Hanna Burdorf

"'Bilingual' Education for Uyghurs in Xinjiang: A 'Creeping' Linguicide"

The so called “bilingual" education in Xinjiang (China) aims at making Uyghur children fluent in Chinese by using written and spoken Standard Chinese as the only language of instruction in public (pre-)schools. Instead of aiming at educating Uyghur children to become “balanced bilinguals” equally fluent in Standard Chinese and Uyghur, the next generation of Uyghurs grows up with ‘crippled’ knowledge of their mother tongue, a result from ‘creeping’, or slowly progressing, linguicide.

I understand linguicide as a process (killing a language) rather than as a result (death of a language). My research traces the gradual introduction of the Chinese language in Uyghur schools and its progressive rolling out from urban to rural areas, from teenagers to pre-schoolers, and even most recently to the (grand-)parent generation in “political re-education centres”. The design and practice of these “bilingual” education policies clearly show an intend to replace the Uyghur language with Standard Chinese - conforming with the goals of “bilingual” education set out by the Chinese government. The restrictions on the Uyghur language in the classroom and in society have intensified once more since 2017, as my fieldwork conducted in Xinjiang between 2018 and 2019 and outside China suggests. My research also lays bare the ‘creeping’ element of the Uyghur linguicide, which is its slow stop-and-go nature over time that also contributes to the invisibilisation of the linguicide. Rather than an immediate death of the Uyghur language, ‘creeping’ linguicide manifests itself in the next generation of Uyghurs who only possess ‘crippled’ knowledge of their mother tongue – being able and allowed to speak it in private settings, but not learning how to use it in spoken or written form in a formal academic context, as this has become Chinese-only.

Jo Smith Finley, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Patricia Oliart, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University