Persian Bilingual and Community Education among Iranian-Americans in New York City

The sociolinguistic practices of the Iranian-American community remain understudied. While certainly present as part of the linguistic landscape of New York City, Persian speakers, in particular Iranian-Americans, are not as visible as other ethnic groups in the city.1 The under-reporting of the number of Iranians in New York and the US in general exacerbates this low profile. Owing to anti-Iranian sentiment engendered by the 1979 hostage crisis, hostile media representations of Iranian society and culture, and their opposition to the government policies and practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, many Iranian-Americans have historically opted for a strategy of ethnic non-disclosure, or passing as ‘Persian’ rather than Iranian (Bozorgmehr, 2007; Shirazi & Nazemian, 2005). Furthermore, the majority of Iranian-Americans do not live in ethnic enclaves in New York City, barring a small concentration of Jewish Iranians in Rego Park, Queens. Thus there is no ‘Little Iran’ or ‘Irantown’ counterpart to Chinatown or Little Italy in New York City. The absence of a central cultural institution serving Iranians in New York also contributes to low visibility of the Iranian-American community. While there is a permanent Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York, this institution does not function as an umbrella cultural center for Iranian-Americans living in New York. Furthermore, there is no cultural house or language institute (comparable to Alliance Française or the Cervantes Institute) that serves as a center of cultural or language education activities for the community. Zohreh, a Persian language instructor at NYU, notes that this absence of a central cultural center has contributed to a decentralized Iranian cultural landscape in New York City. As a result, cultural activities occur on a small scale and usually originate in, and cater to, specific social networks and communities, as opposed to all Iranians in New York.