language choice in tajikistan’s digital public spaces

1

Language Choice in Tajikistan’s Digital Public Spaces:

An Analysis of Multilingual Practices by Commenters on Public Facebook Pages

Joseph Ritch

A Scholarly Paper

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of

Master of Arts in Second Language Studies

Department of Second Language Studies

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

First Reader: Dr. Dongping Zheng

Second Reader: Dr. Gabriele Kasper

Spring 2021

LANGUAGE CHOICE IN TAJIKISTAN’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACES 2

Abstract

Digital public spaces provide forums for complex communication and meaning making

processes among unfamiliar interactants. Language choice and practices in digital text-based

environments within known social circles have been studied and shown to be shaped by

knowledge of others in the space, whereas relatively less attention has been given to the ways

that posts are constructed in digital public spaces, despite their growing importance and

influence. This study employs the framework of translanguaging and tools of digital

conversation analysis to analyze the coordination of linguistic and paralinguistic resources in the

multilingual context of public Facebook news page comments related to the highly multilingual

country of Tajikistan. The results show considerable variety of visual resources and language

mixing at every level between Tajik and Russian with considerably less use of Arabic. The data

also reinforce linguistic trends observed in Tajikistan with Russian generally used as a prestige

language, while Tajik is used for interpersonal affiliation. The lack of representation of other

languages spoken in Tajikistan emphasizes the important role of these languages in the context.

This study provides insight into the multilingual repertoire and practices of Tajikistan, but more

specifically, the ways in which it is enacted in digital public spaces.

Keywords: digital public spaces, language choice, translanguaging, Tajikistan, Facebook


In recent years, life has become more digitally mediated than ever before. A global

pandemic shifted nearly all interactions into online mediums, continuing the general societal

trend of the last decades towards digitally mediated social actions. Public pages on Facebook are

openly accessible to any user and can be interacted with freely, serving not as closed-off

interactions within a known network of peers, but closer to an open discussion in a public square.

Unlike Twitter, which is epitomized by an open space for all interactions, Facebook pages

section off specific areas of the website, organizing the social interactions into more

topic-specific posts or pages. Facebook pages can post about a topic, inviting anyone to comment

on it, potentially sparking interactions among the users. This is analogous to an organization

hosting a public event about a particular cause - framing interactions around that topic, but

allowing for interactions among attendees who may have otherwise not come in contact. As we

move forward in this digital age, it is important to understand how digital mediums are used for

interaction and to what extent they differ from analog counterparts. This study begins to address

these issues by exploring the translanguaging practices through language choice and the process

of meaning making through the coordination of linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources

on public Facebook pages in the multilingual context of news around Tajikistan, a small country

in Central Asia with a complex linguistic and cultural history.

Literature Review

Facebook as a Site of Social Action and Practice

Since the rise of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social networking sites

(SNSs) have become an integral part of people’s social lives. Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, Facebook,

and many others have provided spaces for strangers to come together and interact in public

forums in new and exciting ways that were impossible before the internet. In recent years, social


and political movements and massive misinformation campaigns have been organized through

these online channels, and there is no indication of this trend slowing down. As these sites

continue to grow in both active users and engagement, it is important to recognize that these

“online communities are interesting in and of themselves, not as weak simulacra of offline

communities'' (Giles, Stommel, Paulus, Lester, & Reed, 2015, p. 47). Among the major SNSs,

Facebook has been one of the longest lasting and farthest-reaching, with more than 2.2 billion

users subscribed by January, 2020 (Internet World Stats, 2020). Wilson, Gosling, and Graham

(2012) summarized five major categories of social science research on Facebook: descriptive

analysis of users, motivations for using Facebook, identity presentation, the role of Facebook in

social interactions, and privacy and information disclosure. The major research on the role of

Facebook in social interactions surround its impact on relationships in real life rather than the

social actions occurring on the site itself. Facebook is a site of social practice in which users

construct concepts through discourse (Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018). (Semi-)private interactions

between known contacts within an individual’s social network have been studied on the platform

(e.g.,Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018; Bazarova et al., 2013; Tagg & Seargeant, 2014). These studies

restrict the domain of interest to participants’ social network of friends, rather than the internet at

large.

While individuals’ personal profiles and posts are often conceptualized as private or

semi-private, even when fully publicly accessible, activity by public organizations and on public

pages are understood to be public (Willis, 2019). There has been relatively less study of

interactions in fully public spaces (e.g.,Burke & Goodman, 2012; Diepeveen, 2019), perhaps

because of a perception of private interactions being more meaningful social interactions for

research. Public pages, however, do garner considerable interactions between strangers, serving


as an open, public forum for engagement around nearly any topic. Diepeveen (2019) analyzed

political debates in a Mombasa-based public Facebook group, finding the context to both

facilitate users’ unexpected expression while also sewing mistrust of users’ intentions and

motivations. Burke and Goodman (2012) studied the discourse of extremism in public Facebook

groups, following the discourse of Nazi related rhetoric around asylum seekers. These studies

explored the ways that discourse was employed and reacted to on Facebook among strangers,

showing the wealth of unexplored, often volatile interactions in these digital public squares.

