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Abstract

This paper examines how ethnic Kazakhs from the Ili region of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region conceptualize variation within the Kazakh language and how these perceptions are shaped by language ideologies. Although Kazakh is often described in linguistic scholarship as a language with relatively limited dialectal differentiation, speakers’ perceptions reveal that linguistic differences are interpreted through ideological frameworks that link language use to authenticity, morality, and cultural belonging. This study investigates how Xinjiang Kazakhs perceive dialect variation across the Kazakhstan–China border and how these perceptions construct symbolic boundaries within the Kazakh-speaking world.

The analysis draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted with ethnic Kazakhs born in Xinjiang who later migrated to southern Kazakhstan. Using methods from perceptual dialectology and following Preston’s framework, which elicits speakers’ attitudes, evaluations, and mental maps of linguistic variation, semi-structured interviews were employed for this study. Participants were asked to comment on regional language differences, evaluate speech samples from different regions of Kazakhstan, and describe where they believe dialectal boundaries exist. While participants experienced difficulty with map-based elicitation tasks commonly used in perceptual dialectology, their verbal responses provided detailed insights into how linguistic differences are imagined and evaluated.

The findings demonstrate that participants consistently interpret linguistic variation through an ideology of linguistic purism. Many described the Kazakh spoken in Xinjiang as таза (‘pure’) or нақ қазақ (‘real Kazakh’), contrasting it with what they perceive as “mixed” or “influenced” Kazakh in Kazakhstan due to Russian borrowings and code-switching. These evaluations reflect broader ideological associations between linguistic purity and cultural authenticity. At the same time, participants frequently portray Kazakh in Kazakhstan as linguistically homogeneous, overlooking internal dialect diversity. These perceptions illustrate the semiotic process of erasure, whereby the ideology of linguistic purity renders both contact-induced features in Xinjiang Kazakh and dialect variation within Kazakhstan largely invisible to speakers. Furthermore, judgments about linguistic purity are reproduced at smaller regional scales within Xinjiang itself, demonstrating the process of fractal recursivity in the construction of dialect hierarchies.

By examining how speakers ideologically interpret linguistic variation, this paper contributes to scholarship on language ideology, perceptual dialectology, and cross-border linguistic identities in Central Eurasia. The study highlights how dialect boundaries are not simply linguistic realities but socially constructed through speakers' beliefs about authenticity, purity, and cultural legitimacy.

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Abstract

The Uyghur language is facing a rapidly growing existential crisis; the global diaspora, scattered across Australia, Turkey, Japan, Central Asia, Western Europe, North America, has emerged as the primary site of active linguistic reproduction and cultural continuity. This study examines how a geographically fragmented Uyghur community organizes itself to sustain a language under severe pressure, through building institutions, curricula, and digital infrastructure from scratch and across borders.

The presentation argues that diaspora language preservation efforts constitute a form of structural counter-architecture: a deliberate, institution-building response to conditions of linguistic vulnerability. This analysis maps three interconnected layers of this response. First is the institutional layer, comprising community-run mother-tongue schools. Second is the academic and curricular layer, grounded in organizations like the Uyghur Academy, which in 2024 published and distributed for free the first systematically produced, five-year elementary textbook series specifically designed for diaspora students. Third is the digital layer, which includes online educational platforms.

The presentation also scrutinizes the deep internal tensions that undermine them. Host country languages like Turkish, English, German, and Russian exert strong socioeconomic pressure on diaspora youth, making Uyghur a secondary language in daily life. More critically, the study develops the concept of the "Frozen Language" effect: severed from the intellectual and institutional centers where natural linguistic evolution would occur, Uyghur vocabulary is stagnant in the diaspora. New terms for technology, science, and contemporary social life cannot be generated organically; this leads to new generations being unable to express complex modern experiences in their mother tongue, further driving them toward dominant languages. The resource asymmetry repeatedly highlights the difficulty of academics, teachers, and organizers sustaining this effort without broader international academic and institutional support.

The presentation concludes by examining how the Uyghur diaspora's struggle for language preservation sheds light on a broader linguistic phenomenon. In this struggle, when a community's conditions for linguistic reproduction are disrupted, the burden of survival falls upon a dispersed, under-resourced exiled population that is forced to maintain the complete infrastructure of a normally functioning society. Whether the diaspora can preserve a vibrant, thriving language, not just as a preserved artifact, but ensuring its permanence as a language of thought and identity for future generations of Uyghurs, or whether it will become a time capsule belonging to an increasingly distant world, as the "Frozen Language" thesis predicts, is the defining question.

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This paper investigates the dynamics that Uyghur diaspora communities utilise to maintain their mother tongue alive in Europe and Turkiye. In recent years, the Uyghur language in China has been restricted in education, public life, publications, and media. These restrictions have contributed to the classification of Uyghur as an endangered language (Reyhan 2021). Complex challenges of political and linguistic pressures from the external homeland and the opportunities for linguistic freedom in their host counties are leading many Uyghurs in the diaspora to actively want to keep their mother tongue survive as cultural resistance to the language policy in the homeland. Drawing on the findings from fieldnotes, interviews and observations gathered with Uyghur diaspora communities in Europe and Türkiye, this paper examines the strategies through which Uyghur diaspora work to keep their mother tongue alive, and explores how the preservation of the Uyghur language across borders within Uyghur diaspora communities generates benefits for cultural identity, community well-being, the safeguarding of unique knowledge systems, and the advancement of human rights. By examining the interplay between linguistic continuity and transnational belonging, this study argues that mother tongue preservation is not merely a cultural practice but a critical mechanism for sustaining resilience and empowerment among Uyghur diaspora populations. This study contributes to scholarship on how diaspora communities confront challenges of sustaining their native languages amidst political and linguistic crisis in their homeland.

Reference:

Reyhan, Dil.2021. ‘Uyghur: from a lingua franca to an endangered language’. In Inalco. No.10, 2021.