2 At the Crossroads: Caspian Languages through a Sociolinguistic Lens

Abstract

Gilaki and Mazandarani, as well as Central Caspian, constitute the Caspian family of languages - spoken in a continuum along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea by more than five million people. While these languages have not developed standard written forms, they all enjoy a rich oral literature. This chapter tackles selected topics in Caspian sociolinguistics that remain understudied by scholars. They include a range of issues: the presence of Gilaki and Mazandarani in Persian media and cinema; attitudes toward these minority languages within the national context; ethnolinguistic identities as expressed by Caspian writers and poets; Gilaki and Mazandarani Wikipedias as major online platforms to express ethnic identities of younger speakers; and language loss, not only in absolute terms, but also regarding lexical obsolescence due to a paradigm shift in the era of globalization. We identify contributing factors relating to the coexistence of the Caspian and Persian languages as compared with the situation of other minority languages in contemporary Iran.

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