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EnglishinTurkey

ARTICLEinWORLDENGLISHES·JUNE2005

ImpactFactor:0.34·DOI:10.1111/j.1467-971X.2005.00408.x

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SeranDogancay-Aktuna

SouthernIllinoisUniversityEdw…

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ZeynepKiziltepe

BogaziciUniversity

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English in Turkey

SERAN DO �GANCAY-AKTUNA* and ZEYNEP KIZILTEPE**

ABSTRACT: This paper offers a sociolinguistic account of the functional range and status of English inTurkey by discussing its role in national education policies as a reflection of governmental acquisitionplanning, by looking at societal attitudes towards the presence of English in Turkish life, and byexamining borrowings from English by the Turkish mass media as examples of unplanned languagespread. The paper examines in detail the role of English in different levels of national education, includingits role in Turkish academia, as an indication of the status of English in the country. It then discussessocietal and individual attitudes towards English and its role in the workplace. Finally, the use ofborrowings from English by Turkish mass media is discussed with examples. The paper discusses howEnglish has become yet another divide between the wealthier, educated urban populations and thosebelonging to other socioeconomic and geographic groups.

INTRODUCTION

Turkey belongs to the Expanding Circle, where English has no official status but isincreasingly used as a language of wider communication with other Europeans and the

rest of the world. As displayed by research on English in Europe (Cenoz and Jessner,

2000), however, the historical contexts and the current sociolinguistic profile of English in

Europe show little uniformity with each context warranting its own scrutiny. Indeed, while

Berns (1988) may talk about English in Germany as German English, there is yet no such

thing as Polish English or Turkish English. The acquisition patterns of English in Europe

are non-uniform. While in some multilingual European nations English is acquired as the

third language, as for example with native speakers of Finnish who learn Swedish as asecond language and English as a third language, in officially monolingual European

nations, such as Greece and Turkey, English is the second language for the majority of the

people and a third language for ethnic minorities who use the official language as the

lingua franca and want to learn English as the international language. Hoffmann’s (2000)notion of ‘‘achieved bilingualism’’ as a distinguishing feature of European bilingualism

characterizes the Turkish situation well. Achieved bilingualism is defined as bilingualism

that ‘‘is not naturally acquired, although it goes beyond school bilingualism; it is neither

‘elite’ bilingualism (although it may have started off as such) nor can it be labeled‘popular’ bilingualism, i.e. found among large numbers of the population’’ (Hoffmann,

2000: 3). In this paper, our focus is on exploring the particular characteristics of Turkish-

English achieved bilingualism and on tracing the spread patterns and demands for English

in various domains of Turkish life.

English in Turkey is used as the international language of access, with no officially

allocated role. It does not have a regulative function in administrative or legal contexts. It

*Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Department of English Language and Literature, Peck Hall, Box1431, Edwardsville, IL 62026–1431, USA. E-mail: saktuna@siue.edu**Bo�gazici University, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences, Bebek 34342, Istanbul,

Turkey. E-mail: zeynep.kiziltepe@boun.edu.tr

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

World Englishes, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 253–265, 2005. 0883–2919

is not used for intergroup communication as Turkish is often the only lingua franca for

minority groups such as the Jews, Armenians, Kurds, and Zazas. There is no literature

written in English by Turkish literary figures nor are songs composed in the English

language, except for international competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest,

indicating that English has no imaginative function for the Turks yet. Printed advertise-

ments and billboards in English are generally borrowed from the US/UK markets and

usually depend on imagery rather than words/phrases in English in order to reach themajority of Turks. Following an earlier analysis, Do�gancay-Aktuna (1998: 37) summar-

ized the role of English in Turkey as follows:

In Turkey English carries the instrumental function of being the most studied foreign language

and the most popular medium of education after Turkish. On an interpersonal level, it is used as

a link language for international business and for tourism while also providing a code that

symbolizes modernization and elitism to the educated middle classes and those in the upper

strata of the socioeconomic ladder.

The above analysis is still by and large true. One factor that probably has changed since

the mid 1990s is the fact that Turks are using the Internet more for business and personal

communication. Nielsen (2003) argues that navigating the Internet is giving English a

stronger interpersonal function; however, though international business is conducted via

English in Turkey, interpersonal communication that appears to occupy most on-line talkis via Turkish.

