THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF DISHARMONY BETWEEN THE STATE’S LANGUAGE POLICY AND SOCIETY’S ATTITUDE TO THE INTRODUCTION OF ENGLISH IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Abstract

The paper considers historic circumstances, which have evoked an emergence of an inconsistency between national language policy of Iran, on the one hand, and the will of the majority of the Iranian society concerning the issue of introducing the English language in the educational establishments of this Islamic fundamentalist country. Topicality of the subject of this paper is conditioned by a keen interest of the research community to a specific way of spread of the English language in the educational system of the Islamic fundamentalist country, the language apprehended as bearing hostile ideology and an alien culture. The aim of the paper is to proceed briefly the vector of Iran’s national policy, related to the English language teaching, its status and results within a period of1979–2020, as well as an attitude of the Iranian society to this issue. Theoretic significance of the article lies in revealing briefly the unique way of spread of the globalized English into an opposite cultural and confessional medium. Practical value of this paper reveals itself in the possibility to make use of the Iranian experience of introducing the globalizing English language into an educational system of a country having opposite cultural and confessional systems.