Iranian Languages

The research in Iranian languages at the Department of Linguistics and Philology falls in a number of areas:

• Linguistics-oriented scholarship involves corpus-based studies of the grammar of classical and modern Persian and other Modern Iranian languages, in particular Balochi, Bashkardi, Mazandarani, Tajik and Wakhi. The analysis has been concerned with phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics.
• Sociolinguistic studies focus on language standardization and orthography development, conversation analysis, bilingual conversation strategies, and language, identity and modernity in a larger socio-political context. Persian, Kumzari, Bakhtiari, and Balochi are among the languages which have been studies. We also do research on minority language rights in Iran, Persian as a second language, as well as the role of Persian in Sweden.
• Literature studies investigate exile literature and theories about the role of literature in identity-building from social, ethnic, and gender perspectives. There is also research on classical Persian and Kurdish literature, as well as on modern literature in Persian, Kurdish and Pashto. Several Iranian languages have a strong oral tradition: Storytelling has been studied by means of corpus-based methods.
• Text edition is another activity in the subject, especially of classical Persian works in the disciplines of Sufi poetry, history and musicology. Among the manuscripts which have been published are Misbâḥ ul-arvâḥ, Vîs u Râmîn, a Zoroastrian-Persian version of Ardây-Vîrâf nâme, Shams ul-aṣvāt and Moḥîṭ ul-tavârix.
• Translation and translation theory is another theme: A number of translations of literary works from Persian, Kurdish and Pashto into Swedish have been published. Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh’s book Yeki bud, yeki nabud, a groundbreaking work in modern Persian literature, is one of these works. Other authors are Mahmud Dowlatabadi and a number of Afghan and Kurdish writers. A new translation of Sa'di’s Golestan is also underway.