Affordances and Constraints of Facebook Commenting

Facebook’s technology for facilitating online interactions consists of several features that

serve to both encourage and inhibit specific actions. First and most relevantly to the current

study, Facebook posts automatically enable and encourage engagement in three main ways:

sharing a post (to a different audience), reacting to a post (with a limited number of options), and

commenting on a post (using text, images, or embedded links). Comments are also nested,

allowing commenters to engage directly with one another in threads that organize responses in

two levels: top-level comments directly on a post, and lower-level comments subordinate to a

specific comment. These comment threads are the primary site of social interaction on public

pages. Another important tool used for addressing and getting the attention of an interlocutor is

tagging. When a user responds to a comment, the original commenter is automatically tagged,

though this can be overridden if the user chooses. This tagging means that the original

commenter receives a notification that they have been tagged, and the new comment includes a

direct link to their profile. A commenter can also opt to tag a third party in a post by typing “@”

and the users’ profile name. Tagging is the most direct form of addressivity on social media and

directly engages the addressed party with a notification. This system of instantaneous


notification encourages users to respond fairly quickly to new comments, but there is still often a

time-lag between posts compared to instant message chats. The structure of interactions, though,

often does have qualities of synchronous interaction. The “distinction between asynchronous and

quasi-synchronous interaction has blurred” (Meredith, 2019, p. 242). Comments on public pages

can be engaged with fully asynchronously, quasi-synchronously, or somewhere in between.

The structure of comments themselves also shape interactions. A comment may include

text, images, and embedded links. The text format is fixed in the settings of each user, so no

textual enhancement is possible (e.g.,bolding, italics, etc.). This limits the possible text variety to

different scripts, upper and lower cases, and the use of other non-textual resources. Emojis have

a long history of use in online forums, and they are popular on Facebook as well. In addition to

these, Facebook allows users to upload or search for images or Graphics Interchange Format

images (GIFs). Embedded links can also be used in comments, and links to videos or images will

embed the actual video or image into the comment as well. These, however, are also limited.

Users may include only one image, GIF, or embedded link per comment, and these will always

occur underneath any entered text. Other than embedded links of audio or video, Facebook

comments do not allow for audio recording in comments.

Alongside the input possibilities, Facebook also has a native translation system that

allows users to translate posts from unknown languages into a main language of their choosing.

Tajik, however, is not supported by this system, so Russian is the default for translation within

Tajikistan and Tajik speaking users must be able to engage on the platform in one of the

supported languages offered by Facebook.

Multilingualism in Tajikistan

This study focuses on language practices centered around Tajikistan, which is a highly


multilingual society. Before the Soviet Union, multilingualism including Turkic and Persian

languages were common across the mountainous region, but Russian as a prestige language

during the Soviet Union became the main second language for all language groups as a lingua

franca, while officially preserving the importance of minority ethnic languages being politically

equal (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001). Between a desire for building independent national

unity apart from the former Soviet Union and the continued reliance on Russian for economic

and political means, several laws have been implemented over time. In 1989, the Law on

Languages formally recognized Tajik as the state language, Russian as the official language of

inter-ethnic communication, and Uzbek as an important ethnic language, as well as guaranteeing

citizens the right to communicate with organizations freely in any of the languages of Tajikistan

and receive education in their native language when possible (Nagzibekova, 2008). After

independence in 1991, the 1989 law continued to be the formal legal basis for language policy in

Tajikistan (Nagzibekova, 2008). Languages in Tajikistan have been perceived hierarchically by

its citizens, with Russian as a prestige language and minority languages seen as less important,

though this hierarchy has been challenged by Pamiri activists since the 1980s (Dodikhudoeva,

2004). Unlike other post-soviet states, Tajikistan does not have a negative relationship with

Russia, despite efforts to derussify the language in public discourse (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele,

2001). Instead, much of Tajikistan’s workforce is migrant labor in Russia, necessitating Russian

language proficiency for economic stability. Tajik’s language policies in 1989 and 2009

exemplify the ideology of “one nation, one language,” though they still explicitly and implicitly

support a multilingual community united through a shared second language.

In the Ukraine, the ideology of “language purity” has influenced pedagogy in efforts to

standardize Ukranian as the national language, mirroring the context of Tajikistan (Friedman,


2010). Tajik is a decentralized language, with a literary form that diverged greatly from the

numerous regional dialects. In the 1980s, policy planners sought to standardize Tajik, but there

were debates as to whether the standardized form should be closest to a specific spoken dialect,

the literary form, or the closely related forms of Persian spoken in Iran and Afghanistan

(Dodikhudoeva, 2004). Initially, the dialect of Bukhara was selected and implemented as the

national standard, but there have been shifts closer to the Kulobi dialect in the decades since due

to political influence from the region (Dodikhudoeva, 2004). The ideology of language purity is

still a common discourse within the region, as exemplified in Figure 1, a response to a video

about rising costs for groceries. Farshad attempts to correct the pronunciation of a word. The first

line shows the original text, while the second and third show morphological and functional

translations, respectively, in line with conversation analysis (CA) conventions.

