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Language Choice in Tajikistan’s Digital Public Spaces:
An Analysis of Multilingual Practices by Commenters on Public Facebook Pages
Joseph Ritch
A Scholarly Paper
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of
Master of Arts in Second Language Studies
Department of Second Language Studies
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
First Reader: Dr. Dongping Zheng
Second Reader: Dr. Gabriele Kasper
Spring 2021
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 2
Abstract
Digital public spaces provide forums for complex communication and meaning making
processes among unfamiliar interactants. Language choice and practices in digital text-based
environments within known social circles have been studied and shown to be shaped by
knowledge of others in the space, whereas relatively less attention has been given to the ways
that posts are constructed in digital public spaces, despite their growing importance and
influence. This study employs the framework of translanguaging and tools of digital
conversation analysis to analyze the coordination of linguistic and paralinguistic resources in the
multilingual context of public Facebook news page comments related to the highly multilingual
country of Tajikistan. The results show considerable variety of visual resources and language
mixing at every level between Tajik and Russian with considerably less use of Arabic. The data
also reinforce linguistic trends observed in Tajikistan with Russian generally used as a prestige
language, while Tajik is used for interpersonal affiliation. The lack of representation of other
languages spoken in Tajikistan emphasizes the important role of these languages in the context.
This study provides insight into the multilingual repertoire and practices of Tajikistan, but more
specifically, the ways in which it is enacted in digital public spaces.
Keywords: digital public spaces, language choice, translanguaging, Tajikistan, Facebook
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 3
In recent years, life has become more digitally mediated than ever before. A global
pandemic shifted nearly all interactions into online mediums, continuing the general societal
trend of the last decades towards digitally mediated social actions. Public pages on Facebook are
openly accessible to any user and can be interacted with freely, serving not as closed-off
interactions within a known network of peers, but closer to an open discussion in a public square.
Unlike Twitter, which is epitomized by an open space for all interactions, Facebook pages
section off specific areas of the website, organizing the social interactions into more
topic-specific posts or pages. Facebook pages can post about a topic, inviting anyone to comment
on it, potentially sparking interactions among the users. This is analogous to an organization
hosting a public event about a particular cause - framing interactions around that topic, but
allowing for interactions among attendees who may have otherwise not come in contact. As we
move forward in this digital age, it is important to understand how digital mediums are used for
interaction and to what extent they differ from analog counterparts. This study begins to address
these issues by exploring the translanguaging practices through language choice and the process
of meaning making through the coordination of linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources
on public Facebook pages in the multilingual context of news around Tajikistan, a small country
in Central Asia with a complex linguistic and cultural history.
Literature Review
Facebook as a Site of Social Action and Practice
Since the rise of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social networking sites
(SNSs) have become an integral part of people’s social lives. Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, Facebook,
and many others have provided spaces for strangers to come together and interact in public
forums in new and exciting ways that were impossible before the internet. In recent years, social
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 4
and political movements and massive misinformation campaigns have been organized through
these online channels, and there is no indication of this trend slowing down. As these sites
continue to grow in both active users and engagement, it is important to recognize that these
“online communities are interesting in and of themselves, not as weak simulacra of offline
communities'' (Giles, Stommel, Paulus, Lester, & Reed, 2015, p. 47). Among the major SNSs,
Facebook has been one of the longest lasting and farthest-reaching, with more than 2.2 billion
users subscribed by January, 2020 (Internet World Stats, 2020). Wilson, Gosling, and Graham
(2012) summarized five major categories of social science research on Facebook: descriptive
analysis of users, motivations for using Facebook, identity presentation, the role of Facebook in
social interactions, and privacy and information disclosure. The major research on the role of
Facebook in social interactions surround its impact on relationships in real life rather than the
social actions occurring on the site itself. Facebook is a site of social practice in which users
construct concepts through discourse (Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018). (Semi-)private interactions
between known contacts within an individual’s social network have been studied on the platform
(e.g.,Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018; Bazarova et al., 2013; Tagg & Seargeant, 2014). These studies
restrict the domain of interest to participants’ social network of friends, rather than the internet at
large.
While individuals’ personal profiles and posts are often conceptualized as private or
semi-private, even when fully publicly accessible, activity by public organizations and on public
pages are understood to be public (Willis, 2019). There has been relatively less study of
interactions in fully public spaces (e.g.,Burke & Goodman, 2012; Diepeveen, 2019), perhaps
because of a perception of private interactions being more meaningful social interactions for
research. Public pages, however, do garner considerable interactions between strangers, serving
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 5
as an open, public forum for engagement around nearly any topic. Diepeveen (2019) analyzed
political debates in a Mombasa-based public Facebook group, finding the context to both
facilitate users’ unexpected expression while also sewing mistrust of users’ intentions and
motivations. Burke and Goodman (2012) studied the discourse of extremism in public Facebook
groups, following the discourse of Nazi related rhetoric around asylum seekers. These studies
explored the ways that discourse was employed and reacted to on Facebook among strangers,
showing the wealth of unexplored, often volatile interactions in these digital public squares.
