Globalization, linguistic markets, and nuanced identity performances: Farsi-English code-switching in Iran

ABSTRACT 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 Iran. I focus on the participants’ Farsi-English Code-switching (CS) practices and their positionings toward CS in naturally-occurring conversations to examine how they use CS in their differentiation patterns and identity performances. 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 understudied community. (Globalization, linguistic markets, indexicality, Farsi-English code-switching, identity performance).