The quest for the ‘best’ language for modern Xinjiang: language ideologies of practicality and aesthetics

Xinjiang has witnessed constant state attempts to reinforce the status of Mandarin Chinese as ‘the Common Language’ and to make local Turkic languages – mainly Uyghur and Kazak – more ‘suitable’ to the modern world. Official efforts to transform the linguistic landscape of Xinjiang have engaged in a complex interplay with Turkic speakers’ own understandings of speaking, writing, and modernity across China and Central Asia. While tacitly...