# Uzbek for My Heart: Language Choice and Identity Negotiation in Multilingual Uzbekistan

Authors: Liang Zhao
Journal: Security and Communication Networks
 (2022)

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## Abstract

Central Asia is distinguished by its high level of multilingualism. Incorporating both language portrait and ethnographic methods, this paper attempts to uncover how young Uzbeks negotiate their use of language in multilingual Uzbekistan and its connections to education, opportunity, identity, and group membership; furthermore, it examines how they construct and negotiate their identities during this process. Under the lens of a micro and bottom-up approach, this research discovers that the youth of Uzbekistan regard multilingualism as a semiotic source of mobility that allows them to function adequately in a globalized world and that Uzbek, as a mother tongue, plays an important role in their ethnic and cultural identification. Being an Uzbek always occupies the first position among their many identities at the intersection of tradition and modernity, as well as localization and globalization, highlights the relationship between the mother tongue, as a heritage and individual development, which can be an important life anchor left for younger generations as a part of their own history and tradition, especially now, in the historical period we are living in, where relationships are characterized by high mobility and virtualization.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

From the point of view of both societies and individuals, multilingualism is a striking characteristic of Central Asia. Uzbekistan’s multifaceted linguistic heritage and historical cultural isolation from the West contribute to its importance as a site of inquiry. Uzbekistan has a diverse cultural heritage due to its storied history and strategic location. Its first major official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population. Russian has widespread use as a governmental language; it is the most widely taught second language. Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians (5.4%), Tajiks (4.0%), Kazakhs (3.0%), and others (6.5%).According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, language, and more specifically multilingual skills, is a form of social and symbolic capital that follows speakers as they search for work and power both locally and transnationally [1]. By transforming social and symbolic capital into economic capital, language is commodified for use in a globalized society, where, as a result, multilingual may have advantages over monolinguals in say, education environment, labor market, etc. For young Uzbeks today, being multilingual provides them with not only a symbolic capacity for mobility but also various perspectives to seeing, being, and feeling themselves and the world per se in their life across borders, languages, cultures, and expected behaviors.Various tensions between the past and the future, tradition and modernity, and local and transnational are evident in all facets of life in Uzbek society as a result of the country’s history and current development, particularly the gradual transition to a market economy. How do young Uzbeks construct and negotiate their multilingual identities in such a scenario? Instead of taking a macrolevel, top-down approach to language policy and planning or language systems, this paper deploys a microlevel, bottom-up approach to the construction of identities of the Uzbek. A multimodal method, language portrait, is combined with questionnaire and interview, with the aim of finding out what meaning these students attach to their linguistic resources, their language practices, and their language attitudes in particular. Through the narrative elicited by the image, the voices and perspectives of the young people themselves are represented. By adopting language biographic approaches to an ethnographic interview, this paper tends to uncover how young Uzbeks negotiate their use of language, its connections to education, opportunity, identity, and group membership, and how they build up their identities at the interface of tradition and modernity as well as localization and globalization.The research is organized as follows. Section2 discussed the background; Section 3 discusses the literature review. Section 4 discussed the methodology of the proposed concept. Section 5 determines the data analysis and discussion. Section 6 discussed the conclusion of the paper. Finally, in Section 7, the research work is concluded with limitations.


