Uzbek data

Excerpt (1) is taken from conversations between four women: the second author, a mother and daughter, and a mutual friend we call Farida. Farida and the second author had been friends for a few years. Farida had originally met the mother and daughter at a Russian cultural event and had introduced them to the second author for a casual conversation that was recorded for research purposes. They met again the next day for the second author to ask the other three explicit questions about comments they had made in the previous conversation. In the initial conversation, the mother had identified Farida as Tajik on the basis of the fact that her Russian language abilities were stronger than her Uzbek language abilities. The daughter had contradicted the mother, identifying Farida as Uzbek. These conflicting perspectives on Farida's identity prompted the second author to ask both the mother and daughter to further explain their positions.

It should be noted that both the second author and Farida were graduate students focusing on issues of identity and culture at the time of recording, so both saw the interactions as potential sources of data for their work. Similarly, the mother and daughter had been informed that the second author was doing research related to Uzbekness, and they had mentioned specifically to Farida that they wanted to represent Uzbekistan positively. However, given their previous meeting, they had developed a friendly rapport that extended beyond the researcher-participant relationship and at the time of recording, everyone was relaxed in the home environment and spoke casually with one another, while they answered questions, ate treats and socialized.

“She speaks Russian, so she's Tajik”

In the excerpt that follows, the daughter and mother continue to debate and give justifications for whether Farida is Tajik or Uzbek. In our analysis, we highlight the levels at which chronotopes are operating in organizing their discourses. We note that the large-scale, conflicting chronotopes brought along by the mother and daughter influence how they discursively identify Farida in the ongoing interaction. We also illustrate that the mother and daughter's chronotopes are not equal in power and how the relative power of these chronotopes shapes their discourses and influences what they take away from the conversation.

1. (1)

   

The first large-scale chronotope we observe in the data is the soviet chronotope, which is brought along by the mother. The Soviet Union is both a time and a place, and as such forms a chronotopic lens through which her identification of Farida as Tajik can be understood. The mother invokes this chronotope within the discourse by reference to particular places that were a part of the Soviet Union, that is, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (line 5), and by referring to a particular time, o'sha payt ‘that time’, which she then clarifies to be soyuz payti ‘soviet time’ (line 15).

The bringing about of this soviet chronotope can also be observed linguistically in the following ways. First of all, the mother code-switches to Russian from Uzbek in the words reshenie ‘decision’ (line 15) and internatsional'niy yazyk ‘international language’ (line 16, 18–19).Footnote ¹ Additionally, the mother uses ethnonyms marked with Russian morphology to indicate femininity, such as tajichka ‘Tajik woman’ (line 23) and o'zbechka ‘Uzbek woman’ (line 27) to refer to Farida. Russian language use is generally associated with the Soviet Union since making Russian the language of education was a decision connected to soviet policies, and the phrase internatsional'niy yazyk ‘international language’ as applied to Russian was a part of widely propagated soviet ideologies. Therefore, these switches to Russian aid in the discursive construction of the image of the soviet time.

It is not only through the mother's discourse that this soviet chronotope is invoked in the ongoing conversation. Notably, in lines 12 and 14 Farida responds to the mother's explanations with the affirmation to'g'ri ‘right’, indicating alignment. In line 19, when the mother notes that bizarni millatlarimizni orasida internatsional'ny til bo'lgan ‘it was an international language between our ethnicities’, Farida interjects with the word birlashtir ‘to unify’ (line 20) and the mother reiterates this word in her next statement birlashtiradigan til bo'lgan ‘a language that unified’ (line 21). Farida is not only aligning with, but also co-constructing this soviet chronotope in the moment of interaction and by so doing, she is approving of the relevance of this spatiotemporal configuration in the ongoing conversation.

