ལ་ལས་བུ་རབས་ཚ་རྒྱུད་དང་བཅས་རང་སྐད་ཡལ་བར་དོར་ནས་གཞན་སྐད་ལ་བརྩོན་པ་ནི། མི་རིགས་རང་ལ་མཚོན་ན། རྟ་ཐོག་ནས་གཡག་ཐོག་ཏུ་ཞོན་པ་ལས་མ་འདས་་་་། Some people make their progeny abandon [their] own language (rang skad, རང་སྐད།) and strive for others’ language (gzhan skad, གཞན་སྐད།) instead. Thinking from the nation's perspective, [this is] no different from [jumping] off a [fast] horse and riding on a [slow] yak [instead]. In his provocative piece “Legacies of Bandung,” the postcolonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty (2005, pp. 4816–4817) compared two responses to linguistic colonialism: On the one hand, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe proposes to appropriate the colonial language (English) and reinvent it; on the other hand, the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o advocates an unwavering defense of one's own mother tongue. In this classic postcolonial tension between decolonizing the dominant colonial language vis-à-vis adhering to one's mother tongue, the late tenth Panchen Lama recruits an Indigenous Tibetan metaphor. For the Buddhist master, the question of linguistic choice for any postcolonial subject should be as simple as choosing between riding the tenacious yak or mounting the tractable horse—a no-brainer for anyone with a hint of commonsense in Tibetan pastoral lifestyle. This strong position to defend the Tibetan language continues to resonate with many Tibetan intellectuals today. More recently, in a special issue of the Tibetan humanities journal Yeshe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was explicitly cited by several Indigenous Tibetan scholars in their decolonial advocacy toward “center[ing] the Tibetan language in Tibetan Studies” and valuing “the richness of Tibetan language” (Gyal 2024, p. 7). Practices of defending Tibetan language sovereignty are ever more resolute nowadays in the censored Tibetan public—as Tibetan language is shrinking in the education sector1 while rigid boarding school policies are separating Tibetan children from their parents.2 Writing between these tensions, Gerald Roche and Shannon Ward, in their respective books, on the one hand, examine the wake of Tibetan linguistic resistance under ongoing Chinese colonialism in Tibet and, on the other hand, introduce a humanistic lens through which to question hierarchies within and beside “the Tibetan language.” I would like to briefly introduce the context that concerns both authors: Like many other Indigenous areas in the world, Tibet is linguistically diverse. As characterized in Tibetan idioms, each different village has its own distinctive “language” or “vernacular” (skad). The Tibetan Empire (AD 618–842) and the later Tibetan Buddhist Ganden Phodrang government (AD 1642–1959) undertook several language standardization projects at different scales, primarily centered around written Tibetan. In contemporary Tibet, three dominant “dialects,” Lhasa, Amdo, and Kham Tibetan, are recognized and institutionalized, supported by broadcasting and educational resources from both the Chinese state and the diasporic government in India (the Central Tibetan Administration). Both books deal with the region where Amdo Tibetan serves as a lingua franca. Following both authors, I use the terms “minority Tibetan speakers” or “minority Tibetans” to refer to those whose mother tongue does not fit into the categories of Amdo, Kham, or Lhasa Tibetan. In his The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, Roche focuses on Manegacha, a minoritized language spoken by roughly 8000 speakers3 in the Tibetan valley of Rebgong. Rich in Tibetan and Chinese loan words, Manegacha is recognized by neither the Chinese state nor the majority of Tibetan speakers as a distinct language worthy of preservation and transmission. Critiquing a one-language-one-people assumption—which is implied in both China's nationality framework (Tb: Mirik, Ch: Minzu)4 as well as many Tibetans’ anticolonial resistance toward it—Roche's book witnesses the biopolitical suppression and linguistic erasure of a marginal population (Manegacha speakers) among an already marginalized people (Tibetans). Diverging from a prominent bottom-up call to defend the Tibetan language within and outside of Tibet, Roche demonstrates how languages with smaller social domains, such as Manegacha, are unintentionally marginalized and eradicated through a grassroots effort to defend the Tibetan language against China's colonial policies. Following a similar stance from the periphery of the periphery, Ward's Amdo Lullaby traces the language use of Tibetan children and their caretakers from Tsachen Village. This village speaks “farmer talk,” and the children in question migrated to the multiethnic city of Xining.5 Her fine-grained, microscale research provides a detailed snapshot of intergenerational language choices, contemplations, and challenges among ordinary Tibetans amid uneven state policies and rapid developmentalism. Sympathetic to parents’ frustration with their children's mixed language use, Ward nevertheless