Affordances and Constraints of Facebook Commenting
Facebook’s technology for facilitating online interactions consists of several features that
serve to both encourage and inhibit specific actions. First and most relevantly to the current
study, Facebook posts automatically enable and encourage engagement in three main ways:
sharing a post (to a different audience), reacting to a post (with a limited number of options), and
commenting on a post (using text, images, or embedded links). Comments are also nested,
allowing commenters to engage directly with one another in threads that organize responses in
two levels: top-level comments directly on a post, and lower-level comments subordinate to a
specific comment. These comment threads are the primary site of social interaction on public
pages. Another important tool used for addressing and getting the attention of an interlocutor is
tagging. When a user responds to a comment, the original commenter is automatically tagged,
though this can be overridden if the user chooses. This tagging means that the original
commenter receives a notification that they have been tagged, and the new comment includes a
direct link to their profile. A commenter can also opt to tag a third party in a post by typing “@”
and the users’ profile name. Tagging is the most direct form of addressivity on social media and
directly engages the addressed party with a notification. This system of instantaneous
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 6
notification encourages users to respond fairly quickly to new comments, but there is still often a
time-lag between posts compared to instant message chats. The structure of interactions, though,
often does have qualities of synchronous interaction. The “distinction between asynchronous and
quasi-synchronous interaction has blurred” (Meredith, 2019, p. 242). Comments on public pages
can be engaged with fully asynchronously, quasi-synchronously, or somewhere in between.
The structure of comments themselves also shape interactions. A comment may include
text, images, and embedded links. The text format is fixed in the settings of each user, so no
textual enhancement is possible (e.g.,bolding, italics, etc.). This limits the possible text variety to
different scripts, upper and lower cases, and the use of other non-textual resources. Emojis have
a long history of use in online forums, and they are popular on Facebook as well. In addition to
these, Facebook allows users to upload or search for images or Graphics Interchange Format
images (GIFs). Embedded links can also be used in comments, and links to videos or images will
embed the actual video or image into the comment as well. These, however, are also limited.
Users may include only one image, GIF, or embedded link per comment, and these will always
occur underneath any entered text. Other than embedded links of audio or video, Facebook
comments do not allow for audio recording in comments.
Alongside the input possibilities, Facebook also has a native translation system that
allows users to translate posts from unknown languages into a main language of their choosing.
Tajik, however, is not supported by this system, so Russian is the default for translation within
Tajikistan and Tajik speaking users must be able to engage on the platform in one of the
supported languages offered by Facebook.
Multilingualism in Tajikistan
This study focuses on language practices centered around Tajikistan, which is a highly
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 7
multilingual society. Before the Soviet Union, multilingualism including Turkic and Persian
languages were common across the mountainous region, but Russian as a prestige language
during the Soviet Union became the main second language for all language groups as a lingua
franca, while officially preserving the importance of minority ethnic languages being politically
equal (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001). Between a desire for building independent national
unity apart from the former Soviet Union and the continued reliance on Russian for economic
and political means, several laws have been implemented over time. In 1989, the Law on
Languages formally recognized Tajik as the state language, Russian as the official language of
inter-ethnic communication, and Uzbek as an important ethnic language, as well as guaranteeing
citizens the right to communicate with organizations freely in any of the languages of Tajikistan
and receive education in their native language when possible (Nagzibekova, 2008). After
independence in 1991, the 1989 law continued to be the formal legal basis for language policy in
Tajikistan (Nagzibekova, 2008). Languages in Tajikistan have been perceived hierarchically by
its citizens, with Russian as a prestige language and minority languages seen as less important,
though this hierarchy has been challenged by Pamiri activists since the 1980s (Dodikhudoeva,
2004). Unlike other post-soviet states, Tajikistan does not have a negative relationship with
Russia, despite efforts to derussify the language in public discourse (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele,
2001). Instead, much of Tajikistan’s workforce is migrant labor in Russia, necessitating Russian
language proficiency for economic stability. Tajik’s language policies in 1989 and 2009
exemplify the ideology of “one nation, one language,” though they still explicitly and implicitly
support a multilingual community united through a shared second language.
In the Ukraine, the ideology of “language purity” has influenced pedagogy in efforts to
standardize Ukranian as the national language, mirroring the context of Tajikistan (Friedman,
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 8
2010). Tajik is a decentralized language, with a literary form that diverged greatly from the
numerous regional dialects. In the 1980s, policy planners sought to standardize Tajik, but there
were debates as to whether the standardized form should be closest to a specific spoken dialect,
the literary form, or the closely related forms of Persian spoken in Iran and Afghanistan
(Dodikhudoeva, 2004). Initially, the dialect of Bukhara was selected and implemented as the
national standard, but there have been shifts closer to the Kulobi dialect in the decades since due
to political influence from the region (Dodikhudoeva, 2004). The ideology of language purity is
still a common discourse within the region, as exemplified in Figure 1, a response to a video
about rising costs for groceries. Farshad attempts to correct the pronunciation of a word. The first
line shows the original text, while the second and third show morphological and functional
translations, respectively, in line with conversation analysis (CA) conventions.
