The Role of Age and Gender in the Choice of Address Forms: A Sociolinguistic Study

The main objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of gender as well as age on the choice of forms of address in Persian. The hypothesis is that variation in the forms of address is related not only to gender of the interlocutors but also to the age of them. For this study, 30 university students- 15 males and 15 females- participated in this process that all of them were asked to fill out a questionnaire presented in the appendix. The results of the data analysis indicate that both men and women use address forms of formality (Šoma) more frequently in addressing the older people from both genders that shows age is more significant than gender in determining the pronouns in address system of Persian.