquity, a connection has existed between literature and society; consequently, literature and sociology have a solid foundational relationship. Sociology examines literature as a social phenomenon from multiple perspectives, including literary work, author, consumer, point of view, and other social data. It demonstrates the connection between literature and the neighboring social indicators. From a global perspective, literary sociology has significantly impacted literary and critical movements worldwide, and literary sociology can be subdivided into numerous subfields due to the breadth of its activities and topics. Satirical is one of the literary genres in Arabic literature, a distinct branch of literature with social content. The purpose of a satirical protest poem is to express the problems and disorders of society, which the poet attempts to solve and rectify by exaggerating the ugliness, flaws, problems, and heterogeneous phenomena in the social life of humans. Since the impact of poetry on the heart is much greater than that of prose, and among poetic purposes, satirical has a greater effect than other poetic purposes due to the induction of content into the audience's consciousness in the form of comedy and mockery, and poetry has a much more significant effect on the heart than prose. The source of satire is two emotions: rage and revulsion. When the poet's instinct of displeasure surfaces, he is repulsed, and if something disgusts him, it arouses his rage; he is then compelled to ridicule whatever disgusted or offended him. Ahmad Shawqi is a precise and inventive poet who has used humor and satire to express discontent through illustration and literary skills. His humor is sometimes used to complain about the occupier and sometimes to revive ancient honors, correct their poor conditions, and rouse their determination. In his poems, he made fun of the authorities and occupiers, the people's apathy, poverty, duplicity, and corruption. The poet expresses his criticism and desire for change through satire. On the premise of poetry, Ahmad Shawqi endeavored to expose the many flaws and flaws of his society, intending to resolve and rectify them.

Translation is the transfer of the content of a text from the source language in to the target language, which is done by finding semantic equivalents between the two languages. The most important problems facing translation are the ambiguities in vocabulary and sentence structure. In a division, there are five important types of lexical ambiguity (categorical ambiguities, homophones, homographs, polysemy and transitive ambiguity), and two important types of structural ambiguity (real structural ambiguities and systemic ambiguities). Machine translation (MT), which is a part of the computer-based field of natural language processing (NLP) in computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, is considered as one of the automatic techniques that that convert unstructured text into structured data, and by converting text into information, it has been able to apply further analysis to the data to extract useful information. In this article, which was compiled in a library method, a theoretical plan has been proposed to resolve the issues surrounding the meaning of words in the machine translation of the Quran, the purpose of which is to help better understand the meaning of the words of the Quran, by taking advantage of the context clues and styles of the expressions. In the proposed method, a more suitable equivalent word is chosen in the target language by taking advantage of the context rule and text mining techniques, and referring to it. In this plan, the context is considered in the scale of words, which can be developed to other types if the conditions are met. In short, this plan has two steps: prioritizing (weighting) the adjacent words next to each other (any word within the range of verses where there is a consensus about their simultaneous descent) and then, comparing with the homonyms words (polysemous), and also comparing the equivalents of a word with the equivalents of other words (synonymization). In order to make the results more accurate, more specifications of the words can be prepared manually, tables that include things such as whether the verses are Meccan or Medinan, the order of revelation of the Surahs, the concepts and interpretations that are mentioned in the meaning of the words of the Qur'an in dictionaries such as Lisan al-Arab by Ibn Manzur and The Book of Vocabulary in the Strange Qur'an by Al-Ragheb Al-Isfahani and so on. Indexing techniques are used to obtain input data. In the pre-processing stage, the data that is less important (Stop Words) (such as “al-lazi (which)”, “al-lati (that is)”, “lam (not)”, “k'ana (was)”, “kaannama (as if)”, etc.) should be removed to get a better output. To change the shape of the data, the diacritic can be removed to make coding easier, and to reduce the sample size, the infix of the words can be used. In order to prepare a record of specifications for each word that is processed as input, based on the rule of context clues, at first, it is necessary to create a tokenizer, to prepare it in the primary data, and in the entire collection of input verses, a weight should be assigned to each word based on the two criteria of spatial proximity and frequency of repetition. The closer the words are to the desired word or the more it is repeated, the more weight is assigned to it, which represents their stronger semantic connection, and vice versa. Naturally, the words that are in the same verse (have the same number of the verse) have a greater influence than the words that are in other verses and at a further distance. In measuring the frequency criterion, weighted frequency (TF/IDF Weight) is used to show the importance of the word in the surah, the value (TF/IDF value) increases proportionally to the number of times a word appears in each surah or set of input verses, and is balanced by the number of verses that are in the Surah and contain the word. Finally, it was concluded that by using the contiguity of words and the semantic relations between them, and with the help of text mining techniques, a greater understanding of the vocabulary was obtained, which leads to a more appropriate selection of the equivalent word in the target language.