The soviet chronotope is invoked by the mother in order to justify why she identifies Farida as Tajik. More specifically, when she states that the Russian language was a language millatlarni o'rtasida ‘between ethnicities’ (line 18) and that it was a language that unified (line 21), she is pointing to the fact that ethnic minorities depended on Russian to communicate during soviet times. It is within this soviet chronotope that soviet-style ethnolinguistic identification can take place, and that Farida's proficiency in Russian can be used to identify her as an ethnolinguistic minority within Uzbekistan.Footnote ²

The daughter disagrees with the mother's identification of Farida as an ethnic minority because she brings along a post-independence chronotope. This post-independence chronotope, though not invoked overtly, pertains to discourses about the nature of Uzbekistan and Uzbekness after the fall of the Soviet Union. Specifically, within this chronotope, Uzbekness is realized through location in the nation-state of Uzbekistan and linguistic proficiency in Uzbek. Since Farida meets both of these qualifications, the daughter identifies her as Uzbek. The invocation of this post-independence chronotope is also evident in the daughter's linguistic practices. Unlike the mother's use of ethnonyms marked with the Russian morphology to indicate femininity such as tajichka ‘Tajik woman’ (line 23) and o'zbechka ‘Uzbek woman’ (line 27), the daughter marks her use of ethnonyms as Uzbek by omitting this morphology—as is evident in her use of o'zbek ‘Uzbek’ twice in line 25. This is in line with national efforts in Uzbekistan to derussify the Uzbek language post-independence.

We have noted that the dialog between the post-soviet and post-independence chronotopes brought along by the mother and daughter influence how they characterize Uzbekness. It is important to note that these chronotopes have differential power and the imbalance of power between these chronotopes can be observed in the mother and daughter's discourses. The soviet chronotope is salient to the ongoing conversation and in particular to the mother's perception of Farida's identity. However, it has a diminished ideological force behind it, given that the Soviet Union is no longer in power. By contrast, the post-independence chronotope is relatively more powerful, in part because Uzbekistan is currently independent and promotes and normalizes rhetoric that legitimizes the titular ethnicity and language of the nation-state. Furthermore, the significant ideological force behind the notion of a homogeneous nation-state goes beyond the case of Uzbekistan and applies more generally to global perceptions of the relationship between governance, sovereignty, and ethnolinguistic and national identity. The power differential between these two brought-along chronotopes manifests in the conversation both metapragmatically and linguistically. For instance, even though the mother identifies Farida through the lens of the soviet chronotope, we see that in summing up the conversation, she discursively moves away from this chronotope by negatively evaluating it through the lens of a post-independence chronotope. She comments qizim to'g'ri aytivotti ‘my daughter is saying correctly’ (line 35) referencing her daughter's earlier criticism of soviet times, and aligning with her negative assessment of these times. She also notes that o'sha paytda… o'zimiz haqiqiy tariximiz bilmadik ‘at that time… we didn't know our own true history’ (lines 36–37), evaluating the soviet chronotope as a time and a place in which people lost their ethnic identity and did not know their true history.

Additionally, it may be possible to read certain aspects of the mother's pronoun usage as discursive distancing from the soviet chronotope. In line 16, she notes that Russian was referred to as an international language, saying rus tili mana tak vot bitta internatsional'ny yazyk deb aytishadi ‘Russian here is like an international language they said’ (line 16). Her use of the third person plural in the verb aytishadi ‘they said’ is a way of distancing herself from the soviet chronotope. Instead of using the first person plural conjugation, that is, ‘we said’, she removes herself from this spatiotemporal configuration. It may be the case that she distances herself from this claim about Russian being an international language because she is aware that post-independence chronotopes are more powerful and demand adherence to a vision of Uzbekistan in which Russian is no longer required. We can interpret this discursive distancing from the soviet chronotope as indicative of the influence of post-independence rhetoric on the ongoing conversation. We can also observe the tentativeness of the mother's position in the fact that she uses the first person plural imperative to pose a hypothetical identification of Farida as Tajik in tajichka buni aytaylik ‘let's say she is Tajik’ (line 23). This tentativeness is not observed in the daughter's response o'zbek-ku o'zbek ‘she's Uzbek Uzbek’ (line 25), which is emphasized through the repeated use of the word o'zbek and through the use of the emphatic particle -ku. The difference between the epistemological certainties with which these comments are made reflect the power differential between the soviet chronotope and the post-independence chronotope.

