Juldyz Smagulova and Elise S.

Ahn
1 Introduction

1 Overview
In the foreword to the second edition of the classic, The Great Game, Peter
Hopkirk (2006: xiii) wrote that [s]uddenly, after many years of almost total
obscurity, Central Asia is once again in the headlines, a position it frequently
occupied during the nineteenth century, at the height of the old Great Game
between Tsarist Russia and Victorian Britain. The unexpected dissolution of
the Soviet Union in 1991, the subsequent socio-political reforms developed in
each of the then newly independent Central Asian countries, and the continued
broader geo-political instability has turned the area back into a hot spot draw-
ing the attention of policy makers, social scientists, academics, and journalists.
Narrowly, Central Asia (sometimes referred to as Central Eurasia) geo-politically
consists of the former Soviet Union (FSU) Turkic republics, which includes
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, along with Tajikistan. How-
ever, when taking into consideration transnational minorities and historical popu-
lation migration patterns, a broader conceptualization of Central Asia could
include parts of Western China (e.g., Xinjiang), southern Siberia, the East Euro-
pean Plains, Afghan Turkestan, and the Pamiri and Kashmiri regions which
straddle Tajikistan and Afghanistan (Figure 1.1). This book looks at Central Asia
through both lenses, narrow and broad, in an attempt to delineate the dierent
pathways the republics have followed as well as elucidating cross-national lan-
guage and education-related issues.
The linguistic map of the modern Central Asian region displays enormous
diversity and complex interaction patterns between the indigenous Turkic and
Iranian languages and the Russian language (Figure 1.2). Many communities
are historically multilingual, e.g., the Tajik-Uzbek-Russian speakers of Samarkand,
Uzbekistan or the Kazakh-Uyghur-Chinese speakers of Kulja, China.
However, despite the regions importance geo-politically and historically,
empirically-based research on Central Asia is still in a nascent stage. Particularly
regarding language-related research, language change eorts vis--vis numerous
language change reforms went largely unnoticed by the linguistic community
and many processes that could enrich sociolinguistic research were left undocu-
mented and unanalyzed (Pavlenko 2013: 263).
Twenty four years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the region is still
undergoing numerous socio-economic and political changes. A top priority for
the national governments is their establishment as independent and legitimate

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2 Juldyz Smagulova and Elise S. Ahn

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Caucasus_and_Central_Asia_-_Political_Map.jpg
Figure 1.1: A map of Central Asia and its neighbors

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 Introduction

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Figure 1.2: The ethnolinguistic patchwork of Central Asia in the later years of the Soviet Union
3

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Central_Asia#/media/File:Central_Asia_Ethnic.jpg
4 Juldyz Smagulova and Elise S. Ahn

political and global entities. Equally important is the construction of national

identities. An added layer of complexity is the continuation of the political
maneuvering from the international community that took place during the last
few centuries, i.e., the Great Game which continues today in soft power
domains, e.g., economics, language, and culture. These external and internal
power dynamics are further complicated by the enormous challenges that
these countries are facing including: ethno-linguistic and religious conict,
security, population movement, poverty, unemployment, and increasing social
stratication.
To illustrate the complex geo-political and sociolinguistic dynamics in the
region, one can look at the case of the Russian language. The sharp decline of
Slavic and Russian-speaking population in Central Asia, in conjunction with the
widespread de-Russication policies in the newly formed states has signicantly
decreased the cultural inuence of Russia in the region. There has appeared a
whole new generation of locals particularly in rural areas who are monolingual
speakers of their titular languages. Despite these demographic changes and
policy shifts, the Russian language is still wide-spread; it remains the lingua-
franca, the language of pop-culture, mass-media, new media, education, as
well as the language of academic and business communication. In fact, Russias
economic growth and its rising political inuence has propelled a resurgence
of interest in Russian among local populations (Pavlenko 2013). Russian was
also acknowledged as a working language of the newly established Eurasian
Economic Union (May 2014), further reifying its symbolic capital in the region.
While Russia continues to reassert its inuence throughout the FSU countries,
other regional actors are pursuing their own agendas in order to gain economic,
political and cultural inuence in the region. For example, the Chinese govern-
ment is funding Confucius Institutes throughout Central Asia, while providing
funding for Central Asian students to study in China (30,000 scholarships over
the next 10 years). The Turkish government and Turkish businessmen are fund-
ing Turkish schools and universities, and funding is coming into the region from
the Middle East to nance the construction and establishment of Islamic religious
schools, i.e., medresses.
While dierent political actors engage in building ties to and within the
region, poverty and high unemployment rates have forced many people to
migrate to other places both in and outside of the region, in search of jobs and
opportunities. In addition to the language policy and planning eorts that have
been established and implemented by the states, this type of labor migration
has thus provided additional impetus to learn other languages/dialects for
mobility and employment purposes.