Caricature is a visual and humorous art form used for media and communication. In caricature, meaning and wit are derived from two semiotic expressions, either verbal and visual or solely visual. The three language techniques of exaggeration, contradiction, and metaphor contribute to creating humor in caricatures, which result from the interaction of verbal and visual elements and the use of visual metaphor. Another abundant source of non-linguistic metaphor representation is the caricature. By examining the phenomena of language, art, politics, and religion, as well as other objective manifestations of metaphor, it is possible to uncover ideology and the human cognitive system. In contrast, the theory of critical analysis of speech seeks to investigate caricature as a social action related to power, ideology, and discourse. Due to caricatures' content compression, brevity, and interaction between language and image, caricatures are quick and straightforward methods to process a message. The audience's unanimity in receiving the message causes them to adopt the desired perspective. Through the use of humor and image literacy, the audience's self-awareness and conceptual literacy will be enhanced. The representation of ideology in political caricatures is founded on two sociological perspectives and linguistic analysis. This study examined the depiction of ideology in political caricatures from the Persian Constitutional Revolution to the present, focusing on significant events such as the July 21, 1952 uprising, Iran's Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, nuclear energy and sanctions, and resistance to the economy. The beginning of the Persian Constitutional Revolution, the concepts of freedom, awakening in front of the sleep and decline of the nations, in the form of conflict between good and evil forces, blowing horn and the resurrection of the dead, nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, concepts of independence, and drawing the occupier in the minds like a captive anima have been conceptualized in political caricatures based on the findings of this study. In verbal-visual political caricatures from the beginning of the Persian Constitutional Revolution, the formation of the caricature is based on a humorous poem and the concept of an auction, a mosque with large rocket domes, and a nuclear bomb symbol representing religion and imposed war. In the first group of images, which contained pictorial metaphors, the symbols of freedom, the symbolic symbols of the occupation's encroachment on Iran's hydrocarbon resources, and the symbols of impertinent and unintelligible representatives are depicted. In the reader's consciousness, the relationship between origin and destination is formed by combining the concepts of origin and destination and unexpectedly filling part of a schema. In the group of verbal-visual caricatures, the same relationships and the stabilizing function of inflated writing map the relationship between the concepts of war's origin and destination.

One of the important aspects of migration, which has been considered by various researchers, including the language community, since the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the recent decade, is the linguistic consequences of migration. The second generation of immigrants, who were born in exile or immigrated with their parents as children, are more prone to mother-tongue encounters.Novel “ Tahta Samae Kopenhagen” Contemporary Iraqi novelist Hura al-Nadavi narrates a group of second-generation Iraqi immigrants in Denmark who, as a result of their resemblance to the host society, the language and culture of their homeland, have faded has also led to some sort of identity confusion for them.This article intends to analyze the linguistic consequences of migration in the second generation of immigrants in this novel in a descriptive-analytical way and relying on the literature of language's society.The results indicate that the dominant bilingualism, borrowing of vocabulary and phonetics, language change and in some cases language preservation and language adaptation are the most important consequences of second generation. It should be noted that the role of parents in the occurrence of these consequences is eye-catching.

