| Summary/Abstract |
In multilingual Iran, Persian continues to be perceived as the official language, while other languages are regarded as local. The duality is not confined to linguistic realms, and extends into the purview of culture. Terms such as ‘local music’, ‘local dance’ or ‘local dialects’ and, with the same token, ‘official language’ and ‘official religion’, for example, refer to much wider and deeper social relations or cultural positions. They are the sources of the production and perpetuation of meanings, to borrow from Bourdieu, which safeguard the interest of a social group or class, and determine the performance of the producers of knowledge, for example writers, without their being directly part of the dominant group.
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