In 2017 there was a massive crackdown on the Muslim population in Xinjiang, China, by the Chinese government through putting 2 million Muslims (mostly Uyghurs) into concentration camps. This thesis investigates how intensified government censorship associated with this sudden political change in Xinjiang might have influenced the language use of characters in a popular Uyghur online show, Anar Pishti. It operationalizes the proportion of Chinese Mandarin and the average length of Chinese Mandarin utterances spoken in the show as indicators of Chinese influence on Uyghur language use. Additionally, the project also describes the changing semiotic representations of Chinese Han culture as the index for Chinese government authority in the show. Furthermore, Uyghur-Chinese code-switching is analyzed to see whether the use Chinese Mandarin in the show is the result of long-term language shift in Xinjiang instead of government censorship. Lastly, by seeing Chinese government as an overhearer of the show based on Bell’s audience design model (1984), present project also investigates whether the Chinse government overhearer could have stronger effect on the speakers than the addresses and auditors in the show.In summary, results of quantitative analysis show the proportion of Chinese and mean length of Chinese utterances spoken in the show increase drastically starting from Season 4 released in 2017 to Season 6. The results of qualitative analysis show that there is a clear increase of semiotic representations of Chinese Han culture from Season 1 to Season 6. And the results of code-switching analysis indicate that most of code-switches are “superficial” (e.g., simple lexical insertion) and Uyghur is still the dominant language in Uyghurs mental grammar, thereby ruling out language shift as a potential reason for language use changes. These results also indicate that Chinese government overhearers have stronger influence on speakers’ language use than the immediate addressees and auditors in the show.
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