A Study of Colloquial Language in Jalal Al-e-Ahmad’s Fictions

As the most prominent novelist in contemporary Persian prose, Jalal Ale-Ahmad has had great influence on Persian writers, insofar as many writers have followed his suit. Employment of colloquial language is the characteristic style of his fiction. What makes his different, however, is mainly the employment of colloquialism in a subtle, precise and accurate way. Due to the extensive use of colloquial language in his fictions, this article studies terminologies, phrases and figures  such as metonymy, interjection, onomatopoeia, reduplication,  and also argot and proverb. Having defined these components in his selected works, the authors of this article will put forth some examples and, in multiple tables, illustrate their frequencies. According to a precise examination of his novels, we concluded that among different types of speech, respectively, the metaphoric phrases, argot, assimilation and then reduplication have the highest frequency in Al-e-Ahmad’s prose. He writes in broken Persian to convey the sense of colloquial language in his novels. Substitution and reduction are the most frequent methods he uses when he writes in broken Persian. Interestingly, this frequent colloquial style in his writings has led to a widespread popularity of his novels among the people.