Figure 1: Ingredients

In this example, Farshad suggests that маводи ғизои (mavodi ghizo), the standard Tajik

pronunciation is incorrect, instead offering the Iranian pronunciation маводи ғазои (mavodi

ghazo) as candidate for correct pronunciation. The referenced speech is only spoken, not written,

so the user is orienting specifically to the pronunciation of the phrase, though using emphasized


written speech (capitalized) to emphasize the correct. Language ideologies impact the

development of linguistic norms, so the expression of language standardization and purity are

important to understanding language choice.

As a highly linguistically diverse country with recent language policy changes, Tajikistan

has a complex relationship with and hierarchical valuation of Russian, Tajik, and the numerous

other languages indigenous to the region, providing a fertile context for complex linguistic and

paralinguistic meaning-making in digital social spaces. This study seeks to answer:

1. How do Facebook users in Tajikistan’s online community employ their linguistic

repertoires through language choice to construct messages, and

2. How do these users coordinate their linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources in

concert with the affordances of the medium in comment sections of digital public spaces

to engage in make meaning?

Methods

Data

The data consist of a collection of Facebook opening posts (OPs) from public news

organizations based in Tajikistan and the set of public comments engaging with these posts.

These data were collected from public pages both due to their accessibility and because they

represent a site of highly multilingual public interactions among individuals. The news agencies

included private organizations based in Tajikistan and Russia, a United States funded agency, and

a Tajikistan state-run agency. These agencies were selected for both balance of audience and

based on their highly popular general consumption in Tajikistan. Posts that contained fewer than

three user comments were excluded. In total, seven OPs in Tajik and five in Russian were

collected with a total of 277 comments that were made over a two week period. An example of


one of the candidate posts is shown as a screenshot in figure 2, and the visible comment is

transcribed as excerpt 9.

Figure 2: Domestic Security Issues

Each of these comments was transcribed and analyzed for language to assess the linguistic

resources implemented, and 45 comments were found to involve multilingual elements. Each of

these comments was then transcribed at two levels: a morphological glossing and a functional

translation, which were shown in the transcripts. Translations and subsequent analysis were

discussed and confirmed with a critical friend (Rossman & Rallis, 2017) of the author, whose

expertise as a Tajik journalist served to verify the interpretations of data with community

membership knowledge. This important step ensured that analytic interpretations of the data

were in line with understandings from within the community of practice. However, some of the


data were found to be uninterpretable even by this native speaking community member. For

example, one user commented on a post about food insecurity with a link to a Russian news

broadcast about North Korean military expansion. While this may have been understood by some

other audience members, such an apparent non sequitur was unable to be understood, and thus

interpreted, for the purposes of this project.

Limiting the sample size to those posted in a given time frame was intended to balance

the amount of data collected and while still getting a snapshot of the context of interaction

(Ditchfield & Meredith, 2018). The OPs included text posts, images, and videos. The text of the

posts and the comments were recorded, and users’ profile names were replaced with

pseudonyms, but comment threads with tagged users were recorded to preserve the tagging

relationships, following the general transcription practices of Tagg and Seargeant (2014). Text,

video, and audio in the OPs were coded by main language and content type. Domestic and

international political and economic stories were reported, as well as entertainment news.

The transcription protocol preserved the original comment level and sequencing: light

colored left justified comments are top-level comments (responding directly to the public pages’

posts), while darker and indented comments are nested responses under a given top-level

comment. Comments are transcribed in chronological order of being posted. Each comment is

contained within its own box, though some comments may have several lines which are noted for

analysis. In the line of original text, language sources are identified by font format: Russian is

italicized, Tajik is plain text, and Arabic is underlined. In Facebook, users are unable to format

their fonts, so this coding method does not remove text qualities that affect the interactions. The

“@” symbol denotes a direct “tagging” of a user, which is a default addressing function of

replying to a user’s comment, but can be deleted if the writer chooses.


Analysis

Digital Conversation Analysis

Giles et al. (2015) introduced digital CA as an alternative to digitized applications of CA,

arguing that the application of offline research methods to online interactions requires a critical

analysis of their underlying assumptions. The current data is primarily text based communication

with limited visual representations, eliminating the need for CA audio transcription conventions.

Instead, text-based digital communication gives rise to a different set of paralinguistic semiotic

resources. Facial expressions and embodied actions are not available directly, but emojis,

punctuation, images, and GIFs can be employed to similar effects.

Traditional CA relies on the notion of conversations as linear and chronologically

ordered, but asynchronous online communication obfuscates the relationship between turns.