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 Introduction 5

These and many other factors (both macro and micro) have informed the
political defragmentation process that have been taking place in these linguisti-
cally, culturally and socially diverse societies. But in the context of growing
social fragmentation, promoting and maintaining a dominant Westaphalian
nation-state model (i.e., one state, one language) has been dicult for new
nation-states in light of issues related inequality, labor mobility, diversity, and
change (Heller 2011).
However, while the Central Asian republics share socio-cultural, historical,
and linguistic similarities, along with a Soviet legacy that has remained entrenched
in various institutions, they have pursued dierent development pathways. By
focusing on language-related issues, this edited volume is thus an attempt to
describe the how social change has been conceptualized, implemented, and
experienced within and across the transnational complex of the Central Asian
republics. Thus, this book broadly revolves around the following questions:
How has the institutionalization of language and literacy policies through
education with a focus on arming titular languages contributing to the
reproduction of particular types of national identities or nationalist discourses?
How do (new) language practices and changing notions of what constitutes
socio-cultural-linguistic capital reect wider global and local, social and
cultural changes?
What has been (and continues to be) the impact of urbanization and demo-
graphic change on language change, particularly as it relates to language
shift and revival, as well as education reform in Central Asia? and
How has language been used as a geo-political tool in the politicization of
transnational identities and histories (e.g., pan-Turkism, pro-Russian, pro-
EU movements)?

All of the chapters in this book provide insight into one or more of the afore-
mentioned questions in relation to current discussions about national identity,
language policy and planning processes, education, and changing notions of
socio-cultural capital in the Central Asian context. The overall aim of this book
is to encourage discussion about these dierent lines of research that will con-
tribute to the broader eld of the sociology of language by examining this
under-published but dynamic region.

2 Context
To situate this volume in terms of language research, this section provides a
brief overview of sociolinguistic research on language change in post Soviet
countries. Pavlenko (2013) lists several reasons for the scarcity of sociolinguistic

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6 Juldyz Smagulova and Elise S. Ahn

research of post-Soviet contexts in the West, particularly in the United States.

This includes: a lack of an appropriate methodological foundation for the study
of sociolinguistic changes and linguistic reforms in the post-Soviet space; a
lack of systematic sociolinguistic eldwork and an overreliance on surveys
and analysis of policy documents; and a lack of collaboration between Western
and local scholars (Pavlenko 2013: 263). Similar problems have more generally
hindered the development of sociolinguistic research in post-Soviet academia.
Briey looking at its intellectual history, one of the key assumptions under-
girding Soviet linguistic research was the understanding that language was
a type of a social activity and that it was dialectically linked to both social
consciousness and interaction (Desheriev 1968; Jakubinsky 1986; Krysin 1977;
Polivanov 1931; Shveitser 1976; Shveitser and Nikolsky 1978). But despite this
conceptualization of language as a social phenomenon contemporary to the
work being conducted by Labov (1972a, 1972b) and others, Soviet sociolinguistics
was fundamentally constrained by ideology. Because the socialist society was
theoretically egalitarian and therefore classless, to posit that language variation
could be due to social inequality and/or power dierentials or that it was ideo-
logically driven was not permitted. This is exemplied in how the analysis of
Soviet researchers regarding language planning in African post-colonial con-
texts was framed as a critique of urban Western bourgeois policies (and thus
aligned with narratives produced by Soviet ideology). Additionally, language
planning studies in the Soviet Union advanced the notion that the Soviet lan-
guage policy was enriching for both the Russian language as well as the milieu
of minority languages (Desheriev 1966, 1987; Isayev 1979; Khasanov 1976).
Moreover, foundational to the creation a homogenous Soviet nation was the
establishment of Russian as the language of the Union. This process of sblizhenie
(getting closer) and sliianie (merging) of ethno-linguistic groups further conned
research related to bilingualism and language contact to safe areas including
comparative linguistics and examining language transfer as it related to the
improved acquisition of Russian by non-Russian speaking populations.
Research was also constrained by methodological limitations. Within the
Soviet research tradition, few methods were considered legitimate sources of
knowledge production. Public opinion surveys, textual and comparative analysis
methods were central in sociolinguistic work, which limited the research that
could be conducted to policy documents and quantitative, taxonomic-type of
work. This vein of research was then appropriated for state-usage to inform the
Soviet policy-making apparatus which was interested in how numbers and
research reected an alignment with its ideological agenda. This was dierent
from language-related research (), where language as the main of object of

