Abstract: There are linguistic items in each language, which are indicative of the social characteristics of the interlocutors and their relationship. The choices speakers make among alternative linguistic means to communicate information often communicate important extralinguistic information. This study investigates, the possible effects of some personal characteristics on Hamedani speakers' use of their vernacular. In so doing, it considers how and to what extent an individual's vernacular use is affected by such factors as gender and education level. To attain this goal, the researchers focused on 4 linguistic variables: 2 items indicating local Hamedani accent and 2 items reflecting Hamedani local words. The results of the study show that the speakers gender and education significantly affect their vernacular use. In general, illiterate male speakers revealed the most frequent use of Hamedani vernacular accent and words.

INTRODUCTION

Sociolinguistics is a broad church. Some definitions of sociolinguistics have to do with studying language ‘in society’ or language ‘in its social context’ (Coupland, 2007). Other definitions pay more attention to studying linguistic diversity or language variation. What these simple definitions have in common is that they give priority to language, then add some summary idea of what aspect of language is to be given priority (its variability) or what sort of data is to be given priority (social manifestations of language). Although, most people would agree that using language is an essentially social process, sociolinguists needed to allow for observing language as it is used in real life and for not trusting intuited or fabricated instances of language. According to Coupland (2007), Stressing variability has been important in order to resist the ideological assumption that what matters in language is linguistic uniformity and standardness.

Labov (1994) used the notion of secular linguistics to describe his approach to language variation and change. He maintained that studying variable language forms, ‘non-standard’ as well as ‘standard’ forms, challenge what we might think of as the high priesthood of theoretical linguistics and its reliance on idealized linguistic data. He also questions the belief that ‘standard’ language is more orderly and more worthwhile than ‘non-standard’ language.

The study of linguistic diversity and language variation and change has been the focus of sociolin-guistics for 4 decades. Variationist sociolinguistics, has developed its own powerful principles of theory and method (Chambers, 1995; Labov, 1966, 1972b, 1982, 1994, 2002; Chambers et al., 2004). Variationist sociolinguistics has burgeoned over the last nearly 4 decades as a discipline that incorporates both social and linguistic aspects of language.

According to Tagliamonte (2006), variationist sociolinguistics is most aptly described as the branch of linguistics, which studies the foremost characteristics of language in balance with each other-linguistic structure and social structure; grammatical meaning and social meaning-those properties of language, which require reference to both external (social) and internal (systemic) factors in their explanation.

The essence of variationist sociolinguistics rests on 3 facts about language that are often neglected in the field of linguistics. First, the notion of ‘orderly heterogeneity’ (Weinreich et al., 1968), or what Labov (1972b) refers to as ‘normal’ heterogeneity; 2nd, the fact that language is constantly in a state of flux and 3rd that language conveys more than simply the meaning of its words. It also communicates abundant non-linguistic information.

Heterogeneity is essentially, the belief that language varies. Speakers have >1 way to say more or less the same thing. Variation can be viewed across whole languages, e.g. French, English, Russian, etc. In this case, variation would depend on the choice of one language or the other by bilingual or multilingual speakers.

However, linguistic variation also incorporates an entire continuum of choices ranging from the choice between English or French, for example, to the choice between different constructions, different morphological affixes, through the delicate microlinguistic level where there are subtle differences in the pronunciation of individual vowels and consonants. Importantly, this is the normal state of affairs: the key to a rational understanding of language change-indeed, of language itself-is the possibility of describing orderly differentiation in a language serving a community. It is absence of structural heterogeneity that would be dysfunctional (Weinreich et al., 1968). Moreover, heterogeneity is not random, but patterned. It reflects order and structure within the grammar. Variation analysis aims to uncover and delineate the nature of this complex system.

Language is a dynamic system. The English language today is not the same as it was 100 or 400 years ago. Things have changed. As an example, consider the word ain’t. This word used to be the normal way of doing negation in English. Today, however, it is condemned. Variation analysis aims to put such linguistic features in the context of where each one has come from and where it is going-how and why. Language is not just used for conveying information from one person to another, it is also used to convey information about who the speaker is, what his group loyalties are, how he perceives his relationship to his hearers and what sort of speech event he considers himself to be engaged in.

