Almost two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ethnic Volga Tatars continue to grapple with the issues related to their ethnic identity. This paper examines how ethnic Volga Tatars currently living in the United States negotiate their ethnic identity through stance-taking in an online-forum discussion on Islam. By employing a socio-cultural linguistic approach to language, identity, and stance-taking and by utilizing as my analytical tools Goffman’s (1981) theory of footing (with the emphasis on production formats) and Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of heteroglossia, double-voicing, and codeswitching, I will demonstrate how Tatars’ multiple stances toward Islam reflect their complex social history as Russia’s ethnic minority and America’s recent immigrants and sojourners. I propose that the varying degrees of loyalty that the forum members display toward Islam signal a non-monolithic nature of their ethnic identity.

Key Words: Tatar, Muslim, post-Soviet, identity, immigrant, America, double-voicing, heteroglossia, codeswitching, online forum.

The collapse of the Soviet Union destabilized the Soviet space and prompted cultural, religious, and linguistic revitalization movements among its many ethnic minorities. Today, the Russian government is trying to neutralize ethnic sentiments and reclaim political control over briefly independent ethnic regions. As a result, Russia’s ethnic minorities at home and abroad are trying to find ways to preserve gains brought about by the revitalization movements, and, ultimately, carve out their future in the Russian and global space. Struggles over negotiating and redefining their ethnic identities are at the heart of these processes. This paper examines how those Volga Tatars[1] who are now living in America use language to negotiate their identities in an online forum. Tatars are not only Russia’s biggest ethnic minority today, but also its biggest Muslim ethnic minority surrounded by a predominantly Christian Russian majority[2]. The history of Tatars as a social group has been intimately intertwined with the Russian (and later Soviet) state for nearly 500 years. The collapse of the Soviet Union enabled some Tatars to come to the U.S. as immigrants or sojourners. Such an opportunity provides only one example of the complex Russian-Tatar co-existence. The way expatriate Tatars negotiate their ethnic identity reflects how those historical developments have contributed to the formation of multiple identities among Tatars: post-Soviet, Tatar, Muslim, and now American immigrant and sojourner.

In this paper, I use a socio-cultural linguistic approach to language, identity, and stance-taking to analyze Tatars’ discussion of Islam in the online forum Tatars in America. I use Goffman’s (1981) theory of production formats and Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of heteroglossia, double-voicing, and codeswitching, to demonstrate how Tatars’ multiple stances toward Islam reflect their complex social history as Russia’s ethnic minority and America’s recent immigrants and sojourners. I am particularly interested in analyzing ways in which Tatars’ ethnic identity is defined by their loyalty to Islam. It was Islam after all, not Tatars’ distinct language or culture, that for centuries has been seen by predominantly Christian (and later Soviet) Russia as a marker of Tatars’ “otherness” and that which had to be suppressed and neutralized. I propose that the diversity in the forum members’ attitudes toward issues related to Islam, gender, and culture—as seen through their use of language—reflect Tatars’ social reality as Russia’s ethnic minority and the complex politics around their ethnic identity negotiation. The trajectory of the forum members’ discussion—first, about the fairness and relevance of the rule of stoning in Islam, then about the importance of peace and tolerance in a Tatar space—reveals how the forum participants negotiate meaning, morality, and identity.

Tatars as Russia’s Ethnic Minority

Tatars’ negotiation of their ethnic identity, including their relationship to Islam, is greatly informed by their minority status within Russia for close to 500 years. There are about 5.5 million Tatars living in present-day Russia (or about 3.83% of the total population of Russia), with only about two million of them living in the Republic of Tatarstan, Tatars’ historic homeland[3]. The Republic of Tatarstan, located in central Russia about 600 miles east of Moscow on the Volga River, is part of Russia today and has a political status of a subject of Russian Federation. This means that, unlike some Central Asian republics that had been part of the Soviet Union but have obtained independence from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tatarstan is not an independent state. As Wertheim (2003) and Faller (2006) illustrated, Tatarstan’s national (political) independence from Russia is seen by Tatar activists as a key condition for preserving Tatar ethnic identity. Furthermore, Tatars use the Tatar language to mark off the borders of the Tatar space and symbolically orient themselves away from ethnic Russians. Similarly to those findings, my data will illustrate that the Tatar forum members’ discussion of the forum’s importance highlights their perception of the forum as a valuable space for preserving their “nation” and is tied to the discussion of Russia as a colonizer of once an independent Tatar nation.

The history of Volga Tatars as a state goes back to the 10th century C.E., when Volga Bulgaria was formed. Volga Bulgaria is the earliest known organized state that corresponds to the territory of the present day Tatarstan. Once an independent state, Volga Bulgaria, was invaded by the Mongol conquerors in the 13th century, and became part of a powerful Mongol Empire. At its peak the Khanates of the Mongol Empire were spread as far West as the Eastern Europe and occupied most of the Russian territories. In Russia, the Mongol Empire and its Khanates became known as “the Golden Horde” and were also referred to as “the Tatar-Mongol yoke.” Having originated in the Russian ideological domain, both terms have a strong negative connotation associated with “barbaric,” non-Christian tribes that once “terrorized” Russia’s Slavic population. Shamiloglu (1990) points out that these terms have been routinely applied by the Russian and later Soviet Empire to stigmatize and russify ethnic, including Tatar, populations. Following the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire in the late 14th century, Tatars once again enjoyed political independence as the Khanate of Kazan, until they were conquered by the Russian Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) in 1552. Tatars have been part of Russia since then.

