Assessing Linguistic Vitality of Mazandarani in Urban areas

Language vitality is a concept that indicates to how extent a language is used as a communication instrument in different social situations. The highest point of the vitality of a language is when the language is applied in full-scale both at home and outside in the society for all purposes while the lowest point is when no one applies the language for no purpose, that is to say the language is extinct. Nowadays, threats to languages are a global crisis, since the number of children who learn their native languages is remarkably decreasing. Mazandarani is not also excluded from this threat. The aim of this study is to apply UNESCO framework that is a result of a collaboration of an expert group of scholars on endangered languages, to assess the vitality of Mazandarani in urban areas. Analyzing the data resulted from questionnaires, official and library sources and field study indicated that Mazandarani receives the point 2.74, a situation a bit worse than what is defined as “definitely endangered” in UNESCO framework for assessing the vitality and endangerment of languages. Discussion on research variables, gender, education, and age, specified that comparing to women, men totally both have a better and more positive attitude toward Mazandarani language and use it more. As education level rises, the use of Mazandarani decreases and the attitude of speaker society toward this language becomes more negative and pessimistic as well.