Kurdish adolescents acquiring Turkish: Their self‐determined motivation and identification with L1 and L2 communities as predictors of L2 accent attainment

Abstract

In this study, we address the particularly charged question of why young adolescent Kurds living and attending school in Turkey, where their education is conducted entirely in Turkish, acquire the accent of the regional Turkish spoken at school and in society to different degrees of native‐likeness. We have chosen to study accent because previous sociolinguistic research and social views of L2 attainment have suggested accent to be the strongest marker of L2 learners' sociocultural identification (Baugh, 1999; Bongaerts, 1999; Labov, 1972; Moyer, 2004; Scovel, 1988). Moreover, we study accent because it is a salient source of linguistic profiling (Baugh, 1999), an important factor that can influence such extrinsic social rewards as access to jobs, entry into a country, housing, or membership in a group, particularly in communities that are imbued with violent conflicts. In our study, we called upon the constructs of identification with speakers of a person's first and second languages (Duff, 2002; Norton Peirce, 1995; Spolsky, 1989) and of self‐determined motivational patterns (Dörnyei, 2005; Pintrich, 2003; Ryan & Deci, 2000) to help elucidate the differing degrees of success in attaining a native‐like Turkish accent exhibited by Kurdish youth in a Turkish‐speaking society.

The influence of extramural access to mainstream culture social media on ethnic minority students’ motivation for language learning

“…The effect of this route was also 0.10 ( p < .05). The findings support the thesis that L2 ideal self is socially structured and that learners’ future L2 selves and projected L2 learning motivation are influenced by their current identification within the socio‐cultural environments (Huang et al ., ; Lamb, ; Polat & Schallert, ). Thus, as hypothesized, the participants’ everyday Chinese social media use influenced their future self‐guides in respect to Chinese language and culture and associated motivated efforts in learning both directly and indirectly via boosted positive acculturation mechanisms—bicultural identification and bicultural competence.…”

Exploring Affective Factors in L3 Learning: CLIL vs. Non-CLIL

“…Indeed, research has foregrounded affective factors so as to account for the fact that language gains, in whatever learning context, do not always follow clear patterns. Thus, there is evidence pointing to such factors and ultimate achievement in the target language being highly interrelated (Gardner 1985 ;Bernaus 1994 ;Dörnyei 2001 ;Masgoret and Gardner 2003 ;Bernaus et al 2004 ;Polat and Schallert 2013 ). This has led to the growing visibility of combined "mixedmethodologies" (Allen and Herron 2003 ;Ellis 2008 ), especially in the wake of the publication of Firth andWagner (1997, re-published 2007 ), somehow uniting the strengths of quantitative research with a qualitative dimension which enquires into those "affective factors" that are believed to infl uence SLA, including (language) attitudes, beliefs (and/or opinions), and motivation.…”

“…However, the internationalisation of English has problematised the very notion of that "valued community", which has led Dörnyei and Csizér ( 2002 ) to reformulate "integrativeness" in terms of their "L2 motivational self system" (already applied in foreign language acquisition research-see Polat and Schallert 2013 ). Thus, integrativeness now becomes an identifi cation process with "the ideal L2 Self" (Dörnyei 2009 ), an ideal image of oneself as a profi cient L2 speaker which learners are assumed to have and which reinforces their integrative disposition.…”

Inter-regional Migration and Intermarriage among Kurds in Turkey

“…the rejecting exchange theory for the case of Turkey). We also argue that 'language' is not a suitable indicator of ethnicity for the analysis of intermarriage patterns due to ongoing language shift among Kurds (Polat & Schallert, 2013;Zeyneloğlu et al, 2015;Zeyneloğlu et al, 2014). Additionally, we have to mention that even without reciprocal universalism intermarriage may lead to language shift (Kuo, 1978;Stevens, 1985;Alba et al, 2002).…”

“…Due to an evident language shift and widespread bilingualism among Kurds in Turkey (Polat & Schallert, 2013;O'Driscoll, 2014;Zeyneloğlu et al, 2015;Zeyneloğlu et al, 2014) we have introduced, for the first time, birth-region (re: territorial association) as a measure of ethnic origin instead of language as overt questions on ethnic identity or ethnic origin are absent in Turkish censuses and surveys. Our hypothesis is that in a universalistic setting intermarriage of both the minority (Kurds) as well as the majority group (Turks) to each other will correlate with education in line with modernization theory.…”