Towards Understanding Tajikistan’s Sociolinguistically Complex Language Ecology: Historical Development, Current Status, Issues, Research, Policy and Practice

Abstract

Tajikistan, at the heart of Central Eurasia, had a population of 7,563,687 in 2010, estimated recently to be almost 10,084,935. Named for its majority nationality, Tajikistan has many other nationalities, most with their own language. This article explores what is known about the historical, development and current status of multiple languages in Tajikistan’s linguistic tapestry. We provide a tentative overview of Tajikistan’s evolving language ecology from earliest times when a range of Eastern Iranian languages were dominant, to the reduced use of Eastern Iranian languages following the entry of Arabic and New Persian (a western Iranian language) into the ecology with the Arab conquest, and the subsequent entry of Turkic languages, and more recently the entry of Russian under the late Russian empire and its spread under the Soviet Union. Following independence in 1991, a shift in balance among domains of use of Tajik and Russian has been ongoing at the same time as international languages, especially English, have entered Tajikistan’s language ecology. We review the current state of knowledge about contemporary sociolinguistic dynamics, monolingualism and plurilingualism in society, where the titular language, Tajik/Persian, is in interaction with local, regional and global languages. Against the background of changing post-independence language and language-in-education policies, we discuss the prospects for monolingual, multilingual and plurilingual education in Tajikistan among efforts to promote the official language, Tajik, and to provide minority language education, while also developing proficiency in foreign languages in Tajikistan, through initiatives such as English-medium instruction.