Phonological Processes in Mashahdi Speakers with Different Levels of Education Compared to the Standard Language

In sociolinguistics, the role of factors such as level of education in different aspects of language has always been the focus of attention. The present research, which was conducted in Mashhad, seeks to study phonological processes among educated and uneducated speakers compared to Standard Persian. The data was gathered through field method and interview to analyze processes such as assimilation, vowel harmony, devoicing, metathesis, addition and deletion. The results indicated that the level of education is a distinctive factor in the speech of Mashhadi speakers. Highly educated speakers have much care in their use of words and mostly use the standard variations while the phonological processes in the speech of less educated ones deviate their speech from the standard. The only process which was found not to be highly influenced by education was the deletion process. It had a high frequency among all speakers. The data analysis has been provided in details and in different methods