A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change of Television News Broadcasting in Iran

Sociolinguistics is descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society including: cultural norms, expectations and context on the way language is used and the effects of language use on society. One of the aspects sociolinguistics focuses on is the effect of the society on the language. Any change in the important aspects of social structure and function - social organization - is likely to have a distinctive role in language change. Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic and political pressures. However, a language can change dramatically if enough users alter the way they speak it and Iranian speakers are not exception to this. Every generation brings about its specific type of language, which has its own effect on a variety of social aspects, most importantly on Mass Media and Electronic Media specifically on Television. The process of change for Iranian media has been particularly explosive in the first three decades of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the aim of the current study is to investigate the reasons behind the language change of News Media in Iran and the attitudes of the Iranian people towards these changes. The results obtained from both the qualitative and quantitative data analysis of the questionnaires, distributed among 150 participants from different regions and generations, and interviews, taken of the 60 selected the participants, showed that 53% were for, 28% were opposed to and 10% were neutral toward the changes in the language of the News Media in Iran.