“I mean, I like English even better than Turkish”: English-speaking German-Turkish Students as Multilingual Transnationals

Abstract

Focusing on a group of multilingual German-Turkish students enrolled at an urban high-school in Berlin, this paper inquires how ELF identities and transnational experiences inform each other. Semistructured, audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a larger project (Erduyan, 2019) are analyzed through microethnographic lenses informed by a scalar approach. Following Lam (2009) and Maloney & De Costa (2017) the analyses focus on the local, translocal, and transnational scales that permeate students’ narratives. Findings suggest that being ELF users/speakers help Turkish students fill in a gap that they perceive they cannot fill in by being Turkish or German speakers alone, that of being
cosmopolitan, global citizens with transnational experience. Findings also suggest the changing meanings of homeland for Turkish students —from the traditional, monolingual, provincial Turkey to a more urban, cosmopolitan Turkey. The inevitable implications of these changes for identity construction are discussed further in the article.

Full text

Available online at www.ejal.eu
http://dx.doi.org/10.32601/ejal.599250
Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 255–268
EJAL
Eurasian Journal of
Applied Linguistics
“I mean, I like English even better than
Turkish”: English-speaking German-Turkish
Students as Multilingual Transnationals
!
Işıl Erduyan a
*
a Boğaziçi University, Department of Foreign Language Education, Istanbul 34342, Turkey
Received 29 March 2019
Received in revised form 24 June 2019
Accepted 18 July 2019
APA Citation:
Erduyan, I. (2019). “I mean, I like English even better than Turkish”: English-speaking students as multilingual
transnationals. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 255–268. Doi: 10.32601/ejal.599250
Abstract
Focusing on a group of multilingual German-Turkish students enrolled at an urban high-school in Berlin,
this paper inquires how ELF identities and transnational experiences inform each other. Semi-
structured, audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a larger project (Erduyan, 2019) are analyzed
through microethnographic lenses informed by a scalar approach. Following Lam (2009) and Maloney &
De Costa (2017) the analyses focus on the local, translocal, and transnational scales that permeate
students’ narratives. Findings suggest that being ELF users/speakers help Turkish students fill in a gap
that they perceive they cannot fill in by being Turkish or German speakers alone, that of being
cosmopolitan, global citizens with transnational experience. Findings also suggest the changing
meanings of homeland for Turkish students —from the traditional, monolingual, provincial Turkey to a
more urban, cosmopolitan Turkey. The inevitable implications of these changes for identity construction
are discussed further in the article.
© 2019 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-access
article distributed unde r the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribut ion license (CC BY-NC-ND)
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: scales; translocality; interaction analysis; ELF; migration
1. Introduction
1.1. Multilingualism with English
While ELF as a field of study has been continuously expanding in scope, the
multilingual turn in SLA and its related disciplines have established its place in the
last couple of decades resulting in a rapid expansion in research base, methodological
and theoretical span (e.g., May, 2014). The interface between these two areas of
scholarship has been acknowledged for quite some time (e.g. House, 2003; Seidlhofer,
2017) leading research into readily embracing the notion “multilingualism with
*
Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-212-359-4612
E-mail address: isil.erduyan@boun.edu.tr

256 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
English,” a term coined and discussed by Jessner (2006) in an entire chapter of her
volume. As Seidlhofer (2017) writes, lingua franca interactions are multilingual by
definition, as “they bring into contact and mediate between linguacultures of two or
more speakers” (p. 392). To this end, Jenkins (2015) has proposed a framework in
which multilingualism encompasses ELF, and argues for a better conceptualization of
ELF communities by paying attention to their transience and mobility against the
background of the multilingual reality of our day.
1.2. The Present Study
The present study aligns with this thought, and locates users/speakers of English
as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF users/speakers) as, first and foremost,
multilingual individuals, who have become multilinguals due to their families’
migration histories. Rather than solely focusing on their ELF trajectories though, this
paper is concerned with situating the ELF user/speaker identity within students’
transnational experience at large. In order to understand how this relationship works,
the study takes a scalar approach (Lam, 2009; Maloney & De Costa, 2017) and focuses
on the local, translocal, and transnational scales as informing students’ narratives.
Starting with investigating the meanings of being residents of a global city like
Berlin, and moving onto the analyses of changing meanings of the homeland for them,
the paper finally investigates the construction of being ELF users/speakers. Before
moving onto these analyses, below I present the theoretical framework in which this
paper is situated.
1.3. Theoretical Framework
Scalar analysis has received significant attention in applied linguistics in recent
years (e.g. Blommaert, 2007, 2010; Blommaert, et al., 2005; Canagarajah & De Costa,
2016; Collins, et al., 2009). As Maloney and De Costa (2017) depict, there seems to be
two major lines of thinking in incorporating scales into language analyses: scales as
timescales or scales as “nested social contexts” (p.38). The former approach is not new
in educational research. The notion of timescales has been acknowledged within the
framework of Vygotskyan sociocultural theory for a long time (Lantolf, 2000a; Lantolf
& Thorne, 2006; Lantolf and Poehner, 2014). Sociocultural theory, Lantolf and Thorne
(2006) write, is not only a theory of social interaction, but “a framework through
which cognition can be systematically investigated without isolating it from social
context” (p.1). One of the major tenets of the sociocultural theory in analyzing
cognitive processes as inseparable from the social context is the genetic method, which
argues that developmental changes in mental functioning take place across multiple
and interrelated genetic domains. The slowest change in human development has
occurred in the phylogenetic domain across millions of years and has separated
humans from other organisms. Next, Vygotsky discusses the domain of sociocultural
history, which concerns the emergence of material and symbolic tools and the
production of culture through differentiation among the ways of using these tools,