The relatively more powerful position of certain chronotopes also makes them relatively more accessible, resulting in particular interactional patterns. In other words, the more powerful a chronotope, the more accessible it is, and the greater the accessibility, the greater its communicability (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2015). As a result, less powerful chronotopes require more explanation, while more powerful chronotopes can be taken for granted as assumed shared knowledge among participants. In this example, we see that the mother talks extensively about the soviet chronotope, elaborating on its characteristics and the ways in which it informs her identification of Farida as Tajik from lines 3–24. By contrast, the daughter neither explains the post-independence chronotope, nor does she attempt to justify her identification of Farida as Uzbek. In response to her mother's long explanation of the soviet chronotope and her identification of Farida, the daughter simply responds by saying o'zbek-ku o'zbek ‘she's Uzbek Uzbek’ (line 25) without any additional explanation or justification for this claim. That the post-independence chronotope is not explained, while the soviet chronotope receives a great deal of explanation, points to the fact that the post-independence chronotope, given its contemporary dominance, is relatively unmarked.

Azeri data

The conversations in the following excerpt were recorded at a dinner party hosted by an Iranian Azerbaijani university professor in a college town in the US. The professor and his wife are known in this town for gathering Azerbaijanis at their place once or twice a year. Although Persian, American, and guests from other nationalities are also invited, these dinner parties are generally understood as gatherings of Azerbaijanis. This time, in addition to the host and his wife, there were four Iranian Azerbaijani male graduate students including the first author, two male visiting students from the Republic of Azerbaijan, three women, two of whom were half-Persian half-Azerbaijani, and one American woman who had come with her Iranian Azerbaijani boyfriend. Most of the guests were comfortable communicating in both Persian and Azeri, but the visiting students from the Republic of Azerbaijan did not speak Persian and the half-Persian half-Azerbaijani women were much more comfortable communicating in Persian. While Persian is the unmarked language choice in most other gatherings as the shared language amongst Iranians, the immediate chronotopic context of this gathering required that Azeri be the dominant language of the conversation. While prior experience at these types of gatherings had helped some of the guests bring along an image of what linguistic behaviors were expected, for others, it was totally new and brought about in their very first interactions. The excerpt we focus on was part of a larger conversation that resulted from one of these initial interactions when the half Azerbaijani women, Tina and Zahra, were introduced to the men from the Republic of Azerbaijan, Alim and Rashid. When Zahra was greeting Rashid, she first greeted him in Azeri, aligning with the expected linguistic behavior, but once she found it hard to further communicate in Azeri, she switched to Persian. Given the fact that her dominant language was Persian, this would have been an acceptable switch if she was interacting with another Iranian Azerbaijani. However, since Rashid did not speak Persian, he reacted: “We do not have Persian here. We are all Turks”. This led to very explicit discussions about language and identity among those present. The resulting conversations were dominated by four of the participants: the hosting professor (Behzad), one of the visiting students from the Republic of Azerbaijan (Rashid), and two of the male Iranian Azerbaijani graduate students (Farhad and Majid). As we see below, these interactions were triggered by two conflicting chronotopes that led to different alignment and disalignment patterns. These two conflicting chronotopes concern differing images of life and linguistic practices for Azerbaijanis living in contemporary Iran. While Rashid had brought along a more nationalistic chronotope about Azerbaijani language and identity, Behzad, Farhad, and Majid's shared histories as Iranian Azerbaijani elites led to their (re)construction of different chronotopic images regarding the situation of Azerbaijani language and identity in Iran. That is, Rashid's image of Azerbaijanis in Iran was informed by an ‘ideal’ space-time configuration in which Azerbaijanis speak monolingually in Azeri and thus prioritize Turkicness over Iranianness. By contrast, the other three participants’ images were informed by their chronotopically organized memories of a multilingual Iranian Azerbaijani experience.

