One of the most commonly mentioned features of informal spoken Iranian Persian in contrast to its formal or written form is the pronunciation of /ān/ as [un], as in [tehrun] ‘Tehran’, and [iruni] ‘Iranian’. While several aspects of this phenomenon have been reported, a comprehensive treatment of the dialectal, sociolinguistic, phonological and phonetic aspects has not appeared. This paper attem...

Abstract Variationist sociolinguists have now collectively spent decades gathering vernacular language data, enriching linguistic theory through detailed empirical analysis. What the field is yet to offer are reflective accounts of how partnership with communities and participatory research models can begin decolonise field. In this paper we reflect on Indigenous‐led fieldwork that allowed us d...

Abstract This paper engages with the notion of shibboleth, an indexically loaded, usually referentially indifferent set (ideologically constructed) minimal pairs that is used in order to mark and perform social differentiation. We argue shibboleth be considered interpretive (metapragmatic) phenomenon operates on different sociolinguistic scales, notably discursive scale (ideologies communicatio...