Literature in Iran
Persian is Iran's official language and the language of the country's ethnic majority (i.e., the Persians), and Persian literature has been the country's most influential literary tradition. Apart from Iran, Persian literature was used and developed further through several medieval Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, and the language is still used widely in Central Asia (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Afghanistan.
Bashu, the Little Stranger
Throughout the film, linguistic differences make Bashu’s journey more difficult. Persian was standardized as the official language of Iran in 1935. It became the predominant method through which educated Iranians of diverse ethnicities, predominantly men, would communicate with one another. The standardization of Persian coincided with a dramatic increase in ethnocentric Persian nationalism, characterized by an increase in the ostracization of Arab culture and language, as well as all others which deviated from the newly defined Persian norms. As seen in the film, this ethnocentric nationalistic standardization had a consequence for gender relations within the nation; the state language held little value in local villages and often left women barred from places of power within the nation-state structure.