“There's no hostility between Turks and Persians”

In this data, once again multiple contrasting chronotopes are brought along and result in different positionings relative to issues of language and identity. While our Uzbek example illustrates how different chronotopes can lead to different identifications of an individual, in this example, we show how contrasting chronotopes lead to different definitions of authentic linguistic practices and ethnic identities for Azerbaijanis in Iran. In particular, we show how Rashid brings along a rather nationalistic chronotope, which leads to his negative evaluation of Azerbaijanis in Iran, who he assesses as not complying with the more rigid standards he expects for Azeri ethnolinguistic identity. By contrast, Behzad, Majid, and Farhad's shared histories as Iranian Azerbaijani elites result in the construction of relatively more flexible chronotopic images of Azeri ethnolinguistic identity, allowing them to defend the situation of Azerbaijanis in Iran as a natural and realistic consequence of different sociopolitical and historical factors. Proponents of nationalistic ideology have claimed sole authority in defining ethnolinguistic identity for Azerbaijanis in Iran (Karimzad Reference Karimzad, Djuraeva and Tochon2018) and are further empowered by the fact that these ideologies align with the aforementioned notion of the ideal monolingual speaker in the ethnically homogeneous nation-state. As a result, the chronotope brought along by Rashid is relatively more powerful than the chronotope brought along by Behzad, Majid, and Farhad, leading to differences in their discourses and interactional patterns.

Prior to excerpt (2), Rashid was questioning why the government does not allow education in and of the Azeri language, given the large number of Turks in Iran. He specifically claimed that this number was thirty-five million, and given that, as mentioned earlier, this number is promoted by nationalistic discourses, it is an indicative of how he is operating within a nationalistic chronotope. Behzad and Farhad draw Rashid's attention to the various complexities of the multilingual situation in Iran in an attempt to explain why education is not offered in Azeri. Given Rashid's critical evaluation of Iranian Azerbaijanis, Behzad, Farhad, and Majid try to defend themselves by explaining the history of the sociopolitical situation in which they have lived. They defend the current situation by highlighting how it has improved compared to the past. Behzad specifically presents a ‘chronotopic contrast’ (Agha Reference Agha2007:322) pointing to a time in Iran in which, given their ethnolinguistic subordination, Azerbaijanis were reluctant to identify themselves as such so as to avoid being mocked: “Previously, people would be embarrassed, Azerbaijanis would be embarrassed to even speak their language. But now, they are not only not embarrassed, but they speak (their language) more strongly”.

Farhad also notices that Rashid's criticisms are based in a nationalistic chronotope, and therefore assumes that he also imagines that there is conflict between Azeris and Persians. The following excerpt begins with a statement of this assumption. Note that the common words for Azerbaijani people and Azerbaijani language in their language are Türk and Türki (‘Tork’ and ‘Torki’ in Persian), respectively. As we illustrate in the examples, the use of these very words has resulted in the construction of certain chronotopes about language and identity; therefore, we have kept them unchanged throughout the English translations.

1. (2)

   

In line 1, Farhad attempts to refute the idea that there is hostility between Azerbaijanis and Persians because he anticipates Rashid's potential assumption of conflict between the two groups. He brings along a contrasting chronotopic image based on his individual experience to highlight the fact that he has not witnessed such a thing. He points to the historical subordination of Azerbaijanis as manifest through jokes, which he differentiates from hostility: Iranda bir dana mütæ:ssifa:næ bir sheyki var mütæ:ssifa:næ chox jok diællær Tühlærin ba:ræasindæ. Amma düshmænchılıx dæyiri. Bülmüræm næjür diæm ba: ‘In Iran, there is one problem unfortunately, and that is they unfortunately tell many jokes about Türks. But it is not hostility. I don't know how to explain’. Rashid, however, brings about a different chronotope through which he articulates the conspiracy theoretic claim that such lack of hostility is maintained by the Iranian system in order to prevent itself from collapsing as a result of interethnic conflict: onda Iran daghılar! bilæxæræ ojür saxlır ki qoy bashın qaldırmasın da. ‘In that case, Iran would collapse! So, it (the system) keeps it like this so that people don't raise their heads (become aware)’ (line 9).

