Reverse Addressing in Modern Persian

Reverse addressing is an interesting realization of kinship terms in interactive, face to face communication. This descriptive study was proposed to examine the use of family address pronouns in Iran as a function of the classical sociological parameters of age, sex, and social distance. It investigated various aspects of reverse addressing as a vernacular phenomenon. Data were reported from the spontaneous productions of 7 Persian natives of varying ages and genders, using record examination. Representative examples were extracted from the corpus to provide a thick description of this underexplored phenomenon. The occurrence of the same phenomenon in vernacular variety of other languages is also reported throughout the study just to point out that, though not universal, this is not a unique feature of modern Persian. However, this is not a substantial report since it is such a broad topic that cannot be fully discussed within the scope of this study.