فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی
پیاپی 2 (بهار 1396)

According to Heine (2013), the main function of discourse markers is to relate our speech and the situation of discourse (i.e. the speaker-hearer interaction), to explain the speaker’s ideas, and organize the text. They are syntactically independent from the syntactic environment of the sentence. Since these markers, as particular tools of language usage and transferring messages, have a significant role in social communication, they make a part of sociolinguistic studies. This paper focuses on a group of Persian discourse markers which have mostly a fixed and certain syntactic structure (such as “The truth is that…”). We call these expressions “Disclosure” discourse markers due to their function in preparing the process of conversation and the addressee for revealing the truths. The research data were gathered from today’s Persian written texts and also Persian speakers speech. The theoretical framework consists of cognitive grammar and Aijmer’s (2007) grammaticalization models. Data analysis indicates that disclosure discourse markers represent a grammaticalized picture of the matrix clause in Persian because they no more carry the main concept of the sentence. This picture reinforces the necessity of reviewing the syntactic concepts of the matrix and subordinate clauses by considering the presence of discoursal elements in the sentence.

Written popular literature of Iran, in addition to its literary and artistic dimensions, is rich in sociological information. In these texts, along with multiple linguistic clichés such as idioms, allusions, curses, oaths, etc., there are lots of proverbs which familiarize us with people’s ideas and beliefs, values and anti-values, ethical principles, agility customs, the role of women in the society, religious issues, etc., while making them sweet, attractive and popular. The objective of the present descriptive-analytic research is to study 500 proverbs extracted from among 30 verse and prose heroic legends written between the 6th century AH and the end of the Qajarid period, in the general framework of sociology of literature, in order to provide a sociolinguistic perspective. Data analysis indicates that the proverbs could be classified into four general categories including world and chance, social issues, politics and governance, and ethical advices. Besides, there are sometimes traces of patriarchal and opposing thoughts against women.

As a class of linguistic tools, reveal the user's personal emotions and feelings as well as sociolinguistic attitudes of the society. The objectives of the present study were to classify common curse words used in Shoushtar city, Iran, and to examine the effect of social variables of age, gender, ethnicity and education on its usage. The present descriptive-analytic research was carried out by direct observation and a questionnaire. From among 160 examinees, 140 answered the questions completely and their answers were analyzed by means of statistic tests. The study indicate that both women and men of Shoushtar use 4 classes of curse words when they are angry or upset. The results indicate that from among the above-mentioned social variables, age and gender have a significant effect on the use of these words (P= 0.015); men use more curse words than women and 15-19 year-old examinees use them more than the other age-groups. Moreover, the variables of ethnicity and education have no significant effect on the use of curse words in Shoushtari language society(P= 0.89).

Previous studies revealed that bilingualism and multilingualism could have a role in improving or reducing children’s cognitive functions. The aim of this study is to examine whether the findings of these studies could be extended to adult Azeri-Persian bilinguals. In other words, does bilingualism have any effect on their cognitive flexibility, inhibition and cognitive beliefs? To achieve this goal, 60 male and female examinees (30 bilinguals and 30 monolinguals) of Azerbaijan Shahid Madani University BA and MA students, with the age range of 18-27, were chosen by available sampling. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was used for the assessment of cognitive flexibility and a MCQ-30 questionnaire for evaluating metacognitive beliefs. Data analysis, while applying independent t-test, revealed significant differences between the monolinguals and bilinguals regarding cognitive flexibility (P=0.004). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding sub-scales of metacognitive beliefs (P = 0.43). The results support the prevailing notion that bilingualism could positively impact on cognitive flexibility.

Applying address terms is considered as a kind of observing social politeness in the society and the speakers of each language use them regarding their particular ways. This article is an analytic-descriptive research which assesses address terms in the Persian and Gilaki languages and compares them with each other. Fifty Gilaki speakers and 50 Persian speakers, ranged between 25 to 40 years old, were selected as the samples of the study. Researchers tried to answer two questions: 1) What are the most frequently used address terms in Persian and Gilaki?, and 2) What is the difference between these terms in the two languages? The results reveal that Persian and Gilaki speakers are similar in applying the address terms of “nick names” and “kinship phrases”, however, after these two, the Persian ones use more “respectful titles” while the Gilaki ones apply more “titles” to call each other. Besides, address terms of “clipping”, “religious names” and “other names” are among the least frequently used phrases in Gilaki. Although there is no significant difference between applying the terms in the two languages, the existence of the above-mentioned differences indicate the cultural distinctions of the two sample societies.

Compliments are universal categories which are found in all languages but they are more common in some languages like Persian. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of social variables of “age” and “gender” on the amount of usage of compliments by Persian speakers. To do this, a questionnaire including 15 questions was given to 100 male and female Kermani participants in different age-groups. The research theoretical framework was Brown and Levinson’s (1978) politeness theory. Static analyses indicate that there is significant difference (P

Compliments and their responses are of high frequency in daily speech acts and carry a special cultural-sociological load. This study aimed at identifying the effect of the variable of age on Persian speaker's compliment response strategies. To this end, 200 Persian speakers (100 women and 100 men) from four different age-groups (10-18, 19-30, 31-40, and above 40 years old) were asked to respond to the written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) consisting of four imaginary situations. The results indicated that the participants used accept strategies the most and the evade ones the least but the most common sub-type of response strategies they used was the downgrade strategy. Return and appreciation tokens were the second and third most frequently used strategies. However, topic shift and reassignment strategies were never used. The results also revealed that the effect of age on the patterns of compliment responses was remarkable. While the age-group under 18 used appreciation tokens the most, the other age-groups preferred downgrade ones the most. However were used, disagreement and reassurance strategies the least in all groups.