Modern Spoken Persian in Contemporary Iranian Novels

What can the presence of spoken Persian forms in literature tell about the future of the language?

One of the characteristic features of the linguistic situation of contemporary Iran is the coexistence of two standards of Modern Persian: the written and the spoken. While literature is generally composed in the written variety, the typically spoken forms are also to be found in the literary text. Modern spoken Persian in Contemporary Iranian Novels is a study of these. A scrutinous analysis of five carefully selected novels with methods drawing mostly from the register analysis seeks answers to questions such as: what features are characteristic to the spoken variety of language, how are they woven into the literary language, does the relationship between spoken and written registers change over time and how can this process affect the future development of Persian language?

Auteur
Katarzyna Wsala, PhD, is a research assistant at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Her interests include Persian linguistics, modern Persian poetry and translation.