Antaki, Ardevol, Nunez, and Vayreda (2005) analyzed the relationship between an initial OP in

inviting the first responses, but Giles et al. (2015) argue that such forums are conversation-like

and extending the assumption of turn design and sequentiality beyond the initial pair may not be

as straightforward. Unlike in face-to-face interactions, interactants cannot monitor

turns-in-progress since each message is transmitted simultaneously as a single batch. Meredith

(2019) emphasized that turn-taking in online interactions may lead to users including multiple

first-pair parts (FPPs) in a given message, and respondents may quote or refer back to these FPPs

in order to manage disrupted turn adjacency. Alternatively, a single FPP may be taken up and

responded to by multiple second-pair parts (SPPs), leading to separate, parallel interaction

threads. For example, in excerpt 1, a back and forth series of comments between Firoza and

Kamran (comments 1-4) do not serve to interrupt the adjacency pair relationship between

comments 1 and 5 between Firoza and a third user. Both comments 2 and 5 are direct responses


and SPPs to comment 1 and can be continued as parallel interactions. Similarly, when

constructing a message, a user may include several complete actions or possible turns

analytically referred to as turn construction units (TCUs) within a single message, limiting the

possibility for turn-taking negotiation. Subsequently, “the concept of a TCU may be more

relevant for recipients than it is for writers of a message” (Meredith, 2019, p. 244). Users may

choose to submit individual turns separately, or include several sequential turns in a single

message, opting to pre-emptively self-select.

Audience Design Framework

The analysis framework for the data is based on Bell’s (2002) Audience Design as

modified by Tagg and Sergeant (2014) for interactions on Facebook, which defines the

categories of speaker (original poster message), addressee, active friends, wider friends, and the

internet as a whole. This framework was used for Facebook interactions on an individual’s

private page, whereas in the context of these public posts, the categories of active and wider

friends are less relevant than poster, addressee, and the internet as a whole. Giles et al. (2015)

describe online public forums as polylogal, suggesting that the unlimitedness of potential

interactants may render these membership categories almost irrelevant. However, within the

audience design framework, language choice is viewed in relation to direct and indirect

addressivity and the nature of the proposed audience categories, which, as shown in the data, are

still salient.

Multi-Performance and Translanguaging

Multilingual speakers switch between and blend their languages within utterances in

creative and strategic ways that make use of the full repertoire of their linguistic resources. He

(2013) used the term multi-performances to describe several contexts where such


language-transcending behavior occurs, showing Chinese heritage speakers’ use of features of

both English and Chinese in various degrees: (1) inter-sentential, inter-turn, inter-TCU

codeswitching; (2) intra-TCU morpho-syntactic codeswitching; (3) codeswitching involving

intra-TCU bound but free morphemes; (4) code-doubling; and (5) intra-TCU morpho-phonemic

codeswitching. The instances of language mixing in the data were analyzed within these general

categories to investigate how these types of language choices were used. Because the data were

entirely textual and/or visual, intra-TCU morpho-phonemic codeswitching was not observable,

but each other category is represented in the data. Li Wei’s (2016, 2018) theory of

translanguaging expands on the creative use of semiotic resources between named languages,

instead focusing on when language practices and paralinguistic resources transcend the socially

constructed boundaries of named languages. Building on languaging, this theory moves away

from a strict adherence to language as a concrete system to emphasize the ongoing process of

communicating. This approach questions the validity of distinctions between named languages

and their relevance in the meaning-making process. However, in order to demonstrate the

contribution of linguistic resources from various socially constructed sources to communication,

it is necessary to identify the named language origins employed. It is within this framework that

the data were analyzed.

Findings

Inter-Sentential, Inter-Turn, Inter-TCU Translanguaging

A full change in language in a response is a well-documented form of codeswitching that

can be seen in digital data, as well. In excerpt 1, a user, Firoza, posts a comment directly on a

Russian language news article OP regarding the recent trial in absentia of a former Tajik political

opposition leader for crimes committed during the Tajik civil war. This first comment was then


responded to by two other users.

Excerpt 1: He Thought He Was Helping

In this excerpt, comment 1 by Firoza is a negative evaluation of the discongruence between the

mental and moral states of the man tried in absentia. The exclamation point emphasizes the

extremity of this statement, while also indicating sarcasm. In a face-to-face interaction, this

would be shown through facial expressions and pitch, but in an online text format, the

punctuation is employed instead. This was responded to by Kamran in comment 2, who initially


affiliates with the evaluation of the mental state but offers a justification for the morality, that his

intentions were good, instead blaming the effect of political slogans during that were popular in

his time. In comments 3 and 4, Firoza and Kamran both reassert their evaluations of the

(im)morality involved in the man’s actions. Comment 4 serves to close this topic. Comment 5

(lines 7-9) is a response by a third user, Mahnoz, whose response to the negative evaluation in

comment 1 is to negatively evaluate the speaker herself. Comment 5 provides a clear example of

an inter-turn, inter-TCU switch from Russian to Tajik. Both the OP and Firoza’s comments are in

Russian, but Mahnoz’s abrupt switch to Tajik, the term of endearment Хохарчон (“dear sister”),

and the direct address by use of Facebook’s tagging function are used to address and affiliate

with her, though this affiliation is used to negatively evaluate her thinking. The coordination of

both affiliative moves of word and language choice and the disaffiliative move of negatively

evaluating Firoza in line 7 serves to soften the blow of the evaluation. Furthermore, the shift

from “you” to “we” in lines 8 and 9 further affiliate Mahnoz with Firoza by aligning herself with

the negatively evaluated group.