Figure 1: Ingredients
In this example, Farshad suggests that маводи ғизои (mavodi ghizo), the standard Tajik
pronunciation is incorrect, instead offering the Iranian pronunciation маводи ғазои (mavodi
ghazo) as candidate for correct pronunciation. The referenced speech is only spoken, not written,
so the user is orienting specifically to the pronunciation of the phrase, though using emphasized
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 9
written speech (capitalized) to emphasize the correct. Language ideologies impact the
development of linguistic norms, so the expression of language standardization and purity are
important to understanding language choice.
As a highly linguistically diverse country with recent language policy changes, Tajikistan
has a complex relationship with and hierarchical valuation of Russian, Tajik, and the numerous
other languages indigenous to the region, providing a fertile context for complex linguistic and
paralinguistic meaning-making in digital social spaces. This study seeks to answer:
1. How do Facebook users in Tajikistan’s online community employ their linguistic
repertoires through language choice to construct messages, and
2. How do these users coordinate their linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources in
concert with the affordances of the medium in comment sections of digital public spaces
to engage in make meaning?
Methods
Data
The data consist of a collection of Facebook opening posts (OPs) from public news
organizations based in Tajikistan and the set of public comments engaging with these posts.
These data were collected from public pages both due to their accessibility and because they
represent a site of highly multilingual public interactions among individuals. The news agencies
included private organizations based in Tajikistan and Russia, a United States funded agency, and
a Tajikistan state-run agency. These agencies were selected for both balance of audience and
based on their highly popular general consumption in Tajikistan. Posts that contained fewer than
three user comments were excluded. In total, seven OPs in Tajik and five in Russian were
collected with a total of 277 comments that were made over a two week period. An example of
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 10
one of the candidate posts is shown as a screenshot in figure 2, and the visible comment is
transcribed as excerpt 9.
Figure 2: Domestic Security Issues
Each of these comments was transcribed and analyzed for language to assess the linguistic
resources implemented, and 45 comments were found to involve multilingual elements. Each of
these comments was then transcribed at two levels: a morphological glossing and a functional
translation, which were shown in the transcripts. Translations and subsequent analysis were
discussed and confirmed with a critical friend (Rossman & Rallis, 2017) of the author, whose
expertise as a Tajik journalist served to verify the interpretations of data with community
membership knowledge. This important step ensured that analytic interpretations of the data
were in line with understandings from within the community of practice. However, some of the
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 11
data were found to be uninterpretable even by this native speaking community member. For
example, one user commented on a post about food insecurity with a link to a Russian news
broadcast about North Korean military expansion. While this may have been understood by some
other audience members, such an apparent non sequitur was unable to be understood, and thus
interpreted, for the purposes of this project.
Limiting the sample size to those posted in a given time frame was intended to balance
the amount of data collected and while still getting a snapshot of the context of interaction
(Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018). The OPs included text posts, images, and videos. The text of the
posts and the comments were recorded, and users’ profile names were replaced with
pseudonyms, but comment threads with tagged users were recorded to preserve the tagging
relationships, following the general transcription practices of Tagg and Seargeant (2014). Text,
video, and audio in the OPs were coded by main language and content type. Domestic and
international political and economic stories were reported, as well as entertainment news.
The transcription protocol preserved the original comment level and sequencing: light
colored left justified comments are top-level comments (responding directly to the public pages’
posts), while darker and indented comments are nested responses under a given top-level
comment. Comments are transcribed in chronological order of being posted. Each comment is
contained within its own box, though some comments may have several lines which are noted for
analysis. In the line of original text, language sources are identified by font format: Russian is
italicized, Tajik is plain text, and Arabic is underlined. In Facebook, users are unable to format
their fonts, so this coding method does not remove text qualities that affect the interactions. The
“@” symbol denotes a direct “tagging” of a user, which is a default addressing function of
replying to a user’s comment, but can be deleted if the writer chooses.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 12
Analysis
Digital Conversation Analysis
Giles et al. (2015) introduced digital CA as an alternative to digitized applications of CA,
arguing that the application of offline research methods to online interactions requires a critical
analysis of their underlying assumptions. The current data is primarily text based communication
with limited visual representations, eliminating the need for CA audio transcription conventions.
Instead, text-based digital communication gives rise to a different set of paralinguistic semiotic
resources. Facial expressions and embodied actions are not available directly, but emojis,
punctuation, images, and GIFs can be employed to similar effects.
Traditional CA relies on the notion of conversations as linear and chronologically
ordered, but asynchronous online communication obfuscates the relationship between turns.
