International Multilingual Research Journal

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Globalization, linguistic markets, and nuanced

identity performances: Farsi-English code-
switching in Iran

Taraneh Sanei

To cite this article: Taraneh Sanei (2022): Globalization, linguistic markets, and nuanced identity
performances: Farsi-English code-switching in Iran, International Multilingual Research Journal,
DOI: 10.1080/19313152.2021.2009157

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2021.2009157

Published online: 31 Jan 2022.

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INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL
https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2021.2009157

Globalization, linguistic markets, and nuanced identity

performances: Farsi-English code-switching in Iran
Taraneh Sanei
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper explores the impact of globalization, and the consequent re-ordering
of indexicalities associated with different languages and linguistic practices, on
the sociolinguistic repertoires and behaviors of Farsi-English bilingual Iranians in KEYWORDS
Globalization;
Iran. I focus on the participants’ Farsi-English Code-switching (CS) practices and
Multilingualism; Identity;
their positionings toward CS in naturally-occurring conversations to examine Code-switching; Farsi/
how they use CS in their differentiation patterns and identity performances. Persian; English
Drawing on ethnographically-grounded discourse analysis, I demonstrate the
speakers’ resort to newer, more nuanced differentiation patterns on the basis of
phonology in Farsi-English CS practices. I argue that the recent visibility and wide
accessibility of English in Iran through globalization, especially the Internet, has
led speakers to states of anxiety to secure their profit of distinction. I elaborate
on how, in the new re-ordered linguistic market, speakers take up CS with
English phonological preservation, and the “authenticity” of the preservation,
as the main resource with which they fulfill acts of differentiation and perform
their (upper)middle-classness and/or elite status. The study has implications for
the scholarship on CS and globalization as it calls for more nuanced and dynamic
approaches towards CS and highlights the significance of investigating the
impact of globalization on the everyday sociolinguistic practices of an under­
studied community. (Globalization, linguistic markets, indexicality, Farsi-English
code-switching, identity performance).

Introduction
Globalization, mobility, and technological affordances have led many scholars to shift their focus
from investigating language-in-place to exploring language-in-motion, a paradigm Blommaert
refers to as the Sociolinguistics of mobility (Blommaert, 2010). Within this paradigm, the impact of
globalization on people’s linguistic resources, repertoires, and identity construction processes is
closely examined to account for the dynamicity, unpredictability, and complexity of multilingual
identification practices. One particular sociolinguistic practice that has long been of interest to
researchers and has also enjoyed much attention in the era of globalization and mobility, is Code-
Switching (Henceforth CS) and how multilingual speakers draw on their linguistic resources to
perform acts of identity in interaction (For a review, see Hall & Nilep, 2015). Specifically, recent
scholarship on globalization has explored the ways in which the indexical values associated with
specific languages and linguistic resources change, or shift, as they move from one context to
another, and how this shifting has complexified people’s repertoires and linguistic patterns
(Blommaert, 2010; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Hall, 2014; Rubdy & Alsagoff, 2013). In this
paper, through examining data from Farsi-English bilingual Iranians in Iran, I illustrate that in
the context of globalization and due to the shifting of indexicalities associated with different
forms of English language and Farsi-English CS, it is the CS phonology, an aspect of CS not yet

CONTACT Taraneh Sanei tsanei2@illinois.edu University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 4080 Foreign Languages
Building, 707 S. Matthews Ave. MC-168, Urbana, IL 61801
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 T. SANEI

thoroughly addressed in CS research, that has become an increasingly important resource that the
speakers utilize to index and perform specific identities (cf. Chun, 2017; Rosa, 2014). As such,
I ultimately argue for more detailed and multi-layered approaches to CS, ones that take into
account the dynamics of indexicalities, social actors, and contexts at a variety of scales.
With the increased mobility of people and resources in the era of globalization, the dynamicity
of the notion of indexicality is at its highest visibility. Indexicality is known as a process by which
signs, linguistic forms included, get linked to social meaning through semiosis (Silverstein, 1976,
1985). Indexicalities, which are at play in all identification performance, are structured and
ordered; and these “orders of indexicality” (Blommaert, 2005, 2007a; see also Silverstein’s (2003)
notion of “indexical order”) are subject to change and re-organization as one moves from one
context to another. Highlighting the dynamicity of indexicality, Hall (2014) discusses the impor­
tance of exploring how “indexical dissonance materializes in the ever shifting back and forth of
interaction” (p. 269) and calls for attention towards the consequences of mobility and shifting
indexicalities. More specifically, she discusses work that investigates the ways in which globaliza­
tion and mobility have led transnational subjects to states of anxiety as they face semiotic
instability and dissonance “in the global economy’s shifting terrain of indexical relations”
(p. 261). Focusing on the local, rather than diasporic, context of Iran amidst the flows of
globalization processes, I argue that, similar to Hall’s emphasis on the dynamicity of indexicalities,
the recent visibility of English in Iran, especially through the use of Internet and social media, has
led the indexicality of Farsi-English CS, as a differentiation function in identity performance (see
Karimzad, 2018a), to move beyond the lexical level and incorporate the phonological one. That is,
due to the current vast accessibility of English linguistic and cultural resources in Iran and the
resulting “unmarkedness” of the act of switching from Farsi to English, it is the phonology of CS
words that the speakers capitalize on to fulfill the function of differentiation, evaluate others and
their practices, and perform certain identities. To be more specific, I show through my data that
a switch accompanied with English phonology, what I will refer to as CS with phonological
preservation, activates one set of indexical construals while a switch with Farsi phonology, what
I will refer to as CS with phonological adaptation, activates another. Moreover, by investigating
the speakers’ attitudes and positionings towards CS and CS phonology, I also illustrate the ways in
which they exploit these indexical readings to perform and negotiate their global, elite, and/or
(upper)middle-class identities and evaluate others’. Therefore, I suggest that in the new and
constantly re-ordering linguistic scene in Iran social actors develop a hyper-sensitivity towards
the phonological, rather than lexical, level of CS. To complexify matters even more, I demonstrate
that, for some speakers not the phonological preservation alone but the “authenticity” of the
manner of preservation while switching becomes another resource for differentiation and identity
performance.
The findings of this study underscore the importance of examining the consequences of shifting
indexicalities not only in the transnational diasporic contexts but also in the geographically local
contexts that are undergoing radical change through globalization. Specifically, the study points to
the anxieties that social actors experience at the geographically local, but sociolinguistically translo­
cal, level of Iran that take the shape of class and/or elite anxieties. It is these feelings of instability,
triggered by the re-ordered linguistic scene in Iran, that pushes the speakers to states of hyper-
awareness making them resort to nuanced acts of differentiation. This heightened metalinguistic
awareness manifests in how the speakers take the act of phonological preservation and its authen­
ticity to secure their profit of distinction and acquire symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991). The paper,
then, contributes to the CS and globalization scholarship as it offers a more complex account of the
dynamics of CS practices in the context of globalization and shifting indexicalities. Finally, given that
the CS scholarship in Iran has been almost exclusively focused on CS practices in EFL (English as
a Foreign Language) classrooms (e.g. Momenian & Samar, 2011; Rezvani, Street, & Rasekh, 2011),
this study helps gain insight into how globalization has impacted and continues to impact Iranians’
sociolinguistic practices in their everyday lives and beyond the EFL classroom.
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 3