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 257
such as language. The ontogenetic domain is situated at the intersection of these two
domains and concerns the individual development through appropriation and
integration of language and other mediational resources. Finally, the microgenetic
domain concerns the local, moment-to-moment learning processes that span much
shorter time frames as in learning particular features of a language (Lantolf, 2000b).
In a similar conceptualization, Lemke (2000) and Wortham (2004, 2006) have
extended the analysis of timescales to classroom learning and social identification
processes. Lemke (2000) contends that the fundamental units of analysis in the
classroom are processes that take place simultaneously on multiple timescales, and
identifies more than 20 such timescales that play roles in classroom identification
processes simultaneously. While some of these span milliseconds as in the duration of
neuron processing in learning, others might take multiple years as in the
implementation of curricula. In Wortham’s (2003, 2006) analyses, meanwhile, the
sociohistorical timescale in the classroom context encompasses the widely circulating
categories of identity, such as ethnicity, gender, or social class, which endure and
develop on the “sociohistorical” timescale of decades and centuries (Wortham, 2003, p.
229). Students mediate the sociohistorical timescale through their unique
developmental trajectories within their own ontogenetic timescales. Yet, they also
develop in the course of “distinctive activities, structures, and styles” (Wortham, 2003,
p. 229) of individual classroom and school settings, which exist and develop over
weeks, months, semesters, and years, i.e. within the mesolevel timescales. Finally,
Wortham (2003, 2006) analyzes the microgenetic timescale in relation to the most
local level of interaction in the classroom that takes seconds, minutes, a certain task
time or a lesson hour. In the 9th grade English lessons that he analyzed, Wortham
(2003, 2006) demonstrates how sociohistorically developed identity models such as
gender stereotypes, or those derived from the widely circulating systems of
individualism and collectivism, intensify locally across weeks and months in the
classroom “through repeated microgenetic enactments in particular classroom
conversations” (p. 232).
The latter approach to scales that Maloney and De Costa (2017) identify,
meanwhile, focuses on scales as social constructions. In this sense, as Blommaert
(2010) put it, “[d]ifferent scales can interact, collaborate and overlap or be in conflict
with one another, because each time there are issues of normativity at play” (p. 37).
Based on this understanding, and extending Lam’s (2009) framework, Maloney and
De Costa (2017) identify the interaction among local, translocal, and transnational
scales across student writings, emphasizing that multiple scales inform the language
development of transnational students. They specifically focus on the imagined
communities that make up three scale levels. The local scale that concerns the
surrounding city and its institutions, the translocal scale that concerns “imagined
community of other transnationals living within the same national borders”; and the
transnational scale which refers to the “the imagined community of speakers globally
or those of the same ethnic heritage” (p. 39).

