Planning the Languages of Turkey
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Nevra Ünver-Lischewski Planning the Languages of Turkey Abstract: This paper examines the sociolinguistic profile of the Ottoman Empi- re from the second half of the nineteenth century on until Turkish Language Reform 1928. It studies the patterns of usage of Turkish by applying the model of diglossia to identify the specific characteristics of language use in different social settings. Those and other related linguistic concepts such as multilingua- lism and variety, will be applied to the specific language situation of the Otto- man Empire. This paper describes the period of Turkish in which the Turkish language was simultaneously written with several writing systems, i.e. multiple graphization of Turkish with Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew Alphabets. This theoretical analysis will be extended with the sociolinguistic aspects of writing and with the critical examination of the written products of Turkish (in both L- and H-Varieties and in multiple graphization). The aim is to show the dyna- mics of multilingualism and the contribution of different language communi- ties to the literary progress of the society. This paper briefly describes the lan- guage policy of the Turkish Republic with special focus on its effects on the sociolinguistic profile. Keywords: Language Policy, Language Planning, Multilingualism, Diglossia, H-L Varieties, History of Writing, Multiple Graphization 1 Introduction Language policy and planning, generally speaking, refer to a conscious at- tempt by government, institutions, scholars, and intellectuals to modify the usage and structure of language. Language planning efforts include the selec- tion, standardisation, implementation, and elaboration of a certain language variety. Those efforts are generally presented as an attempt at solving commu- nication problems and/or promoting literacy in the speech community. Conse- quently, state authorities have a ready-made justification for their practices Note: I would like to thank Dr. Peter-Arnold Mumm for reading earlier drafts of this essay and providing various secondary sources. My special thanks go to Dr. Talin Suciyan for her gener- ous support on all levels, from reading, discussing, and commenting drafts to suggesting and providing a number of primary and secondary sources. Open Access. © 2018 Nevra Ünver-Lischewski, publiziert von De Gruyter. Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Lizenz. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601268-006 246 Nevra Ünver-Lischewski of language planning, and researches in this field mainly focus on linguistic strategies for the emergence of a standard language and its implications and function in the speech community. However, the promotion of a standard lan- guage exerts an impact on the situation of languages and speakers of the speech community before language planning. The constrictions of language behaviour and use have resulted in an asymmetrical development and subse- quent endangerment of those languages not chosen as standard language. Language planning has been a feature of many multilingual and diglossic speech communities. It was extolled and promoted in Turkey1 as a necessity for social advancement with the aim of increasing low rates of literacy. This narrative has been continuously repeated in Turkish official historiography. The practices of Turkish language planning found their justification thereby, leading to disregard the holistic analysis of the Ottoman Empire’s sociolinguis- tic profile before language planning and the consequences of Turkish language policy on that profile. This paper aims at examining the sociolinguistic profile of the Ottoman Empire and the linguistic characteristics of Turkish, with spe- cial emphasis on the period in which the Turkish language was simultaneously written with several writing systems, i.e., Armenian, Greek and Hebrew, and the literary corpus produced in those scripts. With this goal in mind, I will first undertake a description of terms and concepts, namely, the sociolinguistic profile and multilingualism. Secondly, those concepts, as well as related terms and linguistic models such as variety and diglossia, will be applied to the specific language situation of the Ottoman Empire.2 The description of the Ottoman sociolinguistic profile before the lan- guage planning of Turkey will lead to an alternative approach to rethink lan- guage policies, in particular, the Turkish one, and attract attention upon lan- guages and literary products that were silenced for the benefit of standard language. Allographic publications have laid the ground for the linguistic da- tabase, namely, the corpus of this study. The study included the scrutiny of pioneering written products of Turkish and the newspapers Mecmua-i Havadis and Ceride-i Şarkiyye (1854–1888), for the Ottoman period, and Cumhuriyet (1928–1929), for the early republican period. This research utilized qualitative 1 Turkish language planning included the Harf Inkılabı (Alphabet Reform) in 1928, which launched the replacement of Arabic script by the Latin alphabet in the graphic representation of the Turkish language, and the Dil Devrimi (Language Revolution), the practices for the im- plementation of a new alphabet and the “purification” of the Turkish language from “foreign” elements. 2 The terms can be used in slightly different senses when employed in the particular linguistic situation of the Ottoman Empire. Planning the Languages of Turkey 247 methods, particularly a corpus-based content analysis. The use of this analyti- cal method will allow discovering the sociolinguistic characteristics shaped by genre that encompass the structures and practices governing the form and con- tent of written products. 2 The Sociolinguistic Profile of the Ottoman Empire before the Turkish Language Planning The sociolinguistic profile of the Ottoman Empire was characterized by multi- lingualism. Here, the term multilingualism is utilized to indicate the societies that accommodate varying numbers of languages and language varieties, which constitute the linguistic repertoire of the speech community. The linguis- tic repertoire may refer to the different varieties of a single language or may comprise several languages with varieties. In multilingual societies, a particu- lar language may function as a common language between linguistic groups among a number of other coexisting languages. The individual speakers of a speech community may not usually have mastery of the whole range of avail- able languages. The languages and speakers of the linguistic community inter- act with each other in a sociocultural context.3 The multilingualism of the Ottoman Empire must be examined in a multi- dimensional framework since the empire spread throughout a vast landscape. It englobed territories from North Africa to the Balkans and consequently com- prised a heterogeneous population. The territory of the Ottoman Empire ac- commodated various languages and varieties, and the languages were in con- stant interaction. The linguistic repertoire of the speech community in the Ottoman Empire included the Turkish language, as well as Indo-European (Armenian, Persian, Kurdish, Greek, Ladino, and Slavic languages), Caucasian (Circassian, Geor- gian, Laz), and Semitic languages (Arabic and Syriac).4 The linguistic groups were heterogeneous, with individual speakers mainly multilingual,5 mastering various languages and alphabets. The common language for different linguis- 3 For societal multilingualism see, Hamers and Blanc (2003) 292–293. 4 The presentation of the coexisting languages and their specific linguistic character cannot be clear enough due to the difficulties in the collection of data. This list of languages is an approximation based on the multilingual written corpus analysed within the scope of this paper and the research done by Andrews (2002), Boeschoten (1998) 3–4, and Imber (2002) 1–2. 5 Multilingual refers here to the linguistic repertoire of individual speakers. 248 Nevra Ünver-Lischewski tic groups was Turkish. The linguistic characteristics of the Turkish language will be examined in the following pages. 3 Turkish Turkish was horizontally distributed over the vast geographical area of the Ot- toman Empire. Besides the regional varieties, characterized by their specific phonological, syntactic and lexical features, additionally there are specific characteristics of usage in certain social settings. The linguistic assessment of those circumstances makes it necessary to apply the concept of diglossia to examine the linguistic situation of Turkish in the Ottoman Empire. Diglossia, according to Ferguson’s definition, refers to bilingualism in or- der to explain the usage of two different languages or two different varieties by a single linguistic community in a specific regional spot, with each language or language variety having a precise range of functions. Ferguson has provided the following definition of diglossia: DIGLOSSIA is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation.6 Ferguson’s