Mobility, shifting indexicalities, and CS practices

Viewing discourse as a symbolic asset Bourdieu (1977, 1991) puts forth the idea of language as an
economic resource with an exchange value, or price, which is determined by the structure and the
dynamics of what he refers to as the linguistic market. This market is characterized by specific laws of
price formation that are shaped and informed by “the relation of power that is concretely established
between the speakers’ linguistic competences” (p. 67). In such a market, different languages,
language varieties, and linguistic practices come to carry a differential indexical social value com­
pared to one another. Thus, the speakers who have had access to “higher-valued” resources and have
acquired a higher linguistic capital, accumulate higher symbolic capital and therefore enjoy higher
social value and power (e.g. the speakers of “standard” language). Bourdieu further points to how
speakers’ linguistic production is guided by their sensitivity to the price formation laws in a specific
linguistic market in order to gain the profit of distinction and specifically brings up bilingualism and
code-switching as situations and practices where one can observe this sensitivity playing out in the
speakers’ behavior (For more discussions on linguistic marketplace see also Irvine, 1989; Woolard,
1985).
Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic marketplace and capital has been of particular interest in recent
work in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology as scholars apply them in their studies con­
cerning language commodification and language as commodity in the context of globalization and
global economy (see for example Heller, 2003, 2010; Park, 2011; Park & Lo, 2012; Park & Wee, 2012;
Vandenbroucke, 2016). The era of globalization, characterized by increased mobility and complexity,
has impacted and continues to impact people’s repertoires and linguistic patterns (Blommaert, 2003,
2010; Coupland, 2010; Jacquemet, 2005, 2016). Blommaert (2010) emphasizes the importance of
investigating sociolinguistic phenomena in this era as “developing at several different scale-levels,
where different orders of indexicality dominate, resulting in a polycentric ‘context’” (p. 42). In this
polycentric context, the linguistic markets change faster than ever before, resulting in a re-ordering
of indexicalities and new price formation rules. In fact, Blommaert points out that while the
Bourdieusian symbolic marketplace was “a local and relatively closed one” in which “patterns of
value attribution and the logic of the economic game were clear to most of the people involved in the
transactions” (p. 28), in the context of globalization and as the linguistic resources get inserted into
patterns of mobility, they might acquire new function, value, and ownership. With the shift in
indexicalities and the recalibration of the values associated with specific practices then, social actors
find themselves in states of anxiety to adjust their practices to the new rules in order to maximize
their profit of distinction. Thus, faced with feelings of uncertainty and in search of semiotic stability,
the speakers go beyond the sensitivity to the laws of price formation that Bourdieu (1991) talks
about, and become hyper-attentive towards the (shifting) indexical relations of resources (see Hall,
2014).
In this climate of changing indexicalities and the constant (re-)issuing of rules of price formation
in the local and global linguistic markets, CS patterns provide scholars with rich data to explore how
social actors make sense of, and adjust to, the new linguistic markets through their sociolinguistic
practices. CS has long been at the center of many sociolinguistic studies investigating identity and
social interaction (Auer, 1998, 2005; Bhatt & Bolonyai, 2011; Blom & Gumperz, 1972; Gal, 1989;
Gumperz, 1982; Lo, 1999; Myers-Scotton, 1983, 1993). As a meaning-making social practice, CS
provides the speakers with the tools to fulfil a variety of different symbolic functions (e.g. differ­
entiation, affiliation, etc.) in their identity performances. Indeed, Hall and Nilep (2015) highlight the
significant reliance of the theorization of CS on the theorization of identity. The study of CS and
identity in the context of globalization and mobility has been of particular interest in sociolinguistic
scholarship. Many researchers have focused on how the intensified mobility and language contact in
the era of globalization has impacted the ways speakers use their multilingual resources to enact
a variety of identities in interaction (e.g. Bhatt, 2008; Chan, 2009; Davies & Bentahila, 2006; Minning,
2004; Si, 2011; Warschauer, Said, & Zohry, 2002). In many cases, we observe that the semiotic
4 T. SANEI

mobility, that is at the center of globalization, has complexified CS patterns as a switch from one
language to another may no longer grant the speakers the profit of distinction due to the change in
the linguistic market. Studying speakers’ CS patterns through which they perform a wide array of
identities in contexts of mobility, then, helps us understand the agentive strategies they use to
navigate the new markets to earn, or maintain, their profit of distinction.
While most of the studies on Farsi-English CS have adopted a structural approach to studying CS
rather than a sociofunctional one (e.g. Kim & Rezaeian, 2009; Mahootian & Santorini, 1996), there
have been a few studies with a sociolinguistic approach towards Farsi-English CS. A majority of
these, however, were concerned with CS in EFL classrooms rather than in people’s everyday practices
(e.g. Momenian & Samar, 2011; Noorbar & Mamaghani, 2016; Rezvani et al., 2011). Particularly
relevant to this study is Karimzad’s (2018a) investigation of the CS practices of Azeri-Farsi-English
speaking Iranian Azerbaijanis in Iran and in the US. Examining the CS patterns in the context of
mobility and transnationalism, Karimzad illustrates how the change in the indexical values asso­
ciated with the speakers’ different languages, as a result of mobility and migration, leads to
differences in CS patterns of speakers in the diasporic community compared to those in Iran.
Specifically, he maintains that in the indigenous context, the CS practice that yields the speakers
the profit of distinction is the one that fulfills the differentiation function through a switch from
Azeri to English or Farsi (i.e. the prestige languages) while in diaspora, due to the experience of
marginality, the profit is gained through performing acts of solidarity with fellow Iranian
Azerbaijanis by switching From Farsi or English to Azeri. While Karimzad’s investigation of the
impact of globalization on Iranian Azerbaijanis’ CS patterns was focused on the context of migra­
tion, I focus in this study on the local context of Iran and how the CS patterns and identification
practices of Iranians within Iran have been impacted by the shifting indexicalities brought about by
globalization flows, focusing specifically on the increasing value associated with CS phonology in
their identification patterns.
Before moving on to the specific context of this study, I would like to note that I follow Hall and
Nilep (2015) in using CS in the broader sense of the term, encompassing several types of language
alternation such as borrowing, code-mixing, crossing and so on. In what follows, I will first provide
a brief background on the context of the study, Iran, to situate my data and analysis. I will then
present excerpts of my data through which I analyze the new CS practices and identity performances
of Farsi-English bilinguals in Iran and unpack the observed complexities in these practices.