## 2. Background

Because of the large number of language families represented in the region, linguistic diversity is a distinguishing element of the situation in Central Asia. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan has redefined its cultural, political, and economic identity as one of the newly independent states of Central Asia. It is a multiethnic country with more than 130 ethnicities which occupies more than 20% of the whole population. Uzbek is the predominant ethnicity, while other minorities include Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Tatars, and Koreans. The country has a rich blending of ethnicities, languages, and cultures.Uzbeks, like other Central Asians, are often bilingual or multilingual rather than monolingual. Uzbek is by far the most widely spoken language, but Russian is also widely spoken as a native or second language, especially in large towns. Other languages, such as Tajik in Samarkand and Bukhara, are extensively spoken in different parts of Uzbekistan. On landscapes and outdoor billboard boards in Tashkent, Uzbek and Russian are always depicted alongside one another. Besides Uzbek and Russian, languages in use in the region include Turkic languages, Indo-European—primarily Slavic and Iranian languages—and Semitic languages, Chinese languages (Chinese languages refer to varieties of Chinese that are mutually unintelligible to varying degrees), and others.The issue of Uzbek-Russian relations is further compounded by the prominence of English as a lingua franca. English is a compulsory subject in every school. In fact, varied language instruction situations in different schools in Tashkent depict multilingualism. In Uzbek-speaking schools, Uzbek is the working language and learned as the first language while Russian and English are taught as foreign languages. In Russian-speaking schools, Russian is the working language and taught as the main language, whereas Uzbek and English are given less courses. There are also English-speaking international schools in Tashkent, where English is the major language to work on and Russian is the second while Uzbek is not taught at all. Besides these three main kinds of scenarios, schools differ from each other on the issue that what languages should be optionally available for students. Common choices are German and Chinese. Students can learn these languages as additional subjects after their compulsory class hours. Given the complicated language teaching situation, the upcoming generation of teenagers and youth who have been formally schooled in Uzbek normally can speak three languages at least.Within the paradigm of globalization, multilingualism, more specifically multilingual practices are seen as situated practices rather than as abstract and absolute competencies a speaker acquires. Bloomaert (2005) argues that multilingual competencies are organized around activities, situations, and topics. This paper tends to examine the activities, situations, and topics related to language choice patterns and attitudes of young Uzbeks and, more importantly, to find out how they build up their identities during these practices.


## 3. Literature Review

Over the last few decades, methods for assessing speakers’ multilingual ability have advanced significantly. Gumperz [2] coined the term “verbal repertoire” to describe how language decisions are influenced by social limitations and categories. Since the era of “super-diversity” [3], empirical studies have focused attention on linguistic practices. Notions such as “language crossing” [4], “translanguaging” [5–7], “polylingual languaging” [8], and “metrolingualism” [9] are not based on the knowledge of a language in a traditional sense but rather on language as an expression of style, which can help to understand better of social heteroglossia [10], i.e., multilinguality, multivoicedness, and multidiscursivity of our societies.Acknowledging fluidity and creativity in linguistic practices, these approaches mark a shift away from regarding language as a structure, system, and full of regularity. However, they focus on the synchronic space of social interactions, showing less attention to a diachronic time space of cultural reenactment of multilingualism. Poststructuralists like Derrida and Butler suggest a subject perspective of multilingualism that will not only “encompass the body dimension of perceiving, experiencing, feeling, and desiring” but also “take into account a historical and biographical time dimension, as in a poststructuralist view the subject is considered as constituted in and through language and discourse already established before” [11]. Such a perspective requires us to rethink multilingualism more in terms of a diachronic time space of cultural reenactment instead of only focusing on the synchronic space of social interactions.Biographic approaches provide researchers with both a macrosociological perspective based on large-scale surveys and a microlevel perspective of the individual speaker by providing insights into how an individual experiences the broader social context and how s/he develops her/his language repertoire with various expectations and desires in language capabilities. Although biographic techniques rely on individual case studies, such a combined perspective means that they are concerned not just with the uniqueness of a specific life story but also with the social dimensions of language practices that the approaches serve to uncover.Earlier biographical approaches are used mainly in language acquisition studies, involving diary-writing and reporting (Ronjat 1913, Leopold 1939–1949, Maneeva 2004, cited from [12]). Language portrait, one of the biographic approaches I deploy in this research, originates from research on linguistic diversity [12]. At the beginning of the1990s, when European towns became increasingly multilingual as a result of migration and movement, language portrait was developed with the goal of investigating language awareness in primary school instruction. This approach comprises two parts: language silhouettes coloring and telling or/and writing language biographies. The participants are given a body shape and told to paint all of their languages on it, using a different color for each one. Coloring in preprinted body outlines with various colors is an activity that youngsters are familiar with from painting books. They frequently like picking a hue to represent a language or code they speak, and they take their time to figure out the best way to portray their linguistic capital. Following this, language biographies are written and told, with the goal of examining selection, interpretation, and evaluation in both the visual and verbal modes, because identity representation and formation do not occur independently of social discourses.Language portraits, as a multimodal approach, provide a possibility of examining how speakers build up their linguistic repertoire over time, i.e., the diachronic process of accumulating linguistic resources through practices, as opposed to other approaches to multilingualism (as stated in the first paragraph of this section). More crucially, language portrait allows speakers to communicate their sentiments and attitudes about language and language use by allowing them to tell or write about their language experiences.Based on these considerations, this paper adopts the biographic approach of language portraits into an ethnographic study, with the aim of examining how the young Uzbeks negotiate language choice and use in multilingual Uzbekistan and how they construct self-identity and group identity at the interface of tradition and modernity as well as of localization and globalization. As in many multilingual societies, language attitudes in Uzbekistan reflect a complex sociocultural picture of Uzbeks; this explains hesitancy and ambivalence in terms of language choice and attitudes at the individual and societal levels. Biographical approaches like language portraits will help to find out the complicated reasons for such hesitation and ambivalence as well as speakers’ own orientation and expectation as to identities.


