The Significance of Education and Gender in Persian Word-selection

This study strives to investigate the importance of ‘education’ and ‘gender’, as two major sociolinguistic variables, in accepting or rejecting the words coined by the Iranian Academy of Persian Language and Literature (APLL). A total of 500 students from state universities in Tehran were chosen as subjects and provided with a questionnaire consisting of 50 APLL equivalents. The respondents’ acceptance of the first 25 words correlated with the extent to which these words are used in newspapers and magazines; however, the second 25 equivalents were treated differently. Close to half of the Undergraduates and Masters and only a little more than half of the PhD students accepted the equivalents. The results showed no significant relationship between education and the acceptance and rejection of the APLL words; however, there was a significant relationship between respondents’ parents’ education and the acceptance and rejection of the APLL words. Although, males tended to be slightly more accepting than females who were split 50:50, there was no significant relationship between gender and the acceptance and rejection of the APLL words. The respondents preferred words which had only a single equivalent.