Tatars’ minority status within present day Russia is marked by their distinct language, the Tatar language (of a Turkic origin). Along with Russian, Tatar is the official language of the Republic of Tatarstan. While Tatars’ phenotype is diverse and ranges from what could be identified as a “Slavic” look (fair skin and blue eyes) to an “Asian/Mongol” look (dark hair, dark , slightly slanted eyes, but fair skin), it is the latter look that is stereotypically associated in Russia with “ethnic” (meaning non-Slavic, non-Christian) people, Tatars among them. But perhaps even a stronger element of Tatar ethnicity that marks Tatars off from Russians is their religious affiliation. The majority of Tatars are historically Sunni Muslim. (A small number of Christian Orthodox Tatars, called Keryashen Tatars, are the evidence to centuries-long forceful conversion of Tatars by the Russian state.) Tatars have been practicing a relatively liberal form of Islam—partly a result of almost a five-hundred-year long coexistence with traditionally Christian Russians as part of the Russian Empire and of almost a century of atheism, imposed by the Soviet government. As a rule, Tatars do not practice polygamy, most Tatar women do not wear a headscarf and prefer Western-style clothes, and many adults consume alcohol. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union opened an opportunity for ethnic and religious revival, which also took place in Tatarstan. There, the ethnic revival has been marked by questions related to activating and preserving the Tatar language and by claims to Tatars’ national/political independence from the Russian state. As Wertheim (2003) points out, for Tatars, ethnic and national identity is inseparable from their religious identity. As a result, today there are some Tatars who advocate for a return of what they consider “pure” Islam as a marker of their ethnic identity. While these Tatars are becoming more religiously observant, there are others who limit their religious practices to important events, or remain Muslim in name only. Tatars’ struggle over the degree to which Islam (and the kind of Islam) should be part of their identity is reflective of their complex social history and is evident in the segments of an on-line discussion analyzed below.

Theoretical Framework

In this paper, I base my analysis of Tatar ethnic identity negotiation on sociocultural linguistic approaches to language and on a premise that identity is interactional and relational in nature (Ochs 1992, Bailey 2001, Bucholtz & Hall 2005, Du Bois 2005). Subjects rarely talk about their identities explicitly; rather, identities are constructed implicitly in the moment of talk when subjects align themselves with or against others through taking stances—making judgments and evaluations. Therefore, one way to observe how Tatars negotiate their ethnic identity is to examine their talk and stances in a discussion centered on Islam.

As analytical tools, I utilize Goffman’s (1981) theory of footing (specifically changes in production formats) and Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of double-voicing, heteroglossia, and codeswitching. These theories are particularly useful for examining identity because they highlight historical and social meanings and indexical nature of language, which is central to sociocultural approaches to language and identity. By examining specific instances of changes in footing, double-voicing, and codeswitching throughout the forum members’ discussion, I illustrate how Tatars’ linguistic performance, on the one hand, reflects their complex sociohistoric reality and, on the one hand, serves as a vehicle for taking varying stances toward Islam (and one another), stances that reflect a contingent nature of Tatar ethnic identity.

My data come from a corpus of messages posted on an online forum that was part of the Tatars in America website. The website was established in 2004. According to the “About us” section of the website, it “was created and founded by a young generation of Tatars living in the United States, but who originally were born and raised in cities of Tatarstan, Uzbekistan and Russian Federation” (www.tatar-usa.org). According to the forum memberlist, as of August 9, 2007, the forum had 932 registered participants, but about eighty percent of that number were spammers, and ten percent were lurkers, who followed the forum, but did not participate in it. The number of active forum participants—the core of the forum—who participated on a regular basis was about twenty and fluctuated. I actively followed the forum discussions between April 2005 and May 2006, when the forum’s activity was at a peak. For the purposes of this analysis, I will concentrate on the “Religious Discussion” thread of the “Culture and Customs” section of the forum, where the forum members engage in a heated discussion around Islam and where evaluative stance-taking is especially explicit.

Competing Notions of Islam in Negotiations of Tatar Identity

The first selection of forum posts will illustrate Tatars’ varying degrees of loyalty toward Islam. The forum participants express their stances through negotiating their own and other forum participants’ footing, specifically production formats. Production formats refer to the relationship between speakers and the words they utter. Changes in production format index changes in footing and one’s alignment to oneself and others, and, ultimately, changes in stance. Goffman (1981) outlines three types of relationship between speakers and the words they utter (also called “speakers roles”): an author who composes words, a principal[4] who takes a stance, and an animator who produces, or animates the words. Individual speakers might or might not simultaneously be an author, principal, and animator of the words they utter. For example, by summarizing in a conversation a point of view one doesn’t share, one becomes the author and the animator of those words, but not the principal because the stance expressed in those words is not the speaker’s actual stance.

