The status of national and local languages in cultural policies (Studying the approach of of Educational System, Culture and Islamic Guidance, and Broadcasting in Ilam city)

This study seeks to investigate the relationship between national language and local language in cultural policies by studying the approach of three institutions of education, culture and Islamic guidance, and broadcasting in Ilam city. The research approach is qualitative and the data collection technique is the in-depth interview. The purpose population consists of the officials of the three institutions of education, culture and Islamic guidance, and broadcasting, as well as experts related to these three areas in Ilam city, who were selected by purposive sampling. Data collection continued until theoretical saturation, which eventually resulted in 16 interviews. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis based on the Walcott model. The findings of this qualitative study led to nine main themes that were classified into three categories: policy-related themes, results-related themes, and solution-related themes. The policy-related themes include the four themes of dominating the security approach in the relationship between national and local language, politicization, individual-centeredness of policy implementation, and centralism of institutions and policies. The results-related themes include the three themes of subordination of the local language to the standard language, the concentration of power in the standard language, and the challenge of the dominance of monolingual education. The solution-related themes include the two themes of the necessity of coherence of ethnic language and national language, and dialect diversity and non-dominance of standard dialect in the Kurdish language. Each of the main themes is explained in the article.