Occupation and its Effects on Vowel Harmony in Persian (A Socio-Linguistic Study)

The data of the present article was collected through a randomly classified data collection process, Labovian sociolinguistic interviews; the data, then, was analyzed through the Pearson Chi-square method by means of SPSS. The data was described through cross tabulations and diagrams as well. In addition, the multivariate log linear (factorial analysis) has been conducted to determine which of the independent variables under study affects the use of vowel harmony more than the other, the occupation or style. A total of 95 informants were interviewed: there are four groups of informants with different occupations (35 sellers, 35 university professors, 10 university students, and 15 IRIB employees). The subjects’ speech has been examined in different styles (Free Speech (FS), Reading Sentences (RS), Fast Word Reading (FWR) and Slow Word Reading (SWR)).The hypothesis of the present survey research is that there is a significant difference between and among different groups of informants’ accents regarding their use of vowel harmony.