On the Change Route of Address Terms in Persian

The purpose of this study is to investigate the change route of Persian address terms in a period of two hundred years, divided into three distinct historical sessions including Qajar (1170/1791-1304/1925), Pahlavi (1305/1926-1357/1979), and Post Islamic Revolution (1357/ 1979 -up to now). Data was extracted from a corpus of 24 novels and travel notebooks which were selected from the three periods under study. Data analysis indicates that Persian address terms and types have changed through time in line with changes in society. They have shown to change in different ways of deletion, addition and change in frequency, in all three historical periods of Persian language. Increase in the use of three categories of “personal names”, “intimacy terms”, and “zero address terms”; and decrease in the use of “honorifics”, “educational/cultural titles”, and “teknonyms” in all periods reveal that the use of Persian address terms has moved from more formality/less intimacy to less formality/more intimacy. Increase in the use of formal and informal religious titles in Post Islamic Revolution period is the logical result of establishment of an Islamic government. Also, changes in address terms and types are to a large extent affected by different social factors, the most influencing of them are; religion, politics, education, gender-equity, social situations and interpersonal relations.