The following example will demonstrate how changes in production formats are means of evaluative stance-taking. It is worth mentioning at the outset that the forum posts analyzed here were originally made in English (with the exception of one instance of codeswitching that I will analyze later on). Taking into consideration the fact that most forum members grew up in the former Soviet Union where Russian was the only official language, the choice of English for this discussion might signal, among other things, the forum participants’ alignment with their new place of residence (America) and away from the Russian dominance. As Wertheim (2003) points out, Tatars use the Tatar language to align themselves against Russians and to subvert Russian cultural and political hegemony. The use of English could also stem from the fact that the website and the forum were created to “unite all Tatar internet users all over the world, communicate with them, exchange information and to grow together as a whole one big virtual and non-virtual community” (www.tatar-usa.org, retrieved October 21, 2005). As Roy’s, a discussion initiator’s, avatar indicated, for example, Roy was posting from a Central Asian and an Eastern European country. Thus the choice of English could be explained by the fact that today English is still considered an international language. Finally, the choice of English over Tatar might reflect the social reality of Tatars as an ethnic minority within Russia and gradual loss of the Tatar language due to extensive institutionalized russification during the Soviet era. Throughout the forum, there are several instances of Tatar forum members admitting to not knowing the Tatar language. Thus the forum members might perceive talking in Russian as perpetuation of Russian dominance and hegemony, whereas English could be perceived as neutral. Ultimately, because language serves as a marker of identity, the choice of English over Tatar (in the forum discussion that I will analyze) points to the absence of a fixed link between language and identity and to the situational nature of the relationship between the two. Similarly, as the following discussion will illustrate, the relationship between identity and religion is also negotiated at the local level.

On September 4, 2005, Roy,[5] made a post, sharing the news about crowning of the first Muslim “Miss England.” This post generated a heated discussion of whether it is appropriate for a Muslim woman to participate in a beauty contest. Roy openly expressed his approval of this Muslim woman and also his joy over the fact that she was born in the same city where he resides. In response, Adam, another active forum participant, confronted Roy’s position and expressed his deep disapproval of the woman’s behavior as inappropriate for a Muslim. As the discussion continued, Adam stated that media “popularizes wrong behavior of Muslim[s]” and suggested that Roy google “’beauty contest’ AND muslim” to see that “politically active mainstream Muslims are, of course, negative” about the fact. It is possible to suggest that what Adam calls “wrong behavior for Muslims[s]” is a display of a woman’s body (including, in a swimming suit) associated with beauty contests—something that might be considered inappropriate by some Muslims. Roy responded that he followed Adam’s suggestion about the search and that the search returned two links related to the story of Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock. Roy posted those links in his response to Adam. The first data segment below shows Adam’s response to Roy, in which Adam accuses Roy[6] of intentionally changing the topic from beauty contests to adultery:

In the above post, Adam not only makes the assumption that Roy purposefully changed the subject to “confuse” or “shame” him (lines 1-3). By quoting a religious authority (lines 6-20), Adam acts as an animator and a principal of the Islamic scholar’s words and thus aligns himself with them. Moreover, by repeating the words of the hadith, Adam is aligning himself with God/divine authority, thus implying that his stance is the authoritative one. Adam’s reasoning (lines 21-30) for why “such a harsh punishment” (lines 26-27) as stoning to death is “just” (line 30) for committing adultery illustrates that he considers himself a firm believer in the importance of the Islamic law and, specifically, in this interpretation of it. In addition, by using the collective “we” in lines 29 and 30, Adam speaks on behalf of all Muslims and acts as an author and animator of their convictions, which he shares. Not only that: because Adam is also addressing a real audience—Tatars who participate in the forum—he also speaks on their behalf, thus authoritatively equating “Muslim” with “Tatar.” Such rhetorical device gives more appeal to Adam’s words, and also illustrates that for Adam being a Tatar is inseparable from being a devout Muslim. Adam’s linguistic performance demonstrates his strong loyalty toward Islam and a certain interpretation of it, as well as his conviction that Tatar ethnic identity should be defined by a strong Muslim identity. The fact that his stance toward Islam and toward what being a Tatar means differs from that of Roy’s speaks to the contested nature of Tatar ethnic identity. The following example also supports this observation.

The second segment of data is Emil’s response to Adam’s words. A careful comparison of the two posts reveals that Emil partially quoted Adam’s original post (which is verbally indicated by the words “Adam wrote:” and visually – by nested frames) and then commented directly in it. In this online forum, each original post is visually enclosed in a simple frame. When someone quotes another poster or source, the post that is being quoted is by default enclosed in another frame and introduced by a verbal cue, such as “Adam wrote” or “Quote” in the example below. These posting conventions serve as an important cue for the forum members to enable them to differentiate between speaker roles. As the following example will illustrate, when these conventions are violated, speaker roles can be mixed up and stances misattributed or veiled.

