فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی
سال دوم شماره 4 (پیاپی 8، پاییز 1398)

Mass media pave the way for expressing social affairs and people’s lives at the national and international levels. As a powerful and influential tool, Cinema plays a significant role in attracting audiences to express social issues. Using Fairclaough model for critical discourse analysis and descriptive and qualitative method, this research investigates one of the branches of sociolinguistics, namely, the impact of the gender on the representation of social issues in Rag-e-Khab. The population of this study is Iranian cinema movies, and Rage-e-Khab, selected through a purposive sampling method, was analyzed for the purpose of this study. The main questions are: How does the movie Rage-e-Khab represent gender? How are the men and women represented in the film's story? The findings of this study show that the female character of the story owes her luck to the presence of a man whom she does not know very well, and builds a world with her emotional and fragile beliefs stemming from her mistaken view of life. The man's character in the story betrays the woman and abuses her fragile psychological conditions after separation, and ultimately destroys the love in the woman, yet he remains in the life of the woman in the story. This woman represents a part of those in society who grew up unknowingly disregarding their surroundings and neglected the advice of the father, which was portrayed in the film as the society. As a result, women confronted with the bitter truth of deception and, ultimately, this internal collapse recreates them and makes them meaningful.

Speakers’ linguistic behavior regarding the usage of lectal variations (regional, Shirazi and Standard varieties), creates mixed responses which are influenced by social variables, the age, gender, education and place of residence. The favorable and unfavorable reactions toward the regional lectals have led to the formation of social categorizations from a cognitive point of view. This field study describes the correlation between social layers and linguistic forms in Fars Province. Data collection was carried out through a survey method by 490 speakers from Shiraz, Marvdasht, Kazeroun, Fasa, Jahrom and several cities around Shiraz. The founding indicates that, the age group of 15 to 30 year-old more than the other age group, women more than men and, speakers with higher education, prefer to use the Standard Variety rather than their local varieties in social domains (family, education, work, street, media, and in elites’ discourse). Although the Standard Variety is dominant everywhere, local varieties are used by the native speakers to express their identity in informal social settings and live with these varieties alongside their family and acquaintances.

The present study investigates the use of Argot language vocabulary in two gender groups. The Argot language is a collection of words and phrases that certain groups use to keep secrets inside their group against others. This sociolinguistics study describes the functional differences of the vocabulary of this language in two groups of males and females. Data were randomly collected through 60 face-to-face interviews. This research applied a descriptive and a case study method. The purpose of this research is to answer the question whether there is a significant difference between the lexical frequency and the expected occurence. To test the hypothesis, males respondents have used the most secret words in the interviewees, using Chi-square non-parametric tedst. The dependent variable in this study is the frequency of Argot vocabulary and independent gender variable is gender. It seems that gender plays an important role in the frequency of certain words; nevertheless, the results  showed that there is no significant difference between the two gender variables and the use of the Argot vocabulary; however, the tendency of females to use argot vocabulary is less than men.

Children’s and adolescent literature plays an important role in socializing the audience and reflects the conditions of society, beliefs, traditions and opinions that shape readers' mentality and perception of the various phenomena on which they are based. One of the most important aspects of socializing is the formation of concept of gender identity in the children's mentality, which stabilizes in adolescence. The fictional literature as the most socially used genre can be the best source to present the image that Iranian children and adolence literature have about the concept of gender. Children get acquainted to the new world through the book and gain new and different experiences. The present study investigates the status and role of women, men and gender stereotypes in child literature. A total number of 200 Persian fiction books were analyzed. The results show that a gender-based discrimination was found in the books awarded as the top best-selling books by Iran Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Younh Adult for a decade from 1385 to 1395. In these books, the number of male characters and names was almost twice as much as female characters. The main female characters of the text were seen more often. This article investigates the stereotypes of children's picture books which play a role in shaping gender identity.

The present writing is a report of an empirical study to measure the level of mutual intelligibility between Mahabadi variety from West Azarbayjan and Badrei one from Ilam Province based on linguistic and non-linguistic criteria and receptive multilingualism approach. For this purpose, two types of tests, that is, function tests and opinion tests were used. We used targeted sampling to exclude subjects who had previous language contact. Test materials which were translated into the most common language in both varieties, were recorded. Subjects wrote the meaning or translation of presented auditory items in Persian. Findings showed that intelligibility between two varieties was not symmetric and although the attitude of Badrei speakers was more positive compared to the other variety, the scores of Mahabadi speakers in function tests were higher. This finding contradicts the result of the previous studies conducted by Maurud (1976) and Delsing and Akesson (2005) who claimed that there was a positive correlation between positive attitude and intelligibility. Moreover, the findings showed that among the eleven lexical features emphasized by Gooskens et al. (2008) as factors affecting intelligibility, phonetic distance and lexical etymology influence intelligibility more than other factors in these varieties.

Language is the most important device for communication, but one coded form of it is used to restrict communication. The Coded Language of Jaberi is one of the most unknown languages in Iran that was originally developed by the people of Jaber village (of Badre County, Ilam Province). This language is known as žêrzuwanaki in the local dialect. The purpose of this research was to study the linguistic characteristics of the coded language of Jaberi. The data were collected through field research based on the researchers’ linguistic aptitude and interviews with native speakers of this language. The results indicated that the phonemes, syntax and grammar of the coded language of Jaberi is similar to the standard language of the region, but lexically it is completely different. The inventors of this language were also Jaberi’s prayer writers who traveled to different areas in the past to pray for people, and they needed a coded language to keep their secrets hidden from others. Results show that the creators of coded languages including the coded language of Jaberi are usually business owners who have invented such languages to protect their business secrets.

The present sociolinguistic research aimes to study the discourse of ambient billboards in Tehran in order to identify, by means of inter-semiotic cohesive devices, the aspects which lead to the development of meaning in this minimal medium. Accordingly, the present study attempts to address the question "How inter-textual elements of Tehran ambient billboards could create meaning in relating to intra-textual elements?  In order to analyze and represent the unknown aspects of meaning, a mixed model with a multivariate approach has been used to analyze the intrinsic meta-analysis constructs at different levels and with respect to the intertextual links in the context. The data were collected using field and documentary method. After the data were collected through cluster random smapling, they were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. The findings showed that the resemioticisation of non-peripheral text in the context of Tehran ambient billboards was influenced by features of urban areas or religious, historical, cultural or commercial sites, extending the dimensions of meaningfulness. Also, the resemioticisation of the texture of the position of the ambient billboards of Tehran was based on the reference to the structures of the texture of peripheral text, the development of texture in relation to the context of the perimeter position, and the presence of structures of the perimeter context in the text of the billboards, which has led to the expansion of the dimensions of the miniaturization of this minimal medium.