Investigating the Effect of Social Variables on Speech Variation: Social Class, Solidarity, and Power

Abstract

The study presented here was conducted first, to classify speech based on functional effects by using the theory of speech act [1] as well as Brown and Levinson`s politeness theory [2], and to see the effects of social class, power, and solidarity on variations observed within Persian speech. The data for the study constituted the entire conversations among the main characters of the movie called “A Separation”. They included Nader, Simin, Termeh, Hojat, Raziye, and the Judge. The procedures involved first, transcribing the conversations between the characters of the movie, next, Brown and Levinson`s politeness theory as well as Austin`s speech act theory were applied in order to categorize the data and to examine how successfully our data could be classified based on their model. Then, the effects of social class, Power, and solidarity on speech variations were examined for discovering how social variables create variation in Persian Language. The findings revealed that first, utterances could be classified based on both Brown and Levinson`s politeness theory and Austin`s speech act theory. Second, social class, solidarity and power create variations in Persian. Social class raises the politeness degree of speech, while solidarity and power decrease the degree of politeness.