Tehrani People’s Attitudes Toward Accented Persian: Impact of Gender, Age, and Education Level

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs Cargile and Giles (1998) state, hearers of distinct accents might be subject to reaction to both linguistic and paralinguistic characteristics of their accented speech, which might give rise to positive/negative attitudes. This study examined Tehrani people‘s attitudes toward four varieties of Persian accented speech. The sample consisted of 188 informants, born and raised in Tehran; 84 were male and 104 female; also, 106 participants were in the age-range of 18-30, 60 in 31-45, and 22 in 45-65. 31 had a high-school diploma, 84 either had a BA degree or were studying toward one, and finally, 73 either had a graduate degree or were studying toward one. The informants completed a questionnaire, on which they evaluated five varieties: Tehrani, Azeri, Isfahani, and Gilaki. Each variety was evaluated on 10 scales: social status, education level, friendliness, generosity, trustworthiness, intelligence, selflessness, perseverance, art appreciation, and ethnic pride, on a Likert scale of 1-6, coupled with “please explain” sections. The individual items were the factor-analyzed, thus falling under three main factors of status, solidarity, and ethnic pride. Analysis of the data revealed a number of significant differences across the 3 factor groups for each variety. Additionally, the varieties differed significantly from each other on individual factor groups. Post-hoc analysis also revealed the impact of gender, age, education level on the ratings. Finally, the coding of open-ended answers identified personal experience, societal stereotyping, ethnically diverse friends, ethnic jokes, and ethnically associated jobs as the underlying reasons for the respective ratings.