## 4. Methodology

The study was carried out from January to February 2016. There were 32 participants in this study; all of them were Uzbek students from classes of Grade 2 in Tashkent Confucius Institute, ranging in age from 16 to 20 (please see Tables1 and 2). I told them about the purpose, methods, and steps which would be used in the research and asked for allowance to carry out the research among them. I spoke English mainly, switching to Chinese from time to time when some students asked questions in Chinese.Considering my identity as a foreigner and their being lack of experience in academic research, I expect that the coloring task will help the participants to feel relaxed and less uncomfortable facing the following questions and interviews. At the same time, given the fact that English is not the native language of both the researcher and the participants, I replace the second part of the biographic approach, the telling or/and writing of autobiographic stories, with a short interview (10 minutes or so), in order to make the information more focused and condensed. To supplement the results of biographic approaches, a questionnaire was designed to obtain more specific quantitative data concerning language use and language attitude. Finally, ethnographic interviews were held with some of the participants with the aim of acquiring more deep and thoughtful reflections on socialization, education, and future career among young Uzbeks. In a word, my methodology consists of three parts.First, a questionnaire was distributed to 32 students. All of the questionnaires were returned. The purpose of the survey was to gather information about the respondents’ languages and variations, as well as their views. The questionnaire was in English, consisting of eight questions and including sociolinguistic background, age, sex, education and linguistic proficiency of the participants, language activities, and language attitudes. The responses of the respondents were then totaled and tabulated.Secondly, all participants were asked to consider their linguistic repertoire, as well as the codes, languages, ways of expression, and communication that play a role in their lives, and to map them in a body-shape drawing using colorful pens (Figure1). And then each of them was interviewed briefly about the choice and pattern of colors and their experiences in learning, choice, and use of the languages represented in the body silhouette. Both the color (despite the fact that no color has a neutral and universal meaning, it becomes a signifier, a bearer of meaning, in a specific setting and in combination with the meaning potential it has gained as a result of its cultural history (Kress, van Leeuwen 2001: 590)) and the location of the color revealed their meaning only when the drawing is explained n interpreted by the author.Figure 1
Template for the drawing of language portraits.After doing a 10-minute interview with each student, as soon as they completed the silhouette coloring and questionnaire, I chose eight students to conduct in-depth interviews with. The quality and outcomes of the first-round interview, i.e., the English level, the Chinese level, and the desire to talk, were used to select these 8 candidates. I first interviewed 5 students whose English or Chinese is good enough to carry out a long conversation and found out several themes. And then I interviewed 3 more, who speak English or Chinese less well than the first 5 and found out there were no more new themes appearing. The eight interviews are transcribed and qualitatively examined. Using English or Chinese instead of Uzbek or Russian in the research will, without a doubt, influence the results. In the final portion, we will go through this in further detail. However, I believe that such a restriction will not distort the results because the goal is to elicit the students' feelings, emotions, and expectations rather than to criticize their language choice patterns or identities. After all, in the field of social science, completely impartial research is difficult to obtain because our research subjects are well-known for being fickle and unpredictable: humans.


