The Language of Qajar-Era Travelogues: Linguistic-Historical Documents of Iran’s Cultural Transition toward Modernity

Abstract
Travelogues and prose texts of the Qajar era serve as a linguistic document of Iran's transition to modernity and its encounter with the phenomenon of "lexical gap." The central question of this research is to investigate what linguistic and cognitive mechanisms the Persian language has employed to construct a new semantic system when confronted with emergent phenomena and novel concepts lacking prior signifieds. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach and drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Historical Semantics and Contact Linguistics, this study examines texts such as The Memoirs of Haj Sayyah, The Travelogue of Ebrahim Beyg, The Book of Ahmad, and The Treatise of One Word as a linguistic corpus. The findings reveal that during this period, the Persian language relied on three main strategies to name and convey modern concepts: (1) semantic extension and conceptual metaphor (e.g., using "bāghcheh" for "park"); (2) phonological borrowing mediated by French, adapted to the Arabo-Persian phonological and orthographic system (e.g., "université," "théâtre," "hôpital"); and (3) intra-lingual compounding based on inherited morphological patterns (e.g., "horse-drawn railway" for "tramway"). These mechanisms demonstrate that language in these texts was not merely a passive descriptor of the new world; rather, at the very moment of modernity's production, it engaged in structural and semantic reconstruction.
Keywords: Historical Semantics, Lexical Gap, Phonological Borrowing, Semantic Extension, Qajar Prose, The Memoirs of Haj Sayyah