The only way all these things can be fulfilled at the same time is related to language variation. The choices speakers make among alternative linguistic means to communicate the same information are often significant in that they convey important extralinguistic information. While one can inevitably identify a person’s gender from a piece of their speech, it is often as easy to localize her age and sometimes even her socioeconomic class. Likewise, depending on one’s familiarity with the variety, it can be fairly straightforward to identify nationality, locality, community, etc.

As above, studying language variation is the mainstream of variationist sociolinguistics. As such, it focuses on the study of language varieties. But what is a variety? According to Hudson (1996), a variety of a language is a set of linguistic items with similar distribution. Ferguson (1971) defines a variety as anyone of human speech patterns which is sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements or processes with broad enough semantic scope to function in all normal contexts of communication.

Drawing on the above mentioned definitions, we can call a whole language as a variety. Furthermore, a special kind of linguistic usage associated with a certain area or social group can be considered as a variety. What distinguishes 1 variety from another is the linguistic items that it contains. This allows us to call any of the following a variety; English, London English, French and the language used by a particular individual as a variety.

Most speakers give a name to the variety of language they speak. However, many of them have difficulty deciding whether their variety is a language or a dialect of a language. In fact, language and dialect are ambiguous terms. Language may be used to refer either to a single linguistic norm or to a group of related norms and dialect to refer to one of the norms, but the norms themselves are not static.

Chambers (1995) defines dialect as a form of language or speech used by members of a regional, ethnic, or social group. Dialects that are mutually intelligible belong to the same language. All languages spoken by >1 small homogeneous community are found to comprise 2 or more dialects. Since a dialect is a subordinate variety of a language, if a language is spoken by so few people or it has only 1 variety, language and variety become synonymous. In general usage, however, language and dialect may be used interchangeably. In fact, it is extra linguistic considerations on some political and social factors which determine, which term is used (Wardhaugh, 2005).

There are social as well as regional varieties of a language. The term dialect can be used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. Social dialects originate from social groups and depend upon various factors among which social class, religion and ethnicity are principal. As such, the variety of English spoken by working class, black speakers is absolutely distinct from that of middle classes. However, the way individuals speak varies not only according to their social status, but also according to the context in which communication takes place. Speakers can adopt different styles of speaking.

Wardhaugh (2005) defines style as the distinctive manner in which people express themselves in a particular situation. Therefore, one can speak very informally, depending on the context of language use. The style used in ceremonial occasions is certainly different from conversations between intimate friends. A style of speech which does not entail negative reaction is used on formal occasions and is associated with prestige. This style is considered standard; varieties that do not meet these norms are regarded as nonstandard. The level of formality chosen pertains to a variety of factors: kind of occasion; social class, age and other differences between participants; the particular task involved and emotional involvement of one or more participants (Wardhough, 2005).

Along with social variation, regional variation in the way language is spoken is likely to be one of the most noticeable ways in which, we observe variety in language. If we travel throughout a wide geographical area in which a particular language is spoken, we are likely to notice differences in terms of pronunciation, choice of words and syntax. As we move from one area to another, we may notice some conspicuous local colorings in the way language is spoken. These distinctive varieties are referred to as regional dialects of the language. The social and linguistic reasons for the development of regional differences are complex and by no means thoroughly understood. Such differences are the consequence of language change in different geographical areas.

The 19th century was a particularly good time in the history of the study of regional variation in language. Some very large projects were initiated in Europe, some of which continued to run well into the 20th century. An early and significant example of these was the Altas Linguistique de la France or Alf, as it is commonly called. In this study, the data collection was carried out by a fieldworker, who bicycled all around France stopping in small villages where he interviewed older speakers and asked them what the local word was for a number of vocabulary items and then carefully noted the local pronunciation of different words. He was trained to use a consistent system for transcribing regional pronunciations and at every point in his fieldwork he administered the same questionnaire. This standardization of methods was an important breakthrough as it allowed thorough and reliable comparisons to be made between different localities.

