Linguistic situation in Tajikistan: language use in public space

Abstract

This paper studies the roles of the Tajik and Russian languages in today’s Tajikistan, focusing on their use in the public space. In recent years, the state language policy has been aiming at strengthening the role of the Tajik language but the Russian language also continues to be important for many Tajikistanis. The study of linguistic landscapes researches written texts in public places. This paper presents the linguistic landscape of one Tajik city and demonstrates how and to what extent the state language law has been implemented at a grass-roots level. The comparison of linguistic landscape with languages spoken in the city also reveals local population’s attitudes towards different languages in their environment. This paper contributes to understanding the formal and informal roles of the Russian and Tajik languages in Tajikistan.

Keywords:

• linguistic landscape
• language policy
• language legislation
• Russian language
• Tajikistan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.