emphasizes children's agency, treating their mixed expressions as a generative effort to sustain the vitality of Tibetan language(s). Here, when linguistic concerns in Tibetan margins are foregrounded, the tenth Panchen Lama's deictically anchored categories of “[one's] own language” (rang skad) and “others’ language” (gzhan skad) start to entail much more beyond named languages like “Tibetan” and “Chinese.” Classic research on language shift has viewed the death of a minoritized language like Manegacha with scientific reserve, conducting meticulous analyses while remaining non-interventionist (Fishman 1964). Siding with younger generations who often pioneer new language choices, linguists and linguistic anthropologists often resist their own intuitive impulse to wish for a language's preservation (see Gal 1979; Kulick 1992). Roche, however, takes the diminishing of a minoritized language as a symptom of linguistic oppression, a general manifestation of intergenerational violence, and a “part of broader patterns of oppression and violence” (Roche 2024, p. 6). Adopting a stance that calls for linguistic rights and “a minority Tibetan standpoint” (Roche 2024, p. 8), Roche critiques both state policies that initiated violence and colonized communities who unintentionally compound state violence onto recursively marginalized others. Similarly, Ward critiques the popular demand for standardized uses of the Tibetan language as “mirroring the state's emphasis on language standardization as a marker of national identity,” which further marginalizes Tibetan children living in urban areas (Ward 2024, pp. 131–132). To be clear, Roche and Ward respectively address two distinct kinds of language shift in their books—both imbricated within a larger linguistic ecology. Roche is concerned with the shift from Manegacha and Tibetan bilingualism to Amdo Tibetan monolingualism (and possibly bilingualism with Putonghua). At the same time, Ward focuses on the shift from Amdo Tibetan monolingualism to Putonghua monolingualism (as well as Tibetan-Putonghua bilingualism in effect). A common backdrop for both studies is China's political, economic, and linguistic colonization of Tibet, together with strong linguistic resistance in heavily monitored Tibetan public spaces. Against this backdrop, Putonghua is state-sponsored and explicitly promoted, while a standardized Tibetan language is both the language of direct state control, as well as the unified language for articulating anticolonial resistance. Here, languages and vernaculars of smaller social domains like Manegacha or any singular farmer talk (rong skad) are situated at a doubly marginalized position—readily disposable by a colonial governance project that seeks large-scale population control, on the one hand; while being easily rejected in light of publicly admirable anticolonial resistance, on the other. Overall, both books critique what can be described as the colonial installation and public pluralization of “recursive monolingualism” in Tibet. Inspired by both books, I use the term “recursive monolingualism” to refer to the dialectical process between the Chinese state's mandate to impose Putonghua monolingualism on Tibetan subjects and Tibetan communities’ equally monolingual anxiety over the loss of the Tibetan language. Here, monolingualism informs both the state's coercive practices and anticolonial groups’ counterstrikes. However, putting the seemingly unassailable structural analysis aside, we must ask: How do Tibetan communities themselves think about Tibetans who speak otherwise (or whom both authors call “minority Tibetans”)? What are young Tibetans’ own critiques of what they call the Tibetan “language police”? Here, despite their insights, both books also fall short in seeing the minority and majority Tibetan subjects’ own reflexive critiques of the Tibetan linguistic hierarchy. Also, neither author addresses emerging Tibetan voices that advocate for Tibetan multilingualism and diverse Tibetan representation in recent years. As I will demonstrate in this review essay, the latter trend includes not only traditional Tibetan linguistic scholarship but also emerging domains of Tibetan women's literature, popular music, and other audio-visual social media. Both books, in conjunction with recent language-related scholarship on Tibet, inspire a further question: What would a Tibetan sociolinguistics look like? By “Tibetan sociolinguistics,” I mean an assemblage of metalinguistic analyses, language ideologies, as well as metapragmatic norms and stances concerning Tibetan subjects’ own analyses and practices regarding the languages around them. Here, Tibetan sociolinguistics might be seen as situated in a series of thick multilayered backdrops: with historical sediments of diverse Indigenous regional languages/dialects (Roche 2014) as well as multiethnic language contact (Vasantkumar 2014); linguistic colonialism and resistance since China's Cultural Revolution (Shakya 1994; Willock 2021); vibrant practices of honorifics (Agha 1998), humilifics (Samdrup