Globalization and the “boom” of English in Iran

Following the one nation-one language ideology, the government of Iran recognizes Farsi (i.e.
Persian) as the country’s sole official language. However, English as an international language, has
always been associated with prestige and high status among Iranians, providing them with a higher
symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991) than the national language (Sadeghi & Richards, 2016). English
learning, therefore, is perceived as crucial and is pursued for different reasons including improving
professional careers, obtaining a better social status, enjoying the benefits of having access to the
international community, and migration (Ardavani & Durrant, 2015). Not surprisingly, then, the
EFL business is extremely active and flourishing in Iran, especially in the private sector since, due to
the not-so-high quality of English education in public schools, most Iranians resort to private
language institutes in order to gain communicative skills (Sadeghi & Richards, 2016; Zarrabi &
Brown, 2017). In fact, it is common practice for (upper)middle-class families to send their children
to language institutes around the same time they start school. English in Iran, thus, has long been
associated with (upper)middle-classness and switching to English has been taken up to fulfill acts of
differentiation and to index power and distance (see Karimzad, 2018a).
While English has always enjoyed an unmatched popularity in Iran, in comparison to other
foreign languages, the recent decade has seen a “boom” in English language use and visibility
through the Internet and social media and with the widespread use of smart mobile devices.
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 5

Providing a larger population with accessibility to English, this has made English, a once-rare
commodity, enter more people’s linguistic repertoires, thus shifting the indexicalities associated
with it. In other words, an instance of Farsi-English CS is relatively less “marked” than before,
which disrupts the differentiation patterns that were formerly in place on the basis of it. This new
visibility and vast accessibility of English, hence, leads to new differentiation patterns based on CS as
the social actors find themselves adjusting to the new linguistic market and finding ways to secure
their profit of distinction. In the remainder of this paper, I engage with naturally-occurring
conversation data to explore the ways in which Farsi-English speaking Iranians navigate the new re-
ordered linguistic scene and suggest that it is the phonological processes in CS acts that do much of
the indexical work.

Data collection and analysis procedures

The data for this study come from a larger ethnographic project investigating the sociolinguistic
practices of Farsi-English speaking Iranians in the era of globalization both in the context of Iran and
in diaspora. The excerpts in the next section are drawn from 50 hours of audio-recorded naturally-
occurring conversations that were held with Farsi-English bilinguals in Iran on different topics
including immigration, studying abroad, English education, technology and social media, etc.
Adopting an ethnographically-grounded discourse analytic approach (Wortham & Reyes, 2015),
I analyzed the interactions with a specific focus on the speakers’ discursive practices (e.g. instances of
CS, the phonetic output of CS, (dis)alignment patterns, deictics, etc.) as well as their metapragmatic
commentary to unveil their positionings towards Farsi-English CS and its phonology and also to
further examine how they implement these ideologies in the processes of identity negotiation and in
performing certain identities. I particularly investigate the identification processes drawing upon
Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004, 2005) framework of identity in interaction looking at how certain
identities emerge in discussions about CS and CS phonology. Among the discursive practices that
I analyzed, the phonetic output of the English CS words was particularly important. With regard to
this, I specifically focused on the level and extent of phonological adaptation vis-à-vis preservation of
the English CS words; that is, how and through what phonological processes the English words are
adapted to the Farsi phonological system when used as a CS word. Within the realm of phonological
adaptation, I specifically focused on two phonological adaptation processes that happen in Farsi: (1)
epenthesis and (2) monophthongization. Epenthesis in Farsi is when a vowel (usually /e/) is added to
break up the consonant cluster at the onset since the language does not allow that, and mono­
phthongization is when some diphthongs, like /æʊ/ for example, are turned into a monophthong,
like /ɑ/ (for more details, see Kambuziya & Hosseinzadeh, 2014). It is worth noting that I examined
both the speakers’ practices and their positionings specifically with regard to these two phonological
adaptation processes in CS.
The data presented in the next section come from two sets of data collected through conversa­
tions with two groups of Farsi-English speaking Iranians in Iran. The two groups consisted of young
women (age range between 27–32) who were all university graduates working in the Capital, Tehran.
They all considered themselves middle-class and upper-middle-class, had attended EFL classes
before, and self-evaluated their English at high-intermediate or advanced levels. The difference
between the two groups of participants was that one of the groups consisted of EFL teachers who
had an academic background in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) while the other
group consisted of individuals who did not have an academic background in TEFL and did not have
English teaching experience. The two specific groups were chosen to be included here since they
complement each other and together reveal a more complex image of the current CS dynamics and
the way CS is used in identity performance in Iran’s new linguistic scene. Before moving on to the
data and analysis, I would like to point out that these conversations naturally started as part of
a bigger casual discussion we were having about language, social media, and immigration in friendly
meet-ups: in the first case with the non-EFL-teacher individuals at my parents’ house in Tehran,
6 T. SANEI

Iran, and in the second case with the EFL teachers at a local coffeeshop. In the interactions, I was not
perceived as the “interviewer” but as a participant in the discussion; below I mention my role in the
conversations with each group. Finally, all the data collection procedures were approved by the
University of Illinois Institutional Review Board (IRB#18123) and written consent was obtained
from the participants before the data collection began.

CS phonology in identity negotiation

In this section, I present excerpts from conversations with my two groups of participants which
mostly consisted of metalinguistic discussions about language mixing and language use in the era of
Internet and technology. Through the analysis, I illustrate how participants in both groups reveal
a hypersensitivity towards the phonology of the English CS words, what they refer to as the “correct
English pronunciation” of the words, and also how they resort to CS phonology to perform acts of
differentiation in their identity negotiation. I show in the excerpts the different anxieties experienced
by the participants that trigger this hypersensitivity and argue for cases of linguistic classism
(Excerpts 1 & 2) and linguistic elitism (Excerpts 3 through 5) on the basis of phonological
preservation while switching from Farsi to English in the context of globalization.

CS phonology and class-based identity differentiation: linguistic classism

Excerpts 1 and 2 are drawn from conversations with a group of three participants, whom I will refer
to as Mina, Sara, and Hoda, during one of my visits to Iran. This group consists of non-EFL-teacher
individuals who are all university graduates in their early thirties working in Tehran. My role in this
interaction is that of a close friend. It is important to note that in the excerpts that were chosen to be
included in this study, Mina is in the same room but has gone to sleep; however, although she is not
actively participating in the conversation, she plays an important role in the interaction: the
discussion in which CS phonology is first introduced happens when Sara and Hoda are talking
about how Mina makes a lot of spelling mistakes when texting in Farsi on messaging applications.
From there, Sara and Hoda draw a direct comparison between writing Farsi words incorrectly to
saying English words with an “incorrect” pronunciation specifically pointing out to how Mina
pronounces the epenthesized version of the word Instagram rather than the phonologically pre­
served form (H: I’m saying like Mina was that same person who instead of /instɑgrɑm/ she used to
say /iniestɑ/) and draw an implicit conclusion that they are both equally bad. While underscoring
the importance of saying the English words with correct pronunciation in Mina’s specific case, they
keep pointing to her social status (read class) by invoking her profession as an engineer in the
society (S: I’m saying for Mina who is an engineer of the society, (she) is in contact with a lot of people
and a lot of people count on her and she has a high and solid status from both the social and the
professional aspect). Later on, Sara points out that saying English words with an “incorrect”
pronunciation (i.e. not phonologically preserved) is exactly like how some culturally old-
fashioned, uninformed, and lower-class people pronounce some Farsi words incorrectly (e.g. saying /
qolf/ instead of /qofl/ meaning “lock”). Therefore, “social class” is both implicitly and explicitly
invoked from the very beginning of the discussion and CS phonology has been utilized as an index
of class.
The excerpts presented below are immediately following this discussion where Sara and Hoda,
shift from evaluating Mina’s linguistic practices to talking about themselves and their own CS
practices. In Excerpt 1, they are talking about how they consciously make an effort to avoid
phonologically adapting the English words to Farsi phonological system when switching and further
explain that they do so to differentiate themselves from other common people. Throughout the
excerpt, Farsi is in normal font while switches to English are boldfaced (for transcription conven­
tions see Appendix).
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 7

Excerpt 1: I don’t do this. I don’t say the common mistake

Prior to this excerpt, Sara had mentioned how she, like everybody in Iran, used to say /ikʰɛʔɑ/ instead
of /aɪkijɑ/ to refer to the (Swedish) chain store IKEA. She then talks about noticing her mother
saying /aɪkijɑ/ after she had returned from her first visit to the US and mentions that this had
confused her as to which pronunciation is correct which led her to checking online videos about the
company to see which one is correct. Her narrative, therefore, reveals her sensitivity with regard to
the phonology of CS words, a more visible form of which is observed in Hoda’s elaboration in the
following excerpt where she emphasizes that she does not like to make the pronunciation mistakes
that everybody else makes when she switches to English.