The results of dialect surveys are often plotted on maps, thus providing an atlas which, instead of showing topographical features like mountains and plains, shows how speakers’ pronunciation of words changes as you move across physical space. The distribution of different forms-pronunciations or sentence patterns-can be shown with different symbols superimposed on a map of the region which plots every point surveyed. Regional dialectology is by no means a historical exercise. For example, there are ongoing projects involving the comparison of structures across Germanic languages.

Regional dialectology can also inform theory (Britain, 2003; Meyerhoff, 2006). It can be used to do more than simply documenting where people use one form or another. Quite early on some linguists realized that the level of detail in many of the regional dialect atlases could be used to inform linguistic theory. For instance, Meyerhoff (2006) noticed that in varieties of Swiss there was a consistent relationship between whether or not a dialect centralized its low, short-a vowel and the number of other low vowels in that variety. He noticed that if the variety had a central (a), then it would have both a low front and a low back vowel. But if speakers of one variety had fronted the short-a, then that variety generally did not have another low front vowel. Conversely, if speakers had backed the short-a in any particular variety, then that variety generally did not have another low back vowel, it would only have a mid-back vowel.

Meyerhoff (2006) suggested that the reason for this was that if the short-a vowel fronted there might not be a big enough difference between the way it sounded and the way the other low front vowel might sound and this would lead to speakers confusing words with different meanings. He suggested that speakers prefer to maintain a safe level of differentiation between the phonemes in their language, so if there is change in part of the system they will reorganize the rest of the system so as to keep the distinctions between different words clear. He was able to induce this principle solely from the data on regional dialect maps.

Current study: Persian is a language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan and has official-language status in these 3 countries. Persian language exists in a number of dialects. As one travels throughout such a wide geographical area as Iran where Persian is spoken, he is likely to notice differences in terms of pronunciation, choice of words and syntax.

As we move from one area to another, we may notice some noticeable local colorings in the way this language is spoken: Isfahani, Yazdi, Shirazi, Kermani, Araki, Hamedani, Kashani, etc. These varieties of Persian differ from the standard Persian in a number of ways: word pronunciation and choice and syntax. This study is concerned with Hamedani vernacular; one of the regional variations of Persian spoken in Hamedan province. Hamedani dialect of Persian differs from the standard Persian in terms of pronunciation and choice of words.

As an example, in Hamedani Persian the word unja (there) is pronounced onja, or the word koja (where) is pronounced as kuja. There are many other such pronunciation differences: baraye: beraye (for); nemidunam: nimidanam (I don't know.); pas:pa (therefore) and nakhor: nekhor (Don't eat). Furthermore, this dialect has equivalents for some of the standard Persian words. The word hashtan (to put), for instance, is the Hamedani equivalent of the standard gozashtan; Tuye (inside) has the Hamedani counterpart miane; Milich (sparrow) is the Hamedani alternative for the standard gonjeshk.

The interesting point, however, is that conversing with Hamedanians, one notices a conspicuous difference among them as to the extent to which they use their regional dialect. In other words, not all Hamedani speakers seem to use this vernacular to the same degree. This can be accounted for on the grounds that an individual's speech can be interpreted as an indication of his social identity.

In other words, there are linguistic items in each language, which are indicative of the social characteristics of the speaker, the hearer and their relationship. As Tagliamonte (2006), puts it the choices speakers make among alternative linguistic means to communicate the same information often conveys important extralinguistic information. While you can inevitably identify a person’s sex from a fragment of their speech, it is often nearly as easy to identify her age and sometimes even her socioeconomic class. Further, depending on one’s familiarity with the variety, it can be relatively straightforward to identify nationality, locality, community, etc. In fact, an individual's speech is governed by such factors as context; interlocutor; power relationships; socioeconomic status and gender (Hudson, 1996).

