Multilingualism in Iran Unity or Pluralism? (A case study in East Azerbaijan Province)

Abstract

The present paper is based on a research conducted to investigate how English newspaper editorials in Iran express their political ideologies in the ninth presidential election. All texts usually encode the ideological position of their producers, but they are not always explicit for all readers. They need to be revealed and unmasked, so the use of critical discourse analysis in this regard is to examine the ideologies underlying the texts. In the methodological framework of Van Dijk's model, the ideology carrying categories were identified, scrutinized and compared in the clause structure of the editorials in four English newspapers in Iran. It was generally found that the relationships of the newspapers with the institutions, political parties and government influenced the way the editors conveyed their ideas and thoughts about the candidates in the presidential election.

The Relation of Language Context and Religiosity to Trilemma Judgments

“…Therefore, undergraduate students are educated within a similar cultural and political context (Hamdhaidari et al, 2008). Although we did not ask directly about the linguistic repertoire of our participants, it is likely that our participants who belong to a multicultural and multilingual country like Iran have a heritage language such as Kurdish, Turkish, or Turkman (Asl, 2013). What we know for certain is that all the participants in the Arabic and English groups acquired these as a foreign language at school.…”

“My Language is Like My Mother”: Aspects of Language Attitudes in a Bilingual Farsi-Azerbaijani Context in Iran

“…Apart from Azerbaijani explored in this study as the second widelyspoken language in Iran, Kurdish, Lori, Baluchi, Mazandarani, Gilaki, Arabic, Turkmen, and Armenian are some of the well-known local languages roughly estimated to be spoken along with Farsi by more than half of the population of the country (Ahmadipour 2011;Haddadian-Moghaddam and Meylaerts 2015;Safaei Asl 2013). According to the Iranian Constitution (Article 15) Farsi is recognized as the language of official texts, correspondence, and textbooks but the teaching of local languages and using them in the media is allowed.…”

“…According to the Iranian Constitution (Article 15) Farsi is recognized as the language of official texts, correspondence, and textbooks but the teaching of local languages and using them in the media is allowed. Therefore, although Farsi is known as the language of national unity, and by some accounts it might have been subject to purist attempts (Marszalek-Kowalewska 2011), the overall policies regarding local varieties are generally supportive (Haddadian-Moghaddam and Meylaerts 2015) and public attitudinal positions towards them are believed to be positive (Ghamari and Hassanzadeh 2010;Safaei Asl 2013). This positive attitude, of course, does not necessarily entail a preference for the use of local varieties in all actual situations of language use which tend to be overshadowed by Farsi (Mirhosseini 2015).…”