*Author’s comment: Emil adds emphasis to Adam’s words in line 10 and then inserts his own words (line 11) into Adam’s post without acknowledging his authorship and, thereby, making it look like those words belong to Adam.

**Author’s comment: Similarly, Emil cuts lines 12, 13, and 14 out of Adam’s original post and frame and inserts them into his own post, thereby misattributing or veiling their authorship.

Specifically, Emil edited out Bukhari’s quote in Adam’s post, keeping only the last two lines (8 and 9). He then commented directly in Adam’s post by first adding emphasis to Adam’s words in line 10 (by making the font bold) and then inserting in Adam’s post his strong response to them (“WHATABULLSHIT!” in line 11). In this instance, by mixing the speaker roles of the principal, author, and animator, Emil made it look as if Adam himself made the strong disapproving comment (line 11) toward the rule of stoning, and thus contradicted his original statement. Emil further added to the mix up by taking the last two lines (12-14) of Adam’s original post out of the visual frame that signaled quoting and by inserting them in the visual frame of his own post. Even though Emil tried to bracket Adam’s words by following them with the word ”[/quote]” in line 14, they could still be easily confused with Emil’s own comment on them (lines 15-18). This instance forces one to question a traditional way of thinking about authorship, which does not allow for a possibility of different speaker roles (or voices) within one utterance. It demonstrates that stance-taking and identity negotiation are done not only through explicit utterances, but also through highly indexical attributes of language, such as production formats.

As it is evident from Emil’s comments to Adam’s post (line 11, 15-18), his view on adultery, the rule of stoning—in other words, his interpretation of Islam in general—signal different degrees of loyalty toward Islam. What Adam considers a “just” punishment given by “the Almighty” (lines 12-14) is regarded “uncivilized” (line 16) and “STUPID” (line 17) by Emil. While Adam believes that “we,” Muslims, do not have a choice but to abide by the law (lines 12-13), Emil questions whether “the Islamic world” (line 17) should follow it. Such opposing views reflect more than just the forum participants’ views on the role of religion in general—a customarily contentious questions for many. They reflect the forum participants’ stance on the role that Islam should play in the lives of Tatars. To be sure, while Adam authoritatively ascribes a strong Muslim identity to Tatars by using the collective “we” (lines 12-13), Emil distances himself from it by resorting to the impersonal “the islamic world” (line 17). The indirect indexing of the forum participants’ opposing views reflects a complicated dance that they perform in the process of negotiating their ethnic identity through stance-taking. Despite the fact that in Russia, Tatars are assumed to be Muslims and that the majority of Tatars generally ascribe themselves a Muslim identity, the contours and the meanings of that particular identity are situationally negotiated and contested.

The forum participants are aware of the role the language use can play in reflecting their stances. For example, when Adam responds to Emil in the data segment that follows, he comments on Emil’s viewpoint and his use of language.

In line 1 of the third data segment, Adam’s terseness could be interpreted as his displeasure with the changes that Emil made to Adam’s post when he quoted Adam. In response, Adam wants to make sure to distance himself from the disapproving stance toward stoning, a stance that, in fact, belongs to Emil. Furthermore, in line 2 Adam urges Emil to write arguments rather than express emotions. By doing so, Adam takes a stance toward Emil and his words. He presents Emil as an emotional person, which could be interpreted as a culturally inappropriate role for a Tatar man. Faller (forthcoming), for example, observes that “[p]eople acculturated to Tatar linguistic practices are trained not to give in to expression for anger, but rather to keep the peace and to convince their opponents to comply with their wishes through non-confrontational persuasion” (draft, p. 9). Thus, by emphasizing Emil’s frustration, Adam undermines trustworthiness of Emil’s words. Moreover, by stating in lines 3 and 4 that he gave Emil “an authentic hadith” and by referring to the Koran, Adam is aligning himself with God/divine authority, thus implying that his stance is the authoritative one. In her ethnographic description of Tatar Islam, Faller (forthcoming) points to a link between emotionality and Islam. “Experientially,” she argues, “being a Muslim means cultivating the ability to keep one’s emotions in check no matter what happens” (draft, p. 9). By saying that Emil does not have arguments and only uses emotions instead, Adam questions Emil’s loyalty to Islam and implies that Emil does not have divine (but only subjective) authority to back up his position/stance, and thus it is invalid.