The most significant function of English in Turkey is its instrumental use within public

and private educational institutions that also act as the main agent of language spread.

Thus we turn to a detailed look at the status of English in Turkish national education as

representative of the status of English in Turkey.

ENGLISH IN TURKISH NATIONAL EDUCATION

English has become an integral component of all levels of national education in Turkey,

albeit with varying patterns of implementation, therefore leading to a cline of proficiency,

as we will discuss below.

Higher education

There are 53 state and 21 private universities in Turkey. With the exception of one

institution where education is both in English and Turkish, all private universities are

English medium. Of the 53 state universities, 23 are English medium, offering one year of

intensive English preparation for all incoming students who do not pass the proficiencyexam. Eleven are both English and Turkish medium. The remaining universities offer

English language instruction as an alternative in some schools, such as medicine, economics,

and management, for those students who scored higher in the centralized university

entrance examination. A new policy for higher education in Turkey states that as of the

academic year 2001–2, compulsory foreign language preparation classes will be integrated

into all Turkish-medium university programs. Accordingly, in the third semester of a

four-year degree program, there will be a compulsory course on Yabancı Dilde Okuma,

Konusma ‘Reading and speaking in a foreign language,’ to be followed by Mesleki Yabancı

254 Seran Do�gancay-Aktuna and Zeynep Kiziltepe

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Dil I and II ‘Foreign language for specific purposes,’ and _I s Hayatı _I cin Yabancı Dil

‘Foreign language for business,’ implemented into the fourth, fifth, and sixth semesters

respectively. The aim of the Mesleki Yabanci Dil courses is to expose students to the

relevant terminology of their field and facilitate their following of the relevant literature._I s Hayatı _I cin Yabancı Dil is intended to give students the oral and written communica-

tion skills to do business with foreign people and corporations. Though the policy does

not specify the particular foreign language to be taught, given the emphasis placed onEnglish in Turkey at the expense of other languages, the lack of trained teachers to teach

other languages, the role of English in global communication, and the attitudes of the

Ministry of Education thus far, this will most probably be English.

Secondary education

This lasts three to four years and covers general, vocational, and technical education in

a variety of high schools. There are two types of high schools in Turkey: public/state andprivate. Public/state schools are in turn classified as standard/general, vocational

(technical, commerce, Fine Arts), and Anatolian. Standard high schools and vocational

schools have no preparatory English but approximately eight periods a week of instruc-

tion in English. Currently the Ministry of Education is considering increasing this number.

Anatolian high schools, that were founded via a government decision in the late 1970s and

named so as to be distinguished from standard high schools, are very similar to private

high schools in having a year of preparatory English and in using English as a medium of

instruction. Anatolian schools were founded to meet demands by those parents whodesired foreign language instruction for their higher achieving children but who could

not afford private school tuition. The vast majority of expensive private high schools are

English medium, with several others teaching through German, French, and Italian.

Regardless of the foreign language used as the medium of instruction, there is a great

demand for both private high and Anatolian schools due to the dominance of foreign

languages in their curricula. Parents believe that graduating from a foreign language high

school, especially from an English-medium one, would enable their children to be placed

in more competitive universities, to study abroad, and to end up with more prestigiousjobs. Students are admitted to private and Anatolian high schools based on their scores in

the nationwide entrance examination at the end of primary education. This placement

examination is becoming more competitive each year because the students are getting

better coaching from private tutors and parents. Children of the wealthier upper middle

classes are sent to private courses for coaching in test techniques. Although parents appear

to frown upon what they call ‘‘the college race,’’ most nonetheless feel compelled to keep

up with the majority in the face of fierce competition for foreign language-medium

schools.In the face of complaints that the level of academic competence of Turkish high school

students was suffering due to widespread instruction in a foreign language (mostly

English) and that these students were disadvantaged in the Turkish-medium university

entrance examination, coupled with a lack of properly trained teachers to teach math and

sciences in English, in 2002 the Ministry of Education decided that in Anatolian high

schools science and math would be taught in Turkish. Yet, the law also stated that it

would be possible to teach these courses in a foreign language if permitted by the context

and desired by the parents. This is a contradiction in policy because while those schools

English in Turkey 255

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

catering to the children of the wealthier classes will continue to offer education in foreign

languages because they can afford to employ better qualified native and non-native

teachers, others who lack the resources will shift to Turkish. The Ministry responded to

this contradiction by indicating that it is difficult to find trained teachers to give content

area instruction through a foreign language, so these classes were already being taught in

Turkish anyway.

