Juan L. Costa S 1229656 1 December 2013 Words: 1629 Course: Globalization and Cultural Studies Mr. Looi van Kessel, M.A.

The English language in Turkey – A case study of linguistic imperialism
English is considered to be the world’s lingua franca. It is the most extended language in all kinds of international interactions, including trade, culture, and academia. This is considered to be a factual statement and not a normative one. Certain scholars have considered the rise of English as a positive process in normative terms, while others have critiqued it as a form of imperialism. However, both sides of the argument agree on the principle that English is indeed the global language (Lin and Martin 116). The effects of English linguistic imperialism can be found in a plethora of countries, but they are mostly evident in countries that adopt official language policies to encourage the use of English in order to position themselves closer to the Western world. That is the case of Turkey which has favored English teaching and usage since the late 19th century (Doğançay-Aktuna and Kiziltepe 254-257). Furthermore, this official language policy and its consequences are most noticeable in academia, an environment where English has become an essential tool for participating in the international scientific community. This essay will discuss the case of Turkey as a country that has been directly impacted by English linguistic imperialism, resulting in a struggle between the economic benefits of expanding English usage, and the existence of a nationalist agenda for which the Turkish language is an essential pillar. The English language was first introduced in the Ottoman Empire by British traders in the early 19th century. A few decades later, its expansion took a leap when Christian missionaries established English schools along the shore of the Bosphorus (Zok 2). A parallel can be drawn with Makdisi’s research on the Middle East. One of his main findings is that American missionaries tended to be less flexible than Europeans in their language choice for engaging in religious proselytism. While Europeans in many cases learned the local vernacular language, such as Arabic in the case of Middle East countries, Americans used only English (216). This is reflected in the case of Turkey as well, since many of the English-only schools established during the late 19th century were founded by American missionaries (Reagan and Schreffler 117-118). This case can be analyzed as a case of conception of identity via language, in a country with a history of pre-modern national churches. According to MyHill, there has been a conflict between pre-modern national
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church groups, such as the Maronites, and modern states that conceptualize national identity via language homogeneity, such as contemporary Lebanon (248-251). In Turkey, there was a long-term settlement of Greek Orthodox minorities that nonetheless spoke Turkish as their first language. Ottoman authorities thus faced the challenge of defining national identity via the Turkish language, or via Islam. They chose to define ‘Turkishness’ as being Muslim, thus leaving out the minority Greek groups from this nationalistic conception (Zok 3-6). As a result what had once been the capital of Christendom, Constantinople, became the center of a homogeneously Muslim society. Turks chose not to be like Lebanon, a multi-religious society under a single language, and instead considered Islam to be a stronger factor for national identity than language. This key choice should be taken into consideration for explaining why English expanded rapidly and smoothly in Turkish territory. While Ottoman authorities adopted a strong position towards religious minorities, as the horrors of the Armenian genocide show, the same level of opposition was not adopted against institutions that undermined the hegemony of the Turkish language (Zok 4). In this regard, it is thus not surprising that English schools rapidly became key institutions of the national educational system. In fact, one of the many schools established during the 1860s, Robert College, later became one of Turkey’s most prestigious universities, adopting the name of Bogazici University (Phillipson 216). This rapid expansion and gain of prestige of English institutions was only possible with the explicit approval of Turkish governments that were more concerned with maintaining the hegemony of the Islamic religion, instead of the hegemony of the Turkish language. Linguistic imperialism in Turkey developed during its early stages in a similar way to colonial settings in Africa and Asia. Despite the fact that Turkish territory was never colonized by France or Great Britain, English spread via schools that actively engaged in linguistic imperialism endeavors, with the consent of Ottoman authorities (Zok 2-3). However, modern expansion of English has taken a neocolonial form in Turkey. Phillipson differentiates between postcolonial and neocolonial environments for linguistic imperialism to take place. The main difference is that Turkey was never directly colonized, thus Phillipson considers it a neocolonial setting (112-113). He argues that the spread of English is based on a global cultural hegemony, a concept first introduced by the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci (Ives 124). English can be considered hegemonic because it dominates and subordinates other languages. Phillipson identifies this subordination in the intrinsic arguments used by agents of domination such as the World Bank, which emphasize the richness of English in detriment to other languages (125-126). Moreover, the Marxist caveat of Phillipson’s theory can be identified in the struggle between national vernacular languages, such as Turkish, and global hegemonic languages, like English. A parallel can thus be drawn with Marx’s original idea of a struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Phillipson
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extrapolates this originally Marxist concept to the linguistic realm, and asserts this struggle in the form of imperialistic dominance through cultural hegemonic forces (Pupavac 124). An example of those forces is the idea of English as a rich, global language, essential for transnational communication. This discursive idea is spread by agents such as the World Bank or the British Council (Phillipson 128-130), which have been key players of linguistic imperialism in many countries, including Turkey. This has resulted in a conflict between the hegemonic international language, English, and the alienated national language, Turkish. This struggle becomes particularly relevant in the realm of Turkish academia. Authorities are faced with the dilemma of accepting English as the main language of instruction, and undermining the possibilities of lower-income students to access higher education, or keeping Turkish as the sole language in academia, and isolating scholars from the international community (Reagan and Schreffler 117). Universities have tended to converge in the usage of a hybrid model. Istanbul Technical University was a pioneer in this practice, by implementing in the early 1980s a system by which one third of all courses would be taught in English. This policy was then championed by government authorities (Reagan and Schreffler 130). It reflects the struggle between the ‘benefits’ that English knowledge provides under a modernist discourse, and the key role that Turkish plays in the discourse of building a homogeneous nation-state. Even though Turkey initially identified Islam as the most important factor for its nationalist discourse, language is nonetheless essential, as this contemporary struggle with English linguistic imperialism shows. The increased use of English has become problematic for Turkey’s nationalistic agenda. Although religion was originally conceived as the main factor in identity politics, the Turkish language has become more important in recent decades (Zok 9). Language ideology is defined as a set of beliefs about language, which define its role within a certain community (Woolard and Schieffelin 76). Thus, it can be argued that the language ideologies concerning Turkish have recently shifted towards a more prominent role in the formation of national values (Zok 6-8). This shift has been conflictive due to the influence of minority languages and the widespread use of English. Suleiman studies the role of language in Middle East countries with conflictive minorities, such as Lebanon and Israel. He argues that the role of language in these nations is subject to political contestation, because the existence of non-Muslim, Arabic-speaking minorities challenges the primordial linkage between Arabic and Islam (126). Turkey has gone through similar political struggles and this has caused violent outcomes, such as the expulsion of the Greek minorities from Anatolia and the genocide of the Armenian population (Lin and Martin 127). However, despite these attempts to force a homogeneously Muslim and Turkish-speaking society, minorities are still source of conflict. This struggle in national identity politics has been further enhanced by the
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interference of English (Zok 5). This is particularly observed in the form of code-switching, which is defined as the alternation of two or more languages in the context of a single conversation (Milroy and Muysken 368). This occurs frequently among young Turks who have been learning English from an early age. In fact, a new dialect is considered by linguists to have been born from this interference: Tarzanca (Eldridge 307). This level of interference, product of a linguistic imperialistic process that started in the late 19th century, represents an additional source of conflict for an already problematic discourse that intends to define the Turkish nation via its national language. In conclusion, Turkey is now facing the consequences of decades of condescending government policies towards English-teaching in its territory. By having initially chosen to define the nation via the Islamic religion and not the Turkish language, authorities allowed several agents of colonial linguistic imperialism, such as missionaries, to act freely and expand the use of English in detriment of vernacular languages. This became problematic in recent decades, as language gained a more prominent place in national identity discourses, and linguistic imperialism adopted a neocolonial form. All sectors of the Turkish society were then faced with the challenge of fully embracing English in detriment of national identity building, or reinforcing Turkish and becoming isolated from the international community. Hybrid responses resulted from this struggle, of which the language policy adopted in Turkish academia is a clear example. The increased use of English among the youth has fuelled contemporary struggles in national identity politics, as authorities try to reaffirm the Turkish language as a key element of their nationalistic agenda, but are faced with increasing challenges from the imperialistic expansion of English across social strata.