258 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
The present paper will adopt this approach and attend to these three scales in its
analyses of interview accounts with German-Turkish high school students. The
guiding question in these analyses is How does their transnational experience inform
students’ construction of multilingual identities in an ELF context?
2. Method
The data analyzed in this paper is part of a larger linguistic ethnographic study
that has been reported across various papers and a volume (e.g. Erduyan, 2017, 2019).
Focusing on five German-Turkish high school students enrolled in a mainstream
Gymnasium in Berlin, the study at large analyzes the multilingual construction of
identity across language classes (German, Turkish, English). In this paper, data
drawn from interviews with four of these participants will be presented. Of these four,
three are female, Berlin-born students (Deniz
†
, Ela, Simla) and one is a Turkish-born
male student (Mert) who migrated to Berlin with his family while in the second grade.
Regular classroom observations that spanned three academic semesters were
supplemented by field notes and audio-recordings of participants’ interactions. The
present paper, however, focuses on the semi-structured interview data that come from
8 different interviews conducted with the participants and their language teachers at
school and lasted from 45 minutes to 2 hours in duration. The interviews were
conducted at various different points in the fieldwork timeline, audiotaped and
transcribed for a closer linguistic ethnographic analysis (see Appendix for
transcription conventions). Interview questions spanned a range of reflective
questions that elicited participants’ extended responses to questions concerning
identity and those that focused on more specific, event-related topics.
The analyses in this paper adopt the notion of scales as an analytical tool as framed
by Lam (2009) and De Costa & Maloney (2017), and as depicted in the previous
section. The local, translocal, and transnational scales will be under focus in each
section below as informing participants’ discourses in the interviews. Different than
De Costa & Maloney (2017), who focus on the imagined communities as scale makers,
the analyses in this paper will treat these three scales as three different levels of
understanding the participants’ discourses.
2.1. The Local Scale of Berlin: Constructing Attachment to the City
In the realm of understanding participants’ linguistic identity construction
processes, my interviews with them involved a focus on inquiring their takes on being
residents of a city like Berlin. All of them openly and strongly stated their attachment
to the city by particularly centering on its big-city-like qualities, such as liveliness of
streets. Among them, Mert and Deniz gave quite articulated personal accounts. I
asked Mert whether he could see himself live in another city in Germany:
1 Mert: yok (.) Berlinden başka bir şehirde yaşayamam
†
All names are pseudonyms.

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 259
2 Işıl: Berlinde Kreuzbergden baska yerde yaş-
3 Mert: yok (.)Berlin(.) yani illa Kreuzberg olmasına gerek değil [öyle bi ayrım yapmam da
4 Işıl: [herhangi bi yeri
5 Mert: başka şehirlere de gittim Berlin gibi değil yaa […] Essene gittim mesela Allahım
6 gittim >1-2 haftalığına kalmaya gittim< 2 saat sonra geri döndüm [..] dayanamadım ya:
7 insan görmedim […] insan yoktu dışarıda >bunu herkes söylüyo< Berlinde yaşayan bir
8 insan başka bir yerde öyle kolay kolay yaşayamaz
1 Mert: no (.) I can’t live in a city other than Berlin
2 Işıl: in Berlin in any place other than Kreuzberg [live]-
3 Mert: no (.)Berlin(.)I mean it doesn’t have to be Kreuzberg [I don’t make such a distinction
4 Işıl: [anywhere
5 Mert: but I’ve been to other cities but they’re not like Berlin ma:n […] I went to Essen for
6 instance my God I went >I went there to stay for 1-2 weeks< I returned after two hours [..]
7 couldn’t take it ma:n didn’t see a human being […] there was nobody on the streets >
8 everybody says this< a person who lives in Berlin cannot live in any other place easily
anymore
Mert’s opinions about living in Berlin are heavily marked by references to the local
scale of the city. He first clarifies that he does not necessarily mean Kreuzberg when
he says living in Berlin, thus referring to a larger scale than the immigrant-heavy
neighborhood at the heart of Berlin. He then explains that Berlin is different than any
other city in Germany, and to support this stance, he draws on an anecdote in which
he compares Berlin with Essen. His framing of this narrative with my god and his
exaggerated tone as in there was nobody on the streets further enhances his stance.
In a similar vein, in my interview with Deniz, I bring up the topic of moving to
another neighborhood in Berlin:
9 Işıl: hiç kendini sen başka bi mahallede yaşarken düşünebiliyo musun Berlinde?
10 Deniz: alışamam ya:
11 Işıl: zum Beispiel Spandau [joking]
12 Deniz: nei::n (.) hayatta ben buralardan çıkma:m (.) annem diyodu Mitteye taşınalım
13 Işıl: ha orası da temiz güzel nezih
14 Deniz: orayı bilmiyom ya:: istemiyom ben Kreuzbergden hiç çıkmak istemiyom (.) hele
15 burda Schlesisches Tor Schlesiden hiç çıkmak istemiyom
16 Işıl: neden? orda ne var?
17 Deniz: seviyom buraları
18 Işıl: canlılığı mı hoşuna gidiyo?
19 Deniz: evet yani
9 Işıl: can you ever imagine yourself living in another neighborhood in Berlin?
10 Deniz: I can’t get used to it ma:n
11 Işıl: for example Spandau [joking]
12 Deniz: no:: (.) I can no way in life lea:ve here (.) my mom used to say let’s move to Mitte
13 Işıl: oh yes that’s also clean nice classy
14 Deniz: I don’t know about it ma::n I don’t want it I don’t want to leave Kreuzberg at all (.)
15 particularly here at Schlesisches Tor I don’t want to ever leave Schlesi
16 Işıl: why? what’s up with it?
17 Deniz: I like it here

