Introduction: Language and globalization in South and Central Asian spaces

Abstract

In this introductory paper, we outline our approach to the two main themes this interdisciplinary special issue brings together – language and globalization, and South and Central Asian spaces. Arguing for the importance of exploring these topics from multiple, complementary disciplinary angles (sociolinguistic, anthropological and historical), we delineate a conceptualization of language and globalization which both acknowledges the inextricable relationship between language (use and ideology) and processes of globalization (past and present); as well as the challenges this relationship poses for linguistic research. We thereby adopt a viewpoint which underscores the importance of not a priori assuming any one layer or scale – local, national, transnational, transregional – will be central to the ways language is used to perform or index globalization. To address questions of language and globalization in connection with South and Central Asian spaces, we further underscore our approach to regions as “process geographies” (Van Schendel 2002), an outlook which is suggestive of the importance of critically reflecting on the notion of “areas” as potentially unfixed, unstable and oscillating entities.