Doostdar, Alireza. "'The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging': On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan." American Anthropologist 106.4 (2004): 651-662. 7 Apr. 2009 <http://www.doostdar.com/articles/vsob.pdf>.

Doostdar, a blogger himself (writing in both English and Persian), opens his article by providing background on the vulgarity debate (bahs-e ebtzeaal) among Iranian bloggers. The debate concerns whether it is important to observe standard orthography and grammar, and whether the use of colloquial Persian is appropriate. Doostdar argues that the debate sparks mostly from the increasing separation of blogging from "offline" media, as well as a political clash between intellectuals and a larger group of people who use the internet to be free from any kind of authority or "intellectual pretense." He also challenges the naive assumption that the emergence of the internet will necessarily result in social, cultural, or political revolution. Doostdar points to many orthographic traits of blog writing to hint at the oral tradition of blogs. He continues on this idea to explain the "dialogic" nature of blogs; that is, blogs engage other texts (and other blogs and bloggers) in a dialogue about material. Part of this dialogue is an established custom of reciprocity that obliges the host blogger to comment on a visiting blogger's recent entries (the practice is known as did-o baazdid: "seeing and re-seeing"). He then discusses the use of "vulgarity" as a form of resistance.

While Doostdar doesn't address the larger social context of Iranian blogging, choosing instead to focus on the blogging community, many of his arguments can be extended from a linguistic debate to a larger social issue. Most importantly, the questions of linguistic authority and legitimacy reflect the dissidents view that the Islamic Republic and its moral code are illegitimate. While Doostdar speaks of resistance in terms of social practices, that resistance can be extended to a more subversive resistance against political authority as well. It is interesting that Doostdar chooses to connect blogging to oral speech traditions; in many ways, Iranian blogs are the discussions that the Iranian public is unable to engage in. Doostdar also ignores the occasional need to misspell in order to avoid censorship or filtering. Still, by examining this debate among bloggers, Doostdar further examines the diversity of Iranian bloggers and demonstrates how impassioned they are about the issues. He also shows how established they are becoming as a community.