Language and Globalization in Post-Independence Tajikistan (Research Brief)

Far from being an exotic, isolated Central Asian country, post-independence Tajikistan presents a dynamic society at the complex confluence of local, regional and international forces of change. The present research is an ethnographic attempt to explore and study how these forces of change affect the everyday practice of languages in various registers of communication and interaction from street conversations to foreign digital media consumption and to the intelligentsia’s plans for the future of Tajiki script. The below findings should be treated as snapshots over vast fields of social processes calling for further sustained scholarly inquiry and analysis.

Khashayar Beigi, of the University of California-Berkeley, was a 2011-2012 Embassy Policy Specialist (EPS) fellow.