A Sociological Study of Address Terms in Spoken Colloquial Persian

To know how people open conversation and how they address each other is an important topic in studying language community to establish social relation among people. This article investigates addressing behavior in spoken variety of colloquial Persian. In this research, the analysis of the data from 43 Persian speakers show that 10 types of address terms are used in everyday conversations, namely, personal names, titles, religious terms, occupational terms, relative terms, honorifics and formal terms, intimate terms, personal pronouns, descriptive terms and zero ones. Also metaphors and taboos are investigated. Statistical analysis of address terms show that male speakers use intimate terms more than female ones and usage of relative terms decreases with the increase in the age of speakers.