260 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
18 Işıl: do you like the liveliness?
19 Deniz: I mean yes
Deniz’s reaction to my sarcastic comment in line 11 and her following statement
where she states she can no way in life leave here indicate her sense of the local space
of Schlesisches Tor, which is a small part of Kreuzberg with vibrant multicultural life
and which is where Deniz lives with her family. As in the case of Mert, Deniz
constructs her rationale around not being able to live anywhere else, which she
repeats four times in lines 10, 12, 14, 15. Both Mert and Deniz indicate a strong sense
of attachment to the city through emotionally laden comments that they construct
through language.
In addition to these accounts, the participants have also stated their affiliations
with the city in a rather direct way, simply by focusing on “being from Berlin.” While
it is quite common to hear various self-affiliations among young German-Turkish
students of this age group, affiliation with their city of residence in particular is much
less commonly heard among the Turkish immigrants living in Europe (see Yağmur,
2009; 2016), although it is quite conventional in Turkey. The participants express
their affiliation with Berlin in the same way that they would do if they were residing
in Turkey: by adding the Turkish derivational suffix, -l(i) to the word Berlin to mark
relation. Ela explains her affiliation in a rather detailed way:
20 Ela: Zaten Türkiyeye gidince Almancı diyolar gıcık oluyom [...] buraya geliyoz yabancı
21 diyolar oraya gidiyoz Almancı diyolar [smiles] öyle bi şey var [...] ben zaten kendi
22 memleketim şey Erzurum (.) oraya hiç gitmedim [...] aslında mantık olarak Berlinliyim
23 artık hani (.) burda doğmuş büyümüşüm
20 Ela: When I go to Turkey they call me Almancı I’m so pissed off [...] we come here and they
21 call us foreigners we go there and they call us Almancı [smiles] there’s such a thing [...] I
22 mean my own hometown is Erzurum (.) I’ve never been there [...] in fact logically speaking
23 I’m from Berlin actually (.) I was born and raised here
Ela refers to a well-known Turkish tongue-twister-like expression that is used to
describe German-Turks, i.e. “Türkiye’de Almancı, Almanya’da yabancı.” Her smile
and her following comment there is such a thing indicate that she is actually aware of
the intertextual reference that she makes with this usage and she does not really
subscribe to it. In her next sentence, she refers to her hometown, by which she means
the town where her family has come from and that she has never been to. As her line
of thinking continues, she finally uses Berlinli to describe herself, adding also the
rationale that she was born and raised here. The way she constructs this as in, in fact
logically speaking I’m from Berlin actually, gives the impression that she is also
aware of the way Berlinli sounds unusual.
In my interviews with her, Simla sounds more confident about being from Berlin,
but she also gives the impression that she is aware of the uncommonness of this
ascription herself:
24 Simla: ben kendimi Türk kökenli bir Alman vatandaşı olarak tanımlıyorum […]
25 eskiden sorarlardı bana annemin ilk çocuğuyum ve kızım (.) herkes sorardı