All types of high schools offer elective courses in a third language, usually German orFrench, although private school students more commonly elect them. A recent law from

the Ministry of Education stated, however, that as of academic year 2005, a second foreign

language will be compulsory in Anatolian and other highly competitive high schools as a

means of applying the standards of the European Union to Turkish national education.

Accordingly, students in these schools will study 4–6 hours of another foreign language

besides the medium of instruction.

Primary education

Primary education consists of eight years of compulsory schooling starting at age 6. It is

against national language-in-education policy to give instruction in a language other than

Turkish before the fourth grade (age 9), except in minority elementary schools where

children can be taught in Armenian, Greek, or Hebrew depending on their heritage. In

public/state schools English language teaching starts with four periods a week in the

fourth grade. In grades 5 and 6, instruction is increased to five hours and to six hours

in junior high with considerable variation across schools in senior high.In private elementary schools, however, the situation is different: English is taught as an

‘‘extracurricular activity’’ for 3–4 periods a week from first grade to make children familiar

with the English sound system. In second and third grades some vocabulary development

is customary. Formal instruction begins in the fourth grade with 8–10 periods a week.

Starting from grade 6 there is a shift to content-based instruction in English and through-

out high school math and sciences are taught in English and social sciences in Turkish

(Dalo�glu, 2004).Besides the diversity in the numbers of hours dedicated to English and other foreign

languages in state and private schools, there is also a discrepancy in instructional methods

and materials used. In state elementary and high schools, students not only have signifi-

cantly fewer hours of English, but are taught via outdated methods and materials in

crowded classes. Textbooks used in state schools are written locally under the supervision

of the Turkish Ministry of Education while private schools purchase books from interna-

tional publishers. Because private schools charge considerable amounts of money, they

have all the required equipment in their classrooms for good language teaching, can afford

to hire better qualified teachers and native speakers to give learners the much neededauthentic communication in the foreign language, and have continuous in-service training

for their teachers.

As can be seen, though all students in the national education system are said to be

studying English as a curricular requirement, there is considerable discrepancy in the

quality and quantity of instruction students receive across various types of schools.

Materials that play a very significant role in what is taught and how it is taught are

especially important in Turkey as the course book is often the curriculum/syllabus because

the Ministry of Education does not have a detailed curriculum (Dalo�glu, 2004). Therefore,

256 Seran Do�gancay-Aktuna and Zeynep Kiziltepe

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

students across state and private schools receive very different types of instruction and

content. This discrepancy is even more significant outside of large cities where students

receive poor quality and inconsistent instruction in English for about four hours a week

and end up as false beginners at the end of high school.

The strong presence of English in Turkey can be seen most clearly in the proliferation of

private schools whose main marketing point is instruction through English at elementary

and even pre-school levels, a situation also widespread in Iran and Egypt (Talebinezhadand Aliakbari, 2002) and Columbia (Velez-Rendon, 2003). Due to the lack of standard-

ization of instruction in these private schools and their varying competitiveness, the

English language proficiency reached by the students is highly divergent, too.

As can be seen from the above descriptions, the language-in-education situation in Turkey

displays similarities to colonial education policies with many private and state schools

where the medium of instruction is English, while even former colonies of the US and the

UK are moving away from this trend in favor of national languages. This colonialisttendency in education is interesting given the fact that Turkey was never colonized by

foreign powers and was herself the colonial power in the Balkans and the Arab peninsula

for 500 years. As Konig (1990) maintains, while many countries with very different social

and political stances have taken measures to keep English outside the domains of their

national affairs while encouraging its use for international communication, Turkey has

done exactly the opposite by showing an increasing tendency to use English as the medium

of instruction both at the secondary and high levels of education and sometimes even in

private elementary schools.Another important factor aiding the acquisition of English in Turkey is the existence of

a great number of private English language courses that are very popular. The Ministry of

Education allows the private sector to offer language courses to people who have finished

either high school or university without having had the chance to learn a foreign language.

