The Frequency of Expressions and Proverbs in Different Iranian Generations' Speech Styles

Abstract

Change is one of the fundamentals of every language. Every community consists of different generations with various perspectives toward life. The difference among different generations’ vernaculars are so drastic that it would not be an exaggeration to claim that every generation of a society or a speech community has its own language or vernacular which distinguishes it from other generations or age-groups of the society in lexico-grammatical terms. This study put the frequency of expressions and proverbs in different generations' speech styles under investigation. Hence, inspired by stratified randomization technique, the researcher randomly selected a group of 24 middle-aged and similarly a group of 24 teenager participants of the two genders. Each of the age-groups consisted of 12 male and 12 female subjects in order to provide the possibility to determine the role of gender on expression or proverb usage. All the subjects were individually interviewed for elicitation of the needed data then their sentences were recorded and accurately transcribed for further investigation. By counting the expressions or proverbs in sentences of male/female teenagers' and middle-aged subjects of the research, their expression and proverb usage frequencies were illuminated. The study's results suggested that middle-aged speakers of Iranian community employed expressions and proverbs more than teenagers. This implies that the older would have a stronger relationship with the literature and are more satisfied with their culture and identity. Middle-aged subjects used those expressions which were deeply rooted in the literature and culture while teenagers were highly in use of those expressions and proverbs which were suddenly entered into the lexicon of the society by the advent of new television series or expanded advertisements of mass media, for example. Furthermore, it was found that males generally were more interested in using expression and proverb in their daily conversations than females.