The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate some features of sociolinguistic interaction and language convergence phenomena in northern Iran and Transcaucasia. In particular, I wish to explore some of the problems of language classification and the effect of sociological and geographic factors on language diversity in the extended geographic area of Iran, with the aim of offering a new and more productive model for the study of Iranian dialects and languages. Since the material that forms the basis of my discussion is the Tāti language group, I will present here a brief description of it before going on to more general questions.

Tāti, in the context of Iranian linguistics, generally refers to at least two groups of Iranian languages of different origin. The use which interests us presently refers to a group of languages of Northwest Iranian origin, generally classified as a subgroup of the Central Plateau Languages.

In July 1980, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died in Egypt, approximately a year and a half after the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy and the subsequent establishment of the Islamic Republic. Once asked whether Madame de Pompadour's celebrated phrase, “Après nous le déluge” echoed his own sentiments, the shah had willingly agreed, and indeed, Iran has in the period since his ouster experienced the turbulent existence of a society in the throes of revolution. The prevailing climate of instability, interspersed by alleged conspiracies and widespread purges and executions, has given every indication of developing into a chronic condition, if it has not already done so. The economy has faltered under the burden of inflation, unemployment, and the inadequacy of managerial skills, and in the process, become wholly reliant on the revenues that accrue from the export of petroleum.

The subject of this descriptive essay is social stratification and social control among sharecroppers and wage laborers in Haftabad, a peasant village in northeastern Iran. The aim of the essay is threefold: (1) to describe the complexity of the economic, social, and cultural differences among its residents; (2) to call attention to a critical sociocultural variable hitherto overlooked and/or underplayed in the literature on the rural people of Iran and the Middle East--the hometowner-stranger difference; and (3) to pose the question, whether a large, heterogeneous (with respect to origins) village with both dispersed and nucleated settlement patterns and a wideranging pattern of social status differences can be regarded as a community and, if so, in what sense.

A number of researchers have already called attention to the necessity of examining the complexity of rural social structure in Iran. Ajami (1969), Hooglund (1973 and 1975) and Safinejad (1969), for instance, have argued that at the very least a three-way breakdown of the population is necessary.