Some cultural organizations or societies, generally linked to foreign consulates or foreign

cultural organizations, offer language courses, too. Because these organizations have their

bases in large cities, courses in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese

are offered only to urban populations. Despite the recent economic crisis, the privatelanguage education sector still seems to be thriving, mainly because of many people’s

conviction that a certificate of completion of a foreign language course, especially one in

English, will be a tool for career advancement regardless of the type of profession (see alsothe section below on English in the workplace).

THE SPECIAL ROLE OF ENGLISH IN TURKISH ACADEMIA

Schaub’s (2000: 236) characterization of the role of English as an additional or associatelanguage in academia in Egypt versus its role as a foreign language for the vast majority of

Egyptians is certainly applicable to many Turkish academics, especially those who received

their doctorates from English-speaking countries and now teach in one of the English-

medium universities in Turkey. Indeed, in comparing the role of English in different parts

of Europe, Hoffmann (2000: 9) also argues that the number of bilinguals among academics

and scientists is disproportionately high. These scholars use English to teach, read, publish,

and present their work internationally and thus require a higher level of proficiency in the

language. Increasing internalization in academics seems to create a context in which national

English in Turkey 257

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

languages then become subordinate to English, resulting in a diglossic situation in academe

(Berg, Hult, and King, 2001). In the elite universities in Turkey where the medium of

instruction is English, there is pressure on faculty to publish internationally in order to

receive promotion, thus the system elevates English to the high language of academic

communication and promotion while Turkish is made the low language for this context.

Promotion policies that reinforce publication in journals listed in SSCI or other prestigious

indexes push faculty members to write in English and set the tone for the role of Englishversus Turkish in academia in Turkey. This in turn creates a disparity between faculty

members who have been educated abroad in English-speaking countries and those with

doctorates from Turkish universities. As noted above, although the medium of instruction

especially at the doctoral level tends to be English, faculty educated abroad benefit from

extended exposure to English in various domains of life throughout their graduate work

when compared to those who use English only in their academic endeavors.

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE PRESENCE OF ENGLISH IN TURKISH LIFE

Many Turkish scholars (Ekmekci, 1995; Sarıtosun, 1994; Sinano�glu, 2000) argue that

the increasing Anglicization of education in Turkey, where English is readily adopted as

the medium of instruction and where English language publications are expected for

academic promotion, is a major impediment to the development of Turkish. The prestige

of the English language, increasing demands for it in various domains of Turkish society,

and widespread education through English are seen as obstacles preventing the develop-

ment of the corpus, especially scientific terms in Turkish, and as a threat to the main-tenance of Turkish cultural norms. It is argued that the influx of borrowings in everyday

language is a result of widespread education in English and that by not using Turkish in

the most competitive institutions of higher learning, even the elite are losing touch with the

finer aspects of Turkish. An important debate among Turkish educators is whether

English language instruction should be through content teaching in English-medium

schools or via intensive English language study as part of national education. Though

proponents of education through English maintain that in a globalizing world people need

to know the international language (English) well to advance as individuals and as anation, its opponents argue that content-area instruction is not the only means for

learning English. The latter emphasize that it is important for educated people to learn

to use their mother tongue for creative and technological communication, especially to aid

the internal development of the language.

An interesting point to note here is that the great emphasis put on English is not given

to German or French, the two most used languages of the European Union, which Turkey

has been trying to join. Indeed, the role of French and German has been greatly reduced in

the Turkish education system in the face of competition from English and not manyscholars have paid attention to this amidst discussions of the role of English in Turkish

national education.