The examples above Illustrate that Emil’s and Adam’s moral stances, in this case toward Islam, are largely executed not only through direct referential discourse, but through changes in footing, production formats specifically. When Adam expresses his view on adultery or the rule of stoning, he aligns himself with a divine authority by quoting it, and thus he takes on the roles of both animator (announcer) and principal (adherent) of that particular interpretation of Islam. When Emil expresses his stance on Islam, by quoting Adam and commenting directly in his post, he mixes speaker roles and thus misattributes, or perhaps veils, stances in the process. In response, Adam wants to make sure to distance himself from Emil’s stance to Islam (which he sees as undesirable) by calling on Emil to quote correctly. Adam and Emil disagree about interpretations on adultery and the rule of stoning in Islam. Their interpretations of the rule reflect not only their stances toward that particular rule, but also their degree of loyalty toward the religion. Furthermore, even though both Adam and Emil are ethnic Tatars, their views on Islam indicate different extents to which their ethnic identity is defined by religion. It is also necessary to note that both Adam and Emil are regular forum participants and thus have a more or less equal status and can enjoy an equal amount of authority in the forum. This forum episode reflects a bigger picture of the complexity of opinions held by ethnic Tatars toward religion, Islam in particular, different interpretations of Islam, and toward the role Islam (and what kind of Islam) plays/should play in their perception of Tatar ethnic identity. It also illustrates how language shapes certain cultural and religious ideologies that compete for claims to “the truth.” As Bucholtz & Hall (2004) observe, “Language is a primary vehicle by which cultural ideologies circulate, it is a central site of social practice, and it is a crucial means for producing sociocultural identities” (p. 492). In the example above, changes in production formats in the context of exchanging views on Islam provide a window onto these competing cultural ideologies and the process of negotiation of sociocultural identities.

Tatars’ discussions around Islam illustrate the degree of prominence to which religion matters in their identity negotiation. For Tatars, who are Russia’s both ethnic and religious minority, matters of religion cannot be effectively separated from those of nationhood. This section illustrates how Tatars negotiate identity by orienting themselves away or toward Russia and ethnic Russians. Forum members’ negotiation of identity through stance-taking vis-à-vis “things Russian” can be effectively analyzed through Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of double-voicing. As a type of heteroglossia, double-voicing implies the presence of two “voices” within an utterance, specifically when “words are spoken as if they are to be understood as being in quotation marks” (Bailey, 2005, draft p. 21). To give an example, double-voicing takes place when in the course of a conversation an interlocutor inserts a line from a movie, taking on a persona in that moment of interaction, without identifying the movie or the character. The sociocultural approach to language draws on the same ideas that are at the heart of the notion of heteroglossia, specifically the indexical nature of language that captures and reflects its social meanings. By applying the notions of heteroglossia and double-voicing to the next set of data, I will demonstrate how stance-taking toward or away from Russia is achieved and utilized in the negotiation of Tatar ethnic identity.

As the discussion generated by the rule of stoning became more heated, Emil made a post about the importance of “balance” of opinions and, ultimately, the importance of peace on the forum. In data segment 4, Sam echoes Emil’s concern (lines 1-6), and Drew, an active forum participant who hadn’t engaged in the discussion until this point, responds to Emil and Sam (data segment 5, lines 1-5):

In his response to Sam (data segment 5), Drew first agrees with Sam by saying “Yeah, nice words” (line 1), but then continues to express his own, divergent stance on this matter by evoking what he thinks an ethnic Russian would say about Tatars (lines 1-4). As I mentioned above, because Tatars once were part of the Mongol Empire (the Golden Horde), it is not uncommon to hear among ordinary ethnic Russians, as well as in the Russian media, sentiments that portray Tatars as Russia’s barbaric enemies. These sentiments are reflected and perpetuated by the commonly used Russian term the “Tatar-Mongol Yoke” to refer to the Mongol invasion of Russia. There is even a Russian saying that states: “an unexpected guest is worse than a Tatar.” Most Tatars are aware of these sentiments (in fact, in another forum discussion Drew recalls one such incident[11]).

The clue to the fact that in lines 1 through 4 Drew evokes what he perceives to be a Russian stance toward Tatars lies in the nature of the discussion that preceded Drew’s post. As the discussion about the rule of stoning became heated, the forum members reflected on the importance of sharing their views without imposing them on one another. After identifying himself as a “non-religious” Tatar and thus a “minority” in the forum, Emil apologized for a possibility of inadvertently offending “those who follow the rule of Islam”— his opponents in the debate. He proceeded to emphasize the importance of the space of the forum for Tatars: “This forum, a unique way to communicate and bond with each other, has always been seen by me as a place where anyone who considers himself/herself a Tatar (Tatar Muslims, Tatar Christians, Tatar Atheists, Buddists, liberals, democrats, conservatives etc) could come and engage themselves in the exciting life of the only active on day-to-day basis.” While emphasizing diversity, Emil limited the space of the forum to those who identify themselves as ethnic Tatars. Responding to Emil’s sentiment about the importance of the forum, Sam identifies the forum as “a very important mechanism keeping us [Tatars] all connected and together somehow.” Sam goes on to emphasize that preserving tolerance in the forum “is so important for our small nation and even smaller community in this country.” In the context of the discussion, by evoking the concept of a nation (“small nation”), Sam refers to Tatars as a people AND as a nation in a political sense of the word—a polity independent from Russia, the kind of nation many Tatar political activists dream about. In his response to Sam, Drew first agrees with Sam by saying “nice words,” but then reminds Sam and other forum members that it is “untatar” to be tolerant.