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 261
26 >Berlinliyim<
24 Simla: I describe myself as a German citizen with Turkish background […] when
25 they asked me in the past I’m the first child of my mom and I’m a girl (.) everybody
26 would ask >I’m from Berlin<
Simla describes herself in a rather formal way at the beginning, but then she
adopts a more animated tone with her insertion of the exact quotes that she used as a
child in line 26. What she means here is how she immediately tells people that she is
from Berlin after saying two introductory statements about herself. Said in a faster
tone, her quote I’m from Berlin sounds more defensive than a regular statement.
Together with Ela’s statement in the previous excerpt, being Berlinli appears as one
way in their discourse in which the participants show their affiliation with the city.
All in all, participants make clear references to the local scale of Berlin in their
interview accounts, and they indicate a sense of attachment to the city. They
construct this discourse through exploiting remarkably articulate forms of speech,
with their exaggerated tone as in the use of my god, extending vowels, or repetitions.
They also incorporate Berlinli in their self-description, a pretty common form of
marking affiliation with a place in the Turkish language, but is much less commonly
used in the case of places outside Turkey. Their acknowledgement of the unusualness
of this ascription seems to suggest that, their affiliation with the local scale of Berlin
points to a sense of belonging to a large vibrant city, in a native sense that Turks
normally would do with their homeland in Turkey. In a way, this sense is perpetuated
by the multicultural ‘global city’ quality of Berlin, with certain neighborhoods like
Schlesisches Tor being home to people from a large number of ethnic and national
backgrounds.
2.2. The Translocal Connection: Changing Meanings of Turkey
As part of the 9th grade curriculum in the Fall semester, the Turkish teachers at
school organized a trip to Istanbul, which I had a chance to join due to my additional
role at school as a materials developer in the Turkish program. As an important part
of this excursion, the teachers organized a visit to a well-known state high-school in
central Istanbul. In addition to observing some classes, the students had a chance to
socialize with their local peers, playing and chatting with them. At one point in these
observations, the two groups had a classroom discussion on migration. In our
interview at the end of the year back in Berlin, I ask Ms. Kaya (MK), the Turkish
teacher, about her opinions on the trip and her take on the encounters students
experienced. Ms. Kaya narrates this discussion and its aftermath with her students in
the following way:
27 MK: şimdi bizim ögrencilere dedim ki ben=göç konusu şimdi siz dedim bakın göç etmiş
28 ailelerin çocukları olaraktan Almanyada yaşıyosunuz (.) Berlinde yaşıyosunuz
29 Almanyanın başkenti dört milyonluk bi nüfus ve biz şimdi burada İstanbulda büyük bi
30 metropoldayız (.) yani dünyada sayılı büyük şehirlerden birisi de İstanbul (.) fakat burada
31 yaşayan insanlar da göçü yaşamış yani yerli İstanbullu bulmak zor
32 Işıl: hı hı

262 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
33 MK: yani belki bir iki kuşak geriye gittiğin zaman mutlaka ya Anadolunun bi yerinden
34 geliyordur ya yurtdışından geliyordur ama genelinde Anadolunun bir yerlerinden
35 geliyordur yani
36 Işıl: tabi tabi
37 MK: orada göçü nasıl yaşıyosunuz (.) öğrencilerle bizim öğrenciler kendi göç hikayelerini
38 anlattı ve Beşiktaştaki öğrenciler de kendi hikayelerini anlattılar çok ilginç şeyler var
39 Işıl: tabi tabi
40 MK: ve kesişen şeyler var
41 Işıl: muhakkak
42 MK: konu olarak da o yalnızlık büyük şehirde yaşamın verdiği sorunlar
43 Işıl: evet
44 MK: işte kuşaklar arası çatışma yani çok ilginçti
27 MK: well I told our students that=the topic of migration I told them listen you are living
28 in Germany as children of families who migrated (.) living in Berlin the capital of Germany
29 a city of four million and we are now here in a large metropolis (.) I mean one of the few
30 large cities in the world is İstanbul (.) but people living here have also experienced
31 migration I mean its difficult to find natives of İstanbul
32 Işıl: uh huh
33 MK: I mean perhaps when you go back one or two generations they come either from
34 somewhere in Anatolia or somewhere from abroad but generally they come from somewhere
35 in Anatolia
36 Işıl: of course of course
37 MK: how do you experience migration there (.) our students told their migration stories and
38 the students at Beşiktaş told their own stories there are very interesting things
39 Işıl: of course of course
40 MK: and there are intersecting things
41 Işıl: for sure
42 MK: and as topics that loneliness problems that come with living in a big city
43 Işıl: yes
44 MA: like generation clash I mean it was very interesting
The connection that Ms. Kaya seems to have drawn in her class is the similarity
between Istanbul and Berlin in terms of being two large cities receiving immigrants,
the difficulty of finding genuine natives in both, and the similarities in residents’
experiences as immigrants. In this account, Istanbul appears more similar to Berlin
than to Anatolian towns that most of the students’ families have come from. Thus,
Ms. Kaya draws on a translocal scale in describing her take on this experience they
went through together in Istanbul. This perspective is a novel way to approach
migration from Turkey, and at its core lies the connection drawn between Berlin and
Istanbul as two large cities. Instead of the traditional homeland rhetoric, Ms. Kaya’s
account draws on a renewed sense of connecting with the homeland.
Mert was one of those students who were influenced by the trip to a great extent. In
our end of the year interview, he gives the following account:
45 Mert: Türkiyeden döndüğümü düşünmüyorum hala Türkiyedeyim o etkideyim hala
46 Işıl: ha: gezinizde doğru:
47 Mert: gezi olsun yaz tatili olsun [..] kendimi Türkiyede gibi hissediyorum […]
45 Mert: I don’t think I’ve really returned from Turkey I’m still in Turkey I’m still in that mode
46 Işıl: o:h you mean on your trip ri:ght

