This paper takes the construction of bridges across the Tajik-Afghan border river as starting point to assay how the different actors partaking there in communicative encounters, conceive processes of globalization. Following Pennycook, it is claimed that a focus on language as local practice discloses that the Tajik-Afghan frontier is featured by a high rate of distinct languages, but also by multiple meanings within and beyond these languages. It is asserted that pointing out the locality of languages at the Tajik-Afghan frontier supplies a chance to frame language as tied to particular communicative encounters in semiotized time and space.