Language blending between TCU boundaries is often associated with a change of speaker

in an adjacent speaking turn (He, 2013). However, in digital comments, turn boundaries are less

rigid as a single user may include several distinct turns in a single message, only allowing

self-selection between turns, despite transition relevant places (TRPs; Sacks, Schegloff, &

Jefferson, 1974) being included within the message. The next three examples of mismatched

linguistic performance between TCUs with internal language consistency, excerpts 2, 3, and 4,

are responses to a Russian language post commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the death

of Pamiri-Tajik performer Muborakhsho Mirzoshoyev and a video of one of his live

performances in Tajik.


Excerpt 2: Blessing

In Excerpt 2, Farzan initially comments on the Russian language post with a blessing in Tajik

(line 1), which directly addresses the subject of the post (the late singer). However, in lines 2 and

3, Farzan switched fully to Russian, continuing to address Mirzoshoyev. Of course, the singer is

deceased, so posting this on Facebook was intended for an overhearing audience to potentially

affiliate with. While this post was not responded to with a subordinate comment, two other users

did react to the post with a like reaction and a love reaction (a thumbs up and a heart,

respectively), showing affiliation with Farzan as overhearing audiences. The use of Tajik and

Russian in this post mirrors the OP itself - a Tajik musical performance juxtaposed with a post in

Russian about the singer.

Excerpts 3 and 4 both make use of GIFs as primary semiotic resources for their

comments. GIFs are short, moving images that can be added to the bottom of Facebook

comments using either a link to Facebook’s native GIF search engine. These GIFs offer users the

opportunity to simulate embodied actions, among other uses. In excerpt 3, Jahangeer posts a GIF

featuring American actor David Boreanaz from the television show Bones saluting with the word

respect in English along the bottom of the image. Jahangeer does not add any additional text to

his post, instead allowing the GIF to be the full comment, suggesting his own virtual salute to the

late performer.


Excerpt 3: Respect

The use of English text along the bottom of the post adds more explicitly the emotion he is

conveying towards the performer. As with excerpt 2, this post is addressed to Mirzoshoyev, both

the subject of the respect and the recipient of the salute, but is designed to invite affiliation from

the general public audience. This comment employs English language resources alongside the

visual and embodied semiotic resources of a salute, coordinating the two positive semiotic

resources in order to evaluate the performer Mirzoshoyev.

Similarly, excerpt 4, another comment on the same OP, also presents a visual of

embodied action, a GIF of a man praying with a traditional Muslim hand motion wiping his face

with his palms, but further coordinates it with written Russian text.

Excerpt 4: Songs from the Soul


As with Jahangeer in excerpt 3, the GIF serves as a representation of the embodied action of

Sahar, who is praying for Mirzoshoyev. The text alongside the image is an evaluation of

Mirzoshoyev’s singing. While this does not involve the use of two distinct linguistic codes (the

OP and this comment are both in Russian), the employment of the GIF as a symbol of embodied

action alongside Russian language text shows the creative use of various semiotic resources

through different modes in coordination with one another to produce a more complex message.

The last excerpt in this category is in response to a video posted by a state-run news

agency of a brief (38 second) Tajik-language political speech by the president of Tajikistan

recounting some of his major accomplishments in office.

Excerpt 5: Thanks

In this excerpt, Hurmoz initially responds to the video with praise of the president and an

imperative that he be thanked (line 1). Behruz in line 2 orients to his suggestion that the president

be thanked and negatively evaluates it initially in Russian, saying Hurmoz was mistaken, and

then explains in Tajik that thanks should only be given to God. The language mixing in this

excerpt provides a delineation between the two actions of Behruz’s comment: first, to negatively

evaluate Hurmoz’s call to action with linguistic resources from Russian, and second to explain

his reasoning with linguistic resources from Tajik. In this way, Behruz is able to give corrective

feedback to Hurmoz’s action by appealing to an evaluative phrase in Russian and a religious

reference in Tajik.


Intra-TCU Morpho-Syntactic Translanguaging

Blending languages within a TCU has been suggested to be highly unpredictable and not

cognitively generalizable across different speakers (He, 2013). In these data, there were several

instances of such Rusian-Tajik mixing within TCUs. In the first example, a short Tajik-language

video of a government official explaining the reasons for rising grocery prices was posted,

initiating the two comments posted by a single user in excerpt 6.

