BETWEEN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND GLOBALIZATION: THE CHANGING SOCIOLINGUISTIC ROLES OF UZBEK, RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH IN SECONDARY EDUCATION IN UZBEKISTAN

This article examines the changing sociolinguistic roles of Uzbek, Russian and English in the context of secondary education in Uzbekistan. Rather than treating the three languages as competitors occupying a single hierarchy, the article conceptualizes their relationship as a differentiated multilingual configuration in which languages acquire distinct forms of symbolic and instrumental value. The analysis revisits the empirical component of the author’s 2020 Master's research, combining an online questionnaire completed by 150 students in grades 9–11 in Khorezm region and Tashkent city with 20 semi-structured interviews involving parents, teachers, a student and school administrators. The dissertation evidence indicates that Uzbek had a clearly established institutional and national-language role, while Russian retained strong social and professional significance and English was increasingly associated with international education, employment, globalization and future mobility. Among questionnaire respondents, English was selected by 85% as a foreign language they would like to learn well, compared with 78% for Russian. The qualitative evidence also indicates that Russian was perceived as prestigious and practically useful, whereas English was valued as an aspirational resource for future educational and economic opportunities. The article argues that the rise of English should not be interpreted as a straightforward replacement of Uzbek or Russian. Instead, Uzbekistan’s language-policy environment is better understood through a layered model: Uzbek is associated primarily with statehood, national identity and institutional legitimacy; Russian retains established communicative, professional and symbolic capital; and English increasingly represents internationalization, mobility and global opportunity. Recent policy developments, including the 2025–2026 programme for the development of the Uzbek state language, reinforce the continuing importance of Uzbek while contemporary scholarship documents the growing social value of English. The article concludes that an effective language policy for secondary education should pursue additive multilingualism, strengthen the functional capacity of Uzbek, recognize the continuing social value of Russian, and expand equitable access to high-quality English education without framing these goals as mutually exclusive.