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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1325

Part of Session 177: Field methods in multicultural megacities (Other abstracts in this session)

Looking from the other side: Comparing Tehran, Paris, and Barcelona

Authors: Adli, Aria
Submitted by: Adli, Aria (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)

This paper outlines the methodology of a cross-cultural, sociolinguistic project carried out in the last years in Tehran, Paris, and Barcelona.

One common denominator of many megacities in the world is their multicultural and multilingual character. However, the linguistic situation differs from place to place. For example, one salient aspect of the linguistic situation in Barcelona is the Spanish-Catalan language conflict. By contrast, language conflicts are less palpable in Tehran, where Farsi is accepted as official language (although it is not the first language spoken at home for at least half of the population). Paris, in turn, differs from Tehran and Barcelona, because the non-native speakers of the official language (French) are usually immigrants from other countries. We therefore adapted our strategy of data collection to the respective local situation: While we worked with monolinguals of French and Farsi (or bilinguals whose French or Farsi was the dominant language), we carefully selected balanced bilinguals of Catalan and Spanish in Barcelona.

A major challenge of this research has been the approach to social class, because the social structures (or, more precisely, the ways of constructing and reconstructing social inequality) are different in each society. First, the economic situation of the household as a whole is given more weight in Tehran than in Paris and Barcelona. Second, the lifestyle variable, used in all three cities as an indicator of the subjective side of social structure, cannot be applied in the same way. While the main dimensions are comparable at an abstract level at all three places (leisure, clothing, media preference, values), the concrete operationalization is very different. For example, the specific semiotics of the style of headgear is taken seriously in Tehran. Likewise, the attitudes towards national or regional identity are investigated in more detail in Barcelona. Finally, we applied two international classifications, one for the level of education (UNESCO, 2006) and one for the socio-professional categories (ILO, 2008), which ensures a certain level of comparability.

In order to illustrate these challenges and our ways to deal with them, we present some results of a cross-cultural variationist study on optional subject pronoun use conducted with 40 speakers of each of the languages Persian, French, and Spanish. We analyzed the contrast between null and overt subject pronouns in Persian and Spanish (Haeri, 1989; Otheguy et al., 2007), and the analogous phenomenon of simple pronouns vs. pronominal doubling in French (Coveney, 2005). Our interpretation of the results of the interview data is that the subjective and objective side of social structure have different weights in the three cities – a result discussed in the light of social theory (Bourdieu, 1984).

In conclusion we will argue that the development of methods of cross-cultural sociolinguistics will not only teach us strategies for comparing results obtained in different societies, but also give us tools that are useful in the study of the multicultural microcosm of a single megacity.