In line 10, Majid attempts to provide a reason why Persians tell jokes about Azeris, asserting that the purpose of these jokes is not to mock. In doing so, he uses the verb masxara elamax ‘to mock’, which is an established Persian borrowing in Iranian Azeri that is not shared with North Azerbaijani; hence, Rashid does not understand it. This leads to a series of interactional exchanges from lines 11 to 19, digressing from the topic of jokes and engaging in metapragmatic commentary about how languages work. In order to justify his use of a borrowed word, Majid claims that language mixing is natural: ‘Look, there is something, some things are natural, they happen naturally. For instance, the mixing of languages. Our language has been mixed with Farsi, Farsi's been mixed with Arabic. This isn't in my hands, it is not in your hands. Your language might have been mixed with Russian. You might be using some Russian words’ (line 14). Having explained how the contact between Azeri and Farsi or Farsi and Arabic has resulted in language mixing, Majid attempts to elicit positive alignment from Rashid towards the end of his turn, expecting that Rashid would accept that North Azerbaijani has been influenced by Russian, given its historical contact with the Russian language. However, Rashid straightforwardly disaligns with him in line 15.

Majid finally manages to return to his point about why Persians make jokes about Turks in line 20. Connecting this phenomenon to Persians’ lack of ‘exposure’ to other accents in Iran, he claims that since in a country like the US people are exposed more to other nationalities, Americans do not make fun of other accents. However, in Iran, ‘they have not seen other accents, and cannot accept them’ (line 20). It is evident that in his example of the situation in the US, Majid is drawing on his own elite experience of interacting mostly with his fellows in academia, and thus ignores the fact that ethnolinguistic subordination occurs in other contexts in the US. In order to make his point about the generality of such practices, Majid once again attempts to elicit alignment from Rashid in lines 22 and 24, assuming that such subordination also exists in the context of the Republic of Azerbaijan: ‘In your country, in Azerbaijan, you do not have any problems with other languages, do you? Where do you see this problem? Have you seen this problem somewhere? This has not happened to you that in a different place, for instance, someone tells you that you have an accent?’ (line 24). Rashid yet again refuses to align with Majid's point: ‘No, there isn't such a problem among us’ (line 25). In line 26, Farhad aligns positively with Majid's point about why Persians mock Azeri-accented Farsi. In doing so, he constructs a chronotopic image of certain Azerbaijani social types that Persians were exposed to in Tehran fifty years ago, maintaining that since the first Azerbaijani immigrants to Tehran came from working class families, they started associating the Türki accent with lower-class people and hence made jokes about them. Towards the end of his turn in line 26, he returns to his previous point, contrasting the past situation of Turks in Iran with that of the present, emphasizing that things have gotten better.

This excerpt illustrates how Rashid, Farhad, and Majid employ contrasting chronotopes when they are positioning themselves with respect to language and identity. Rashid's refusal to acknowledge the influence of Russian on North Azerbaijani or the existence of socially dominant groups that might linguistically subordinate other groups in the Republic of Azerbaijan reveals the nationalistic chronotope he has brought along, which pertains to an ‘ideal’ unified nation in which the language has not been influenced by other languages, and has not been used as a way of subordinating certain social groups. Also, his claim that mocking accents ‘is not a problem among us’ (line 25) is in line with his overarching position throughout the conversation in which he differentiates us from you, that is, you have let the system manipulate you and the Persians mock you, and you have let your language be influenced, while we do not have these problems. By contrast, Farhad and Majid are engaging with different chronotopes in their language-ideological orientations. While denying the existence of hostility between Persians and Azerbaijanis, they attempt to provide broader social explanations for the current situation of Azerbaijanis in Iran, motivated by the chunks of history they have brought along. The chronotopes they invoke regarding Persians come from their experiences as students attending prestigious universities both in Tehran, Iran, and in the US. These experiences are different from the experiences of the working-class families living in Tehran to whom Farhad was referring, which is indicative of their rather limited perspective in this respect. In addition, what Majid discusses in terms of how languages work is in part a re-entextualization of his previous interactions with the first author over a period of four years, a recalibrated chronotope taken away from previous encounters and brought about in the current interaction.

