Projektbereich E: Reflexionen und Konzepte, Teilprojekt E6

Interaction of language and social norms:
a sociolinguistic investigation into the conflict and integration of nomadic and sedentary lifestyles among Kazak speakers living in Kazakstan and Mongolia

Programme

The project aims to investigate the social significance ascribed to nomadism among the Kazak linguistic community, (concentrated in Kazakstan, in Western Mongolia and Northwest China) in contrast to urban and rural lifestyles, and the ways in which these valorisations are expressed in social interaction. The project focuses on the power relations between languages and language variants within their social context.

Like all languages, Kazak possesses a number of subsystems of variants, which emerge on the basis of dialectal, sociolectal or stylistic differences. Sometimes two or all three of these may coincide. On the level of subsystems "imagined communities" may emerge, such that a language variant may become an important symbol of group identity and of demarcation from other groups. This demarcation is typically associated with the evaluation and stereotypical representation of both the other and the self. Linguistic strategies may be consciously or unconsciously mobilised to demonstrate difference and solidarity, and these strategies themselves may contribute to the emergence of difference or may facilitate integration. This may be particularly effective in differentiating between real and "ideological" nomadism. The project aims to find out how members of a large language community deal with demarcation, differentiation and value conflicts in the perception of others and the self under varying political, economic and social conditions. What role is played in these processes by actual or former lifestyle and the positive and negative valorisations and repressions associated with it? To what extent do evaluations of language behaviour coincide with social judgements? How are social demarcations expressed linguistically (if at all)? These questions will be investigated among various Kazak speaking groups in Kazakstan and Mongolia.

Publications

Dr. Ildikó Bellér-Hann

The Written and the Spoken. Literacy and Oral Transmission among the Uyghur. Berlin/Halle 2000 (ANOR 8).

The Peasant Condition in Xinjiang. In: Journal of Peasant Studies 25 (1) (1997), 87–112.

Narratives and Values. Source Materials for the Study of Popular Culture in Xinjiang. In: Inner Asia. Occasional Papers 1(1), Cambridge 1996, 89–100.

A History of Cathay. A Translation and Linguistic Analysis of a Fifteenth century Turkic Manuscript. Bloomington 1995, (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 162).

Script Changes in Xinjiang. In: S. Akiner (ed.): Cultural Change and Continuity in Central Asia. London 1991, 71–83.