Türkiye’deki İngilizce kullanımına dil emperyalizmi ışığında eleştirel bir yaklaşım

Abstract

Starting to attain an important international language status in the world from the 19th century onwards thanks to many interrelated factors like British colonialism and later US-Britain cultural policies of expansion, English language has achieved an unprecedented prevalence in usage in different sectors ranging from education to tourism and art to literature and sports. Today, it keeps its reign as an international lingua franca, reinforcing its position by making use of very effective mechanisms of expansion such as globalization, academia, media, music, TV, and sports. This preponderance, or in Phillipson’s words, English linguistic imperialism, however connotes oblivion and even evanescence of vernacular and the inferiorization and hybridization of national languages. As mid-20th century onward, Turkey’s political convergence with the US has brought into the life and language of Turkish people irreversible changes whose critique, as this paper argues, can be made within the concept of linguistic imperialism. Drawing on theoretical approach by Phillipson, this paper thus discusses and critiques the ways English is used in Turkey, in an attempt to draw attention to the attrition in Turkish language, inquination in linguistic landscape, and language discrimination among the young.