On an individual level, attitudes towards the educational institutionalization of English

in Turkey and borrowings from English into Turkish vary in line with the individual’s

context and sociopolitical identity. Although the choice of lexical items is not as politicized

as a sign of one’s political identity as it used to be (Cuceo�glu and Slobin, 1980), there arestill certain preferences in place. There are those who scatter English borrowings into their

language to look more educated, westernized, and more sophisticated. This would be a

258 Seran Do�gancay-Aktuna and Zeynep Kiziltepe

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

small minority of the Turkish people living in the affluent parts of large cities and going to

English-medium private schools. In some cases, these people would be perceived as

pompous by others outside of their social group. Other educated elite groups, especially

those with leftist tendencies, display greater language loyalty to Turkish, in particular to

purer Turkish free of Arabic and Persian influences. The religious sectors of the educated

population prefer traditional Arabic/Persian origin lexical items due to their Islamic

affiliation. Thus, when discussing legal matters, for instance, the first group might saylegal (English), the second group would use yasal (Turkish), and the last group would opt

for kanuni (Arabic), still maintaining mutual intelligibility in most cases but displaying

their various sociopolitical identities. On the other hand, the average Turk living in rural

areas and small cities would have no concern for the origins of the words they use while

they learn product names in English and shop from businesses with English names.

ATTITUDES AND MOTIVATION

The most extensive empirical study done on the attitudes and motivation of Turkish

learners towards English is that of Kızıltepe (2000). The study looked at 308 male and

female Turkish high school students in four different kinds of schools: two private high

schools, one run by Americans and the other by Turks, a state school, and a private

language school. A range of factors were investigated using an attitude and motivation

scale adapted from Gardner (1985) and found to be determinative in the process of foreign

language learning. These factors are attitudes of Turkish students towards the British and

Americans, motivational intensity, interest in foreign languages in general, attitudestowards learning English, instrumental and integrative orientation, English class anxiety,

family encouragement, and feelings towards the English teacher and the English course.

Results indicate that the attitude of the students from the four schools towards British

and American people is positive. The subjects showed a high level of instrumental

motivation towards learning English and foreign languages in general with high motiv-

ational intensity. Students want to learn English because they think that it will be useful in

getting a good job. What is more, they believe that the knowledge of two languages

(Turkish and English) will make them a better educated person. To better understandBritish/American people and to meet and converse with them turned out to be not as

important as the instrumental motivation, thus corroborating Raybould’s (1976) researchthat also pointed out Turks’ instrumental orientation towards learning English. These

findings are quite interesting given the impact of cultural transmission from Hollywood

films and MTV on Turkish youth. Most middle-class Turkish teenagers seem to identify

with American movie/pop stars and dress or behave like them. It is a common belief that

the goal of most young people in Turkey is to live like a wealthy westerner. Though this

sociocultural phenomenon might lead one to expect some integrative motivation fromthese youngsters, they seem to have a very pragmatic approach when it comes to learning

English. Further results of Kızıltepe’s (2000) study indicate that there is no English

language classroom anxiety amongst the subjects; they are not nervous, confused, or

self-conscious in the English language class. Apart from that, they are highly encouraged

by their families to learn English; they have positive feelings towards their English courses

and English teachers.

Though available studies show Turks’ positive attitudes towards learning English, these

studies focus on a small, generally more affluent sector of the population, and thus cannot

English in Turkey 259

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

be generalized to learners from different geographical areas of the country or to those

from state and religious schools or more conservative families. Given the significant

diversity in the sociopolitical tendencies and lifestyles across various groups one observes

in Turkey today, it can be argued that attitudes towards English would vary greatly

depending on the context and the composition of the groups studied. While the more

conservative sectors of Turkish society would be more likely to perceive English as a

threat to national culture, learners in these sectors would still learn English for itsinstrumental value as is the case with the more religious groups in the country. The

other pole would be those Turkish elites who would support English as an inevitable

aspect of globalization and socioeconomic liberalization.

ENGLISH IN THE WORKPLACE

English is now one of the job requirements for higher level, better paid jobs in Turkey as

well as for those in service industries such as tourism. Using a survey of job advertisementsthat appeared in two of the largest national newspapers in Turkey, Dogancay-Aktuna

(1998) showed that not only was English listed as a top job requirement, but named

universities were almost always English-medium ones. Moreover, 20 percent of the framed

advertisements (vs. classified ones) were printed in English in Turkish-medium dailies.

