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Sociolinguistic Situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical Factors and Language Use Patterns

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Sociolinguistic Situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical Factors and Language Use Patterns DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2012-0053 IJSL 2012; 217: 151 – 180 Ergin Öpengin Sociolinguistic situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical factors and language use patterns Abstract: This article aims at exploring the minority status of Kurdish language in Turkey. It asks two main questions: (1) In what ways have state policies and socio- historical conditions influenced the evolution of linguistic behavior of Kurdish speakers? (2) What are the mechanisms through which language maintenance versus language shift tendencies operate in the speech community? The article discusses the objective dimensions of the language situation in the Kurdish re- gion of Turkey. It then presents an account of daily language practices and perceptions of Kurdish speakers. It shows that language use and choice are sig- nificantly related to variables such as age, gender, education level, rural versus urban dwelling and the overall socio-cultural and political contexts of such uses and choices. The article further indicates that although the general tendency is to follow the functional separation of languages, the language situation in this con- text is not an example of stable diglossia, as Turkish exerts its increasing pres- ence in low domains whereas Kurdish, by contrast, has started to infringe into high domains like media and institutions. The article concludes that the preva- lent community bilingualism evolves to the detriment of Kurdish, leading to a shift-oriented linguistic situation for Kurdish. Keywords: Kurdish; Turkey; diglossia; language maintenance; language shift Ergin Öpengin: Lacito CNRS, Université Paris III & Bamberg University. E-mail: [email protected] 1 Introduction Kurdish in Turkey is the language of a large population of about 15–20 million speakers. Yet, it has rarely been the subject of formal sociolinguistic description. The existing literature (Hassanpour 1992; Akin 1995; Haig 2004; Skutnabb- Kangas and Fernandes 2008; Coşkun et al. 2011) has discussed in detail the modality of restrictions on the private and public usage of Kurdish in Turkey, Brought to you by | Penn State - The Pennsylvania State University Authenticated Download Date | 5/23/15 5:10 AM 152 E. Öpengin naming state attitudes and policies towards Kurdish under terms like “lingui- cide”, “glottophagie” and “invisibilization” practices. However, what remains relatively absent is research on the speakers’ perspectives about the vitality of their language and on issues of language maintenance and shift. To address this research gap, this study is informed by two questions: (1) In what ways have state policies and socio-historical conditions influenced the evolution of linguis- tic behavior of Kurdish speakers? (2) What are the mechanisms through which language maintenance versus language shift tendencies operate in the speech community? This article thus tries to establish the complex array of interrelations be- tween language use and choice patterns of Kurdish speakers in Turkey and socio- political factors of the language situation to the extent that they relate to the “speaker” and “language”. The existing literature has mostly backgrounded these factual aspects as mere setting/context, whereas in this study these fac- tors are foregrounded as crucial elements behind the current linguistic situation. Here the key constructs related to minority language situations such as diglossia, language vitality and language maintenance and shift are discussed. A back- ground section presents an overview of the objective/factual conditions of the language situation in Turkey. I then analyze the linguistic behavior and percep- tions of the speakers in respect to the domains of language use, interlocutors, and speakers’ generation, gender, and level of formal education. Finally, the extent to which the factual aspects of the linguistic context are reflected in the linguistic behavior and perceptions of the speakers is assessed. The article con- cludes that the mainly unfavorable sociopolitical conditions have led, and continue to lead, to community bilingualism evolving to the detriment of Kurd- ish, a shift-oriented linguistic situation. Nevertheless, I suggest that the phenom- enon is not a wholesale one and that there are mechanisms through which the language shift tends to be reversed, for instance through media and cultural and political activism. 