English in a multilingual ecology: “structures of feeling” in South and Central Asia

Abstract The paper foregrounds analysis of the significance of English in individual and collective life in relation to a myriad of feelings that religious and ethnic minorities experience in South and Central Asia within their multilingual ecology. The data reveal an entangling of varied yet coexisting emotions on the part of these minorities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Tajikistan in relation to English and its positioning vis-à-vis other languages. The discursive realisation of emotion also gives a nascent understanding of the historical, political, social, cultural, and material significance of English at the microlevel – as the language is practised, nurtured, and sustained with anxieties and insecurities as well as desires and hopes of its users. Most importantly, the data indicate that English is used to legitimise ethnic and religious identity by minority communities. Drawing on findings from two ethnographic case studies, the paper thereby suggests the necessity of exploring individual metalinguistic awareness and subjective “structures of feeling” (Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2015. Structures of feeling in unequal Englishes. In Ruanni Tupas (ed.), Unequal Englishes, 59–73. London: Palgrave Macmillan) of users of English in order to understand its shifting meanings in varied contexts of Asia. The paper thereby brings together understudied areas in Asia, whilst also going beyond a South/Central Asia divide by incorporating studies from both (Bolander, Brook and Till Mostoslansky. 2017. Introducing language and globalisation in South and Central Asian spaces. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 247; Bolander, Brook & Shaila Sultana. 2019. Ordinary English amongst Muslim communities in South and Central Asia. International Journal of Multilingualism 16(2). 162–174).