Title: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Metathesis in Persian
Review of literature shows that metathesis, as a phonological process, has not been studied from a sociolinguistic perspective to date. Thus, in order to make a contribution to the field of sociolinguistics the present study seeks to investigate the relationship between extralinguistic parameters such as sex, age, and social class and the use of 'metathesis' in modern Persian. Along these lines, data were elicited from four socioeconomically different groups of Persian speakers in Tehran. The statistical analyses of the data indicate that there is a close correlation between sociolinguistic variables and the use of 'metathesis' in Persian.
Key Words: sociolinguistics, phonological processes, metathesis, modern Persian