ABSTRACT
As one of the official languages of Xinjiang and the official language of the Uyghurs, Uyghur has spread across various domains of the public sphere and has become a symbol of cultural autonomy. While China guarantees the legal status and freedom of officially recognized ethnic minority languages to be developed and used in the public sphere, government language policy has intensely promoted Standard Chinese, particularly in the education sector. This chapter covers the years from mid-2000 to 2017 and addresses how language ideologies of an “authentic” and “pure” Uyghur have been seen as a tool to protect the language and how the discourse on bilingualism has been used as a way to guarantee social and economic integration for the group. Finally, it assesses the extent to which the language is an important element in defining group consciousness among Uyghurs in light of the current policies of re-education and assimilation.
