The Roles of Age and Gender in Applying Proverbs and Expressions in Daily Conversations of Shirazians

Abstract

Change and transformation are the basic characteristics of languages. Each community incorporates different generations with different ideologies toward life and obviously use different dialects. The difference in dialects among different generations in Iran is so drastic that it seems people speak different languages. This research has attempted to study the amount of applying proverbs and expressions in different age-groups of the society. Therefore, two groups of 24 respondents were randomly selected from both male and female as the statistical population so that investigating age and sex factors in the type and amount of applying proverbs and expressions in the daily conversations become possible. All participants were interviewed individually and their sentences were transcribed accurately. By counting the number of proverbs and expressions in the sentences of Middle-aged and teenager groups, and also by counting the male and female participants, and considering their Expression Density; i.e., the proportion of the number of proverbs and expressions to the total number of the words of each sentence, and by using the method of inferential non-parametric statistics, these results have been achieved:    1.The Middle-aged Group use more proverbs and expressions than teenagers. Perhaps, because they are more familiar with the culture and literature, and they are much more aware of the delicacies of language and literature. 2.Teenagers also use proverbs and expressions; however, these are of the type of words which were inserted suddenly into the lexicon of the society through printed matters or media and cyber networks. 3.Moreover, men totally use more proverbs and expressions than women in their daily conversations.