The Application of Vowel Shift as a Phonetic Strategy for Prestige Saving among Immigrants Inhabited in City of Sanandaj, a Sociophonetic Research

The present article, with an emphasis on vowel shift of /u:/ with /ʉː/, examines phonetic changes in the Kurdish dialect of the native Kurdish speaker Lilakhi immigrants living in Sanandaj to improve social status through the application of changes known as "phonetic strategies for prestige promotion." Therefore, the authors intend to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of language change and their impact on social identity through the study of variables such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status. The research data includes 20 words in the Kurdish language in which the vowel under study is located at nucleus, and the distinction between them in the two dialects Lilakhi and Ardalani lies only in the phonetic manifestation of this vowel. The statistical population of the study also consists of 30 respondents who were selected through systematic sampling method and considering the equal distribution of gender, age and social class factors and they were asked to express each of the words they have in the form of a sentence or phrase. The results of the study show that the negative correlation between age and the use of the vowel /u:/ indicates a meaningful relationship.