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

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.