## 5. Data Analysis and Discussion

Questions of the questionnaire include three aspects: language capability, language choice and use, and language attitudes, which are shown in the following three tables.The results of the survey demonstrate that students choose languages based on situations, contexts, addressees, and topics, among other factors. When they are at home or on the streets, they speak Uzbek or Russian; however, when they are in school or with friends, they speak Russian. At school and on the streets, they also speak English and Chinese (as shown in Table3).Table 1
Biodata of the participants.
GenderAgeEthnicityEducation backgroundMaleFemale1617181920UzbekRussianKazakhHigh schoolLyceum1418431110422461220Table 2
Language capability of the participants.
GenderAgeEthnicityNumber of languagesLevels of languagesNativeFluentMediumUndevelopedPoor1M17Uzbek6U∗RCEF, G2M20Uzbek5UR,ECG3M19Uzbek5URCEG4M18Uzbek4URE,C5M16Kazakh4UER,C6M19Uzbek4E, RCU7M18Uzbek4UR, EC8M18Uzbek4UR, EC9M19Russian4R, UEC10M18Uzbek4URE, C11M19Uzbek5U, RECG12M16Kazakh5KR, UEC13M18Uzbek4UR, EC14M19Uzbek4UR, EC15F20Kazakh5U,RCEJ16F19Uzbek6R,UE, CAG17F18Kazakh4R,UEC18F19Uzbek4U, REC19F18Uzbek5R, UCET20F16Russian4UR, EC21F17Kazakh4U, REC22F20Uzbek5U, RECFA23F18Uzbek4U, REC24F18Uzbek4R, UEC25F19Uzbek4UE, RC26F19Russian5U, RECK27F18Uzbek4R, UC, E28F16Uzbek5RUECF29F20Kazakh6KU, ECDF30F18Russian5RECUG31F19Uzbek7RU, EC, KFG32F17Uzbek4UR, CE∗F : Female; M : Male; ∗∗C : Chinese; E : English; F : French; G : German; K : Kazakh; R : Russian; U : Uzbek.Table 3
Language choice in different domains.
At homeAt schoolWith friendsIn streetsUzbek84.37%76.19%68.85%96.89%Russian66.48%82.67%80.76%88.57%English3.12%45.83%38.90%68.41%Chinese0%20.59%7.06%10.52%Other languages6.25%9.65%4.12%6.96%Languages they are studying and going to study later are listed in Table4.Table 4
Foreign languages which are studying or going to study later.
EnglishChineseGermanFrenchKoreanSpanishArabicPersian87.5%62.5%56.25%46.88%34.38%31.25%25%6.25%After finishing the questionnaire, the participants started coloring the body silhouette. 32 body images are collected, each with a different layout, coloring, and labeling. Figure2 shows some examples. Some of the students add eyes, noses, mouths, ears, hair, flags, or weapons to the body silhouette. During the following brief interview, each participant described the reasons for color-choosing, labeling, layout, language use, and attitudes. The effect of language portraits manifests itself from the processes and results of the coloring and brief interview. The approaches not only help relax the participants at the beginning of the research through the coloring and drawing part but also provide them a lively way to rethink their own language repertoire and related learning and user experiences. As a result, they feel natural and comfortable to express their feelings and emotions concerning language choice and use in the following question-and-answer part.Figure 2
Examples of colored body silhouettes.Social position, identification with a professional group, affinity with a given world view, and ties to certain geographic and linguistic settings can all be represented via language use. The 8 participants who accepted deep interviews told about their language experience, language ideologies, and future plan. After the transcription and analysis, three themes emerged.


### 5.1. Uzbek and Russian: Natural versus Necessary

Uzbek is the most often spoken language at home and in social situations. The hue indicating Uzbek takes up more than half of the body silhouette in some students’ coloring. Some of them embellish the body silhouette with eyes, noses, mouths, ears, hair, flags, or weaponry. Many pupils choose a color to represent their “Uzbek heart” and add a heart to the body contour. They expressed a bit about this language compared to other languages, such as reasoning, experience, and expectations of language learning and use; nonetheless, most of them thought it was so natural that there was no need to say anything else about it. “We're Uzbeks who speak Uzbek.”Russian is the second most popular language for young Uzbeks; most of them think it is as important as Uzbek today. Most students said they speak both Uzbek and Russian at home, for everyone in the family can speak these two languages. But this is not the case for everyone. Nearly a half of the students said that one of their parents could not speak Russian, so they speak mainly Uzbek at home. Several others, who were ethnically Russian or Kazakh, spoke Russian or Kazakh at home. They stated that it was “natural” to switch into Russian or Kazakh when they were with family, for it was “like this since the first day” they “could remember”. Four students said they had been to Russia with their families; two boys stated explicitly that they would “go to Russia for higher education”; five students expressed their expectation to “o to Russia for traveling” and none of the rest said anything explicit about the willingness or desire of going to Russia, be it for education, trip, or business. Most students described Russian as “necessary” and “important” for their career, including further education and good job opportunities in government or administration, but no strong intention of going to Russia was expressed.


