The Analysis of the Position and Usage of Gonabadi Dialect

This study was conducted with the aim of detecting the social status of Gonabadi dialect as one of the oldest dialects of Iran via the analysis of the effect of social parameters like age, education, gender, and urbanity upon the frequency of Gonabadi usage in diverse fields including family, school, art, office, alley and street, and hobby. Our method was field analysis and the recruited instruments included questionnaire and interview. The sampling method was random based on which our statistical society included 240 participants from three age groups of 12 to 17, 25 to 35 and 50 and more were selected proportionally and equally from each gender and from two urban and rural societies. The results demonstrated that Gonabadi was the dominant language of informal fields, specifically, family, though in the more formal fields including school and office, Persian was the dominant language. Also, the propensity to utilize Persian among female, young, educated and urban participants outweighed this tendency in the male, older, uneducated, and rustic counterparts. Hence, on the light of these results, it could be asserted that Gonabadi is undergoing gradual trend of extinction in the realm of great Khorasan.
 
1. Introduction
Language death is regarded as the degeneration of language variety as a result of gradual change toward a dominant language in communicative interactions. In fact, the emergence of this phenomenon creates diaglossia based on which gradually the inferior language is utilized in more restricted contexts paving the way for its gradual death. In doing so, social variables like gender, age and urbanicity would play crucial role. Also, as any dialect is an indispensable aspect of each culture, its death could be regarded as the degeneration of a semio-cultural element. The issue of language death or degeneration would become more serious when we observe that the results of the recent scientific researches corroborate the degeneration of dialects because according to a pessimistic estimate, only 600 languages of the world have the chance to survive during a longer span of time. Henceforth, regarding the importance of Iranian dialects preservations, in this research, via conduction a field study in the city of Gonabad, we tried to investigate the sociolinguistic status of Gonabadi as one of the south western dialects of Iran through analyzing its frequency of usage in different fields and native speakers’ attitudes toward it.
 
2. Theoretic framework
From sociolinguistic perspective, diglossia is a type of standardization based on which two varieties of a language live alongside each playing a crucial function. Fasold (1984) envisages diglossia as a kind of style shifting asserting that when dominant and inferior varieties are mingled, the status of diglosssia would change. Fishman (1967, 1996), introducing his extended theory, emphasizes on the co-existence of standard language and regional dialects pointing out that today standard language has transformed into the common language of bilingual or multilingual societies. So, according to this theory, the regional dialect or language is utilized more in friendly settings like family while formal language like standard Persian is recruited in formal and educational settings. Ricento (2012), proposing social hierarchy of dialects and languages, believes that social hierarchy is imposed by political figures or popular media and in doing so, vernacular tongue gains low social prestige and is utilized extensively in interpersonal and informal interactions. In this hierarchy, there is another variety possessing high social prestige and is utilized more in formal interactions. In societies where social inequality is predominant, the majority of people are incapable of utilizing the standard language. Wurm (2002), proposing language endangerment theory, considers four levels of potentially endangered, endangered, seriously endangered, and completely endangered (death). Nercisance suggests three levels of diglossia in Iran including the co-existence of colloquial with literary Persian, the co-existence of standard Persian with a regional dialect and the co-existence of standard Persian with a regional language.
 
3. Methodology
Our method was field analysis and the recruited instruments included questionnaire and interview. The sampling method was random based on which our statistical society included 240 participants from three age groups of 12 to 17, 25 to 35 and 50 and more, were selected proportionally and equally from each gender and from both urban and rural societies
 
4. Results and Discussion
The results demonstrated that Gonabadi was the dominant language of informal fields, specifically, family, though in the more formal fields including school and office, Persian was the dominant language. Also, the propensity to utilize Persian among female, young, educated and urban participants outweighed this tendency in the male, older, uneducated and rustic counterparts. Hence, on the light of these results, it could be asserted that Gonabadi is undergoing gradual trend of extinction in the realm of great Khorasan.
 
5. Conclusions and Suggestions
The overall performance of the participants in different fields including family, school, office, city, religion, art and amusement is indicative of a close relationship between the social variable of “age” and “Persian usage” with younger participants being more inclined to utilize Persian in these fields than their older counterparts. On the other hand, the important roles of the variables of “gender”, “education”, and “urbanity” in the use of Persian and Gonabadi were corroborated.  Girls’ more robust propensity to utilize Persian than boys leads to the increase of Persian language acquisition in the family context, because girls as future mothers would play pivotal role in language learning of their children. Also, participants with M.A and Ph.D degree had a much stronger propensity to utilize Persian than other individuals. Regarding “urbanity”, our findings demonstrate the more extensive use of Persian language among city inhabitants compared to villiage inhabitants. Concerning the extension of urbanicity in Iran, more robust propensity of city inhabitants to utilize Persian language in their interpersonal interactions, is indicative of a gradual erosion and death of Gonabadi dialect.
    Furthermore, the positive attitudes of most speakers toward the use of Persian language, demonstrates that Gonabadi is losing its social status as the frank attitude of the speakers about the gradual erosion of this dialect indicated a vivid language change.
    Since languages and dialects comprehensively foreshadow the culture of each country and play a pivotal role in the representation of the customs, traditions and social events of each nation, any attempt to preserve Gonabadi inheriting the linguistic properties of Classical Persian, could also be regarded as an attempt to preserve the enriched treasure of Persian language.  
 
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