(1) H: mæsælæn- man dæghighæn umædæm (1) H: like- I exactly did this thing that I
(2) goftæm bær æsase in ke migæn, agha jun i (2) thought based on this (rule) that they say
(3) ægær do taye bædish hærfe vowel bashe, (3) if (the letter)i has a vowel ((says /vɑwəl/)) as the second following
/aɪ/ khunde mishe: letter after it, it would be read as /aɪ/,
(4) pæs inæm bayæd /traɪdent/ bashe, (4) so then this should also be /traɪdent/ ((referring to the chewing gum
brand))
(5) næ /trident/. mæn khob dust daræm (5) not /trident/. well, I like to say its
(6) dorostesho begæm. Nemidunæm ælan (6) correct form. I don’t know which one it
chie vaghe’æn actually is though ((sounds frustrated))
(7) S: akhe ye mæs’ælei ke hæst, un (7) S: but one thing is that this is
mæsælæn
(8) hala brand e, yæni- um- chi migæn- esme (8) a brand ((says /brænd/)), um like - what do they say- it’s a name
(9) væ ba tævæjoh be hala [systeme- (9) and based on the [system of…
(10) H: [khob mæsælæn (10) H: [ok so for example, I’m
(11) migæm Sensodyne, (11) saying Sensodyne ((referring to the
(12) /sensodaɪn/ e. (12) toothpaste brand)) is /sensodaɪn/,
(13) mæn miræm migæm (13) (when) I go (to a store) I say
(14) /sensodaɪn/↑. kheilia mian migæn (14) /sensodaɪn/↑. A lot of people say “give
(15) “/sensodin / bede!”. (15) (me) a /sensodin/ (toothpaste)”! ((emphasizing and overarticulating
with a nasal voice)).
(16) T: mæn migæm /sensodin/. (16) T: I say /sensodin/
(17) H: khob /sensodaɪn/ e (17) H: but it is /sensodaɪn/
(18) T: khob bashe (18) T: so what?
(19) H: (.) khob mæn næ. mæn- mæn in karo (19) H: (.) well, not me. I- I don’t do this.
nemikonæm.
(20) mæn ghælæte mostælæho nemigæm. (20) I don’t say the common mistake. I, now, even
mæn hæmin ælanesh mæsælæn
(21) be ranænde taxi: mikham begæm, migæm (21) (when) I want to talk to a taxi: driver, I’d
(22) mæsælæn “æz lane e unværi berin”. (.) (22) say for example “go from the other lane ((says /leɪn/)) “ (.)
(23) S: bæd mige “haan??” (23) S: then he says “what??”
(24) H: Are. dæghighæn! barha shode be mæn (24) H: yep. exactly! there have been a million times,
(25) goftæn “haan??”. mæsælæn hætta ba chiz- (25) they said “What??”. like even with-
(26) um- un seri ba Mæjid bud (26) um- the other day it was with Majid
(27) goft “ahan. mænzuret (27) ((her boyfriend)), he said “oh, you mean
(28) /laɪn / e”? goftæm “ghælæte mostælæhe. (28) /laɪn/?.” I said “(this) is a common mistake.((says it with a sharp tone,
raising her voice))
(29) æslesh /leɪn/ e”. goft “khob væghti (29) the right form is /leɪn/”. he said “well,
(30) hæme inja migæn /laɪn/, to æm begu (30) when everyone here says /laɪn/ you should say /laɪn/ too” ((says with a
/laɪn/“. high-pitched voice)).
(31) migæm “mæn dælili nædare hæ- hæme (31) I said “there’s no reason that if eve-
(32) daræn eshtebah mikonæn, mænæm (32) everybody is making a mistake I should
(33) eshtebah konæm”. (33) make it too” ((says it with a sharp tone, raising her voice)).
(34) miduni?↑ (34) you know?↑

There are two important themes in this excerpt: 1) the participants’ heightened sensitivity towards
CS phonology and their conscious efforts of avoiding phonological nativization, and 2) their
employment of phonological preservation as a resource to demarcate a line between the lower-
class and themselves, performing their (upper)middle-classness. In the beginning of the excerpt
8 T. SANEI

(lines 1–5) Hoda brings up how she was making an effort to preserve the phonology of the brand
name Trident by invoking a prescriptivist grammar book rule about how letter “i” should be
pronounced based on its position in the word. This is an instance of an appeal to authority
(Kasper, 1979). Interestingly, she had appealed to authority another time previous to this excerpt
by talking about a third person, her cousin, who had just come back from the Netherlands and told
us how she would pay attention to his pronunciation of English CS words. These invocations,
therefore, point to her heightened metalinguistic awareness and conscious efforts to preserve English
phonology when switching. This is in line with what Sara had mentioned about the “standard”
(American) English pronunciation of the, ironically, Swedish brand name IKEA immediately before
the excerpt. Sara’s appeal to authority, in her case first her mom who had visited the US, and not
Sweden where IKEA is originally from (see below for more elaboration), and then the “native”
speaker media through watching online IKEA videos, also underlines this metalinguistic awareness
about CS phonology.
As the interaction unfolds, we see this awareness unveiled in the way the participants take up
phonological preservation/adaptation in general, and specific adaptation processes of monophthon­
gization and epenthesis in particular, as a basis for differentiation. This differentiation can be seen at
play through the two scenarios narrated by Hoda, one hypothetical and one actual. In lines 10–15,
Hoda gives another example of a brand name (i.e. Sensodyne) the phonology of which she insists on
preserving by avoiding monophthongization (i.e. avoiding the Farsi adapted form /sensodin/). Hoda
here narrates a hypothetical scenario through which she draws a line between herself and others on
the basis of the diphthong in Sensodyne. She contrasts I and a lot of people by the juxtaposition of
two scenarios (i.e. going to the store to buy a Sensodyne toothpaste) and by voicing those who adapt
the phonology to Farsi with a mocking tone, emphasizing the monophthong /i/. Through the
voicing, the intonational cues, and her last explicit comment that she does not make the common
mistake (line 19–20), Hoda distances herself from these common people and performs acts of
distinction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005).
This is followed immediately by more specific examples of these common people. She first
mentions Taxi driver in line 21. Here, Hoda’s example is a borrowed word from English frequently
used in Farsi: “lane.” This word has, most probably randomly, come to be pronounced as /laɪn/ in
Farsi over the years. In line 20, the word even points to the fact that Hoda, in fact, expects the taxi
driver to not understand her when she says /leɪn/ instead of /laɪn/, but even in this situation, she
insists on using the “correct” pronunciation anyway. The expectation that the taxi driver would not
know that the “correct” pronunciation is /leɪn/ is confirmed by Sara’s turn in line 23 when she
predicts what the taxi driver’s reaction to this “correct” pronunciation would be. Considering this
implicit expectation then, when Hoda mentions that this has happened a million times, she is
emphasizing the divide between “us” and “them” rather than expressing surprise of the Taxi driver’s
reaction. Through this intentional insistence on preserving English phonology, Hoda differentiates
herself from the Taxi driver and implicitly points out the class difference.
Hoda then narrows down these common people by bringing up an even more specific example.
After mentioning taxi drivers, she narrates a story of an argument between her and her boyfriend,
Majid, over the pronunciation of “lane” (lines 26–33). An important point to note here is that Hoda
had mentioned before in our friendly gatherings that one of her hesitations about dating Majid is
that he is from a lower social status than she is, again making class salient in this interaction. Using
reported speech all throughout the story while using different tone and intonation, Hoda establishes
her social superiority through voicing of the characters (Wortham & Reyes, 2015): herself voiced as
an authoritative “teacher” through a sharp tone and a raised voice using authoritative language
performing an authorization act (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004) (e.g. this is a common mistake, the right
form is /leɪn/ (line 28 & 29) and there’s no reason that if everybody is making a mistake I should make
it too (lines 31–33)); and Majid voiced as just a common person, like everybody else through a high-
pitched voice which is used to create a mock affect and distance. Eventually, the excerpt ends with
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 9

