‘Here is Haryana CM speaking fluent Tamil’: language and ethnic categories in negotiating sociolinguistic hierarchies.

People’s abilities to learn and speak various languages are important to social scientists to illuminate the complex association(s) between language and social identity. This paper examines threads from Indian Twitter/X where users mobilise these associations as a resource to discuss, maintain, negotiate, or resist prevalent notions of social hierarchies. We examine how the opening question is framed as a category-puzzle, implicating normative expectations about ‘North Indian politicians’ not speaking the regional language Kannada using discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis. We show that users respond in various ways, such as by attempting to solve the puzzle or attending to a broader implication of the prevalence of hierarchies regarding speaking Hindi and other regional languages. We conclude by discussing how a close analysis of this interaction reveals users’ understanding of the prevalent social hierarchies in the Indian context, and how they manage their stake and involvement in discussions around these.