Kourosh Safavi


Dr. Kourosh Safavi is an Iranian linguist, translator and university professor. He is the vice-president of Linguistics Society of Iran and a leading professor in Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran. His activities revolve around semantics, semiotics, history of linguistics and the relationship between linguistics and literature.
One of the most prolific writers and translators on linguistics, Safavi has authored renowned books such as An Introduction to Linguistics, Wandering in the Philosophy of Literature, Logic in Linguistics, Literature from Linguistics Standpoint, Acquaintance with Written Systems, Introduction to the History of Iranian Languages, and Applied Semantics. He also has translated many books into Persian written by notable linguists and writers such as Noam Chomsky, Roman Jakobson, Ferdinand de Saussure, Hösle, Goethe and Jostein Gaarder.

Early life and career

He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1956 from a Law-graduated father; Dr. Ahmad Emad al_Din Safavi and a Persian literature graduated mother; Parvindokht Javidpour. When he was only two months old the family migrated to Switzerland, Germany and finally Austria. 14 years later they returned to Iran and he got a mathematics diploma from Hadaf high school in Tehran. He first studied Chemical engineering in Shiraz university but finally came back to Tehran and studied German language and literature course of Tehran university. There, he participated in Persian literature courses held by Dr. Shafi'ee Kadkani and Dr. Ali Ravaghi.
He was acquainted with linguistic and philological debates in his youth, because his father used to talk about these topics in some discussions with many notable people such as Dr. Parviz Natel Khanlari.
He got his bachelor's degree of German language in 1971 and master's degree of Linguistics in 1979 and his Linguistics doctorate in 1993 from Tehran university.

As writer