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Article published In: Historical Linguistics at School
Edited by Theodore Markopoulos and Brian D. Joseph
[Pedagogical Linguistics 6:2] 2025
► pp. 211–230

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Greek and Turkish linguistic nationalism in language and history coursebooks

A comparative study

ORCiD logo with link | University of Vienna
 | University of Vienna
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Vienna.

Published online: 22 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.24004.sam
Abstract
The article compares linguistic nationalism theories in conjunction with the reception of historical linguistic findings (especially those about linguistic families) in instruction books of secondary education in Greece and Turkey. It is suggested that Greek linguistic nationalism can be described as “introvert” in the sense that it repudiates or disregards the genetic association of Greek to the rest of the Indo-European languages whereas Turkish linguistic nationalism is accordingly classified as “extrovert” since it emphasizes the linguistic link of Turkish to the rest of the Turkic language family and seeks to expand this connection to the theoretically dubious (Ural-)Altaic (macro)family. This methodological dichotomy between introvert and extrovert linguistic nationalism is justified by comparing how the linguistic concept of a language family is presented in history and language handbooks in both countries.
Article outline
  • 1.Introductory remarks
    • 1.1(Historical) linguistics and nationalistic narratives
    • 1.2Greek and Turkish linguistic nationalism(s)
    • 1.3Greek linguistic nationalism
    • 1.4Turkish linguistic nationalism
    • 1.5A contrastive approach: Introvert versus Extrovert Linguistic Nationalism
  • 2.Language and Historical Linguistics in Greek and Turkish schoolbooks
    • 2.1The Greek case
    • 2.2The Turkish case
  • 3.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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