2 Conceptual framework Minority language situations are often studied by referring to a set of socio- political factors supposedly influencing the maintenance and shift of minority languages (Kloss 1966; Giles et al. 1977; Edwards 1992). Language maintenance is a speech community’s use of its first language in a number of domains in a contact situation (Yağmur 1997: 18); it regulates within-community communi- cation (Fase et al. 1992) and protects against external attitudes (Grenoble and Brought to you by | Penn State - The Pennsylvania State University Authenticated Download Date | 5/23/15 5:10 AM Sociolinguistic situation of Kurdish in Turkey 153 Whaley 2006: 13). In reverse, language shift refers to a stage in the relationship of the community to its language during which the members of the community have either partially or completely abandoned the usage of the native language (Winford 2003: 14–17). Language shift is typically a gradual process and it nec- essarily implies changes in societal norms. Thus, as implied in Fase et al. (1992: 7), it can be best understood by studying the mechanisms that govern soci- etal norms and changes in them. A number of models have been developed to understand those overarching mechanisms. The construct of “ethnolinguistic vitality” (EV henceforth), proposed in Giles et al. (1977), aims at exploring and systematizing the role of socio-cultural factors on language maintenance, lan- guage shift and language loss. The concept is defined as the socio-structural factors that make a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup situations (Giles et al. 1977: 307). The EV of a group is made up of three cover factors, namely status, demographic and institutional support and control. A group with high values on these factors will have a high ethno- linguistic vitality, thus tending to maintain its language and preserve its dis- tinctive group characteristics; conversely, a group with low values on most will end up with a low EV; thus it will tend to assimilate and consequently may cease existence as a distinctive collective identity (see Landry and Allard 1994). Fur- thermore, in order to systematize the role of individual perceptions of the socio- structural factors on language behavior, Bourhis et al. (1981) proposed a Subjec- tive Ethnolinguistic Vitality Questionnaire (SRVQ), designed to obtain the subjective assessment of group members on the vitality factors both for their own group and for one or multiple other groups coexisting in the context. The EV has been used in many countries and with many language groups, and developed substantially further. In addition to the typological models, constructs such as “diglossia” and “do- main analysis” help to better understand the individual and interactional bases of linguistic behavior. Domain is conceived as “cluster of social situations typi- cally constrained by a common set of behavioral rules” (Fishman 1972 [1968]: 263). Linguistic behavior of members of a speech community is assumed to be governed by such sets of situational constraints. Diglossia, in turn, refers to a relatively stable stage in which the languages of the contact situation are func- tionally separated across a set of social domains and communicative situations (see Ferguson 2003 [1959]; Fishman 2003 [1967]). In this configuration, the variety that is used for more prestigious functions such as education, media and market is the high variety, while the variety used in more intimate domains and functions such as intra-familial communication, friendship and neighborhood is the low variety. When the functional separation of the languages is no more respected, the low language inevitably follows the path to shift (Fishman 2003 [1967]: 360) Brought to you by | Penn State - The Pennsylvania State University Authenticated Download Date | 5/23/15 5:10 AM 154 E. Öpengin and bilingualism tends to be temporary and transitional (Edwards 1994: 85). However, a number of authors working around “conflit linguistique” (Jardel 1982; Kremnitz 1991; Boyer 1997) take issue with the “harmonizing” interpretation of diglossia. For these scholars, the existence of a high and a low variety within a community inevitably presupposes conflictual relationships, characterized by concurrence, dominance, and violence (Boyer 1997: 6–14). The present study il- lustrates the difficulties with stable functional separation of languages in that, as it will be seen, not only the high language Turkish has started to exert its presence in low domains but also the low language Kurdish aspires to high domains and functions. In addition to diglossia, domain analysis and ethnolinguistic vitality, I em- ploy Edwards’ (1992) typological model, which proposes eleven categories/ perspectives: demography, sociology, linguistic, psychology, history, politics, geography, education, religion, economy and media. Each factor is analyzed according to the “speaker”, “language” and “setting”. For instance, the geo- graphical classification of linguistic situations makes three basic distinctions: (1) “unique minority” vs. “non-unique minority” depending on whether the language
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