Excerpt 6: Empty Words

In this excerpt, Kourash responds to the Tajik language video primarily in Russian. There is the

notable exception, though, in the use of the word Раис (“leader”) in line one. This word is being

used to directly address the Tajik official. He posted two separate comments directly on the OP,

dividing his response into lines 1 and 2. The first of which directly addresses the official, calling

for action (as opposed to speeches). The second comment, however, addresses a larger audience

and expands Kourash’s self-category by using the pronoun нам (“us”).

Excerpt 7 is a comment made in response to a Tajik language video of a government

official describing international import policies to target rising market prices. In this excerpt,

Mehrab directly addresses the government officials in charge of international trade policy,

accusing them of not thinking of the poor (line 1) and then upgrading the accusation in line 2 to

being corrupted, while also expanding the address (“all of you”).


Excerpt 7: My Words Are Wasted

The use of Russian in line 1 is limited to the word да (“yes”), which serves only as a discourse

marker of emphasis within the larger Tajik sentence. In both of these examples, single word

borrowings across languages are used sparingly.

Translanguaging Involving Intra-TCU Bound but Free Morphemes

While borrowing of single words is very common, less common is the mixing of bound

and free morphemes across language boundaries. He (2013) referred to this type of code

blending as seeming “to break all conceivable linguistic boundaries” (p. 310). This form of

translanguaging was, however, still very common among the data analyzed.

Excerpt 8 is an interaction in response to the Tajik language video post about rising prices

of groceries. Lines 1 and 2 of Kia’s comment express a dislike for the market regulations as they

impact smaller traders. In line 3 Kia turns attention to importing firms, addressing market

regulators. The word Kia uses for “firms and” is made of two morphemes, фирма (“firm”,

Russian) and у (“and”, Tajik), which are connected by the consonant в (/v/). In Tajik, this

consonant is inserted after a vowel before у (“and”), so in this excerpt, the Russian word is being

inserted into the Tajik syllable structure. While this word is only written so it is not possible to

analyze it in terms of its phonemic qualities, the orthographic conventions of Tajik are carried

across the linguistic boundaries. The comment is then responded to by Soroush, who positively

evaluates the statement and agrees with Kia.


Excerpt 8: Market Control

In excerpt 9, a colorful response is made in response to a Tajik language video post about

domestic security issues in the city of Kulob. In this excerpt, Arash begins in line 1 with an insult

of one of the officials being interviewed in the posted video.

Excerpt 9: A Cow’s Yoke


He uses the word Галстукотон, which is comprised of two morphemes, Галстук (“necktie”,

Russian) and тон (2nd person possessive clitic, Tajik). The two morphemes are connected with a

vowel o, which could be either a genitive marker for Russian or a ezafe for Tajik, either of which

would be used to connect the noun (tie) with its possessive (your) in this instance, but neither of

which would be written with an o in standard spelling. This blending shows that the Russian

word is inserted with Tajik morphology, though the line between these codes is not clear. Instead,

both languages are contributing to the structure of the word, resulting in a new vowel that is not

wholly derived from either of the component language sources.

Code-Doubling for Clarity

The final category of language mixing is code-doubling, a practice in which a turn

includes repeating an idea in two languages. While the other types of translanguaging were very

prevalent in the data, code-doubling was substantially less common. Except 10 is another

response to a Tajik language video about the rising cost of food.

Excerpt 10: Inflation

In this example, Delaram proposes that inflation is a cause for rising prices in the grocery stories.

He uses the Russian word in parentheses followed by the word in Tajik outside of the

parentheses. This serves several functions. First, by sectioning the Russian word off, Delaram

makes it explicit that that word does not fit within the Tajik sentence and is an addition. This

decision would seem to reinforce the ideology of language purity shown in figure 1. Second, the

use of this Russian word as an addition clarifies the meaning of the following Tajik word. The

Russian word is used to scaffold for readers who would be unfamiliar with the Tajik word but


know the Russian word. Russian has served as a prestige language in Tajikistan, and here the

technical term is assumed to be better understood in Russian, though the Tajik equivalent is still

reinforced as the correct word in the sentence.

Advertisements

While the majority of comments were directly related to the topic posed by the OPs, there

was also another category of comments that was commonplace: advertisements. Excerpts 11 and

12 are both advertisements or spam, which occurred frequently among the data. These were

comments made on unrelated posts, but alongside other comments that did relate to the OP.

These types of advertisements are common on social media and contribute to the complete

picture of language practices in this digital space, but their function is distinct from the other

kind of data analyzed because they repurpose the space for marketing. These posts do not orient

to the content of the posts, nor do they address the organizations posting, but instead are used

specifically to reach and address the audience of each of the OPs. Interestingly, among the data,

advertisements employed intra-TCU morpho-syntactic translanguaging more frequently than

other translanguaging practices.