her trying to gain alignment from the other participants by saying you know? which expresses her
desire to build an in-group.
This excerpt reveals the sensitivity that participants show to the phonological preservation vis-
a-vis adaptation of English CS words and how they use this as a resource for identity performance.
Before moving on to the next excerpt, I would like to bring the readers’ attention to two interesting
points. First, besides the metapragmatic commentary, both participants’ CS practices reveal their
conscious efforts of phonological preservation and confirm their heightened awareness and sensi­
tivity. In line 8, for instance, Sara uses the CS word brand with the English phonology, i.e. without
applying the adaptation process of epenthesis (/berænd/). However, a more interesting thing
happens with Hoda’s switch in line 3: while she is explaining the rule she knows for the pronuncia­
tion of the letter “i” as a diphthong or a monophthong in English, she uses the English word vowel.
However, she monophthongizes the diphthong /aʊ/ to /ɑ/ thus using a Farsi phonological adaptation
process. I argue that this is not merely a case of phonological adaptation of a CS word but a failed
attempt at phonological preservation. A closer look reveals that the pronunciation of “vowel” here by
Hoda is actually half-preserved (or half-adapted) because she does not use the completely adapted
form of the word which would be /vɑvel/ with the glide /w/ turned into labiodental /v/, due to the
nonexistent consonant /w/ in Farsi. In addition to this, the schwa and the velarized /l/ in her
pronunciation (/vɑwəĩ/) also point to attempts at phonological preservation. This, thus, shows that
Hoda is still trying to preserve the English phonology but fails to do so completely successfully,
possibly because in the real-time interaction she did not have too much time to think about it. These
two instances portray the participants’ conscious efforts to avoid phonological adaptation in their
practices: these preserved forms do not seem to be coming naturally to them and, as in the case of
Hoda, their efforts sometimes fail.
Finally, it is very interesting that the word Sara mentions is in fact not English at all and the way
she used to pronounce it (/ikʰɛʔɑ/) is much closer to the original (i.e. Swedish) pronunciation of the
name; nevertheless, the origin of the name seems irrelevant and what seems to be legitimate and
indexical of (upper)middle-classness is the (American) English pronunciation of the word (/aɪkijɑ/).
We see something similar to this in Hoda’s data as well when she mentions she would pay close
attention to the way her cousin visiting Iran from Netherlands, a non-English-speaking country,
pronounces the English words. These instances point to the fact that English is still the language of
prestige in Iran; however, the indexical work that it used to do on a lexical level is not taken up as
before anymore; rather, it is the phonological level that is doing a considerable extent of the indexical
work.
The next excerpt provides a more detailed picture of how sometimes the participants consciously
and strategically exploit phonological adaptation processes when switching in their communication
to invoke lower-classness and perform their own (upper)middle-class identities through mock affect
and distinction. While the adaptation process mostly discussed in the previous excerpt was mono­
phthongization, the one that is focused on in this excerpt is epenthesis.

Excerpt 2: that’s because we’ve even written /ferendz/ in Farsi

Prior to this excerpt, Sara is talking about how, if she wants to switch to English, she would try to use the
correct English pronunciation. I asked them about how they would pronounce some of the English
words that people now commonly use when speaking Farsi (e.g. try, friend, etc.). They emphasized that
they do not pronounce these words with the Farsi phonology; that is, rather than saying /teraɪ/ or /
ferɛnd/ which are the adapted epenthesized pronunciations, they would say /traɪ/ and /frɛnd/. I followed
up on this by asking Hoda why she refers to the group-chat she has with a couple of her friends on
Telegram (an online messaging application) as /ferendz/, the adapted form.
10 T. SANEI

(1) T: væli to mikhay begi goru- goruhe (1) T: but when you want to refer to the gro-
(2) dustitun, migi “goruhe /ferendz/emun” (2) your group of friends, you say “our /ferendz/ ((the epenthe­
sized form)) group”
(3) H: khob akhe ma uno æslæn Farsi (3) H: well, that’s because we have even
(4) neveshtim /ferendz/. (4) written /ferendz/ ((emphasizing the epenthesis)) in Farsi.
(5) yæni un æsæn ye chize (.) (5) I mean- that is a thing that’s- (.)
(6) mæskhæræst [khodesh (hahaha) (6) ridiculous ((starts to laugh)) [itself. (hahaha)
(7) S: [esme goruheshun (7) S: [the name of
(8) /frɛndz/e. goruhe /frɛndz/e. (8) their group is /frɛndz/. /frɛndz/ group.
(9) esme goruh [/frɛndz/ e. (9) the name of the group is [/frɛndz/
(10) T: [khob? (10) T: [well?
(11) H: [yæni ingilisi friends næneveshtim. (11) H: [like- we haven’t written friends in
English.
(12) S: are. be [Farsi e. (12) S: yes. it’s in [Farsi.
(13) H: [are. Farsi neveshtim (13) H: [yes we’ve written, in Farsi,
(14) /fe/ (.) /rendz/. (14) /fe/((emphasizing the epenthesis)) (.) /rendz/ ((overemphasizes
and fronts /z/ at the end and pronounces it as /dz/)).
(15) yæni /e/ hash hæm gozashtim. yæni (15) like- we even put the /e/’s (as diacritics).
(16) kollæn mækhæræst (hahaha) (16) like- the whole thing is ((starts laughing)) ridiculous. (hahaha)
(17) T: khob? (17) T: ok?
(18) S: (.) joke ghæzie. (18) S: (.) it’s a joke.