### 5.2. More Languages, More Power

English is treated as an important resource for future careers; about half of the students expressed their desire to go to Britain or the USA for further study. Some thought English was the leg, for it could bring them to other places of the world; some said English was a fancy language because English songs were very fashionable; still, some suggested that English was a language that they must learn, because “everybody learns it today”. One boy, whose father is British, said he would go to Britain for a college education. One girl, who chose English literature as her major at the lyceum, expressed explicitly her dream of going to Britain to “feel the country”. Several students mentioned that Britain or the USA might be choices for further study when they graduated from lyceum, but they were not sure yet. Several university students said that most of the faculties at Westminster University (a local university) were from Britain, so it was also good to study at this local university. But anyway, as some claimed, good English could help them to see a bigger world.Compared to English, the reasons for learning Chinese are more specific. To go to university in China, to do business with Chinese, and to teach Chinese to local people are the three main arguments. Many participants show great passion for learning Chinese and regard it as “a language for making money” because China is a “huge market”. Five boys expressed firmly that they would choose international trade as their major in university and be a businessman in the China-Uzbek trade market. Three young women told me that they just “wanted to be a teacher” like me and that they intended to teach Chinese in Uzbekistan or adjacent countries. They told me about their Chinese names and how they came up with them. An 18-month exchange at a high school in Urumqi, China, was one of the highlights of one girl’s life. Her Chinese is good, and she stated that after high school, she plans to attend a Chinese institution.In the interview part, many students expressed their expectations of picking up foreign languages, sharing a view that language can make them entitled to participate in globalization and enjoy more power and benefits from it. They treated languages as toolkits for them to participate in this globalized era.Alim (All names are pseudonyms.): I use Uzbek with my family. At school, we use Russian more. I think my English and Chinese are ok, but not very good. … I need language, ‘cause I want to see a bigger world.Sarvar: I am not sure where to settle down after graduation. I just want to be a wise man. I must learn English and Chinese well. They are very important now … You know, good English can make you have more opportunities, and money, you know. You can know more people, go to other places, and you know, have a more interesting life.Rustam: I hope I can go travel the world. I need to learn different languages, and then I can understand people from everywhere. It’s important to be able to speak several languages (s).Arthur: I will go to Britain for college. And I want to work Germany or France … Yes, my dream is to be a very clever and powerful man, just like my father. And he is right, more languages, more power.Being aware of the power of multilingualism in terms of the capability of mobility, these young students are eager to pick up new languages for their future occupations and career plans. Their expectation of being a globalized person ensures multilingualism as a positive power. However, the multilingual capability does not affect their Uzbek identity at all. As the next section discusses, they all claim an Uzbek heart.