Taken literally, Drew’s comment does not make sense because he at once agrees with Sam and Emil that tolerance is what keeps the Tatar forum together (via Tatar forum members’ tolerance to each other), but then immediately undermines his (and other members’) words, asserting that it is “untatar” to be tolerant. He then closes his comment by calling it “optimistic.” By using the “happy” emoticon at the end of the comment, Drew signals that his words in lines 1 through 4 should not be taken literally—as his own. Situated in the context of the discussion that preceded Drew’s comment—a discussion that emphasized the importance of tolerance for the survival of the Tatar nation (be it the forum, the people, or the “nation-state”)—Drew’s words reflect a stance toward Tatars that is in exact opposition to the Tatar forum members’ own stance. Taking in consideration the context of the discussion, and drawing on both Wertheim’s (2003) and Faller’s (2006) observations that Tatars’ negotiation of their ethnic identity is tied to their aligning themselves against Russians/Russia, Drew’s words in lines 1 through 4 should be interpreted as those of an imagined ethnic Russian.

By speaking on behalf of an imagined “collective” Russian, Drew acts as an author and animator of this speech event—as someone who, for a moment, takes on a persona of an ethnic Russian. But by doing so, he uses irony to express “an imagined stance of an indexed imagined principal” (Shoaps, forthcoming). In other words, Drew uses the “happy” emoticon and refers to his unflattering remark about Tatars as “optimistic,” to destabilize the possibility of a literal interpretation of his words. Drew’s own stance toward Tatars is, in fact, the opposite of the imagined principal’s (imagined Russian’s) stance evoked in lines 1 through 4, and he is trying to express it through irony created by double-voicing. The fact that Drew is limited to written communication deprives him of the ability to index his own stance through non-verbal cues, to the extent that in a post that follows, Rose perceives Drew as the principal of the imagined speech event, someone who literally means what he says. In her response to Drew’s post, she first cites Drew in lines 2-6 and then expresses her puzzlement about his stance (line 7):

Drew’s words, cited by Rose in lines 2-6 are an example of what Bakhtin defines as passive double-voicing, when the speaker (animator) and author, is in control (Morson & Emerson, 1990). Further, Drew’s words illustrate a special kind of passive double-voicing—varidirectional double-voicing, or parody, where “words treat the discourse of the other in a critical or hostile fashion … [and] [t]he discourse of the other has been tested, and found not only wanting, but necessary to dispute” (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 152). A crucial feature of parody is that “the parodist will indicate the grounds of his disagreement by making the objectionable aspect of the target’s discourse deliberately ‘palpable’ (ibid.). If he does not, the point of the parody is likely to be missed” (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 153). As I suggested before, Rose might be missing Drew’s point, as seen from her words in line 7 and the emoticon that stands for confusion, because Drew is limited to written communication to make the objectionable aspect of the target’s discourse “palpable.”

writer/animator (but not the principal) of the stance that he supposedly takes (in data segment 5, lines 1-4) by using the “very happy” emoticon at the end of his remark (line 4) and by calling it “optimistic” (line 5), which, in fact, contradicts the tone of a stance that he would sincerely take. Drew is being ironic. As Shoaps (forthcoming) observes, “Irony indicates, much like reported speech, that the speaker role is divided. More precisely, the ironist is merely the animator of the ironic expression, which may bear another author or principal” (p. 4).

What’s important here is the fact that in his statement Drew presupposes as shared the notion that, contrary to what he is saying in lines 1-4, it is, in fact, very Tatar to be “respectful to each other and live in harmony and peace” (a view widely held by Tatar activists) and that ethnic Russians are, in fact, the ones who “destroyed our [Tatars’] own creations, the greatest empires in history,” who “had no tolerance,” “were arrogant, and “betrayed each other.” To do so, Drew has to have trust in his addressees as someone who also share these notions, because he challenges them in his remark. Moreover, he has to have a certain amount of authority among the members of his discourse community to ensure that they understand his real stance on the matter: As Shoaps (forthcoming) observes in her analysis of Sakapultek moral irony: “We can easily imagine explicit evaluative stance-taking that openly challenges moral norms, but for others to take heed of the new ‘prescriptions,’ the person doing the challenging usually has to have a great measure of status and power, and do the challenging in a cultural context that allows direct evaluative stance-taking (p. 32).

Through his double-voiced discourse, Drew acts as a social actor who has social status and power to challenge the authority, beliefs, and values of other social actors (in this case, ethnic Russians or those who sympathize with ethnic Russians), and he thus proposes a social change. As Morson & Emerson (1990) observe, “Changing social attitudes (toward authority, toward other people, and toward received truths, for example), are always generating new varieties of double-voiced discourse, which are consequently an excellent document of that change” (p. 150). On a larger scale, Drew’s utterances, as other posts in the forum, are “part of the social meanings indexed within the message” (Ochs, 1992, p. 338). They reflect the “social history” of the conquest of Tatars and the legacy of a Muslim ethnic minority under the Russian rule, the “social presence” of their quest for self-definition in post-Soviet Russia, and a possibility of a social change that would ensure the future survival of a Tatar “nation.”

