Page 99 is found in my second chapter where I discuss how English becomes iconized (Irvine and Gal 2000) as an elite index through practices of learning English at private educational centers in Astana, Kazakhstan. Page 99 includes an ethnographic example of what I characterize as an ostentatious display of English—the head of a small company, a woman I call Raushan, contacted the educational center that served as my primary field site to ask about private English lessons. Raushan’s request was considered ostentatious because she wanted private (and therefore more expensive) English tutoring that would take place at her office during her lunch break. To demonstrate its ostentatiousness, I recount the educational center director, Zhibek’s, response which was to laugh at how ridiculous it was that “even the heads of tiny companies think they’re so important that everyone should accommodate their schedule and needs.” This page describes one experience of learning English at private educational centers that I try to capture in my dissertation—that of the elite, upper middle class. The remaining content chapters explore other experiences connected to English such as entrepreneurial self-development and aspirations for class mobility.

My dissertation proposes that learning English in private educational centers offers students an opportunity to take up different subjectivities, not just opportunities for finding employment or accessing higher education. I show ethnographically how learning English is one practice among many that enables students to take up elite or entrepreneurial ways of being in the world. I also argue that students’ experiences in the English language classroom reflect broader cultural and ideological shifts that are reshaping contemporary Kazakhstan. Though my interlocutors’ experiences are not unfamiliar to English students living in other areas of the globe, what makes learning English in Astana (and its many frustrations) unique are the private educational centers in which most students encounter English. My dissertation focuses on these centers and the students who frequent them in order to present an ethnographic portrait of those in the middle class in Astana. Page 99 is then one piece of that portrait and reflects a partial but relevant portion of that overall goal.

References:

Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press.