The current study is concerned with investigating the possible effects of some personal characteristics on Hamedani speakers' use of their vernacular. In so doing, it considers how and to what extent an individual's vernacular use is affected by such factors as gender and education level. To attain this goal, the researchers elicited samples of language use by both male and female Hamedani speakers from different educational groups in different situations and on different occasions. The study, therefore, aimed at answering the following research hypotheses:

H₁: Hamedani speakers' local accent use is significantly affected by their gender and educational status.

H₂: Hamedani speakers' vernacular word choice is significantly affected by their gender and educational status.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Participants: Some 148 participants were selected from among the population of Hamedani Persian speakers. All participants were born and raised in Hamedan. They were both male (n = 88) and female (n = 60) and had different educational statuses: illiterate, elementary, secondary and university. To make the sample as representative of the population as possible, the participants were selected from various age groups. Furthermore, they had different socioeconomic backgrounds and resided in different parts of the city Hamedian.

Data collection: In doing sociolinguistic research, data collection is a consideration of overriding importance. Tagliamonte (2006) maintains that the most fundamental challenge for sociolinguistic research is how to obtain appropriate linguistic data to analyze. There are a variety of data collection approaches available to sociolinguists. The investigator's choice as to the appropriate data collection approach, however, is guided by the aims of the research. What good data is depends on the aims of research, as do the methods for collecting such data. Decisions relating to data collection are very important because various contextual factors affect patterns of language use. Consequently, researchers must allow for the fact that the manner in which they approach a speaker will affect the data available for analysis (Milroy and Gordon, 2003).

Traditionally, spontaneous, everyday usage of vernacular by speakers has been the data of primary interest to sociolinguists. However, the status of researchers as community outsiders absolutely limits their ability to gain access to such data. The investigator is faced with the observer’s paradox: we want to observe how people speak when they are not being observed. The problem is made more serious when data analysis needs tape recordings of speech, since many speakers, when recorded by a stranger, will tend to shift away from their casual usage. Sociolinguists have developed a variety of techniques for alleviating the observer’s paradox, or at least for reducing its effects since the problem can never be entirely resolved.

In sociolinguistics research literature a number of different data collection methods have been applied: written questionnaires, surveys, interviews and participant observation. Interviews have traditionally been the most common approach to data collection among sociolinguists. In spite of its popularity, however, the interview offers a rather problematic solution to the needs of data collection. This is particularly true when the researcher seeks natural conversational speech. Much of the difficulty involved in interviewing is due to the fact that an interview in most societies is a clearly defined and quite common speech event to which a formal speech style is appropriate. A rather different type of challenge posed by interviews has to do with the nature of the data they are likely to elicit.

The basic format of the interview may limit the structural characteristics of the data. The formality of the interview may also limit efforts to examine certain variables.

Furthermore, the act of answering questions from an interviewer is likely to affect the use of overtly stigmatized features (e.g., multiple negations in English by). Still another problem particularly associated with data collected by means of interviews is that the effects of speaker correction of socially stigmatized items are often indirect and can also give a misleading impression of phonological structure. Nevertheless, there are steps that can be taken by interviewers to encourage subjects toward more casual speech. All in all, it is important to note that although interviews are not ideal instruments for sampling informal speech styles, they can with some fudging be fruitful in this regard (Milroy and Gordon, 2003).

In this study, the researchers used interview as the data collection instrument. However, in order to alleviate the above mentioned shortcomings associated with this data collection approach, they utilized the strategies suggested by Milroy and Gordon (2003). Such interviewing strategies are basically of 2 types: attempts to influence the content of the interview (Labov, 1972a; Gordon, 2001) and modifications to the dynamics of one-to-one interviewing (Reid, 1978; Edwards, 1986). In order to elicit natural data, the researchers asked questions that bring about such emotional reactions as excitement, anger, or fear. According to Milroy and Gordon (2003), When people are emotionally involved (excited, angry, fearful, etc.) in a discussion, they are more concerned with what they say than with how they say it.