### 5.3. My Heart Is Uzbek

In spite of the different layout of color on the silhouette, all of the participants emphasized that their identity is, with no doubt at all, Uzbek. Their identity of Uzbekness is represented with either one of their favorite color or a specially painted heart. In the interview, all the students tell me that Uzbekistan was their home and they were very proud to be Uzbek. I could have listed many of the positive remarks and comments on how certain and proud these young people were about their Uzbek identity, but I thought maybe a counterexample will be more helpful and insightful to illustrate this point.This is a language portrait of a 15-year-old girl. Her ethnicity is Russian. In the blank body silhouette provided, she sketched in her language, completely filled in the outline, added hair, and then explained her portrait as follows. In the visual and narrative description of her language experience, she expressed her various attitudes and identities.Vietoziya: Oh, can I add hair? Because, look, it is like my hair. Oh yes, I draw eyes and mouth here. I want it beautiful. Well, I like Chinese, which is why I'm taking this course. My father's favorite color is blue, and he wants me to learn Chinese, therefore you can see why I chose blue here (for Chinese). Eh…German is another language I just begin to learn at the lyceum, and … I do not know where to put it. I am not sure I will use it later. My brother learns French so I choose German, haha. … Yes, I am Russian. Yes, I draw a Russian heart, but … I am Uzbek. … It’s hard to decide. But I love Uzbek. I want to live here. My grandparents are in St. Petersburg, but I do not want to go to Russia… My right hand is Uzbek because this is the most important body organ. I use my left hand to greet people, but I use my right hand for all the other stuff. … It’s hard to decide whether I will go to Russia or Britain for college, but, I will come back to Tashkent, of course. This is my home. I will not leave it.This narrative is a good example to illustrate the ambiguities and fluidities of identity. While “identity” has multiple definitions and formulations depending on disciplinary affiliations, it is a recurring image in linguistic theory to see it characterized as a “process” within distinct power configurations. The idea has evolved to recognize the range of identities that such a broad term obscures, as well as the fact that identity is significantly less static than previously thought, and that it is more of a construct than a structure. All of the participants in this research have multiple identities, and their social identities derive from a multiplicity of sources—from nationality, ethnicity, community, gender, etc. They build their identities through language choice patterns for now and for the future, their language attitudes, and their expectation of identity-building concerning language use.Vietoziya is particular because her ethnic identity is strong (especially compared to the other minority participants), and when she faced the conflict between ethnic identity and national identity, she chose the latter without any hesitation. Her story shows how identity “gives us a place in the world and establishes a connection between us and the community in which we live... Differences, i.e., what it is not, are frequently used to define [it]” ([13] 1–2). At the same time, Vietoziya is not particular in that everyone has to face the multiplicity of identities. When a person has multiple identities that compete and occasionally contradict each other, identity conflict can occur. People with a multiplicity of identities have a variety of social and cultural identities that they blend together in some way. This sort of combined identity reveals, as Hall points out, that far from being grounded in a mere “recovery” of the past, identities are the different ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within the narratives of the past ([14]: 223). The reason that the story of Vietoziya is described with more effort is that the analysis of how she solved the identity-building problem gives another case example of the negotiation role in multiple identities. Identity, according to Fishman [15], is the dynamic link between ancestral legacy, including all of its components (oral tradition, literature, beliefs, and so on), and the language(s) that give rise to a particular cultural identity (Figure 3).Figure 3
Vietoziya’s language portrait.This case also highlights again the advantage of using the biographic approaches. If only the questionnaire and interview were deployed, I could not find out about this important phenomenon of self-conflicts and self-solution processes in identity-building. Such a biographic approach helps to track the trajectory of language experience and to find out clues to uncover the multiple identities, for, as the psychologist Josselson claimed, identity is “neither a structure nor a context but a property of the ego that organizes experience. In some ways, identity creation resembles putting together a jigsaw puzzle, with each person having somewhat different parts to fit together” (cited in [16]: 75).


## 5.1. Uzbek and Russian: Natural versus Necessary

Uzbek is the most often spoken language at home and in social situations. The hue indicating Uzbek takes up more than half of the body silhouette in some students’ coloring. Some of them embellish the body silhouette with eyes, noses, mouths, ears, hair, flags, or weaponry. Many pupils choose a color to represent their “Uzbek heart” and add a heart to the body contour. They expressed a bit about this language compared to other languages, such as reasoning, experience, and expectations of language learning and use; nonetheless, most of them thought it was so natural that there was no need to say anything else about it. “We're Uzbeks who speak Uzbek.”Russian is the second most popular language for young Uzbeks; most of them think it is as important as Uzbek today. Most students said they speak both Uzbek and Russian at home, for everyone in the family can speak these two languages. But this is not the case for everyone. Nearly a half of the students said that one of their parents could not speak Russian, so they speak mainly Uzbek at home. Several others, who were ethnically Russian or Kazakh, spoke Russian or Kazakh at home. They stated that it was “natural” to switch into Russian or Kazakh when they were with family, for it was “like this since the first day” they “could remember”. Four students said they had been to Russia with their families; two boys stated explicitly that they would “go to Russia for higher education”; five students expressed their expectation to “o to Russia for traveling” and none of the rest said anything explicit about the willingness or desire of going to Russia, be it for education, trip, or business. Most students described Russian as “necessary” and “important” for their career, including further education and good job opportunities in government or administration, but no strong intention of going to Russia was expressed.