and Suzuki 2019), and other oral and literary traditions (Jabb 2019; Thurston 2024); contemporary developmental colonialism that threatens a Tibetan lingua franca (Schutte Ke 2024); histories of Buddhist multilingual translation and traditions of book and 2024); diasporic that an emerging public that of and this scholarship to ask: What and subjects living on the Tibetan over the several toward living through as well as linguistic by with colonial linguistic as a population with a is one of the on the and colonial violence, one often to on marginalized others. from of postcolonial of violence against the that violence is to the who this has that violence is within “the structural of and colonial and p. of colonial are seen to and the violence of to the in contemporary Tibet, Chinese state violence is in social not in is against the backdrop of in what can be “recursive I Gerald book on the of in Tibet. The of The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet biopolitical and state as the of linguistic and marginalized Tibetans to a of Roche the of Tibetans who speak a minoritized language like Manegacha, as to not only through the broader biopolitical of oppression within but also a that continues to and minority languages in the policies in the of to the of Roche that the is not one as Roche the population to a of one for each of the with “Tibetan” being one of the and being the (Roche 2024, p. on of the biopolitical Roche how the state is and This is by the state's of that sustain a singular Tibetan language and its while languages in Tibet like Manegacha, At the same time, the biopolitical state is also and in the that minoritized languages be in for the state to its (Roche 2024, p. Roche, a prominent of studies has the biopolitical to how the Chinese since while in its governance such studies how biopolitical in minority nor how language use more Roche provides a that the of Tibetan language and Tibetan since the a biopolitical in the Tibetan language while other languages in the region Here, Tibetan scholars in as of the traditional Tibetan language and of Tibetan However, an question for scholars on the of Tibetan scholars within Chinese are already of a biopolitical colonial what would the general call for research and mean in this of the What are the and in a decolonial or a that to with the while with the The of the book a provocative that the Tibetan communities’ resistance to state continues to state violence and further speakers of other minoritized languages in Tibet. Writing about anticolonial resistance within the Roche how minoritized languages like Manegacha, as a of the of Tibetan As Roche the Tibetan language is to be by and a into language. In this from of from a and and through (Roche 2024, p. Here, in light of over Putonghua the majority Tibetan to a Manegacha speakers to the language shift that Roche from bilingualism to Tibetan Roche critiques the Tibetan outside of Tibet as also from state from and to India and the of whom do not minoritized Here, research on linguistic in Tibet and has these anticolonial and Thurston Roche is in how minoritized linguistic fall to such linguistic In this Roche also linguistic for different compared with who with generations and subjects Roche the loss of like Manegacha, in However, as a I not with to “language” as an social I that Roche has an to the of and reflexive language well as the between and the languages they Manegacha an or or Here, a or analyses would to the and for the and of a language like of Manegacha compared with Tibetan and Chinese the that the book to The of the book the process of Manegacha erasure in and with in the scholarship on language Roche demonstrates that Manegacha speakers themselves are to the choice of and the Tibetan language. Roche the that such can school and violence” that Manegacha speakers are to by other Tibetan speakers (Roche 2024, p. The Manegacha language was described as language” or at by Tibetan speakers in the Manegacha with of in public Roche Tibetan subjects who direct such toward Manegacha speakers as who to and those who do not fit the As Roche at the of the these are of violence between and within (Roche 2024, p. toward the of the Roche Tibetan violence against Manegacha this analysis with while the violence that ordinary Tibetans from government as well as policies. what in are the many subjects’ equally toward Tibetan Overall, The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet a provocative of an minoritized languages in Tibet beyond Tibetan. 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Ward 2024, p. What can and of as well as ongoing about general beyond of the biopolitical state and Here, I an of Tibetan sociolinguistics and scholars to think with minority and majority Tibetan who are with state colonialism amid diverse Indigenous languages and This to the that those who under colonialism must be in and by colonial or language we might on the one hand, to and, on the to the but of to the of or to “the p. 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