Local Identity Construction Through Chronotopic Encounters: English in the Lives of Ukrainians in İstanbul
The Rise of English as a Glocal Language: Reimagining its Role in an Era of Deglobalisation, Springer Nature, ss.147-163, 2026
- Yayın Türü: Kitapta Bölüm / Araştırma Kitabı
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1007/978-3-032-27041-2_8
- Yayınevi: Springer Nature
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.147-163
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Chronotopes, Globalization, Glocal, Turkish, Ukrainian
- Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
One important consequence of the recent Ukrainian-Russian war is the migration of Ukrainian nationals to the neighboring countries, among which Turkey is one. Starting right after the outbreak of the war, thousands of Ukrainians fled the country and arrived in İstanbul in the hope of a new life. This abrupt beginning exacerbates multilingual identity negotiations on a daily basis involving Ukrainian, Turkish, Russian, and English languages. In this framework, the local meanings attached to English are heavily influenced by how speakers renegotiate their identities across the other three languages (Ukrainian, Russian, and Turkish) as they navigate the war, displacement from Ukraine, and resettlement in a partly familiar country. In this chapter, placing English at the center, the major language in use on a daily basis in the case of our participants, we investigate how Ukrainians construct their multilingual identities in their new home. Drawing on an interview study with 15 Ukrainian women residing in İstanbul, we take a chronotopic approach in our analysis of the participants’ narratives. We focus on five chronotopes that participants frequently pull into their discourse: the Ukrainian nationalist, the post-Soviet, the Russian, Turkey-then, Turkey-now.