## 5.2. More Languages, More Power

English is treated as an important resource for future careers; about half of the students expressed their desire to go to Britain or the USA for further study. Some thought English was the leg, for it could bring them to other places of the world; some said English was a fancy language because English songs were very fashionable; still, some suggested that English was a language that they must learn, because “everybody learns it today”. One boy, whose father is British, said he would go to Britain for a college education. One girl, who chose English literature as her major at the lyceum, expressed explicitly her dream of going to Britain to “feel the country”. Several students mentioned that Britain or the USA might be choices for further study when they graduated from lyceum, but they were not sure yet. Several university students said that most of the faculties at Westminster University (a local university) were from Britain, so it was also good to study at this local university. But anyway, as some claimed, good English could help them to see a bigger world.Compared to English, the reasons for learning Chinese are more specific. To go to university in China, to do business with Chinese, and to teach Chinese to local people are the three main arguments. Many participants show great passion for learning Chinese and regard it as “a language for making money” because China is a “huge market”. Five boys expressed firmly that they would choose international trade as their major in university and be a businessman in the China-Uzbek trade market. Three young women told me that they just “wanted to be a teacher” like me and that they intended to teach Chinese in Uzbekistan or adjacent countries. They told me about their Chinese names and how they came up with them. An 18-month exchange at a high school in Urumqi, China, was one of the highlights of one girl’s life. Her Chinese is good, and she stated that after high school, she plans to attend a Chinese institution.In the interview part, many students expressed their expectations of picking up foreign languages, sharing a view that language can make them entitled to participate in globalization and enjoy more power and benefits from it. They treated languages as toolkits for them to participate in this globalized era.Alim (All names are pseudonyms.): I use Uzbek with my family. At school, we use Russian more. I think my English and Chinese are ok, but not very good. … I need language, ‘cause I want to see a bigger world.Sarvar: I am not sure where to settle down after graduation. I just want to be a wise man. I must learn English and Chinese well. They are very important now … You know, good English can make you have more opportunities, and money, you know. You can know more people, go to other places, and you know, have a more interesting life.Rustam: I hope I can go travel the world. I need to learn different languages, and then I can understand people from everywhere. It’s important to be able to speak several languages (s).Arthur: I will go to Britain for college. And I want to work Germany or France … Yes, my dream is to be a very clever and powerful man, just like my father. And he is right, more languages, more power.Being aware of the power of multilingualism in terms of the capability of mobility, these young students are eager to pick up new languages for their future occupations and career plans. Their expectation of being a globalized person ensures multilingualism as a positive power. However, the multilingual capability does not affect their Uzbek identity at all. As the next section discusses, they all claim an Uzbek heart.


## 5.3. My Heart Is Uzbek

In spite of the different layout of color on the silhouette, all of the participants emphasized that their identity is, with no doubt at all, Uzbek. Their identity of Uzbekness is represented with either one of their favorite color or a specially painted heart. In the interview, all the students tell me that Uzbekistan was their home and they were very proud to be Uzbek. I could have listed many of the positive remarks and comments on how certain and proud these young people were about their Uzbek identity, but I thought maybe a counterexample will be more helpful and insightful to illustrate this point.This is a language portrait of a 15-year-old girl. Her ethnicity is Russian. In the blank body silhouette provided, she sketched in her language, completely filled in the outline, added hair, and then explained her portrait as follows. In the visual and narrative description of her language experience, she expressed her various attitudes and identities.Vietoziya: Oh, can I add hair? Because, look, it is like my hair. Oh yes, I draw eyes and mouth here. I want it beautiful. Well, I like Chinese, which is why I'm taking this course. My father's favorite color is blue, and he wants me to learn Chinese, therefore you can see why I chose blue here (for Chinese). Eh…German is another language I just begin to learn at the lyceum, and … I do not know where to put it. I am not sure I will use it later. My brother learns French so I choose German, haha. … Yes, I am Russian. Yes, I draw a Russian heart, but … I am Uzbek. … It’s hard to decide. But I love Uzbek. I want to live here. My grandparents are in St. Petersburg, but I do not want to go to Russia… My right hand is Uzbek because this is the most important body organ. I use my left hand to greet people, but I use my right hand for all the other stuff. … It’s hard to decide whether I will go to Russia or Britain for college, but, I will come back to Tashkent, of course. This is my home. I will not leave it.This narrative is a good example to illustrate the ambiguities and fluidities of identity. While “identity” has multiple definitions and formulations depending on disciplinary affiliations, it is a recurring image in linguistic theory to see it characterized as a “process” within distinct power configurations. The idea has evolved to recognize the range of identities that such a broad term obscures, as well as the fact that identity is significantly less static than previously thought, and that it is more of a construct than a structure. All of the participants in this research have multiple identities, and their social identities derive from a multiplicity of sources—from nationality, ethnicity, community, gender, etc. They build their identities through language choice patterns for now and for the future, their language attitudes, and their expectation of identity-building concerning language use.Vietoziya is particular because her ethnic identity is strong (especially compared to the other minority participants), and when she faced the conflict between ethnic identity and national identity, she chose the latter without any hesitation. Her story shows how identity “gives us a place in the world and establishes a connection between us and the community in which we live... Differences, i.e., what it is not, are frequently used to define [it]” ([13] 1–2). At the same time, Vietoziya is not particular in that everyone has to face the multiplicity of identities. When a person has multiple identities that compete and occasionally contradict each other, identity conflict can occur. People with a multiplicity of identities have a variety of social and cultural identities that they blend together in some way. This sort of combined identity reveals, as Hall points out, that far from being grounded in a mere “recovery” of the past, identities are the different ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within the narratives of the past ([14]: 223). The reason that the story of Vietoziya is described with more effort is that the analysis of how she solved the identity-building problem gives another case example of the negotiation role in multiple identities. Identity, according to Fishman [15], is the dynamic link between ancestral legacy, including all of its components (oral tradition, literature, beliefs, and so on), and the language(s) that give rise to a particular cultural identity (Figure 3).Figure 3
Vietoziya’s language portrait.This case also highlights again the advantage of using the biographic approaches. If only the questionnaire and interview were deployed, I could not find out about this important phenomenon of self-conflicts and self-solution processes in identity-building. Such a biographic approach helps to track the trajectory of language experience and to find out clues to uncover the multiple identities, for, as the psychologist Josselson claimed, identity is “neither a structure nor a context but a property of the ego that organizes experience. In some ways, identity creation resembles putting together a jigsaw puzzle, with each person having somewhat different parts to fit together” (cited in [16]: 75).