Balancing Multiple Worlds

The forum participants’ use of English in their posts indicates their connection to the United States, a country where many of them live and/or study. However, the use of English in the forum is far from absolute. The forum participants often code-switch between Tatar, Russian, and English, aligning or distancing themselves with a certain country, and thereby negotiating their complicated identity. Like production formats and double-voicing, codeswitching can index social meanings and histories that a language is part of (Bailey, 2005). Drawing on Ochs (1993) and Silverstein (1997), Lo (1999) argues that, because codeswitching involves “sharing norms of denotational code,” by employing codeswitching “speakers simultaneously project acts and stances which, in turn, index group membership or social identity” (p. 462). The data segment below is a post made by Rose, a very active female forum participant. After Adam and Emil’s heated exchange on the rule of stoning, Rose first tried to defend Roy, who initiated the discussion by sharing the news about the crowning of the first Muslim “Miss England.” However, Adam was unforgiving and, by quoting verses from the Koran, accused Roy of being an unbeliever. The segment below could be perceived as Rose’s attempt to prevent further accusations and to appease the forum participants. The post translates roughly as “Not again, the war of the roses started again, enough already.” I marked the use of transliterated Russian by fonts in bold, and the use of transliterated Tatar by underlining.

In line 1, Rose switches to transliterated Russian and Tatar, punctuated with the English idiomatic phrase “war of roses.” Given that all previous posts were made in English, the use of Russian and Tatar is marked here. Rose’s codeswitching from English could have several interpretations and implications. On one level, it could be interpreted as her desire to exclude non-Russian and non-Tatar speakers from what could be perceived as both her attempt at shaming the Tatar participants for fighting with one another and, ultimately, at peacemaking.

On another level, Rose’s use of, first, transliterated[12] Russian could be interpreted as a choice in favor of a language that is less “formal” than English. English came to post-Soviet Russia as a language of business and trade and thus is perceived by many in Russia as appropriate for more formal, business-like encounters than Russian. Rose’s use of Russian may represent an attempt to establish a more intimate context that indexes to the forum participants their shared social history.

Rose then switches to Tatar: “iii jitte inde [enough already].” Tatar is deeply revered by the Tatar forum members. The forum participants’ reverence for their native language can be explained, perhaps, by the fact that during the Soviet era, Russian was forcefully institutionalized throughout the Soviet Union as the only official language. This language policy resulted in the fact that several generations of ethnic minorities, including Tatars, lost their linguistic and cultural heritage. Those who were able to preserve their language mainly did so by speaking the native language with close family members, within the secure and private space of home. Based on her observations of language use by Tatars, Faller (2006) identifies Tatar as a language of secrets, particularly when used in the presence of ethnic Russians. She concludes that Tatars use the Tatar language to create intimacy and/or solidarity. Furthermore, the ability to speak Tatar is often interpreted among ethnic Tatars as an act of resistance toward the earlier Russian occupation of 1552 and the later Soviet russification (Wertheim 2003; 2005; Faller 2006). Therefore, the ability to speak Tatar is an important social and moral act for many ethnic Tatars and an integral part of their ethnic identity.

Rose’s use of Tatar thus could be interpreted not only as a call for peace and an attempt to appease the forum participants, but as a symbol that indexes shared social history of Tatars and feelings of trust, closeness, respect, and unity. Such interpretation of the use of Tatar is supported by the way Rose perceives the debates she responds to—as the “war of roses”—which implies a mutually destructive fighting among those who should be united, for example an intra-ethnic conflict. By switching to Tatar, Rose expresses her moral (disapproving) stance toward the direction that the debate was taking and her reverence for the Tatar language.

Finally, Rose’s post provides a window into a link between language use and gender, in this case, between the use of the Tatar language by a Tatar woman. Faller (forthcoming) explains that “[Tatar] women are supposed to be emotionally expressive—a sign that they are not repressing their humanity—but their expressiveness is supposed to emerge from a grounded and diffuse spirit of openness and empathy and an ethical approach to living. That is, women’s emotionality is both supposed to serve as a moderating force and requires being kept in check” (draft, p. 9). By intervening in the forum debate with what could be interpreted as a call for peace, Rose, therefore, acts as a moral guide and a peacekeeper—socially appropriate roles for a Tatar woman.

Even though Rose’s appeal to peace did not stop the debate altogether, it contributed to a more amicable tone of the posts that followed and eventually lead to the debate participants’ reflection on the importance of the forum (discussed above). To be sure, Rose’s act of codeswitching made “salient the indexical links between a language, categories of ethnic identity, and speech community membership” (Lo, 1999, p. 462). It reminded the forum participants of their shared social past as members of Russia’s ethnic minority, their social presence as expatriates in America, and the importance of the forum as a space for negotiating their ethnic identity.