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Works Cited
Doğançay-Aktuna, Seran and Zeynep Kiziltepe. "English in Turkey." World Englishes (2005): 253– 265. Print. Eldridge, John. "Code-switching in a Turkish secondary school." ELT Journal (1996): 303-311. Print. Ives, P. "Global English': linguistic imperialism or practical lingua franca." Studies in Language and Capitalism (2006): 121-141. Print. Lin, Angel M.Y. and Peter W. Martin. Decolonisation, Globalisation. London: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Print. Makdisi, Ussama Samir. Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print. Milroy, Lesley and Pieter Muysken. One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print. Myhill, John. Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 2006. Print. Phillipson, Robert. "Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation." World Englishes (2008): 250–267. Online. —. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Print. —. Linguistic Imperialism Continued. London: Routledge, 2010. Print. Pupavac, Vanessa. Language Rights: From Free Speech to Linguistic Governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print. Reagan, Timothy and Sandra Schreffler. "Higher Education Language Policy and the Challenge of Linguistic Imperialism: A Turkish Case Study." Lin, Angel. Decolonisation, globalisation: language-in-education policy and practice. London: Multilingual Matters, 2005. 115-130. Print. Suleiman, Yasir. "Charting the Nation: Arabic and the Politics of Identity." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2006): 125–148. Print. Woolard, Kathryn and Bambi Schieffelin. Language Ideology. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Print. Zok, David. "Turkey’s Language Revolution and the Status of English Today." The English Languages: History, Diaspora, Culture (2010): 1-14. Print.

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