Antaki, Ardevol, Nunez, and Vayreda (2005) analyzed the relationship between an initial OP in
inviting the first responses, but Giles et al. (2015) argue that such forums are conversation-like
and extending the assumption of turn design and sequentiality beyond the initial pair may not be
as straightforward. Unlike in face-to-face interactions, interactants cannot monitor
turns-in-progress since each message is transmitted simultaneously as a single batch. Meredith
(2019) emphasized that turn-taking in online interactions may lead to users including multiple
first-pair parts (FPPs) in a given message, and respondents may quote or refer back to these FPPs
in order to manage disrupted turn adjacency. Alternatively, a single FPP may be taken up and
responded to by multiple second-pair parts (SPPs), leading to separate, parallel interaction
threads. For example, in excerpt 1, a back and forth series of comments between Firoza and
Kamran (comments 1-4) do not serve to interrupt the adjacency pair relationship between
comments 1 and 5 between Firoza and a third user. Both comments 2 and 5 are direct responses
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 13
and SPPs to comment 1 and can be continued as parallel interactions. Similarly, when
constructing a message, a user may include several complete actions or possible turns
analytically referred to as turn construction units (TCUs) within a single message, limiting the
possibility for turn-taking negotiation. Subsequently, “the concept of a TCU may be more
relevant for recipients than it is for writers of a message” (Meredith, 2019, p. 244). Users may
choose to submit individual turns separately, or include several sequential turns in a single
message, opting to pre-emptively self-select.
Audience Design Framework
The analysis framework for the data is based on Bell’s (2002) Audience Design as
modified by Tagg and Sergeant (2014) for interactions on Facebook, which defines the
categories of speaker (original poster message), addressee, active friends, wider friends, and the
internet as a whole. This framework was used for Facebook interactions on an individual’s
private page, whereas in the context of these public posts, the categories of active and wider
friends are less relevant than poster, addressee, and the internet as a whole. Giles et al. (2015)
describe online public forums as polylogal, suggesting that the unlimitedness of potential
interactants may render these membership categories almost irrelevant. However, within the
audience design framework, language choice is viewed in relation to direct and indirect
addressivity and the nature of the proposed audience categories, which, as shown in the data, are
still salient.
Multi-Performance and Translanguaging
Multilingual speakers switch between and blend their languages within utterances in
creative and strategic ways that make use of the full repertoire of their linguistic resources. He
(2013) used the term multi-performances to describe several contexts where such
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 14
language-transcending behavior occurs, showing Chinese heritage speakers’ use of features of
both English and Chinese in various degrees: (1) inter-sentential, inter-turn, inter-TCU
codeswitching; (2) intra-TCU morpho-syntactic codeswitching; (3) codeswitching involving
intra-TCU bound but free morphemes; (4) code-doubling; and (5) intra-TCU morpho-phonemic
codeswitching. The instances of language mixing in the data were analyzed within these general
categories to investigate how these types of language choices were used. Because the data were
entirely textual and/or visual, intra-TCU morpho-phonemic codeswitching was not observable,
but each other category is represented in the data. Li Wei’s (2016, 2018) theory of
translanguaging expands on the creative use of semiotic resources between named languages,
instead focusing on when language practices and paralinguistic resources transcend the socially
constructed boundaries of named languages. Building on languaging, this theory moves away
from a strict adherence to language as a concrete system to emphasize the ongoing process of
communicating. This approach questions the validity of distinctions between named languages
and their relevance in the meaning-making process. However, in order to demonstrate the
contribution of linguistic resources from various socially constructed sources to communication,
it is necessary to identify the named language origins employed. It is within this framework that
the data were analyzed.
Findings
Inter-Sentential, Inter-Turn, Inter-TCU Translanguaging
A full change in language in a response is a well-documented form of codeswitching that
can be seen in digital data, as well. In excerpt 1, a user, Firoza, posts a comment directly on a
Russian language news article OP regarding the recent trial in absentia of a former Tajik political
opposition leader for crimes committed during the Tajik civil war. This first comment was then
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 15
responded to by two other users.
Excerpt 1: He Thought He Was Helping
In this excerpt, comment 1 by Firoza is a negative evaluation of the discongruence between the
mental and moral states of the man tried in absentia. The exclamation point emphasizes the
extremity of this statement, while also indicating sarcasm. In a face-to-face interaction, this
would be shown through facial expressions and pitch, but in an online text format, the
punctuation is employed instead. This was responded to by Kamran in comment 2, who initially
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 16
affiliates with the evaluation of the mental state but offers a justification for the morality, that his
intentions were good, instead blaming the effect of political slogans during that were popular in
his time. In comments 3 and 4, Firoza and Kamran both reassert their evaluations of the
(im)morality involved in the man’s actions. Comment 4 serves to close this topic. Comment 5
(lines 7-9) is a response by a third user, Mahnoz, whose response to the negative evaluation in
comment 1 is to negatively evaluate the speaker herself. Comment 5 provides a clear example of
an inter-turn, inter-TCU switch from Russian to Tajik. Both the OP and Firoza’s comments are in
Russian, but Mahnoz’s abrupt switch to Tajik, the term of endearment Хохарчон (“dear sister”),
and the direct address by use of Facebook’s tagging function are used to address and affiliate
with her, though this affiliation is used to negatively evaluate her thinking. The coordination of
both affiliative moves of word and language choice and the disaffiliative move of negatively
evaluating Firoza in line 7 serves to soften the blow of the evaluation. Furthermore, the shift
from “you” to “we” in lines 8 and 9 further affiliate Mahnoz with Firoza by aligning herself with
the negatively evaluated group.