Conclusion

As the data segments discussed above illustrate, the forum participants engage in stance-taking and identity negotiation through changes in footing, be it changes in production formats, double-voicing, or codeswitching. Such linguistically-achieved, direct and indirect, stance-taking reflects the forum participants’ “social history” as members of Russia’s Muslim ethnic minority, their “social presence” as post-Soviet immigrants and sojourners in America, and, ultimately, the “social future” of Tatars and their ethnic identity in the Russian and global space. Language, therefore, remains a function of, a window into, and a link between locally negotiated meanings of “Tatarness” and broader social history of the Tatar ethnic minority. Focused on the issues around the role of Islam in Tatars’ lives—specifically, whether, to what extent, and what kind of Islam should define their ethnic identity—the forum discussion revealed Tatars’ varying perspectives on the issue. Those perspectives speak to the ongoing negotiations over meaning, morality, and identity among Tatars in America forum participants.

Bailey, B. “The Language of Multiple Identities among Dominican Americans,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2001), 190-223.

---. “Heteroglossia and Boundaries.” In Heller (ed.) Bilingualism: A Social Approach, Palgrave Macmillan, Great Britain, 2007.

Bakhtin, M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, U of Texas Press, Austin, 1981.

Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. “Theorizing Identity in Language and Sexuality Research.” Language in Society, No. 33 (2004), 469-515.

Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4-5 (2005), 584-614.

Faller, H. M. “The Influence of Tatar Language Revival on the Development of Divergent Referential Worlds.” In D. Arel & B. Rubel (eds). Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine, 304-334, Johns Hopkins University Press (2006).

Faller, H. M. One Nation Divisible: The Unmaking of Soviet People in the Central Russian Republic of Tatarstan (working title), forthcoming.

Lo, A. “Codeswitching, Speech Community Membership, and the Construction of Ethnic Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1999). 461-479.

Morson, G. S & Emerson, C.. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Ochs, E. “Constructing Social Identity: A Language Socialization Perspective.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, No. 26 (1993), 287-306.

---. “Indexing Gender.” In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking Context. Cambridge U Press, 1992.

Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. “Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories and Their Implications. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, 276-320, Cambridge U Press, 1984.

Shoaps, R. “’Moral Irony:’ Modal Particles, Moral Persons an Indirect Stance-taking in Sakapultek Discourse,” forthcoming (to appear in Pragmatics.)

Silverstein, M. “Encountering Language and Languages of Encounter in North American Ethnohistory.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, No. 6 (1997), 126-144.

Wertheim, S. “Language Ideologies and the ‘Purification’ of Post-Soviet Tatar.” Ab Imperio No 1 (2003), 347-369.

- - - - . “Islam and the Construction of Tatar Sociolinguistic Identity.” In J. Johnson, M. Stepaniants & B. Forest (Eds.), Religion and Identity in Modern Russia: The Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam, 106-203, Great Britain: Ashgate, 2005.

[1] Volga Tatars are Tatars whose ancestry goes back to central and Eastern European parts of Russia, primarily the geographical territory of present-day republic of Tatarstan, a constituent subject of the Russian Federation. I will refer to Volga Tatars as “Tatars” from here on.

[2] According to the 2002 Official Russian Census, Tatars constituted Russia’s biggest ethnic group (3.83% or about 5,5 million) living in the territory of the Russian Federation (www.perepis2002.ru).

[4] See Shoaps (forthcoming) for this reading of principal as stance-taker.

[5] All names are pseudonyms.

[6] In his post, Adam refers to Roy as “guest,” because Roy’s response to Adam was under a temporary forum participant category of a “guest.” It is possible to suggest that when Roy attempted to make his post, a technical difficulty prevented him from logging into under his name, so he opted o log in as a “guest.” It is also possible to speculate that Roy intentionally logged as a “guest” to post links to the story of Amina Lawal.

[7] The layout of the posts was simplified for easier comprehension, but the overall format was unchanged. Any italicized text in the posts is my comments, including the line numbers.

[8] “Ahadith” is a plural form of Arabic “hadith,” oral accounts of the prophet Muhammad’s life. Apparently, Adam is mistakenly using the plural form in his post.

[9] The most trusted by Sunni Muslims collection of hadith, compiled by a ninth-century prominent Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari.

[10] Adam is presumably referring to baboons.

[11] In another forum discussion, Drew argued that it was important for Tatars to remember and commemorate the date of invasion of the Kazan Khanate by the Ivan the Terrible because Russians up to this day accuse Tatars of the Mongol invasion. Drew’s words are worth citing in full: “Many many Russians are still raising the topic about "Mongolo-Tatarskoe Igo" [Mongol-Tatar Yoke] and keep blaming Tatars. And this was like what? 700, 800 years ago? Even more they are still trying to take revenge for all those years of ‘sufferings’. I'm not making this up. Several years ago when CSKA [Russia’s team] beat Unics [Tatarstan team] in the basketball finals one of the players said that: ‘Tatars burnt my hometown Ryazan. Now I got my revenge.’ Idiot.”

[12] Due to limited access to non-Latin based fonts and keyboards (Cyrillic in this case) transliteration is a common practice among immigrants and sojourners, and can also index, among other things, their “immigrant” identity.

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:39 am
1. Nu vot opyat [not again] war of the roses nachalas' [started again], iii jitte inde [enough already]