The Effect of Social Variables on Vowel Variations of Sociolects of Persian in Nehbandan

Different speakers of Persian varieties have sociolects developed due to various social variables. The present descriptive-analytic study aims at descrbing vowel variations of Nebandani dialect of Persian and investigating the effect of social variables including gender, age and education on the use of the given variations. Having interviewed the informants, the relevant vowel variations were extracted from the recorded speech of 24 qualified adolescents, young and old speakers. Due to the high rate of immigration to this area, the samples were selected purposefully. After transcibing their speech, the frequency of the recurrent vowel variations was determined and the remaining variations were just described. The results showed that education played an important role in distinguishing the speech of different speakers. Females’ speech in both literate and non-literate groups, with the exception of non-literate old women, was closer to the standard Persian. In young and old speaker groups, aging had different results with regard to different vowel variations. The results also revealed that adolescents rarely used some variations having historical roots. However, concerning variations with no historical origin, they used more non-standard forms. It was also found that gender played an important role in differentiating the speech of male and female speakers. The speech of adolescent girls having literate and non-literate parents was closer to standard Persian than the boys of the same group. Therefore, it can be concluded that sociolects occur even in small language communities speaking their own speech variety and having high language solidarity.