Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan

by Jacob M. Landau, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele

Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States offers a unique and timely analysis of language policies in the central Asian states of the former Soviet Union. The authors relate these policies to broad issues such as nation-building, language planning, and multilingualism. The book is a comprehensive survey of language policy in the five newly independent states with largely Turkic-speaking populations and in the Tajic republic, with its mainly Iranian-speaking population. It addresses each state's consideration over how the use of Russian--widespread as a second language among the Turkic-speaking peoples and known as a first language for Soviet-era immigrants regardless of ethnicity--should relate to use of the local varieties of Turkic or Iranian. It also addresses efforts in each state to elaborate the local variety of Turkic or Iranian for use as public discourse in administration, law, business, and politics, including teaching the language to its nominal speakers, and considers the relation between these languages and those of local ethnic minorities. The authors utilize previously unpublished empirical data, which is presented in both a clear narrative and conceptual framework.

Genres: Linguistics

274 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

Jacob M. Landau was Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Landau was born on 20 March 1924 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, which he left in 1935, moving to Palestine with his parents, Miriam and Michael Landau. They settled in Tel Aviv, where he studied at the Herzliya Gymnasium, ending his school career in 1942. He took his B.A. and M.A. in 1942-1946 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in history and Arabic studies. His M.A. thesis researched the nationalist movement in modern Egypt. It was supervised by Professor Richard Michael Koebner. For his Ph.D. studies he went to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His Ph.D. dissertation there was on parliaments and parties in Egypt (published in book form in 1953). His supervisor was Professor Bernard Lewis.

Returning to Israel in 1949, he first taught history and the Arabic language at the Hebrew University’s experimental high school from 1949 to 1958, interrupting this to take up a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University with Professor H.A.R. Gibbs in 1955-1956. During that year he was also visiting lecturer in modern Middle East history at Brandeis University. In 1958 he joined the Hebrew University’s department of political science where he lectured until 1993 when he left as a full professor emeritus. During those years he also served as a part-time professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, in addition to the Hebrew University. He also served as visiting professor at foreign universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Reviews

[iitu]

Would love to see an updated version on the subject.