Language blending between TCU boundaries is often associated with a change of speaker
in an adjacent speaking turn (He, 2013). However, in digital comments, turn boundaries are less
rigid as a single user may include several distinct turns in a single message, only allowing
self-selection between turns, despite transition relevant places (TRPs; Sacks, Schegloff, &
Jefferson, 1974) being included within the message. The next three examples of mismatched
linguistic performance between TCUs with internal language consistency, excerpts 2, 3, and 4,
are responses to a Russian language post commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the death
of Pamiri-Tajik performer Muborakhsho Mirzoshoyev and a video of one of his live
performances in Tajik.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 17
Excerpt 2: Blessing
In Excerpt 2, Farzan initially comments on the Russian language post with a blessing in Tajik
(line 1), which directly addresses the subject of the post (the late singer). However, in lines 2 and
3, Farzan switched fully to Russian, continuing to address Mirzoshoyev. Of course, the singer is
deceased, so posting this on Facebook was intended for an overhearing audience to potentially
affiliate with. While this post was not responded to with a subordinate comment, two other users
did react to the post with a like reaction and a love reaction (a thumbs up and a heart,
respectively), showing affiliation with Farzan as overhearing audiences. The use of Tajik and
Russian in this post mirrors the OP itself - a Tajik musical performance juxtaposed with a post in
Russian about the singer.
Excerpts 3 and 4 both make use of GIFs as primary semiotic resources for their
comments. GIFs are short, moving images that can be added to the bottom of Facebook
comments using either a link to Facebook’s native GIF search engine. These GIFs offer users the
opportunity to simulate embodied actions, among other uses. In excerpt 3, Jahangeer posts a GIF
featuring American actor David Boreanaz from the television show Bones saluting with the word
respect in English along the bottom of the image. Jahangeer does not add any additional text to
his post, instead allowing the GIF to be the full comment, suggesting his own virtual salute to the
late performer.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 18
Excerpt 3: Respect
The use of English text along the bottom of the post adds more explicitly the emotion he is
conveying towards the performer. As with excerpt 2, this post is addressed to Mirzoshoyev, both
the subject of the respect and the recipient of the salute, but is designed to invite affiliation from
the general public audience. This comment employs English language resources alongside the
visual and embodied semiotic resources of a salute, coordinating the two positive semiotic
resources in order to evaluate the performer Mirzoshoyev.
Similarly, excerpt 4, another comment on the same OP, also presents a visual of
embodied action, a GIF of a man praying with a traditional Muslim hand motion wiping his face
with his palms, but further coordinates it with written Russian text.
Excerpt 4: Songs from the Soul
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 19
As with Jahangeer in excerpt 3, the GIF serves as a representation of the embodied action of
Sahar, who is praying for Mirzoshoyev. The text alongside the image is an evaluation of
Mirzoshoyev’s singing. While this does not involve the use of two distinct linguistic codes (the
OP and this comment are both in Russian), the employment of the GIF as a symbol of embodied
action alongside Russian language text shows the creative use of various semiotic resources
through different modes in coordination with one another to produce a more complex message.
The last excerpt in this category is in response to a video posted by a state-run news
agency of a brief (38 second) Tajik-language political speech by the president of Tajikistan
recounting some of his major accomplishments in office.
Excerpt 5: Thanks
In this excerpt, Hurmoz initially responds to the video with praise of the president and an
imperative that he be thanked (line 1). Behruz in line 2 orients to his suggestion that the president
be thanked and negatively evaluates it initially in Russian, saying Hurmoz was mistaken, and
then explains in Tajik that thanks should only be given to God. The language mixing in this
excerpt provides a delineation between the two actions of Behruz’s comment: first, to negatively
evaluate Hurmoz’s call to action with linguistic resources from Russian, and second to explain
his reasoning with linguistic resources from Tajik. In this way, Behruz is able to give corrective
feedback to Hurmoz’s action by appealing to an evaluative phrase in Russian and a religious
reference in Tajik.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 20
Intra-TCU Morpho-Syntactic Translanguaging
Blending languages within a TCU has been suggested to be highly unpredictable and not
cognitively generalizable across different speakers (He, 2013). In these data, there were several
instances of such Rusian-Tajik mixing within TCUs. In the first example, a short Tajik-language
video of a government official explaining the reasons for rising grocery prices was posted,
initiating the two comments posted by a single user in excerpt 6.