In lines 1 and 2, I make a reference to the Telegram group chat that Hoda and her friends had
named “Friends” with a reference to the popular American TV show. I point out how whenever
Hoda wants to refer to this group, she says /ferendz/ (epenthesized form) and not /frɛndz/ which is
in conflict with her previous comments. This is followed by Hoda’s explanation of how they
intentionally do this to be silly: in lines 3 and 4, she emphasizes the epenthesis and mentions that
they have even written it in Farsi. It is interesting how she points to the choice of script and the
mismatch between the switch to English and the Farsi script, making their linguistic choice a marked
one with a specific purpose. In lines 5 and 6, she explicitly says that this marked linguistic choice (i.e.
writing the English word with Farsi script) is ridiculous itself followed by a long laughter. The
mismatch is again emphasized in line 11 where she says that they haven’t written it in English. In her
next turn (lines 13–16) she expands on their marked choice with more details: in line 14, she pauses
after the epenthesis to make the epenthesis more salient; in addition, she fronts the /z/ at the end of
the word “friends.” This is particularly important because this way of pronouncing /z/ is associated
with the accented Farsi of minorities in Iran (mostly Azeri-speaking Iranian Azerbaijains) as well as
the so-called “lower-class” people living in the southern low-income neighborhoods of Tehran. The
Standard Farsi Language ideology has led to a mockery of the accented Farsi of Azeris as they and
their linguistic practices have been viewed and represented as “less-intelligent” or “foolish” in several
cultural products, e.g. jokes (Karimzad, 2018b). Therefore, I argue that by pronouncing /z/ as /dz/
right next to the epenthesis, Hoda is making a connection between the epenthesis in the pronuncia­
tion of English words and how “lower-class” “less-intelligent” people pronounce Farsi words. The
juxtaposition of the phonological processes of fronting and epenthesis, therefore, points to an iconic
relationship (Gal & Irvine, 1995; Irvine & Gal, 2009) between epenthesis and being lower-class. In
line 15, Hoda mentions the script again and makes their intentional use of epenthesis explicit by
mentioning that they even put the /e/’s as diacritics. Pointing out this detail reveals Hoda’s sensitivity
to epenthesis since in Farsi the unmarked practice in writing is leaving out the diacritics representing
short vowels. Her laughter and negative commentary that the whole thing is ridiculous further
illustrate her and her friends’ attempt at creating a jocular affect in this linguistic choice through
which they perform their (upper)middle-class identity through acts of distinction from the “lower-
class” people. Finally, in line 18 Sara finishes the conversation by saying that using this pronuncia­
tion in this case is a joke making the jocular affect of the intentional use of epenthesis in CS explicit.
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 11

In this section, I demonstrated how driven by class anxiety and seeking to maintain and portray
their class identities in the new linguistic scene in Iran, the participants have developed new
differentiation patterns on the basis of CS phonology. I thus argue for a case of linguistic classism,
not based necessarily on CS at a “whole language” level, but based on CS phonology. The data
presented in the next section, from my other group of participants, adds more nuance to the
accounts of CS phonology and identity performance in the context of globalization by bringing in
more complexity and revealing more layered forms of sensitivity sparked by a different kind of
anxiety.

CS phonology, authenticity, and authority: linguistic elitism

In this section, I draw upon data from a specific group of Farsi-English bilingual Iranians who are
the so-called “English experts”: EFL teachers with academic background in TEFL. Through the
excerpts, I illustrate how these participants experience a different kind of anxiety in the new
linguistic scene: one to keep and maintain their elite identities as English experts in a market
where English is not a scarce commodity anymore. I, then, specifically show how this leads to
differentiation patterns on the basis of CS phonology that are even more nuanced than what was
observed with the first group of participants.
Excerpts 3 through 5 are from conversations I had with two of my former classmates in graduate
studies in TEFL, Nina and Elnaz, at friendly gatherings in Tehran during one of my visits to Iran.
Both participants have an MA in TEFL and have been teaching English in Tehran for almost four
years. My role in these interactions is that of a friend and a fellow English teacher. The first excerpt
presented in this section, much like the ones that we saw in the previous one, shows the participants’
sensitivity towards phonological preservation/adaptation in acts of CS, and further illegitimizes
phonologically-adapted CS practices.

Excerpt 3: they don’t know how to say Instəgræm!

Prior to this excerpt, Nina, Elnaz, and I were talking about how English is currently used a lot by
Iranian Instagram users in captions as well as the biography section. Nina mentions how a lot of
them don’t even know a word in English and that they just do it because they think it’s high-class
pointing to the prestige that is still associated with English. The conversation then transitions into
how English is used in everyday offline face-to-face conversations as well.

(1) T: kollæn tuye goftareshun hæm umæde (1) T: it[English] has also entered the conversations.
(2) N: are, tu goftar kheili umæde (2) N: yes, it has become very common in speaking
(3) E: are (3) E: yep.
(4) N: hænuz /instəgræm/ o nemidunæn (4) N: they don’t know how they should
(5) bayæd chejuri tælæfoz [konæn (hahaha) (5) pronounce /instəgræm/ [yet. (hahaha)
(6) E: [(hahaha) (6) E: [(hahaha)
(7) N: “/inestɑ/” (haha) (7) N: “/inestɑ/” (haha)
(8) E: “/inestɑ/”, are (8) E: “/inestɑ/”, yeah
(9) N: migæn “/inestɑ/” (haha) (9) N: they say “/inestɑ/” (haha)
(10) T & E: (hahaha) (10) T & E: (hahaha)
(11) N: hersæm migire ha (11) N: oh it gets on my nerves

From the beginning, the sensitivity towards CS phonology is salient when we are merely talking
about using English words in Farsi speech and in line 4, Nina brings up these people’s inability to
pronounce the word Instagram correctly. Followed by a laughter that is later joined by Elnaz’s
12 T. SANEI

laughter, this comment is to create distance. In addition, focusing on Nina’s CS practice in the same
turn and her complete switch from Farsi to English of the word Instagram (i.e. pronouncing it as /
instəgræm/ rather than the phonologically adapted form /inestɑgerɑm/) confirms this distance and
the differentiation between “us” and “them.” Later on, in line 7 Nina specifically voices how these
people would say the adapted form of Instagram by mentioning the epenthesized shortened form of
Instagram, i.e. /inestɑ/, emphasizing the epenthesis. In line 9, she makes the divide between “us” and
“them” clearer by using deictic they and voicing them again mentioning how they epenthesize
Instagram. Moreover, comparing Nina’s own CS practice (line 5) and the way she voices them
provides more evidence for the differentiation act performed by Nina on the basis of phonological
preservation/adaptation. Finally, the divide is solidified by Nina’s last turn in the excerpt where she
makes an explicit evaluative metapragmatic comment in line 11 showing how she negatively
evaluates these people who do not preserve English phonology. The laughter by all participants
throughout the interaction points to the jocular affect created through which the distance between
“us” and “them” is kept and maintained.
So far, a somewhat similar differentiation pattern as the other group is observed: Phonologically
preserving/adapting CS words is taken up as a resource to perform acts of differentiation. However,
Nina’s comments in lines 4 and 11 reveal her positioning as an authority, i.e. the English expert. This
gives us a glimpse into the sense of authority that Nina and Elnaz, as EFL teachers, feel and the anxiety
with which they deal in maintaining this authority as experts, or elites, in the new linguistic scene. In the
next excerpts, I show how this elite anxiety leads to more nuanced differentiation patterns as the
participants invoke notions of “authenticity” with regard to phonological preservation in CS practices.

Excerpt 4: let them say the correct form at least, we’re satisfied with it!
Following up on the highlighting of pronunciation by Nina and Elnaz, I mention how nowadays
some people would switch completely to English and avoid adapting the phonology. Nina agrees
with me that people have started doing this but adds that they try to do so, implying an extra effort
made by “them.” The following excerpt reveals how the “authenticity” of phonological preservation
gets picked up as a basis for differentiation.