The first, excerpt 11, was commented on a Russian language post about immigration into

Tajikistan. In this comment, Davlatyor directly addresses the readers as бародаро (brothers, line

1) in Tajik paired with an Arabic greeting (Ассалому Алейкум) and a request to subscribe to his

Youtube channels. Lines 2 and 3 further request the same action, subscription, with increasing

pleas. The final line finally provides the link to Davlatyor’s Youtube channel that he is requesting

subscribers to. In line 2, Davlatyor uses the Russian word срочно (“quickly”) in all capital letters

among an otherwise Tajik and Arabic language post. This use of Russian and the capitalization

both signal emphasis, supporting the claim of urgency.


Excerpt 11: Subscribe

The next advertisement, excerpt 12, was commented on the Tajik language presidential

speech (the same as excerpt 6). This comment is an advertisement for an anti-aging cream that

can be ordered and shipped in Tajikistan. Due to the length of the comment, it has been truncated

to show the main translanguaging aspects. In line 1, Muzhdah directly addresses a Tajik reading

audience, capitalizing the pronoun and emphasizing it with an emoji. In line 2, while describing

the development of the cream, Muzhdah capitalized the word French and adds an emoji of a

diamond relating the cream to France and a notion of luxury, which is further associated with

production in Iran in line 3. The word косметологии (“cosmetology”) in line 2 is a lone Russian

word in this turn, and along with сертификат (“certificate”, line 11), результат (“results”, line

14), гарантия (“guarantee”, line 14), and доставка (“delivery”, line 17), there are several

instances of borrowed words being used. Each of these words would have been used more in

marketing from Russia, making them more salient and recognizable in Tajik than many other,

less advertising-specific vocabulary. Line 14 only has a Tajik verb and syntax. In both of these

advertising examples, Russian loanwords are employed for emphasis and/or to conform to the


Excerpt 12: Cream to Stay Young

genre norms of advertising in Russian. Furthermore, the use of emojis in this advertisement are

coordinated carefully with the text. The diamond emojis in lines 2 and 12 are used to emphasize

the connotation of luxury that are indirectly called upon by the mentions of France and Iran. The

heart-eyed emoji in line 1 is used in connection with the word ШУМО (you), suggesting a link

between the beauty and youth the cream can provide and the reader. The 100 emoji in line 3

emphasizes the development and production of the cream is 100% in Iran, though it does not

explicitly state this. Line 14 combines two emojis - a red exclamation point and a black

checkmark - to emphasize that the guarantee is surprising and an important checked item a


customer would be looking for, just like the availability of delivery throughout Tajikistan, which

is where the checkmark is used again in line 17.

The coordination of these paralinguistic resources are used expertly to coordinate the text

of the message with specific marketing goals. The diamond emojis and references to France and

Iran are coordinated and aligned to imply luxury, though the text avoids stating this directly. The

100 emoji, claim of certification in Russian, and explanation of French research and Iranian

production in Tajik work together to create a sense of the product being official, professional,

and recognized. That “certificate” is in Russian while the detailed explanation of production is in

Tajik also reinforces the use of Russian for bureaucratic and official purposes even when Tajik is

the main language for understanding.

Discussion

The data collected in this project show consistency with other findings about public

discourse on open forums. Antaki et al. (2005)’s finding that posts on public forums are often left

unanswered was overwhelmingly the case. The vast majority of posts were not responded to

beyond “likes,” so many of the analyzed posts left open invitations for responses that were not

engaged. Translanguaging, however, does not require a conversational interaction. Rather, the

creative use of semiotic resources to make meaning beyond any one linguistic source show

comprehensive translanguaging practices. The limited collection of back-and-forth interactions

among users often were limited to two or three comments only. As with both Burke and

Goodman (2012) and Diepeveen (2019), when these rare interactions among commenters

happened, they were primarily antagonistic, though several instances of affiliation and

cooperation towards shared goals were also seen. Positive assessments of and agreement with

other users or personalities in the real world were common, as well as the coordination among


users to jointly construct arguments. These brief interactions, while they may seem ephemeral to

the interactants, are archived and can be seen and interacted with again and again, as long as the

posts themselves remain active.

RQ #1: How do Facebook users in Tajikistan’s online community employ their linguistic

repertoires through language choice to construct messages?

The actual use of multilingual repertoires in these data showed a wide breadth of

creativity. The main languages that occurred in the data were Russian, Tajik, and Arabic, and

each of these served different functions. Arabic phrases were employed primarily in reference to

religious topics through standardized phrases, borrowed and used as complete chunks, never

isolated or deconstructed. Tajik and Russian were blended much more frequently. Tajik posts

would be responded to with fully Russian comments and vice versa. Given Facebook’s inability

to translate to or from Tajik automatically, these users would either have to use third party

applications or rely on their own linguistic knowledge to engage in this way. When Tajik was

used in Russian contexts (in response to a Russian language post or responding to a Russian

language comment), direct addresses were common, as well as appeals to the specific audience.

