The Study and Comparison of Address Terms in Persian and Gilaki

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.