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 263
47 Mert: both our trip and the summer holiday [..] I still feel like I’m in Turkey […]
Mert expresses his feelings about returning from Turkey in a rather metaphorical,
almost poetic way. He probably means in his turns here that he still remembers the
summer holiday and the Istanbul trip so vividly, and they still occupy his mind,
drawing on a translocal scale. This leads me into questioning whether it was his first
time visiting Istanbul.
48 Işıl: senin ilk [seferin miydi İstanbulda?
49 Mert: [benim İstanbulda ilk seferimdi yani=
50 Işıl: =nasıl buldun?
51 Mert: bi çok şehre gittim ama Adanayla kıyaslayabileceğim bi şehir yani Adanayı hiçbir
52 şehirle kıyaslamazdım ama İstanbulu kıyaslarım
53 Işıl: hmm
48 Işıl: was this your [first time in İstanbul?
49 Mert: [it was my first time in İstanbul I mean=
50 Işıl: =how did you find it?
51 Mert: I’ve been to many cities but it’s a city that I can compare with Adana I would never
52 compare Adana with anywhere else but I can compare İstanbul with it
53 Işıl: hmm
By comparing the two cities in this account, Mert makes another translocal
connection. Adana, where Mert was born, is a large city in Southeast Turkey, and
apparently, it seemed to be incomparable to even Berlin in Mert’s imagination. He
does not particularly address the size of the city here, but it seems to be more about
the vibrancy of this city that lead Mert into thinking this way. In this sense, the local
scale that he situates himself that was depicted in the previous section seems to be in
play in his translocal account, too. His approach to İstanbul as a first timer,
meanwhile, sounds more like an outsider’s approach. In line with Ms. Kaya’s take
depicted above, Mert approaches İstanbul as a tourist, a consumer of what the city
has to offer. He clarifies this later in the interview:
54 Mert: İstanbulda kendimi böyle yabancı bi sehirdeymişim gibi hissetim yani (.) Türkiyeye
55 ait değilmiş gibi hissettim
56 Işıl: dünya şehri gibi di mi?
57 Mert: aynen […] başka insanlar da yani başka ülkelerden gelen insanlar da çok olduğu için
58 […] bi değişik bi şey oldu benim için
54 Mert: actually in İstanbul I felt like I was in a foreign city I mean (.) I felt as if it did not
55 belong to Turkey
56 Işıl: like a world city right?
57 Mert: exactly […] as there were other people I mean many people from other countries too
58 […] it was something different for me
Mert’s way of describing how he situates himself in İstanbul is worth attention
here. He simply describes the world-city quality of İstanbul in his own words, by
pointing to feeling like a foreigner, or seeing people from other countries. This take is
quite different from his take on Berlin depicted in the previous section. He does not
reflect his way of approaching Istanbul as a local anymore.