Excerpt 6: Empty Words
In this excerpt, Kourash responds to the Tajik language video primarily in Russian. There is the
notable exception, though, in the use of the word Раис (“leader”) in line one. This word is being
used to directly address the Tajik official. He posted two separate comments directly on the OP,
dividing his response into lines 1 and 2. The first of which directly addresses the official, calling
for action (as opposed to speeches). The second comment, however, addresses a larger audience
and expands Kourash’s self-category by using the pronoun нам (“us”).
Excerpt 7 is a comment made in response to a Tajik language video of a government
official describing international import policies to target rising market prices. In this excerpt,
Mehrab directly addresses the government officials in charge of international trade policy,
accusing them of not thinking of the poor (line 1) and then upgrading the accusation in line 2 to
being corrupted, while also expanding the address (“all of you”).
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 21
Excerpt 7: My Words Are Wasted
The use of Russian in line 1 is limited to the word да (“yes”), which serves only as a discourse
marker of emphasis within the larger Tajik sentence. In both of these examples, single word
borrowings across languages are used sparingly.
Translanguaging Involving Intra-TCU Bound but Free Morphemes
While borrowing of single words is very common, less common is the mixing of bound
and free morphemes across language boundaries. He (2013) referred to this type of code
blending as seeming “to break all conceivable linguistic boundaries” (p. 310). This form of
translanguaging was, however, still very common among the data analyzed.
Excerpt 8 is an interaction in response to the Tajik language video post about rising prices
of groceries. Lines 1 and 2 of Kia’s comment express a dislike for the market regulations as they
impact smaller traders. In line 3 Kia turns attention to importing firms, addressing market
regulators. The word Kia uses for “firms and” is made of two morphemes, фирма (“firm”,
Russian) and у (“and”, Tajik), which are connected by the consonant в (/v/). In Tajik, this
consonant is inserted after a vowel before у (“and”), so in this excerpt, the Russian word is being
inserted into the Tajik syllable structure. While this word is only written so it is not possible to
analyze it in terms of its phonemic qualities, the orthographic conventions of Tajik are carried
across the linguistic boundaries. The comment is then responded to by Soroush, who positively
evaluates the statement and agrees with Kia.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 22
Excerpt 8: Market Control
In excerpt 9, a colorful response is made in response to a Tajik language video post about
domestic security issues in the city of Kulob. In this excerpt, Arash begins in line 1 with an insult
of one of the officials being interviewed in the posted video.
Excerpt 9: A Cow’s Yoke
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 23
He uses the word Галстукотон, which is comprised of two morphemes, Галстук (“necktie”,
Russian) and тон (2nd person possessive clitic, Tajik). The two morphemes are connected with a
vowel o, which could be either a genitive marker for Russian or a ezafe for Tajik, either of which
would be used to connect the noun (tie) with its possessive (your) in this instance, but neither of
which would be written with an o in standard spelling. This blending shows that the Russian
word is inserted with Tajik morphology, though the line between these codes is not clear. Instead,
both languages are contributing to the structure of the word, resulting in a new vowel that is not
wholly derived from either of the component language sources.
Code-Doubling for Clarity
The final category of language mixing is code-doubling, a practice in which a turn
includes repeating an idea in two languages. While the other types of translanguaging were very
prevalent in the data, code-doubling was substantially less common. Except 10 is another
response to a Tajik language video about the rising cost of food.
Excerpt 10: Inflation
In this example, Delaram proposes that inflation is a cause for rising prices in the grocery stories.
He uses the Russian word in parentheses followed by the word in Tajik outside of the
parentheses. This serves several functions. First, by sectioning the Russian word off, Delaram
makes it explicit that that word does not fit within the Tajik sentence and is an addition. This
decision would seem to reinforce the ideology of language purity shown in figure 1. Second, the
use of this Russian word as an addition clarifies the meaning of the following Tajik word. The
Russian word is used to scaffold for readers who would be unfamiliar with the Tajik word but
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 24
know the Russian word. Russian has served as a prestige language in Tajikistan, and here the
technical term is assumed to be better understood in Russian, though the Tajik equivalent is still
reinforced as the correct word in the sentence.
Advertisements
While the majority of comments were directly related to the topic posed by the OPs, there
was also another category of comments that was commonplace: advertisements. Excerpts 11 and
12 are both advertisements or spam, which occurred frequently among the data. These were
comments made on unrelated posts, but alongside other comments that did relate to the OP.
These types of advertisements are common on social media and contribute to the complete
picture of language practices in this digital space, but their function is distinct from the other
kind of data analyzed because they repurpose the space for marketing. These posts do not orient
to the content of the posts, nor do they address the organizations posting, but instead are used
specifically to reach and address the audience of each of the OPs. Interestingly, among the data,
advertisements employed intra-TCU morpho-syntactic translanguaging more frequently than
other translanguaging practices.
