Perceptual Dialectology; A Case Study of Azeri Turkish in Shabestar County

Perceptual dialectology deals with the comprehension and attitude of speakers towards concepts such as the geographical demarcation of the dialects of self and others, prestige and social status of dialects, etc. In this study, 64 native speakers living in Shabestar County in North West of Tabriz (including Shabestar, Shend Abad, Daryan, and Khameneh) have been interviewed. The research is conducted using four audio files as well as one researcher-made questionnaire. The findings indicate that the middle-aged group and female group are more successful in finding out the geographical distance and fellow-citizenship of the narrators of the audio files, giving weight to the former studies like Diercks (2002) in Germany. In other words, the middle-aged as well as female individuals display higher levels of linguistic awareness. It is also noted that the administrative and economic situation of an area (Shabestar city) convinces native speakers of the region to consider its linguistic variety as an urban variety. Furthermore, it is revealed that opposing the well-known presupposition in sociolinguistics, the linguistic variety of the smallest town in the region, i.e. Khameneh is regarded more prestigious than those in other areas