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 Introduction 7

study led to extensive analysis of literary works, usually authored by famous

and state-approved writers like the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin or the
Kazakh novelist, Mukhtar Auezov. Language-in-use oriented research was, thus,
essentially non-existent during that period.
The fall of the Soviet Union brought along a collapse of this research tradi-
tion which was based on its own version of Marxism-Leninism. However, at a
macro-level, the epistemological void left behind was then lled by nationalist
discourses within the nascent, post-Soviet nation states. While language-related
research previously existed to scaold the Soviet social meta-narrative, the same
research and research ideologies then became re-appropriated by the dierent
titular nationalities in attempts to reproduce similar meta-narratives within their
geo-political borders.
However, the appropriation of the language-ethnicity-land link was not new
to the post-1991 FSU countries. During the late 1980s, a number of local publica-
tions on language as a way of preserving and reviving ethnic identity and lan-
guage were circulated throughout the Soviet Union and within regions with
large ethnic populations with historic ties to the land. Thus, the idea of a titular
language then as being the sole state language was easy to recycle (Kertzer and
Ariel 2002; Tishkov 1997). As a result, the post-1991 political conditions then
created contexts in which new political elites could use the discourse of
language and nation-state, linking land and political control to establish these
nation-states (Heller 2011: 16). But while the euphoric, nationalist discourses
across the FSU countries in the 1990s was characterized by the move towards
privileging the languages of their titular ethno-linguistic groups, the reality of
reconciling symbolic language policy discourse and the implementation of lan-
guage planning activities has held numerous challenges, which is examined
throughout the rest of this book.

3 Overview of this book

The rst section of this volume looks at dierent frameworks and data collection
methods that can provide insights into how language change can be understood
in Central Asias multilingual contexts. In Chapter Two, Stephen Bahry looks at
how using a linguistic ecology framework better captures both the historical and
contemporary multilingualism and social complexity of language networks and
language change in Central Asia. Tracing back the interactions between dierent
ethnolinguistic groups, Bahry provides an overview of the long history of lan-
guage networks in the region highlighting both the longevity and breadth of

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8 Juldyz Smagulova and Elise S. Ahn

the existing linguistic diversity. In Chapter Three, Nathan Light uses ethnographic
interviewing to examine the function of aspect in Kyrgyz narratives about cul-
tural practices and personal experiences. Drawing from two years of recorded
interviews, Light uses linguistic analysis to investigate dierent modes of narra-
tive expression. In Chapter Four, Elise Ahn and Antonia Jensen provide a
glimpse into the Turkmenistani education system, dierent education-related
language reforms and the various policies that provide a conicted picture
regarding broader socio-political aims through the lens of an English language
lecturer that spent several years teaching in Turkmenistan. By using an auto-
ethnographic approach, Ahn and Jensen utilize this method as a way of engag-
ing in research under constrained conditions.
The second section of this book focuses specically at language policy and
planning activities as part of the nation-state building process in Central Asia.
Chapters Five and Six provide analysis of language change in Kazakhstan.
In Chapter Five, Juldyz Smagulova describes the re-acquisition of Kazakh in
Russian-dominated urban areas in Kazakhstan. She focuses specically on the
role of Kazakh language Medium of Instruction (MOI) and its impact on Kazakh
language revitalization eorts. In Chapter Six, Maganat Shegebayev examines
the corpus building process by looking at the Kazakhstani oil and gas sector,
drawing interviews that were conducted at several dierent Kazakhstani gas
companies.
Chapters Seven and Eight examine language and education policy Tajikistan
from the vantage point of dierent minority populations. Stephen Bahry explores
multilingualism among Pamiri communities in Tajikistan using a linguistic
ecology lens and Daniyar Karabaev and Elise Ahn describe the lived language
and schooling experiences of Kyrgyz populations in Badakhshan, Tajikistan.
Chapters Eight and Nine focus on language change in the broader Central Asian
areas. In Chapter Nine, using text analysis, Ruth Bartholomew examines the
way Tatar nation-state construction was articulated in debates regarding Tatar
language script change in the 1990s. Chapter Ten describes language use by
Uyghur students in the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. Here, Ablimit
Baki Elterish uses a mixed method approach (i.e., surveys, interviews, and docu-
ments) in order to situate language use and attitudes of these students in their
complex socio-political context.
The last section takes a brief look at how globalization is aecting and intro-
ducing new issues into the broader Central Asian context. In Chapter Eleven, Leroy
Terrelonge, Jr. examines the complex relationship between Tajik migrant workers
migrating to Russia and the role of language in helping/hindering this oppor-
tunity, which are situated in a broader context of increasing tension in Russia
and increased nationalism in Tajikistan. And in the nal chapter, Dilia Hasanova

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 Introduction 9

studies the role of English in Uzbekistan, where the government has aggressively
pursued a nationalist language policy agenda, yet desires to be able to participate
in the international community.
The chapters and contributors were selected to represent a range of lan-
guage practitioners and researchers, e.g., researchers, linguists, anthropologists,
educationalists, educators, and sociolinguist, in order to look at the region from
an interdisciplinary perspective using a range of methodologies and tools.
We believe that the methodological diversity reected in this book helps to
provide a fuller picture of the language change in Central Asia. By no means do
the papers in this volume exhaustively answer the questions identied earlier.
However, as Martha Brill Olcott (2014) argued, [m]any of the current discus-
sions about Central Asia do a real injustice to what has happened over the
more than two decades of statehood in this part of the world and totally remove
it from the context of global trends and problems more generally. Thus, our
aim in bringing together this collection was was two-fold. The rst was to raise
emergent language and education-related issues. The second was to demon-
strate that this region deserves a closer attention from researchers as it can pro-
vide invaluable data and insights to question many normative assumptions
widely accepted among language researchers.

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