Gender is one of the most important topics in the sociology of language. Many linguists and sociologists do not believe that there are differences between the speech of women and men. One of the literary categories that receives the most influence from the linguistic elements of gender is fiction literature. In this research, the linguistic differences of the male and female characters , in the novels of Shovhar Ahookhonum  and Soushon (1940s) and Nimeh Ghayeb in Bammad Khomar (1970s) are considered by the following elements: color words, swear words, intensifiers, modifiers, proverbs, polite language, supplementary questions, unfinished sentences, and apologies. The novels of different eras were selected, in addition to the analysis of linguistic differences, the speech type of the characters in different genres will be compared. In order to answer the question, "Can you find a difference in the language of sexuality in the novels of the 1940s compared to the novels of the 70s?" First, the components were extracted from the novels, then they were analyzed by taking statistics and frequency and drawing a table. The findings of the research show that there are similarities between the gender of novels of one decade and differences between novels of twenty. The two basic differences in the novels used are swear words.

The sociology of language, which examines the relation between social and social classes and the germination of the fusion of linguistics and sociology, is a new interdisciplinary study that has opened up meaningful horizons to linguists. Because language is a fundamental element in the story, among the various literary types, the novel is a suitable platform for sociology of language studies, and the analysis of different aspects of the language of the novel from this perspective is necessary. Therefore, the present study aims to provide a sociological reading of the language of the novels of Ali Ashraf Darvishian's cloudy years, which is one of the contemporary, and relationship between the language and social contexts, based on a scientific method. In addition, writers in the final section of the article also refer to the sociology of the author's language in the novel. The method of doing research is descriptive-analytical and data are analyzed using a method of analyzing sociological content. The outcome of the research suggests that the author succeeds in choosing the right language for characters, and that the language of the novel is in cases in keeping with the writer's social orientations

The aim of this study is to explore the phenomenon of "naming businesses"in the city of Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran. Investigation of this phenomenon in the domain of businesses has been carried out cognitive-sociolinguistically. Content analysis is the method of doing the research, as well as the procedures and instrumentations of data are observational and documental. The population of the study included 3711 shops. The result of the study showed that: For business naming as a non-formal hyper domain the social nominating factors are business holders. It is the cultural and political atmosphere of the society which influences that domain. Most names regarding gender as a variable are selected based on human masculane names. Naming business in Sanandaj in celebrity sub-category has tendency towards contemporary celebrities and also it has tendency toward the local identity. Names derived from nature also belong to the plant subcategory. And conceptualization of choosing names seen in this domain is originated from metaphor of the cultural context and topology of the study area.

Proverbs reflect different aspects and angles of people’s lives including social-cultural concepts as if they were linguistic texts being focused by sociolinguistics. The present research is a descriptiveanalytic study investigating the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs from the viewpoint of sociology of language. In this essay, 100 Turkish and Persian proverbs having gender-related stereotypes were selected and investigated through purposive sampling. This research intends to answer these questions: what type of gender-related stereotypes have been much more observed in Turkish and Persian proverbs? Which gender is more impressed by the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs? From the viewpoint of sociology of language, how does the utilization of the special gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs represent the social status of each era? The results obtained from this study indicate that the gender-related stereotypes have been more frequently used in the proverbs related to the women than men. Furthermore, the ethical characteristics have been stated and used more than other characteristics in the Turkish and Persian proverbs. The concepts stated in the proverbs indicate the gender bias (gender discrimination), and ignorance of women and women's low social status in popular culture in the past. Besides, there are a lot of similarities between the cultures of Turks and Iranians regarding the utilization of gender-related stereotypes in the society due to the proximity of cultures and the borders of Iran and Turkey

The purpose of this study was to investigate the naming trends during recent three decades in Kalatarzan of Sanandaj, Iran. Name is a cultural and social phenomenon rooted in the beliefs of the individuals within the community. Thus, the process of children's naming can represent the process of social and cultural changes in the social system. Due to multidimensional aspect of naming, the present research was carried out adopting a cognitive-sociolinguistic approach because neither social nor cognitive linguistics can tackle exploring various aspects of naming. The research method is descriptive-analytical. In order to complete the task, 8325 boys and girls names were collected. The names were analyzed in terms of gender, differences in Sorani and Hewrami varieties of Kurdish, as well as the extent to which nature-inspired names have been used. The result demonstrated that national identity group had the highest frequency (2628 names), followed by ethnic names (2440 names) and religious ones (2353 names) as second and third names with highest frequency. The result of the study indicated that names with national and religious identity had a decreasing trend and names with ethnic and international identity had increased.