Further content analysis of job openings in terms of their prestige and compensation

revealed that higher level, better paid white-collar jobs in well-known companies rein-

forced English as a must. The main reason for the demand for such people in the Turkish

job market is due to the role of English in globalization, international trade, and upwardmobility of individuals. A doctor, a business owner, an engineer, or an employee in many

industries needs English to follow the developments in his/her field and to bring innova-

tions to the competitive job market in Turkey to add value to his/her position. Not only

do the businessmen need English but their assistants and secretaries do too. With liberal

economic policies after the 1980s, Turkish businesses are increasingly taking part in trade

fairs in different parts of the world to view new products and negotiate selling their own to

other nations. People who cannot speak English either are dependent on professional

translators, which makes the whole trip much more costly, or refrain from travelingaltogether. As a result, many people from different walks of life crowd private evening

classes or company-sponsored English lessons to learn the language. As Konig (1990: 4)says, ‘‘more and more people are aware of the fact that at least some knowledge of English

is necessary to get ahead in life. It brings high status to the individual socially, as well as

extending job opportunities.’’ She gives the example of graduates of English language and

literature departments who can easily obtain jobs in tourism or in the exchange depart-

ments of banks by virtue of their knowledge of English, while a number of economists

who speak only Turkish are unemployed.

ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Unlike some other countries in the expanding circle where a range of daily newspapers

are printed in English, there is one Turkish daily of this type that advertises itself as

‘‘Turkey’s First And ONLY English Daily’’ – Turkish Daily News. There are a few

monthly magazines such as Cornucopia, ‘‘the magazine for connoisseurs of Turkey,’’ and

Istanbul Life, which cater to the small group of expatriates in the country and the

260 Seran Do�gancay-Aktuna and Zeynep Kiziltepe

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Turkish-English bilingual elite. Also, in contrast to subtitled TV programs popular in

Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which according to Clyne (1995) lead to

English acquiring a higher profile in the nation, English language programs are dubbed

into Turkish on television, and movies in theaters are sometimes dubbed, sometimes

subtitled. Because all foreign language magazines and best-selling books are translated

into Turkish, Turks are not exposed much to writing in English. Therefore, in the present

situation, mass media in English does not seem to be a factor in the spread of the languagein Turkey.

What seems an important factor though is the number of borrowings used in Turkish

newspapers. Indeed, the infiltration of foreign words and phrases seems to begin with their

use by public figures on TV or in newspapers. As Hoffmann (2000: 12) says, ‘‘There is a

causal link between the macrostructural functions of English and its microstructural

influence on individual European languages: unless English was used by an influential

proportion of speakers for some communicative functions there could be no linguistic

influence on the national languages.’’ In fact, many Turkish politicians and writers areseen to be the sources of infiltration of words from English into Turkish such as those

presented in Table 1.

One recent phenomenon regarding borrowings is that although earlier borrowings were

adapted to the phonology of Turkish, as exemplified by liste and homoseksuel, many of the

recent ones are used without orthographic or phonological modifications. Instead we are

witnessing the fitting of Turkish spelling into English phonology as in writing kepabchi

instead of the Turkish kebabci ’kebab restaurant’ or skinheadler where the root word is

English but the plural suffix -ler is Turkish.There are also a few cases of what Clyne (1995) calls pseudo-transfers which occur when

a lexeme is used with a meaning which it does not have in English, e.g., light erkek, bir

kalorili erkek ‘light man’ or ‘one calorie man’, referring to someone who is not macho.

Table 1. Some examples of borrowings commonly found in the Turkish media

Use English Existing Turkish equivalents

birbirimizin ‘‘alibisiydik’’ alibi tanık, sahit

rasyo ratio oran

formel formal resmi

badigardi bodyguard koruma

ceklist checklist liste (earlier borrowing, now entrenched)

janr genre stil

skinheadlor skinheads dazlaklar (not the same connotation as

skinheads)

NBA’ye ‘‘draft’’ edildi ‘‘drafted’’ into the NBA ca�grılmak/davet edilmek

key man key man kilit adam

tandans tendency yonelim, e�gilimbrifing briefing bilgilendirme

konsept concept kavram

kaos chaos karmasa, karisıklık, kesmekes

sound sound ses, tını

gay gay homoseksuel, entrenched borrowing or the

Turkish word escinsel

English in Turkey 261

ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

These exemplify the gradual beginning of Kachru’s (1992) imaginative function by the

Turks, though there are yet very few such examples in the Turkish lexicon.