Following this logic, the researchers tried to obtain less self-conscious speech by asking such questions. For example, the researchers put a question which asked the interviewees about situations in which their life had been in danger. Sometimes, however, since some subjects had less eventful lives, attempts to use this technique backfired. In such cases, the researchers shifted to other emotionally involving questions. They were asked questions about a dream that had really scared them, examination experiences, or school memories. The researchers also tried to change the dynamics of the interview away from the one-on-one format in order to facilitate the production of casual speech. This was accomplished by having 2 or more interviewees.

A judgment sampling was done to select interviewees according to such criteria as education and gender. In order to elicit the relevant data the investigators utilized the linguistic variable as the basic conceptual tool. According to Wardhaugh (2005), a linguistic variable is a linguistic item, which has identifiable variants. Variation studies employing linguistic variables may investigate phonological, morphological and lexical matters. In this study, the linguistic variables were Hamedani pronunciation of words and their standard Persian equivalents as well as Hamedani vernacular words and their standard Persian counterparts. More specifically, the researchers elicited data pertaining to the use of Hamedani pronunciation of the standard Persian baraye (for) and koja (where). In Hamedani vernacular the former is pronounced as beraye, while the latter is pronounced as kuja. As for the word choice, they collected data as evidence of speakers' use of some Hamedani vernacular words and their Persian substitutes. In this regard the focus was on the Hamedani hashtan (to put) and its standard gozashtan and also Hamedani esandan (to buy; to take) and the standard kharidan; gereftan.

To collect samples of the variants of the linguistic variables, the investigators asked subjects some questions involving the target linguistic items. The following dialog shows how this was accomplished:

The above question elicited the linguistic variables kuja (where) and hashtan (to put) to see if the interviewee used the vernacular or the standard equivalents for them.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Having collected the data, the researchers put the results to statistical analysis. The SPSS 16.0 was used to tabulate the frequency of the occurrence of the target linguistic variables across the criteria whose effect the researchers wanted to investigate, i.e. participants' gender and educational status. The results were reported in the form of clustered bar graphs.

As the next step the one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was run to test the statistical significance of the observed frequency differences among different groups of speakers.

This procedure was followed to display and analyze data pertaining to all linguistic variables: beraye (for); kuja (where); hashtan (to put) and esandan (to take; to buy).

As shown in Table 1 and 2, there is a statistically significant difference among Hamedani speakers in terms of their vernacular accent use.

Table 1:	Results of one-way ANOVA for linguistic variable beraye (for)

Table 2:	Results of one-way ANOVA for linguistic variable kuja (where)

More specifically, illiterate male speakers seem to use their vernacular accent more often than other groups. Female speakers at the university level, including graduates, postgraduates and undergraduates, on the other hand, evidence the least frequent use of their vernacular accent (Fig. 1 and 2).

This finding highlights the significant effect of education on the vernacular use by speakers. The elicited data display that as participants' level of education increases, so does the male-female contrast in terms of their vernacular accent use. In other words, in the case of illiterates, this male-female contrast is not as sharp as the one for university level speakers. Another piece of data the bar graphs display has to the effect gender exerts on speakers' vernacular use.

As the general pattern of vernacular accent use vividly shows, in all educational groups females tend to use their local accent less often than their male counterparts. All in all, Table 1 and 2 display tangible evidence in support of the hypothesis that speakers' gender and education exerts a conspicuous effect on their vernacular accent use. Consequently, the 1st hypothesis of this study is confirmed; Hamedani speakers' local accent use is significantly affected by their gender and educational status.

To answer the second research hypothesis formulated at the outset of the study (Hamedani speakers' vernacular word choice is significantly affected by their gender and educational status), the researchers followed the same procedure. The obtained data as to the frequency of Hamedani words' use by participants across different groups are reported in Fig. 3 and 4.

In general, male speakers show a more frequent use of their local words. In this case, the most frequent use of Hamedani vernacular words esandan and hashtan is reported by illiterate male speakers, while university level female speakers evidence the least frequent use.

