Reminiscent of the Persian Empireâone of the worldâs oldest civilizations and superpowers with three millennia of written history and rich cultural, religious, and linguistic diversityâcontemporary Iran could be viewed as a âparadiseâ for sociolinguistic research. This book aims to open the gates to this paradise, at least ajar, by addressing some relevant and important sociolinguistic questions. What characterizes this book is its focus on sociolinguistic phenomena as situated in over a century-long history of the politicization of language and ethnicity and the more recent phenomena of globalization, immigration, and mobility. This volume aligns the research of scholars from a range of specialties who focus on the cutting-edge topics of language policy, ethnic and heritage language maintenance, and ethnic, national, and transnational identities. These under-researched issues are relevant and important in the context of Iran due to their interconnection with governmental policies, public discourses, and pedagogical practices, on the one hand, and sociopolitical and economic conditions encouraging immigrations of the young in recent years, on the other. Focusing on the politics of language in contemporary Iran, the book first examines minority language speakersâ linguistic attitudes and practices with respect to their ethnic language and Persian in a number of domains. To illustrate, Azerbaijani and Kurdish communities, as the largest ethnic populations after Persians, have been placed under scrutiny. Needless to say, given the complexity of issues revolving around minority communities, on the one hand, and focusing on only two communities leaving many others out, on the other, the book scratches only the surface. Nonetheless, the book contributes to sociolinguistic studies in Iran by opening a window to study a number of under-researched areas of inquiry in the field, such as language shift, family language policy, and linguistic landscapes, through a range of methodological approaches.
The book then focuses on Iranians in the diaspora and the issues of heritage language maintenance, community schools, and ethnic, national, and transnational identity in the era of globalization and transnational mobility. The chapters dealing with these issues in a number of countries in Australasia, Europe, and North America tell us not just generally about transnationalism, but more specifically about how individualsâ experience of living in the specific sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and historical context of Iran manifests itself in the diaspora. These studies show that in examining diasporic populations it is fruitful to explore not only the new conditions in the host country and their impact on the migrants, but also the migrantsâ past experience at home. Each of the chapters raises nuanced issues regarding the complexities of Iraniansâ life in the diaspora.
In order to help the reader to better grasp the discussions and arguments in the following chapters, in what follows, a brief account of the countryâs sociopolitical upheavals and shifts in its political philosophy as well as its language regimes from 1796 to date are presented. Needless to say, the following accounts are brief and simplistic, and they make no pretense of providing a thorough and all-inclusive synopsis of the countryâs history over the past decades. Nonetheless, they help situate the studies in the history of the politicization of language and ethnicity, and the concomitant outcomes, challenges, and consequences over the past two centuries.
The Qajar Dynasty (1796â1925): Introducing Modernization
Similar to the global trends in nationalism and modernization (Sulzbach, 1943), a glance at the history of Iran also suggests that it was in the late eighteenth century that the rulers began to realize the role language could play in nation-building and modernization. This means that those who began to rule new subjects through conquest or peaceful annexation before the eighteenth century did not make any particular attempts to suppress or promote a language for political purposes. For example, when the Arabsâ invasion in the seventh century brought the Sassanidsâ rule to an end, and introduced Islam and its language, Arabic, to the peoples, the existing languages managed to survive this contact. Persian, in particular, notwithstanding the fundamental changes made in the lexicon and the writing system of the language, not only survived the contact but also used the Arabic influence to its advantage and flourished its high literature (Arasteh, 1962; Dabashi, 2012; Kia, 2016; Ostler, 2010).