The above are overt influences of English on Turkish. There are also covert influences,

such as the formation of new expressions resulting from direct translations from English.

In a small survey by Oniz (n.d.), for instance, it appeared that literal translations from

English, such as Seninle durust olabilir miyim? ‘Can I be honest with you?’, Bana 5 dakika

ver ‘Give me 5 minutes’, Aptal olma ‘Don’t be stupid’, Bu mektup senin icin ‘This letter isfor you’, as often heard in soap operas such as ‘‘The Young and Restless,’’ are slowly

creeping into Turkish despite the resistance of people who indicated that these expressions

are unacceptable. Yet, equivalent to the number of people who categorized these expres-

sions as ‘‘cannot be said in Turkish,’’ there were others who indicated ‘‘can be said but I

wouldn’t’’ or ‘‘perhaps can be said,’’ showing a more accepting attitude of these expres-

sions from dubbed Turkish. Also, it appeared that younger people were much more

accepting of these new formulas than older people, therefore acting as catalysts in their

spread. Although such expressions are derogatorily named dublaj Turkcesi ‘dubbedTurkish’ by some and seem to be at first ridiculed by advanced bilinguals, they appear

to be gradually finding their way into everyday Turkish, especially in urban areas, there-

fore having an impact on the sentence structure of Turkish.

CONCLUSIONS

Among the central features of the development of English as an international language,

Brutt-Griffler (2002) cites the fact that unlike an elite lingua franca, English is not confinedto the socioeconomic elite but is learned by various levels of the society. She maintains that

‘‘the kind of language spread that forms the essential process of the development of World

English, therefore, is the process of second language acquisition by speech communities’’

(Brutt-Griffler, 2002: 11, italics as original), which she calls macroacquisition – that is, social

second language acquisition (SLA). Given the expanding role of English in many diverse

contexts today, it seems reasonable to talk about SLA by speech communities rather than

by individuals. Yet, doing this brings the danger of assuming that all individuals in a given

speech community have equivalent opportunities for acquiring English. This, in fact, is quiteremoved from the sociopolitical and economic realities of many speech communities, as

exemplified above by the Turkish case, where there is great disparity between the quality

and the quantity of English language teaching that different strata of the society can have

access to. As discussed above, in many cases education through English is only accessible to

the middle and upper strata of a society because the national resources required for such

macroacquisition are not there (cf. McKay, 2002). Given the above described language-

in-education policies, we can argue that Turkey has chosen to promote the learning of

English for all, yet English is unlikely to spread across the whole society due to a lack ofeconomic support and qualified teachers. In other words, English is not likely to spread

vertically in Turkish society, though it appears to be gradually spreading horizontally. This

situation creates an obstacle for the educational and employment opportunities of the lower

socioeconomic groups and influences their access to power and wealth. Indeed, when most

quality higher education is through English, those who know only Turkish are denied the

opportunity and freedom to access information that can advance them as individuals (seealso Do�gancay-Aktuna, 1998). As Graddol (1997: 40) also asserts, ‘‘English plays an

indirect part in the restructuring of inequality around the world.’’ Although the way

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English has been restructuring poverty and power structures in Turkey cannot be compared

to the cases of some East Asian and African countries where English has long been

entrenched into their socioeconomic and political structure, looking at the Turkish educa-

tion system one can still argue that English is yet another divide in the nation. The apparent

indifference to the power relationships triggered by the use of English in higher education is

an important phenomenon that needs to be investigated.

Rapid urbanization as witnessed in Turkey may be said to be a factor facilitating thespread of English. Graddol (1997: 27) predicts that urban migration, such as that taking

place in the developing world, will be a significant factor in the continued growth of

English because cities influence language contact and diversity. McKay (2002: 15) agreesthat urban migration may encourage the acquisition of English, particularly among

individuals with greater economic resources, thus deepening the already existing gap

between the various socioeconomic groups. Urbanization is certainly a major force in

Turkey, and the spread of English is an urban phenomenon where state and private

schools are more equipped to provide English language education. Yet, as mentionedabove, due to the great disparity among the schools in different areas of Turkish cities,

students’ access, and thereby their resulting proficiency in English, are highly variant.

