The Usage of Loanwords in Spoken Persian

Loan words, as one of the consequences of language contacts, can be widely used by native language speakers. The expansion of loanwords varies depending on many linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The present study, based on a descriptive-analytical method, aims to investigate the usage of loanwords in spoken Persian from three different perspectives: semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. For this purpose, 600 minutes of spoken Persian corpus of Al-Zahra University, including 14000 sentences in Persian for 100 different situations and subjects, used by 240 female speakers and 80 male speakers, have been extracted and studied according to loanwords’ “semantic fields”, “abstraction and non-abstraction”, and “usage frequency” as well as two sociolinguistics variables (“motivation” and “gender” of the speakers). The results of comparing the variety of loanwords and their usage frequency in different semantic fields show that the highest frequency of use belongs to the semantic fields of basic actions and technology, language and speech, and social and political relations. Moreover, research data indicate that loanwords are more related to abstract concepts and phenomena comparing to concrete ones. The research results, from the sociolinguistic view, also reveal that more women than men use loanwords with a common Persian equivalent. “Filling communication gaps in recipient language” and “social, cultural, political and scientific credibility of donor language” are the most important motivations for Persian speakers to use loanwords in their speech.