The present study aims to investigate users’ responses to linguistic diversity on Persian-language social media, particularly Instagram, based on Lippi-Green’s theoretical framework of language subordination. The study employs a mixed-methods design. In the qualitative phase, the data were analyzed using the language subordination framework, which comprises seven core components: Mystification, authority, misinformation, trivialization, accommodators and non-accommodators, threat, and promise. In the quantitative phase, the frequency and proportional distribution of these components were calculated across more than 400 user comments posted on widely followed Persian-language Instagram pages between 2023 and 2026. The findings indicate that the components of misinformation and trivialization occurred most frequently and that social media platforms, contrary to common assumptions, serve as significant sites for reproducing the ideology of the standard language and marginalizing non-standard varieties. Furthermore, the results show that users’ linguistic judgments are largely influenced by entrenched monolingual standard ideologies that, consciously or unconsciously, construct the so-called Persian standard as superior while other language varieties as inferior.
Mohammadi et al. (Tue,) studied this question.