Fig. 1:	Frequency of linguistic variable use: vernacular beraye (for)

Fig. 2:	Frequency of linguistic variable use: vernacular kuja (where)

Fig. 3:	Frequency of linguistic variable use: vernacular hashtan (put)

Fig. 4:	Frequency of linguistic variable use: vernacular esandan (take)

The graphs display a considerable difference among males and female speakers across different groups. However, as the education level increases, this contrast gets sharper and sharper. The results of one way analysis of variance ANOVA confirm the statistical significance of the obtained results. In other words, observed differences are not due to chance. Therefore, the 2nd research hypothesis of the study is also confirmed. In other words, to answer the 2nd research hypothesis formulated at the outset of the study, Hamedani speakers' vernacular word choice is significantly affected by their gender and educational status (Table 3 and 4).

As the results of the study displayed, speakers' use of his vernacular dialect is a function of their gender and educational status. Generally speaking, male speakers use their vernacular accent and words more than females. More specifically, illiterate male speakers seem to use their vernacular dialect of Persian more frequently than other speakers. Their speech tends to show Hamedani vernacular accent and words more frequently than other speakers. Educated (university level) female speakers, on the other hand, evidenced the least frequent vernacular dialect use. They would rather use the standard, prestigious dialect of Persian.

In this regard, it is interesting to note that in the course of data collection, the researchers heard some instances of hypercorrection. To cite an example, when asked a question about her shoolday memories, a female respondent answered Yadame unruz labasamo tu kalas ja gozashte budam… (I remember I had left my clothes in the classroom). In her response, the speaker exhibits 2 cases of hypercorrection: labas (clothes) and kalas (class).

The point is that even in standard Persian these words are pronounced lebas and kelas, respectively. According to Wardhough (2005), this can be attributed to the speaker's desire to move away from the vernacular dialect toward the more standard prestigious one. A further finding of the study pertains to the role of education on speakers' vernacular dialect use. Generally, the higher the speakers' education is, the less their vernacular language use will be. Moreover, educational status tends to further highlight male female differentiation in terms of the frequency of vernacular dialect use. In other words, the male female distinction is sharper at the higher levels of education.

The obtained results can be interpreted in relation to the notion of identity. As mentioned above, language is not only a means of communication. A speakers' speech has much to say about his or her identity. For instance, the way a speaker speaks is an indication of his or her socioeconomic status, age, gender and education.

As for the gender factor, different explanations have been put forward to account for its effects on speakers' speech. Chambers (1995) is of the opinion that women's greater verbal abilities are responsible for male female differences. As such, for Chambers (1995), the differences are sex-based or biological rather than culturally derived or gender-based. Other sociolinguistic explanations, however, have been based on women's supposed greater status consciousness, greater awareness of the social significance of variants and concern for politeness. Therefore, it may be that women are using linguistic means as a way to achieve the status, which has been denied through other outlets. Since women have long been denied equality with men as far as educational and employment opportunities are concerned, these are not reliable indicators of a woman's status or the status she aspires to. In this sense, the use of the standard might be seen as yet another reflection of women's powerlessness in the public sphere.

This interpretation is associated with one of the assumptions made by Lakoff (1975), who considered women's language as the language of powerlessness, a reflection of their subordinate place in relation to men. As for the effect of education on speakers' vernacular use, the observed differences among speakers in terms of their vernacular dialect use can be accounted for on the grounds that education makes for more contact with speakers from other speech communities. This contact can affect the way a speaker speaks.

Furthermore, education results in more exposure to the standard dialect through mass media, colleagues, friends, or institutions where standard, prestigious dialect is mostly used. Thus, it may be deduced that like gender, educational status as an aspect of one's identity, governs the way he speaks, or, in our case, the way he or she uses his or her vernacular dialect.

Table 3:	Results of one way ANOVA for linguistic variable "hashtan" (put)

Table 4:	Results of one-way ANOVA for linguistic variable "esandan" (get)