264 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
Similar accounts have come from Simla, who used the exact same expression in
describing her feelings about being in Antalya, another large city on the southern
coast of Turkey known to be touristy. Simla compares Antalya with her family’s
hometown Kayseri, a conservative central Anatolian city, which is where she feels
more like being in Turkey:
59 Işıl: Türkiye’yi bu sefer nasıl gördün? farklı gördün mü?
60 Simla: evet ben zaten Alanyada kendimi hiç Türkiyede hissetmedim Antalyada falan
61 kendimi hiç Türkiyede hissetmiyorum […] Kayseriye gidince daha da değişiyo orda ancak
62 Türkiyede olduğumu hissediyorum
59 Işıl: How did you perceive Turkey this time? any different?
60 Simla: yes in Alanya I didn’t feel like I was in Turkey at all I don’t feel like I’m in Turkey
61 When I’m somewhere like Antalya […] this changes when I go to Kayseri only there I feel
62 that I’m in Turkey
These three places seem to evoke different senses of translocality in Simla’s
narratives. While she understands the more cosmopolitan quality of touristic towns,
she also relates being in Turkey more easily with being in her family hometown.
Large cities like Istanbul, Antalya, or Adana find place in these narratives in terms
of being cosmopolitan places that the students feel more attachment to. Students’
references to these cities point to their awareness of the translocal scales that they
situate themselves within. As much as feeling a sense of attachment to Berlin at a
local scale, their neutral approach to the large cities in Turkey that are not their
families’ hometowns suggest their revised understanding of homeland connections. As
analyzed in the first section above, this contributes to their identity construction as
global citizens. They are aware of the differences across hometowns and other towns,
smaller cities and big cities, and similarities between big cities although they are in
different countries. This awareness of translocality seems to be a part of their
identities that was not so pronounced in their parents’ generation. Besides a sense of
place and belonging, they also construct this identity through their linguistic
resources. At this point, their take on English as a Lingua Franca deserves closer
attention, which I will do next.
2.3. Being Transnational Users/Speakers of ELF
Turkish migration to Germany has been continuing for more than 60 years now,
and each generation has developed its own set of living habits in the transnational
scale. An important pattern change has been in terms of their ways of spending
summer vacation in Turkey. A remarkable number of Turkish families now own more
property on the coasts where they spend most of their time in the summer, and visit
their hometowns much less for their family obligations. This generational change has
led into new patterns of living in Turkey.

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 265
In relation to living in cosmopolitan places rather than their grandparents’
hometowns, speaking English on their holidays in Turkey find a place in almost all
the participants’ narratives. In most cases, they narrate stories of meeting up with
tourists from other countries in their holidays in Turkey. Simla describes this in the
context of narrating her family’s summerhouse in Antalya, where they have Russian
neighbors. She talks about her friendship with her Russian peers that she constructed
in English. This narrative then reminds her of an anecdote in Berlin that she just
went through:
63 Simla: ben de çok İngilizce konuştum mesela Rus komşularımız olduğu için Rusça iki
64 kelime biliyorum fazla bilmiyorum yani iki tane kelime o kadar kelime arasında ama
65 İngilizce mesela iyi konuşuyodum (.) konuşuyodum (.) karşımdaki anlamıyodu ama
66 karşımdakinin İngilizcesi yetersiz mecburen böyle el hareketleri falan
67 Işıl: evet senden daha iyi konuşan biriyle konuşsan çaba sarfedersin
68 Simla: evet dün zile basıp durdular çöp atmaya gidiyodum bi gürültü patırtı çocuklar
69 zannettim was ist los diyodum bi baktım karşımda kadın I’M SORRY I’M LOSING MY
70 KEY dedi OKAY NO PROBLEM dedim kadın böyle titriyodu
63 Simla: and I spoke a lot of English too for example as we have Russian neighbors I know
64 two words of Russian not much I mean two words among all words but English for
65 example I spoke (.) spoke well (.) the person talking to me would not understand his
66 English is insufficient so we’re bound to use gestures and the like
67 Işıl: yes if you speak to somebody who speaks better than you you put some effort
68 Simla: yes yesterday they kept on ringing the bell I was going outside to throw away the
69 garbage there was noise suddenly I thought it was children I said what’s going on and
70 suddenly there was a woman in front of me I’M SORRY I’M LOSING MY KEY she said and
I said OKAY NO PROBLEM she was shaking
The brief exchange Simla had with the stranger at their doorstep in Kreuzberg that
she quoted in English seems to be a regular daily exchange that people living in a
multi-ethnic neighborhood of a global city can experience. The reason why Simla
brings this up at this point in the conversation is to draw an analogy to her experience
in Antalya, where she speaks better English than her Russian neighbors, according to
her account. In both of her examples, Simla does not only draw on the transnational
scale of various encounters, but also on being an ELF user/speaker. While she
perceives her English better than her interlocutors in both situations, she continues to
make a grammatical tense error in quoting her (I’m sorry, I’m losing my key).
English as spoken in the summer in Turkey has found place frequently in Mert’s
narratives, too. Like Simla, Mert’s family has a separate summerhouse than their
hometown residences. In one of my first interviews with him, he gives the following
account:
71 Mert: ben İngilizce’yi yazlıkta falan konuşuyorum
72 Işıl: sen onu anlatıyodun evet
73 Mert: İngilizce zaten bence derste öğrenilmez ya: dışarda öğrenilir bence gramatiği
71 Mert: I speak English at the summerhouse and the like
72 Işıl: you told me about it before yes