This was shown in both the advertisements and in excerpt 2, where Tajik-dominant responses

were to address the Tajikistan populace or an individual. Conversely, when Russian was used in

Tajik language contexts, the primary use was to use more technical vocabulary.

At more granular levels, Russian words were commonly used for political, economic, and

technical jargon (e.g., “monopolies,” “capitalism,” “bribery,” and “shares” occurred in the data

primarily in Russian). Isolated Tajik words used in majority Russian posts were far less common

and primarily related to Tajikistan specific political issues (e.g., the use of “leader” in excerpt 6).

This practice exemplifies lexical borrowing from Russian, which is the de facto lingua franca in


the region. Unlike in Li Wei’s (2016) study of new Chinglish, in which English resources were

reappropriated and given new meanings within these contexts, these examples did not assign new

meanings to the linguistic resources across linguistic boundaries, but simply incorporated the

original meanings. These tendencies reflect the larger context of language shift during the Soviet

Union, subsequent efforts to reinstate Tajik, and the continued position of Russian as a prestige

language. While ideologies of language purity also seem to be at play with the relatively small

amount of intra-TCU codeswitching apart from loanwords and phrases, the data do reveal

creative language mixing at every level. Tajik, however, continues to be used frequently, even in

Russian-dominated digital spaces. Often, Tajik is used for interpersonal affiliation and direct

address between commenters, as in excerpt 2, rather than as a top-level comment used as a

general response to a post, which is not directed at an individual user.

RQ #2: How do these users coordinate their linguistic and paralinguistic semiotic resources in

concert with the affordances of the medium in comment sections of digital public spaces to

engage in make meaning?

The specific context of Tajikistan’s population led to interesting textual issues. There

were several instances of nonstandard spellings of words, mirroring phonemic representations of

different dialects of Tajik, as well as issues with alphabet use. The recent and dynamic

standardization of Tajik, along with its lack of use in formal education for much of the last half

century are also major factors in these inconsistencies. Furthermore, commenters consistently

used the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, which lacks certain specific Tajik graphemes (e.g., қ, ҳ, and

ғ). Instead of these graphemes, the unmarked Russian characters would be used. Occasionally,

commenters would also use Arabic script or Latin script while still using Tajik or other

(indistinguishable) varieties of Persian. Beyond these, other textual elements were used to create


meaning. Capitalization was used to emphasize specific points or words. Punctuation was used to

imply importance and sarcasm.

The use of visuals, especially GIFs and emojis, provided commenters with the option to

include representations of embodied actions and movement alongside linguistic text. These

paralinguistic resources were coordinated with linguistic resources to support one another and

create meaning beyond either of the parts in isolation. GIFs such as those used in excerpts 3 and

4 gave movement and demonstrated actions that would otherwise not be possible with a purely

text-based digital medium. Excerpt 12 made extensive use of emojis to emphasize and reiterate

the connotations of the text (e.g.,luxury emphasized with diamond emojis). These paralinguistic

semiotic resources are creatively combined to transcend their isolated use and create more

meaning than the linguistic resources alone.

The feature of asynchronous archived interactions provides the affordances of the to tag

specific users and make parallel threads with multiple SPPs for a single FPP, such as in excerpt

1, allowing for more complex threads in which users were involved in multiple parallel

interactions at a given time.

The role of advertisement in public spaces online is a complicated one. Beyond the

advertisements that are present on the platform itself, individual users reappropriate the space for

marketing. Excerpt 10 presented a clear example of a corporate advertisement that an individual

user posted in order to market an anti-aging cream. This is noticeably distinct from the type of

advertisement made in excerpt 9, where a user was advertising their own social media (a Youtube

channel) for other Facebook users to follow. Both of these kinds of advertisements (corporate

and personal), however, shift the focus of discussion away from the topic posed in the OP by the

page itself, instead attempting to capitalize on the public market that the given page attracts.


Conclusion

This study analyzed the language choices and the use of paralinguistic resources of

commenters on public news posts related to Tajikistan. On a practical level, the use of public

data is convenient and readily accessible. This context is also an important site of social action

that needs additional research. The lack of extended interactions in these forums limits their use

to generally studying shorter interactions.

The linguistic context of Tajikistan provides a unique view on how dynamic language

policies for nation building intersect with language use in public discourse. Russian continues to

be a dominant language in politics and economics, which is reflected in the use of Russian for

technical terms in these domains and as a prestige language. However, Tajik is used widely and

for interpersonal affiliation and connection. Fundamentally, despite the presence of language

purity ideologies in national discourse, commenters in these public digital spaces are making the

decision not only to be multilingual, but to engage in translanguaging that blend and mix their

linguistic and other semiotic resources to present creative new meanings. The complex

multilingualism of the Tajik context influences language choice and use at every level in public

discourse online.


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