Similarly, for Turks, who ruled the country for several centuries, language did not appear to be an issue that ideologically concerned them. Although it might have been expected that the ruling dynasties who spoke mutually intelligible Turkic languages would have brought a new lingua franca to the region, that did not take place (Ostler, 2010). Instead, these groups adopted the New Persian language as their idiom for government and cultural aspirations, and Islam as their religion. As a result, âTurkic was spoken among the dominant tribe, but the Persian language, and the urban culture that came with it, was accepted as the standard of civilized life, and the mother tongue of the Turks was largely overlooked as a basis for a written literatureâ (Ostler, 2010, p. 71). This approach to Turkic, Persian, and Arabic languages was particularly reflected in the Safavid Dynasty (1502â1736), founded by King Ismail, who was able to restore internal order in Iran after the sociopolitical turmoil and genocide caused by the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth and Timur in the fourteenth century (Kia, 2016; Riazi, 2005). Despite being Turks and speaking some form of Turkic, especially with their military colleagues, both Persian and Turkic continued to be the languages of their governments and literatures (Jackson & Lockhart, 1986). Persian remained to function as the lingua franca of eastern Islamdom for many centuries, and even, for some time, functioned as the commercial and administrative language under the British East India Company (Ostler, 2010). Yet, Turkic languages continued to be major languages in Iran as the Qajars, also a Turkic-speaking tribal confederation, conquered the country piece by piece in the 1780â1790s after a long dark period in Iranian history, replete with sociopolitical turmoil, marauding, and pillage. Having established his capital in Tehran in 1786, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar was formally crowned as Shah in 1796. The Qajar dynasty proceeded to reign for more than a century (Asgharzadeh, 2007; Katouzian, 2009; Perry, 1982).
The country witnessed many distinctive unprecedented developments during the Qajar period. The most important one of these was the gradual influence of the West which had begun to dominate the political, economic, and social life of the country, causing the Iranians to awake to the potential threats facing the independence of their country (Nezam-Mafi, 2012). In particular, before the nineteenth century, when conflicts between Russia and the then Persia over control of the Caucasus broke out, most of the Caucasus including the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan was part of Persia. Persia was defeated in military campaigns, leading to signing the 1813 Gulistan Treaty and ceding a large part of the Caucasus to Russia. Persia was later defeated in another major confrontation which erupted in 1825. The war was concluded this time by the 1828 Turkmenchay Treaty between Russia (and later the Soviet Union) and Persia. As a result, Persia ceded to Russia control of several areas of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan, splitting Azerbaijani people and lands along the Araxes River (aka Araz River in Azerbaijani, and Aras in Persian) (Shaffer, 2002, 2004). Similarly, the British, who had been in the Persian Gulf since the eighteenth century, began to force the Qajars to relinquish Herat, and imposed on them the Treaty of Paris (1857). The treaties led to the establishment of the borders that have endured more or less intact into the contemporary age (Abrahamian, 2008).
Although the humiliating defeats in the military conflicts with Russia and Britain resulted in losing several areas of the country, they could be considered educative in that they led to the introduction of modern techniques of warfare, modern technology and, above all, the European systems of law and government (Katouzian, 2009). Having learned their lessons, the Qajar rulers began to gradually introduce the modern system of education into the country, bringing about far-reaching sociopolitical, historical, and linguistic influences in the following years. In 1841, Mohammad Shah Qajar, for instance, in the hope of bringing modern education to the nation, issued an edict that allowed Christian missionaries from all denominations to open schools in the country. By doing so, foreign languages, English and French in particular, gained a foothold in the country (Borjian, 2013). The Western development and progress was later reflected in the foundation of Dar ul-Funun (Abode of Skills) in 1852 and its European faculty, whose mission was to train âsons of nobility for public service.â By 1900, it had turned into a fully fledged polytechnic with more than 350 students, some of whom received scholarships to study in Europe (Abrahamian, 2008, p. 39; Arasteh, 1962). As Abrahamian (1982) reports, four other secondary schools later opened in Tehran, Tabriz, and Isfahan, as well as five new colleges affiliated with Dar ul-Fununâtwo military colleges and schools of agriculture, political science, and foreign languages. Further, the Government Printing Office published more than 160 books ranging from abbreviated translations of Western classics such as Defoeâs Robinson Crusoe, Dumasâ Three Musketeers, and Verneâs Around the World in Eighty Days, to Descartesâ Discourses, Newtonâs Principia, and Darwinâs Origin of the Species, 20 biographies of world-famous figuresâincluding those of Louis XIV, Napoleon, Peter the Great, Nicholas I, Frederick the Great, and Wilhelm I; and, most significant of all, 10 histories of Iran, including pre-Islamic Iran, written mostly by Europeans. Meanwhile, Iranian private entrepre...