The first, excerpt 11, was commented on a Russian language post about immigration into
Tajikistan. In this comment, Davlatyor directly addresses the readers as бародаро (brothers, line
1) in Tajik paired with an Arabic greeting (Ассалому Алейкум) and a request to subscribe to his
Youtube channels. Lines 2 and 3 further request the same action, subscription, with increasing
pleas. The final line finally provides the link to Davlatyor’s Youtube channel that he is requesting
subscribers to. In line 2, Davlatyor uses the Russian word срочно (“quickly”) in all capital letters
among an otherwise Tajik and Arabic language post. This use of Russian and the capitalization
both signal emphasis, supporting the claim of urgency.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 25
Excerpt 11: Subscribe
The next advertisement, excerpt 12, was commented on the Tajik language presidential
speech (the same as excerpt 6). This comment is an advertisement for an anti-aging cream that
can be ordered and shipped in Tajikistan. Due to the length of the comment, it has been truncated
to show the main translanguaging aspects. In line 1, Muzhdah directly addresses a Tajik reading
audience, capitalizing the pronoun and emphasizing it with an emoji. In line 2, while describing
the development of the cream, Muzhdah capitalized the word French and adds an emoji of a
diamond relating the cream to France and a notion of luxury, which is further associated with
production in Iran in line 3. The word косметологии (“cosmetology”) in line 2 is a lone Russian
word in this turn, and along with сертификат (“certificate”, line 11), результат (“results”, line
14), гарантия (“guarantee”, line 14), and доставка (“delivery”, line 17), there are several
instances of borrowed words being used. Each of these words would have been used more in
marketing from Russia, making them more salient and recognizable in Tajik than many other,
less advertising-specific vocabulary. Line 14 only has a Tajik verb and syntax. In both of these
advertising examples, Russian loanwords are employed for emphasis and/or to conform to the
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 26
Excerpt 12: Cream to Stay Young
genre norms of advertising in Russian. Furthermore, the use of emojis in this advertisement are
coordinated carefully with the text. The diamond emojis in lines 2 and 12 are used to emphasize
the connotation of luxury that are indirectly called upon by the mentions of France and Iran. The
heart-eyed emoji in line 1 is used in connection with the word ШУМО (you), suggesting a link
between the beauty and youth the cream can provide and the reader. The 100 emoji in line 3
emphasizes the development and production of the cream is 100% in Iran, though it does not
explicitly state this. Line 14 combines two emojis - a red exclamation point and a black
checkmark - to emphasize that the guarantee is surprising and an important checked item a
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 27
customer would be looking for, just like the availability of delivery throughout Tajikistan, which
is where the checkmark is used again in line 17.
The coordination of these paralinguistic resources are used expertly to coordinate the text
of the message with specific marketing goals. The diamond emojis and references to France and
Iran are coordinated and aligned to imply luxury, though the text avoids stating this directly. The
100 emoji, claim of certification in Russian, and explanation of French research and Iranian
production in Tajik work together to create a sense of the product being official, professional,
and recognized. That “certificate” is in Russian while the detailed explanation of production is in
Tajik also reinforces the use of Russian for bureaucratic and official purposes even when Tajik is
the main language for understanding.
Discussion
The data collected in this project show consistency with other findings about public
discourse on open forums. Antaki et al. (2005)’s finding that posts on public forums are often left
unanswered was overwhelmingly the case. The vast majority of posts were not responded to
beyond “likes,” so many of the analyzed posts left open invitations for responses that were not
engaged. Translanguaging, however, does not require a conversational interaction. Rather, the
creative use of semiotic resources to make meaning beyond any one linguistic source show
comprehensive translanguaging practices. The limited collection of back-and-forth interactions
among users often were limited to two or three comments only. As with both Burke and
Goodman (2012) and Diepeveen (2019), when these rare interactions among commenters
happened, they were primarily antagonistic, though several instances of affiliation and
cooperation towards shared goals were also seen. Positive assessments of and agreement with
other users or personalities in the real world were common, as well as the coordination among
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 28
users to jointly construct arguments. These brief interactions, while they may seem ephemeral to
the interactants, are archived and can be seen and interacted with again and again, as long as the
posts themselves remain active.
RQ #1: How do Facebook users in Tajikistan’s online community employ their linguistic
repertoires through language choice to construct messages?
The actual use of multilingual repertoires in these data showed a wide breadth of
creativity. The main languages that occurred in the data were Russian, Tajik, and Arabic, and
each of these served different functions. Arabic phrases were employed primarily in reference to
religious topics through standardized phrases, borrowed and used as complete chunks, never
isolated or deconstructed. Tajik and Russian were blended much more frequently. Tajik posts
would be responded to with fully Russian comments and vice versa. Given Facebook’s inability
to translate to or from Tajik automatically, these users would either have to use third party
applications or rely on their own linguistic knowledge to engage in this way. When Tajik was
used in Russian contexts (in response to a Russian language post or responding to a Russian
language comment), direct addresses were common, as well as appeals to the specific audience.