## 6. Conclusion

Many of the research findings are anchored in the opinions of the youth themselves, who are acutely aware of the various language settings in which they now find themselves. Young Uzbeks negotiate and establish positions in a multilingual society by their language choice and use, and their language choice and use, in turn, form their multifaceted and complicated identities. Language is regarded by these young students as a semiotic resource that can function locally and translocally, enabling them to perform adequately in and through language in a wide variety of social and geographical spaces. Globalization has created new concerns of inequality, both locally and globally, particularly in terms of resource mobility. Being aware of the capacity for mobility, these young Uzbeks treat the issue of multilingualism and multiple identities with flexible perspectives. They negotiated their use of language in terms of its connections to socialization, education, opportunity, and career, making language choices in each different situation, to kinds of addressees, and with various communication aims. Multilingualism, in their point of view, is a powerful resource for them to pursue a career in the globalized era. By doing so, they are building up their identities and group membership at the interface of tradition and modernity as well as localization and globalization. Their language attitudes and choices, which include not only their language beliefs but also their mobility potential, reflect their self-expectations.The findings demonstrate the importance of languages, particularly mother tongues, in the formation of identity. They play symbolic importance since they symbolize cultural factors that influence people's early identities. The child uses them for early socializing. Mother languages help to define people and organizations in terms of their uniqueness, culture, and philosophy, as well as their personalities and ways of thinking (Boukous 1997, cited from [17]). Because they reflect people's feelings, values, goals, and beliefs, mother languages have social functions that are mostly related to identification, everyday life, family, and friends. When national identity is in conflict with other identities (ethnicity identity in this study), people try to find ways to solve the problem and make negotiations among different identities. In rare cases, however, a multilingual shift to another language may not result in a complete loss of language identity. In this context, [18]: 57 claims that a person or community might lose their language without losing their original sense of self.In terms of methodology, two points need to be mentioned. First, biographic approaches, especially language portraits, are useful in dealing with multilingualism and multi-identities. As Bloch (cited from [12]) writes, “A language biography provides the mechanism for one to use one’s own language experiences to pull together and deepen/sharpen one’s understanding/views about language issues.’’ Second, an integrated perspective of the past and the present at both the micro and macrolevel analysis is necessary to uncover how globalization affects people in a localized region. Third, triangulation is carried out to show how the three approaches, i.e., biographic approaches, questionnaires, and interviews, work together concerning language use and ideologies. Each approach’s findings are corroborated by the other two, resulting in more thorough and persuasive results.


## 7. Limitations

The entire study is conducted in English and Chinese, neither of which is the subjects’ first language. Language abilities definitely impact and limit communications and interviews. The results of the research would be far more useful in future research if they were written in Uzbek or Russian. Moreover, the participants in this research are all chosen from the Chinese class at Confucius Institute, which is a self-selected group that voluntarily chooses to learn Chinese as a foreign language. This choice indexes none or less these students’ orientations toward globalization. As a sample, they cannot be representative of all young Uzbeks in the country. Future studies require more representative samples from various groups of people. Time spent in the field is another limitation. Longer and deeper ethnographic field research can doubtlessly bring more interesting and insightful findings.



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