Journal of Iranian Social Studies

Abstract A century after the introduction of higher education and 80 years after the founding of the University of Tehran, as the Mother University, Iran has a student population of almost 5 million plus millions more who have already graduated. This country, in comparison to countries with similar populations, has one of the largest proportions of total students and graduates in the higher educational level in the world. In this regard Iran can stand in comparison with developing countries like Turkey as well as developed countries such as France. This is a paradoxical status when the vast majority of Iranian academic scholars believe that an “academic community” has not taken shape in Iran in the conventional sense of the word. In this paper, based primarily on P. Bourdieu approach of “Homo Academicus," we’ve tried to analyze the situation by focusing on one of the most important aspects of the problem: the language issue. The questions to be answered in this paper are as follows: Do we have really a scientific and academic language? If yes, what are its mechanisms and characteristics which influence academic thought in this country? The results of the study reveal that this language, even taken as “existed” is malformed and is far from a means contributing to the constitution of scientific community. This is a more realistic issue concerning the humanities and social sciences. Without such an academic language, the formation of a local or local/global sociological thought is an almost impossible task.

Abstract