Farhad and Majid attempt to present a more complex image of the situation in their metapragmatic comments compared to Rashid's rather nationalistically biased perspective. However, it is evident that their discourses are organized through the interaction of various small-scale and large-scale chronotopes, some of which are in fact shared with Rashid. As mentioned above, those chronotopes that are more powerful are also more accessible, and it is the understanding and employment of these powerful and accessible chronotopes that is shared across the three speakers. In this case, there are two powerful chronotopes at play. The first relates to the aforementioned link between ethnonational identification and the space-time frame in which monolingualism is the norm. Although Majid attempts to justify the naturalness of language mixing, he still defers to this more powerful chronotope in the following instances. First, when Majid realizes that Rashid did not understand the word he used for ‘to mock’, he asks the others to help find a better word in line 12. The way he frames his question, ‘what is it (the word for ‘to mock’) in Türki?’, illustrates that Majid assumes that there should be a Türki word that he does not know, reinforcing the idea of the existence of a pure Turkic language. This leads to Rashid questioning his ‘Türkness’ in line 13 (Sæn türksæn da? ‘You are a Türk, right?’), again reinforcing the notion that ethnic Turks should speak pure Türki. Similarly, when Rashid claims that there is no mixing between Azeri and Russian in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Majid responds by attributing this lack of mixing to ‘luck’. The invocation of luck here positively evaluates nonmixing and further points to the power associated with an ideal space-time in which Azerbaijanis speak monolingually.

The second powerful chronotope at play in the conversation relates to notions of a single Turkic people and Turkic language, and to the idea that Azeri is a variety of this larger Turkic language. The fact that Iranian Azerbaijanis usually refer to Turkish and North Azerbaijani languages as Istanbuli and Bakı Türkusi—the Türki of Istanbul and Baku—reinforces this chronotope. We see this in our data towards the end of line 26 where in his attempt to present the improved situation of Iranian Azerbaijanis in Tehran, Farhad refers to Istanbul and Tehran as the two cities with the largest Türki-speaking populations, ignoring the striking differences between Azeri and Turkish. Previous to the excerpt above, he also attributed the improved situation of Azeri in Iran to the Turkish TV programs that had become popular among Iranian Azerbaijanis: ‘Of course, it is partially because of satellite TV. When there is satellite TV, we'd watch Türki (Turkish) programs. Kids now learn Türki before Farsi, because parents watch Turkish channels from morning till night, so because of that, for instance, uh, kids grow up there and you see, for example, they speak Istanbul Türki fluently. They learn Farsi as well. So, satellite TV somehow has a positive effect on the culture of the Iranian Turks’. Although he is partially right about how this new trend has resulted in what Bani-Shoraka (Reference Bani-Shoraka2003) calls the revitalization of Azerbaijani language and identity, children's exposure to Turkish TV programs has alternatively been argued to be a new threat to the Azeri language. Mirvahedi (Reference Mirvahedi2012), in particular, regards children's tendency to watch Turkish programs and learn the Turkish language as a new challenge, making it difficult to maintain Iranian Azerbaijani. Karimzad (Reference Karimzad, Djuraeva and Tochon2018:62) also argues that Iranian Azerbaijanis’ exposure to these satellite TV programs has resulted in self-subordination among some people, that is, ‘the idea that the variety of Turkic language they are speaking is “stronger”, “purer” and more “authentic” than ours—since ours has been influenced by Persian—lead[ing] to devaluing their own language and linguistic practices and elevating the value of Turkish (or North Azerbaijani) as the norm’.

Returning to the idea that more powerful chronotopes are more accessible and require less explanation, we see that both claims regarding pure and unmixed language and the idea of a single Türki language are relatively unmarked, unquestioned, and shared across the participants. We see this, for instance, in the fact that the Iranian Azerbaijanis go to great lengths in the excerpt to explain what has caused the mixing of Azeri and Persian and the subordination of Azeri relative to Persian. In contrast, Rashid only answers ‘no’ without explanation when asked if there is mixing between Azeri and Russian, and responds simply ‘No, there isn't such a problem among us’ (line 25) to the question about the subordination of certain social groups in the Republic of Azerbaijan. His relatively short answers point to the fact that monolingualism and images of a homogeneous nation (however imaginary) do not require the same explanation and justification that language mixing and social inequality between ethnic groups require. This in turn is indicative of the relative power of the chronotope of a monolingual nation-state.