(1) N: midunæm ye chizaei hæst ke sæy (1) N: I know there are things that they try to
(2) mikonæn dorostesho begæn. tu zehnæm nist ælan (2) say the correct form for. I can’t remember right now.
(3) T: /lɑɪf-stɑɪl/ (3) T: /lɑɪf-stɑɪl/
(4) N: (hahaha) are (haha) /lɑɪf-stɑɪl/ (4) N: (hahaha) yes (haha) /lɑɪf-stɑɪl/
(5) [ziad shode ælan (5) [has become common now
(6) E: [(hahaha) (6) E: [(hahaha)
(7) T: næ. be jaye /lɑɪf-estɑɪl/ mænzuræme (7) T: No. instead of (saying)
/lɑɪf-estɑɪl/ ((epenthesized form))
(they say /lɑɪf-stɑɪl/) I mean.
(8) to hæm mænzuret hæmune? (8) Is that what you mean too?
(9) N: are (9) N: yeah
(10) T: ya mæsælæn- (.) /stres/ (10) T: or like- (.) /stres/
(11) E: næ dige. migim /esteres/ dige (11) E: no, we would say /esteres/
(12) T: khodetuno nemigæm baba. mellæto (12) T: I’m not talking about you dude. I mean other
ha.daræm migæm people
(13) N: (hahaha) næ baba. eshkal nædare. (13) N: (hahaha) no dude. it’s ok. let them
(14) bezar dorostesho [begæn hædde æghæl (hahaha) (14) say the correct [form at least (hahaha)
(15) E: [are bezar dorostesho (15) E: [yeah let them say the
(16) begæn. shagerdaye mæn ke æsabe mæno khurd kærdæn (16) correct form. My students have driven me nuts
(hahaha) (hahaha)
(17) N: (hahaha) ma razi im. [bezar dorostesho (17) N: we’re satisfied (with it) (hahaha). [let
(18) begæn = (18) them say the correct form =
(19) E: [(hahaha) (19) E: [(hahaha)
(20) N: = [ælæki ham (20) N: =[even if
(21) begæn. eshkal nædære (hahaha) (21) they’re faking it. it’s ok (hahaha)
(22) T & E: (hahaha) (22) T & E: (hahaha)
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 13

In line 1, Nina uses the verb try alluding to the fact that they (who preserve the English
phonology when switching but who are not “us” EFL teachers) are making an extra effort to do
so. Note that we observed this “extra effort” in action in the data from the other group in the
previous section where they were discussing their sensitivity and continuous conscious efforts for
phonological preservation. In lines 3, 7, and 10 I give examples of un-epenthesized phonologi­
cally preserved forms of some common CS words that people use. Nina takes an authoritative
position in lines 13 and 14, addressing Elnaz and me hence building an in-group, saying that it’s
ok and we should let them say the correct form at least. Her authoritative position, in addition to
including us, points implicitly to her (and our) elite and authoritative identities when it comes to
English knowledge. Hence, she differentiates between us, the experts and ones who naturally
preserve English phonology when we switch, and them who make an extra effort to do so. In
lines 15 and 16, Elnaz joins in maintaining this authoritative position by echoing what Nina
previously said and taking it further by talking about her students and their “incorrect”
pronunciation in class (yeah let them say the correct form. My students have driven me nuts).
Continuing to create and solidify their (or rather “our”) “teacher”/“expert” role, Nina uses
deictic contrast in line 17 saying that we, as teachers, are satisfied (with it). Finally, in Nina’s
last turn, she confirms her own (and our) authoritative elite identity by saying that these people,
positioned in the conversation as “students” as opposed to us “teachers,” might be faking the
preserved pronunciation. Nina, therefore, denaturalizes and illegitimizes their identities and CS
practices (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005).
In this interaction, a more nuanced differentiation pattern is observed: it is not simply the
phonological preservation that is used as a resource for differentiation; rather, it is the manner of
this phonological preservation and whether or not it is done “authentically” (i.e. not fake).
Within this differentiation pattern, authoritative identities are more explicitly performed and we,
as elites and English experts, are put by Nina in the position of “gatekeepers” whose phonolo­
gical preservation while switching is authentic and hence legitimate. Therefore, this excerpt not
only supports my earlier argument about the sensitivity towards CS phonology in identity
performance but also complexifies it as it shows a differentiation pattern driven by elite anxiety
rather than class anxiety. In the next excerpt, the participants’ anxiety reveals itself in their
metapragmatic commentary where they explicitly perform an extra layer of differentiation
between “us” and “them.” Moreover, we will also see that the participants bring up another
criterion for evaluating the “naturalness” and hence the legitimacy of the phonological preserva­
tion: what English CS words are to be phonologically preserved and, conversely, the phonolo­
gical preservation of which words would be “unnatural” due mainly to their “almost-borrowed”
status.

Excerpt 5: we, who are experts in this, don’t say that!

Following the previous excerpt, here I am telling Elnaz and Nina that I hear people say /əkæʊnt/ for
the word “account” instead of saying /ækɑnt/, the phonologically adapted form with the mono­
phthongization of the diphthong /æʊ/. I then specifically ask Nina and Elnaz if that is how they,
themselves, pronounce this CS word. It is important to note that this word has become a common
English word that is frequently used in young people’s Farsi speech these days to refer to social
media accounts or online profiles and hence might be negotiated by some as on its way to establish
an “almost-borrowed” status.
14 T. SANEI

(1) T: are mæsælæn (.) /əkæʊnt/. Mæsælæn (1) T: yeah like (.) /əkæʊnt/. like
(2) /əkæʊnt/ e Instagram migin shomaha? (2) do you guys say /əkæʊnt-e-instɑgrɑm/?
(3) N: [(hahaha) (3) N: [(hahaha)
(4) T: [(hahaha) næ vaghe’æn, migin? (4) T: [(hahaha) no seriously, do you say (that)?
(5) E: væli- (5) E: but-
(6) N: (hahaha) (6) N: (hahaha)
(7) T: darim /ækɑnt/. bebin bæstegi dare ha. (7) T: we have /ækɑnt/. look it depends.
(8) midunæm. væli mæsælæn dær halæte mæmuli- (8) I know. but like normally-
(9) N: are dige. nemigim unjuri. [hæmun dige= (9) N: right so. we don’t say that. [that’s the thing tho=
(10) E: [væli (10) E: [but like I
mæsælæn mæn khodæm↑ - myself↑-
(11) N: =[mæsælæn (11) N: =[like we, who are
(12) maha ke inkare im nemigim. væli kæsaei (12) experts (in this), don’t say (that). but some
(13) ke miduni shayæd ye↑ term rafte (13) people who you know have attended
(14) kelas zæban- (14) language class for maybe (only) one↑ term (would say that),
(15) adæm hersesh dærmiad (15) it gets on your nerves
(hahaha) (hahaha)