This was shown in both the advertisements and in excerpt 2, where Tajik-dominant responses
were to address the Tajikistan populace or an individual. Conversely, when Russian was used in
Tajik language contexts, the primary use was to use more technical vocabulary.
At more granular levels, Russian words were commonly used for political, economic, and
technical jargon (e.g., “monopolies,” “capitalism,” “bribery,” and “shares” occurred in the data
primarily in Russian). Isolated Tajik words used in majority Russian posts were far less common
and primarily related to Tajikistan specific political issues (e.g., the use of “leader” in excerpt 6).
This practice exemplifies lexical borrowing from Russian, which is the de facto lingua franca in
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 29
the region. Unlike in Li Wei’s (2016) study of new Chinglish, in which English resources were
reappropriated and given new meanings within these contexts, these examples did not assign new
meanings to the linguistic resources across linguistic boundaries, but simply incorporated the
original meanings. These tendencies reflect the larger context of language shift during the Soviet
Union, subsequent efforts to reinstate Tajik, and the continued position of Russian as a prestige
language. While ideologies of language purity also seem to be at play with the relatively small
amount of intra-TCU codeswitching apart from loanwords and phrases, the data do reveal
creative language mixing at every level. Tajik, however, continues to be used frequently, even in
Russian-dominated digital spaces. Often, Tajik is used for interpersonal affiliation and direct
address between commenters, as in excerpt 2, rather than as a top-level comment used as a
general response to a post, which is not directed at an individual user.
RQ #2: How do these users coordinate their linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources in
concert with the affordances of the medium in comment sections of digital public spaces to
engage in make meaning?
The specific context of Tajikistan’s population led to interesting textual issues. There
were several instances of nonstandard spellings of words, mirroring phonemic representations of
different dialects of Tajik, as well as issues with alphabet use. The recent and dynamic
standardization of Tajik, along with its lack of use in formal education for much of the last half
century are also major factors in these inconsistencies. Furthermore, commenters consistently
used the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, which lacks certain specific Tajik graphemes (e.g., қ, ҳ, and
ғ). Instead of these graphemes, the unmarked Russian characters would be used. Occasionally,
commenters would also use Arabic script or Latin script while still using Tajik or other
(indistinguishable) varieties of Persian. Beyond these, other textual elements were used to create
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 30
meaning. Capitalization was used to emphasize specific points or words. Punctuation was used to
imply importance and sarcasm.
The use of visuals, especially GIFs and emojis, provided commenters with the option to
include representations of embodied actions and movement alongside linguistic text. These
paralinguistic resources were coordinated with linguistic resources to support one another and
create meaning beyond either of the parts in isolation. GIFs such as those used in excerpts 3 and
4 gave movement and demonstrated actions that would otherwise not be possible with a purely
text-based digital medium. Excerpt 12 made extensive use of emojis to emphasize and reiterate
the connotations of the text (e.g.,luxury emphasized with diamond emojis). These paralinguistic
semiotic resources are creatively combined to transcend their isolated use and create more
meaning than the linguistic resources alone.
The feature of asynchronous archived interactions provides the affordances of the to tag
specific users and make parallel threads with multiple SPPs for a single FPP, such as in excerpt
1, allowing for more complex threads in which users were involved in multiple parallel
interactions at a given time.
The role of advertisement in public spaces online is a complicated one. Beyond the
advertisements that are present on the platform itself, individual users reappropriate the space for
marketing. Excerpt 10 presented a clear example of a corporate advertisement that an individual
user posted in order to market an anti-aging cream. This is noticeably distinct from the type of
advertisement made in excerpt 9, where a user was advertising their own social media (a Youtube
channel) for other Facebook users to follow. Both of these kinds of advertisements (corporate
and personal), however, shift the focus of discussion away from the topic posed in the OP by the
page itself, instead attempting to capitalize on the public market that the given page attracts.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 31
Conclusion
This study analyzed the language choices and the use of paralinguistic resources of
commenters on public news posts related to Tajikistan. On a practical level, the use of public
data is convenient and readily accessible. This context is also an important site of social action
that needs additional research. The lack of extended interactions in these forums limits their use
to generally studying shorter interactions.
The linguistic context of Tajikistan provides a unique view on how dynamic language
policies for nation building intersect with language use in public discourse. Russian continues to
be a dominant language in politics and economics, which is reflected in the use of Russian for
technical terms in these domains and as a prestige language. However, Tajik is used widely and
for interpersonal affiliation and connection. Fundamentally, despite the presence of language
purity ideologies in national discourse, commenters in these public digital spaces are making the
decision not only to be multilingual, but to engage in translanguaging that blend and mix their
linguistic and other semiotic resources to present creative new meanings. The complex
multilingualism of the Tajik context influences language choice and use at every level in public
discourse online.
LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 32
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