Language sociologists believed on the role of different non-linguistic factors, such as ethnicity, gender, education, social class, age, and geographical area in the emergence of linguistic forms. One of the social classes is the students’ stage which defined by its own discourse. But this study, with a study on the language of students, concludes that in the present situation, the role of these factors has changed, both because of the changes in global culture and the technological movement and cultural transformation of Iran in recent decades, which has been influenced by international developments and internal events and the collapse of past prehistory. Accordingly, based on the three variables of age, education, and gender and how they affect the language, which arranges the new power system in the language, and the convergence of these factors and the diminution of previously inflexible factors creates a new discourse that has a perfect expression in a language called "dark language". A language that has been spoken in secret in the past decade, but now appear. Then by the descriptive and explanatory study of this sublanguage, it concludes that this linguistic form, which expresses a certain style of life, confronts dominant ideology with a counter-crisis approach. It is not merely a moral phenomenon that is reformed with an advice and warning book, but a product of profound and complex socio-political variables.

Discourse analysis is one of the approaches of discourse analysis and a novel method for studying social issues which is connected to literature through studying literary content analysis and literary criticism. Discourse analysts believe that literary texts, stories and novels like other texts tend to communicate. Therefore, texts can be analyzed analytically. The present study aims to represent female characters in “My Favorite Melancholy” through offered solutions concerning analytical discourse analysis based on Van Loon (2008) pattern, which is semantic- sociological one. In this research, qualitative method is employed, and quantitative approach is also used to scrutinize data. The aim of the study is to analyze and explain how story tellers view and represent contemporary women as social actors in the society. The novelist is to show that today girls will turn into emotionally and socially powerful women in next generation to be able to pass the emotional crises alongside with men.

As a class of linguistic tools, reveal the user's personal emotions and feelings as well as sociolinguistic attitudes of the society. The objectives of the present study were to classify common curse words used in Shoushtar city, Iran, and to examine the effect of social variables of age, gender, ethnicity and education on its usage. The present descriptive-analytic research was carried out by direct observation and a questionnaire. From among 160 examinees, 140 answered the questions completely and their answers were analyzed by means of statistic tests. The study indicate that both women and men of Shoushtar use 4 classes of curse words when they are angry or upset. The results indicate that from among the above-mentioned social variables, age and gender have a significant effect on the use of these words (P= 0.015); men use more curse words than women and 15-19 year-old examinees use them more than the other age-groups. Moreover, the variables of ethnicity and education have no significant effect on the use of curse words in Shoushtari language society(P= 0.89).

From the viewpoint of sociology of language, one of the important linguistic phenomena in any given society is the formation of argots and their structural description. An argot is the language or the dialect of a social group whose members like the content of their speech remains secret for other groups, or, generally, for the majority of the people in their society. From some decades ago up to now, in some villages of Khalkhāl in Ardabil Province, a language known as Arrānaji or Qarqahdili has been commonly used by male workers who went to northern regions of Iran to do carpentry. The main questions of this study are: a) What kind of language is Qarqahdili? b) Which purpose was it created for?, and c) What are its structural characteristics? The data of this field study were gathered through interviews with middle-aged men of two villages called Karnaq and Lerd. The results indicate that Qarqahdili is an argot which is used to cover occupational secrets. From phonetic, morphological, and syntactic viewpoints Qarqahdili is similar to the Tāti language of the same areas but lexically there are some differences.Save for Tāti words which have gained secret meanings, some words from Azerbaijani Turkish are also present in Qarqahdili. Data analysis indicates that a great number of taboos and sex expressions are used in the workers’ speech apparently because they are all male and far away from their families.