From the very beginning of her response, Nina’s mocking attitude towards the phonological
preservation for the CS word “account” by other people is seen in her continuous laughter (lines 3
and 6). In line 9, she mentions that we (referring to herself and Elnaz) do not preserve the English
phonology for this particular word (possibly because it has become very common in everyday use
and might be considered “almost-borrowed”). Note that her turn is interrupted by Elnaz who has
been trying to get the floor (line 5, but-) and seems to want to disagree with Nina (line 10, but like
I myself-). In fact, as the conversation unfolds, Elnaz says that she does preserve the phonology for
this particular word; However, Nina does not give up the floor just yet. In her next turn (lines 11–
15), Nina demarcates the line between the elites (read English experts) and non-elites, by first
creating an in-group and then specifically putting “us” and “them” and our/their CS practices in
opposition to each other. First, in line 11, she repeats the deictic we and further specifies this “we” by
mentioning who are the experts pointing to people with academic background in TEFL. Note how
this is slightly different from the deictic used in line 9 in that this is a more specific and collective
“we,” including me as well. She then insists again, like she did more generally in line 9, that we, the
experts, do not preserve the phonology for this word, specifying “us” and our CS practices. Right
after that, Nina contrasts this we with some people who you know have attended language class for
maybe (only) one term who would “unnaturally” preserve the English phonology for this almost-
borrowed word; specifying “them” and their CS practices. The excerpt ends with another negative
evaluative comment, similar to the one in Excerpt 3, although with two differences: 1) while the one
in Excerpt 3 was about not phonologically preserving (i.e. saying /inestɑ/ for Instagram), here the
negative evaluation is of “unnatural” and “out-of-place” preservation; and 2) here, the generic your
instead of my (as we had in line 11 in Excerpt 3) is used; this can be taken to show how Nina is
continuing to build an in-group identity as “us,” the English experts.
This piece of data was included to pinpoint the participants’ hyper-awareness created by the vast
visibility of English in Iran and the consequent reordering of indexicalities. Nina’s explicit reference
to the elite/expert position (i.e. we, who are experts in this) and to the commonplaceness and
accessibility of English and English education in the current linguistic scene in Iran (i.e. some people
who have attended language class for maybe one term) lays bare the participants’ concerns to
maintain their elite status in a society where English is no longer a scarce commodity, and
a switch to English at the lexical level and even sometimes at the phonological level, does not secure
their profit of distinction. Seeking to (re)gain control and authority over English, the EFL teachers
try to denaturalize non-EFL-teachers’ identities constructed based on preserving phonology in two
ways: 1) by implying that their attempts are fake (as in Excerpt 4) and 2) by putting restrictions on
 INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 15

where (and how) preservation should happen; that is, for some words that might be negotiated as
“almost-borrowed” they deem the preservation as unnecessary, unnatural, out-of-place and hence
illegitimate (as in Excerpt 5). This “authenticity” of preservation that the EFL-teacher participants
take up as the basis of their differentiation acts from “non-experts,” however, seems to be loosely
defined (i.e. what is “extra effort in preservation” and what English words are considered as almost-
borrowed is open to interpretation). This, I argue, gives these so-called “experts” even more room to
maneuver their negative evaluations of others’ CS practices’ legitimacy in the performances of their
own elite identities.
Finally, it is worthwhile to point out that the case of the EFL teachers and their elite anxiety is particularly
interesting due to the intricacies regarding these people’s social status based on their academic field.
Specifically, among the majority of Iranians academic fields in humanities, foreign languages and literatures
included, are perceived as having “less prestige” than many other fields. One of the reasons for this
perception can be, for example, that in order to get accepted in the universities in these majors, applicants
need a much lower score in the nationwide entrance exam in comparison to STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics) majors. To counterbalance the perceived low prestige of their academic
fields, then, TEFL students and graduates have always turned to the symbolic capital that the English
language has provided them with, using English to secure their elite positions. Thus, one can see, then, that
a re-ordered linguistic market where using English CS words fails to index power, and where many other
non-TEFL people have already become hypersensitive about phonological preservation in CS as a basis for
differentiation (as we observed with the first group), pushes the TEFL graduates to states of anxiety to keep
their elite status, hence becoming hypersensitive and adjusting their differentiation patterns based on the
notions of “authenticity” and “naturalness” of this phonological preservation.
In sum, the analysis shows that driven by different kinds of anxieties, i.e. class and elite anxiety, speakers
develop hypersensitivities towards CS phonology (in the case of Hoda and Sara) and the manner of
phonological preservation (in the case of Nina and Elnaz). The hypersensitivities manifest in participants’
identification processes reveal layers of indexical work done through CS phonology, pointing to a shift in
indexical values of Farsi-English CS and a need for more detailed and dynamic accounts for CS. The
analysis, moreover, contributes to a broader scholarship on language ideology and identity in the context of
globalization as it sheds more light on language commodification and the idea that what is commodified in
the globalized linguistic markets is not only language (English in this case) but the whole language-
ideological/indexical package that comes with it (Blommaert, 2010), “accent,” or in the case of my study
the phonological preservation/adaptation of CS words, being a consequential element of this package.
Therefore, CS research in the era of globalization should take into account what Blommaert refers to as the
“sociolinguistic” language, and not just the “linguistic” language, where “the everyday politics of language,
[get] produced and articulated in a polycentric environment by a multitude of (often ephemeral) actors”
(Blommaert, 2010, p. 60). I illustrated through my analysis that it is through carefully examining how these
politics are perceived and negotiated by social actors, in their navigation of constantly changing linguistic
markets and in their identity performances, that CS research can capture the complex impact of globaliza­
tion on speakers’ sociolinguistic practices (see Blommaert’s (2010) discussion of “Selling accent”; see also
Martin, 2006).

Conclusion
In this study, I have examined Iranian Farsi-English bilinguals’ attitudes and practices regarding CS and
its phonology and how they show nuanced patterns of differentiation through their switching to
English. I have suggested that this is due to the recent widespread presence of English in Iran,
a byproduct of globalization processes, that has created new and more differentiated linguistic markets.
In these differentiated markets, the laws of price formation have changed due to English not being the
scarce commodity that it used to be. Therefore, I have illustrated that the indexical work previously
done through a switch from Farsi to English at the lexical level (Karimzad, 2018a), is now being done
16 T. SANEI

through CS phonology; that is, through whether the CS English word is phonologically adapted/
preserved and additionally whether the preservation is done “naturally” and “authentically.”
My main concern in this paper has been to highlight the importance of exploring the conse­
quences of mobility and shifting indexicalities in the geographically local, but sociolinguistically
translocal, contexts such as Iran. I have aimed to demonstrate the dynamicity of linguistic markets in
such contexts, paying close attention to how social actors experience and react to different forms of
anxieties, manifest through their CS practices, to navigate the markets and secure their profit of
distinction. Thus, I draw attention to how vertically-scaled indexicalities associated with English (cf.
Blommaert, 2007b) have been developed in Iran due to the recent accessibility of English. Aware of
these re-ordered indexicalities, my participants showed hypersensitivity towards the phonological
adaptation/preservation in CS practices associating it with certain social types, i.e. lower/upper-
middle class and non-elite/elite (see Agha, 2003). As such, my study calls for a more semiotically-
oriented and indexically-dynamic approach towards people’s linguistic practices, CS included,
particularly in understudied “local” contexts such as Iran in the era of globalization.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Taraneh Sanei http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6571-4130

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Transcription conventions

Underline Emphatic stress

(. . .) Intervening material has been omitted
(.) Brief pause
(hahaha) Laughter
(()) Transcriber comment
() English translation within brackets is added by the author for clarification
[ Speaker overlap
= Contiguous utterances
, Utterance signaling more to come
. Utterance final intonation
: Lengthening of preceding sound
CAPS Increased volume
↑ Rising intonation
↓ Falling intonation
bold Switch to English