Linguistic Policy-Making and the Position of Persian Language in the Language Policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Persian language, as the national language of the Iranian people, has a major role in the connection of their past, present and future and this is a proof for historical and political role of the language. But nowadays Persian language is facing challenges and difficulties which, if not diagnosed and solved, will damage national identity and continuity of national traditions. Thus, preservation and expansion of Persian language as one of the most important components of national identity has always been considered by Iranian politicians and also in major documents of the Islamic Republic of Iran including constitution, document of future perspective, development plan law and comprehensive scientific documents etc. and policies have been provided to achieve that. But despite of design and implementation of policies regarded to this issue, implementation of the policies has faced shortcomings and thus failed to achieve satisfying results. Therefore, this article aims to indicate failure factors of implementation of these policies based on fifth development plan experiences, by asking this question that how the approach and implementation of fifth development plan led to loss of satisfying results in implementation of language policies. The method used in this article is thematic analysis which is one of qualitative methods and its data is obtained from library and documentary data. The final result of this research is that the issues and problems facing the Persian language are malignant political issues, also the method of implementing policies related to the Persian language has been based on an authoritarian approach, which has led to the failure of national language policy to achieve its goals.