Türkiye’de Yaşayan İngiliz Kökenli Göçmenlerin Dil Kullanım, Tercih ve Tutumları

Even though Turkey has long been a country housing various immigrant groups, little is known about these communities’ communication patterns, cultural orientations or attitudes towards Turkish language and culture. This study focuses on a particular group of immigrants in Turkey and explores the language use, preference and attitudes of English immigrants residing in some city centers such as İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya and in various towns on the west coast. The data have been collected from English immigrants permanently living in Turkey through a questionnaire and face to face interviews. The findings indicate that even though English immigrants understand how important it is to be able speak and communicate in Turkish; they tend to use their native English language more often than Turkish in their every-day lives. Most of the participants admit that they encounter a number of difficulties when they communicate with native speakers of Turkish and that their language proficiency is not enough to be used for communicative purposes. Their patterns of language use might be interpreted as signs of willingness to ingrate themselves into Turkish society on the one hand, and on the other hand, being unable to integrate into Turkish society presumably due to lack of Turkish language knowledge.