266 Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268
73 Mert: you cannot learn English in class if you ask me you learn it outside I think its
grammar
Besides clearly locating the context where he speaks English the most, Mert’s
account also reveals how he conceptualizes the summerhouse in Turkey as a natural
extension of his life. He makes the point that English is best learned outside class,
particularly its grammar. Here, he probably refers to the acquisition of English
grammar rather than its explicit learning in class. Mert further continues with his
take on English:
74 Mert: İngilizcem yani İngilizceyi Türkçeden bile daha çok seviyorum öyle söyliyim
75 Işıl: hmm
76 Mert: bilmiyom yani şey bi dil olduğu için dünya dili [olduğu için
77 Işıl: [dünya dili hmm
78 Mert: yani herkesin anlaşçağı bir dil olarak kolay bi dil Türkçeden de kolay Almancadan
79 daha da kolay
80 Işıl: hı hı o kesin
81 Mert: ondan sonra kulağa da hoş geliyo
82 Işıl: hmm
REFERENCE TO TURKEY, AS IF SUMMER IS SPENT HERE
74 Mert: my English I mean I like English even better than Turkish let me put it that way
75 Işıl: hmm
76 Mert: I don’t know like it’s kind of a world language I mean [it is
77 Işıl: [world language hmm
78 Mert: I mean it’s an easy language as far as everybody’s communication is concerned easier
79 than Turkish and much easier than German
80 Işıl: huh huh that’s for sure
81 Mert: and also it sounds nice
82 Işıl: hmm
In this account, it is remarkable how Mert constructs his takes on Turkish and
German, his two native languages, and English. Apparently, the world language
quality of English is what impresses Mert the most. This goes in parallel to his take
on being residents of a global city and living translocally as depicted above. He also
adds the ease of learning English and that it sounds nice to the ear, as the other two
reasons why he thinks that way, which indicate his positive approach to learning and
speaking English.
As transnational individuals, the participants imagine and depict the role of
English in their lives as relevant to their mobility. It is very natural for them to
separate spaces for using English within these lives. It is also natural for them to
recognize themselves as users/speakers of ELF in Berlin, who can run into other
users/speakers of ELF anytime within the scale of their transnational lives. These
accounts are in parallel to the participants’ self-positioning at the local scale of Berlin
and the translocal scale of homeland connections.
3. Discussion and Conclusion

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 267
This paper has sought to investigate how identity construction in ELF contexts
could be situated within the larger transnational experience of multilingual students.
The first two sections have depicted the local and translocal scales that inform
participants’ constructions of attachment to their city and the changing meanings of
homeland for them. Against this background, the third section focused on the
transnational scale, which participants construct through being users/speakers of
ELF. While being users/speakers of ELF in this context is inherently related to being
transnational, it also appears as inseparable from the speakers’ self-positioning as
global citizens and their connections with the homeland, both of which are
constructed through multilingual resources. Living in Berlin, or in a neighborhood in
Berlin, requires exploiting these resources on a daily basis. Likewise, changing
perceptions of the homeland is related to the speakers’ exploiting of multilingual
resources as much as their changing relationship with the Turkish language
compared to their parents’ generation. As depicted in detail in Erduyan (2014),
speaking more standard forms of Turkey-Turkish is one of the many ways this
relationship is enacted.
Identity construction in ELF contexts need to be perceived from a wider perspective
than being confined to the limits of English in order to achieve a fuller understanding
of their role in multilingual repertoires. Research on identity in SLA and its related
disciplines has so far centered on a myriad of ways to analyze linguistic practices. A
similar expansion in ELF research might help broaden the field to fit the more
encompassing research framework of multilingualism and attend to the
linguacultures more closely.
This paper has sought to contribute to the understanding of the linguistic identity
construction of ELF users/speakers from a more holistic perspective. In this vein, it
has demonstrated ELF users/speakers’ self-positioning within the transnational
experiences that they go through in the form of claiming global citizenry and
constructing different relationships with the homeland. Further research might
illuminate how exactly these links are reflected in EFL practices.
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Appendix A. Transcription conventions:
Turkish originals: regular case
German originals: bold case
English orignals: CAPITAL LETTERS
English translations: italics
(.) short pause
(x.0) x seconds
(…) omitted speech
>xx< fast tempo
>>xx<< very fast tempo
xx- abortion of utterance
=xx fast connection
[…] commentary
:: phonemic lengthening
°low° low volume
°°low°° very low volume
underlined high volume

Erduyan/ Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2) (2019) 255–268 269
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