Therefore, though the spread of English might be an urban affair, it seems limited to more

affluent urban areas. In rural Turkey, on the other hand, the spread of English is

insignificant, apart from those areas with heavy tourism where people have greater

motivation to learn English and other foreign languages such as German and Russian.

While the urban Turks certainly participate in the world econocultural system (Brutt-Griffler, 2002), as indicated by their participation in global economy and global scientific,cultural, and intellectual life, thus necessitating their use of English to some extent, rural

Turks of all ethnic groups are quite content and untouched by the globalization that is

rampant in large cities as they continue their lives in their own enclaves.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the above profiling of English in Turkey is

that although Turkey as a whole is in the Expanding Circle of Englishes in Kachru’s

(1992) definition, there are a number of Turkish domains, such as higher education,

business, and science and technology, where the range and depth of English parallels

those in Outer Circle countries (cf. the case of Egypt as described by Schaub, 2000). Theimpact of English is especially felt in education, where, to use Bamgbos:e’s (2003: 421)term, ‘‘English is the recurring decimal,’’ that is, an ever-present competitor to Turkish in

all levels of national education as evidenced by language policy discussions that center on

the role of English in education because of its ‘‘institutionalized entrenchment in the

educational system’’ (p. 421), as it is in many other countries of the Expanding Circle.

Available research shows that attitudes among urban Turks are mostly positive towards

English, though there is not adequate research on all sectors of the Turkish population.

Furthermore, since the language reform years the purity and development of Turkish hasbeen a matter of national debate with various groups holding opposing positions. Given

conflicting views on the impact of borrowings from English into Turkish (see Do�gancay-Aktuna, 1995, 2004 for details), it can be argued that some groups will accept borrowings

as an inevitable consequence of globalization, while others will view them as threats to the

status and corpus of Turkish stemming from their belief that the natural development of

Turkish as a viable means of scientific communication is impeded by these borrowings.

Although negative national attitudes towards the spread of English and loyalty to the

national language can be sources of resistance to the dominance of English in a nation, as

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Truchot (1997: 66) explains, ‘‘a fragile language situation, language conflicts and an

insufficiently established or modernized language are factors that favor the spread of

English, as are positive attitudes toward English speaking countries.’’ The Turkish

language cannot be said to be fragile or insufficiently modernized as the Turkish language

reform resulted in a mostly standardized language with a great capacity for expansion due

to a great number of derivational suffixes. Yet, the lack of widespread concern for further

development of the language by academic groups and the Turkish Language Associationmight well prove to be a factor facilitating the spread of English in Turkey. This is an

important issue worthy of further exploration.

In conclusion, in Turkey we see a pattern similar to other European countries in the

expanding circle in the spread of English via education policies and its replacement of

French as the former language of European diplomacy. As in other parts of Europe,

English-Turkish bilingualism, where it materializes, is of the academically achieved type,

instead of being naturally acquired, but due to significant variation in the quality and

quantity of English language instruction different groups have access to, English has notyet managed to penetrate into all socioeconomic and geographical groups. Perhaps

another difference from other Expanding Circle countries is the fact that while

European countries have been emphasizing the learning of several European languages

besides the national language(s), Turkish language policies reinforce English at the

expense of other foreign languages and often the mother tongue, making national

language-in-education policies more comparable to former colonies of the Outer Circle.

Besides being widespread, especially in higher education, English appears to be seen as a

requirement for better-paying jobs as well as for academic advancement, factors furtherreinforcing societal demand for it especially in urban areas. Available research suggests

that learners have positive attitudes towards English, though there is certainly need for

empirical research on the demand for English in various sectors as well as attitudes

towards it among varied sectors of the sociopolitically and economically diverse Turkish

society. Finally, although the Turkish nation went through a successful language reform in

the early twentieth century when the language was significantly purified of external

influences, it appears that many Turks today are not much bothered by borrowings

from English, given the expansion in the number of borrowed words and expressionsused in daily life as well as in many professional domains. The cause of changes in national

attitudes to Turkish as well as to foreign languages present in Turkish life warrants further

study in order to provide a more complete sociolinguistic profile of the language situation

in Turkey and to enable Turkish decision makers to manage the spread of English more

effectively.

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(Received 4 August 2004.)

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