Abstract
Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken mostly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, is at present undergoing changes in usage. The spread of Standard Chinese promoted by the national government and the growing Han population are contributing to the Sinicization of Uyghur and shaping new language practices. Language-related issues are therefore a common topic in the Uyghur community, in intellectual discourse as well as in daily conversation. This article analyses a Uyghur comedy sketch entitled Chüshenmidim, ‘I don’t understand’, whose main theme is the Sinicization of the Uyghur language. In this analysis, I focus on parts of the sketch that reveal Uyghurs’ attitudes towards the emergent code switching, the use of Chinese loanwords, and the value of the mother tongue for identity formation.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Gülnar Eziz, Mahire Yakup and Josh Freeman for the help given on the transcription and translation of the étot. Moreover, I would like to thank Florian Coulmas, Jean-Léo Léonard, Nathan Light, Miranda Smith, and Adam Thwaites for their insightful comments. I am responsible, of course, for all limitations that remain.
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© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Dear Pr.
- Spanish and Kaqchikel-Maya: A study in town and village in Guatemala’s central highlands
- Language is me: Language maintenance in Chipilo, Mexico
- “I have struggled really hard to learn Sami”: Claiming and regaining a minority language
- Reconsidering language shift within Singapore’s Chinese community: A Bourdieusian analysis
- Language ideologies in a Uyghur comedy sketch: the comedy sketch Chüshenmidim ‘I don’t understand’ and the importance of Sap Uyghur
- On the nature of mixed languages: The case of Bildts
- Language and identity construction: Evidence from the ethnic minorities of Armenia
- What is in a language: Essentialism in macro-sociolinguistic research on Afrikaans
- Small languages and small language communities 83
- Rap music in minority languages in secondary education: A case study of Catalan rap
- Reviewers 2017
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2017
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Dear Pr.
- Spanish and Kaqchikel-Maya: A study in town and village in Guatemala’s central highlands
- Language is me: Language maintenance in Chipilo, Mexico
- “I have struggled really hard to learn Sami”: Claiming and regaining a minority language
- Reconsidering language shift within Singapore’s Chinese community: A Bourdieusian analysis
- Language ideologies in a Uyghur comedy sketch: the comedy sketch Chüshenmidim ‘I don’t understand’ and the importance of Sap Uyghur
- On the nature of mixed languages: The case of Bildts
- Language and identity construction: Evidence from the ethnic minorities of Armenia
- What is in a language: Essentialism in macro-sociolinguistic research on Afrikaans
- Small languages and small language communities 83
- Rap music in minority languages in secondary education: A case study of Catalan rap
- Reviewers 2017
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2017