The quest for the ‘best’ language for modern Xinjiang: language ideologies of practicality and aesthetics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Xinjiang has witnessed constant state attempts to reinforce the status of Mandarin Chinese as ‘the Common Language’ and to make local Turkic languages – mainly Uyghur and Kazak – more ‘suitable’ to the modern world. Official efforts to transform the linguistic landscape of Xinjiang have engaged in a complex interplay with Turkic speakers’ own understandings of speaking, writing, and modernity across China and Central Asia. While tacitly subscribing to the dominant language ideology that Chinese is more useful, practical, and suitable for the modern world, Turkic speakers in Xinjiang also take pride in their languages. Especially since the government-initiated script reform in the early 1980s, the Arabic scripts’ indexical association with literacy and Islamic identity has become stronger than ever for people in Xinjiang. Today, the Arabic script is not only an index of ethno-religious identity, but also an artistic expression. Thus, to many Turkic speakers in Xinjiang, Chinese is merely a language of mundane concern, whereas Turkic languages are the medium of aesthetic elaboration such as oral poetry and epic stories. This paper demonstrates that attention to such historical particularities helps us better understand how certain language ideologies can remain unchallenged while others are easily contested.