A Language Ecology Perspective on Second Language Socialization of Undergraduate Turkish International Students in Terms of Their Linguistic, Social and Cultural Identity Development

This dissertation examines second language identity formations among international undergraduate Turkish students who come to the US biennially to pursue an engineering degree on a joint UB-ITU Program. The students' language advancements and identity formations are examined through the lenses of language ecology and language socialization frameworks. The purpose of this mixed-method longitudinal study is to examine the linguistic and social development of the participants; to this end, the qualitative data were gathered through interviews, personal narratives, diaries and field observations over two years and the quantitative data were collected over a year through discourse completion tests, collocation tests, and authentic voice recordings of the participants. The qualitative data were used as evidence for contestation and negotiation of many facets of the participants' identity such as social, linguistic, historical, gender and social class and otherwise and the intersubjective nature of their identity negotiations were located discursively with its symbolical and historical dimensions. The quantitative data were used to observe the linguistic advancement of the participants in terms of their formulaic language use. The findings of the qualitative data revealed that while some participants developed an 'intercultural competence' by taking up as many affordances as possible to engage in meaningful conversations with their social networks and positioned themselves in a 'third space,' some were at odds with the idea of world citizenship and their resistance to identity slippage has strongly shaped their identities. Of particular interest, elite social class positioning of these students was one major factor that also shaped their narratives. The quantitative data revealed that all the participants improved their use of formulaic expressions even though the pre and post-test results did not yield statistically significant results. Symbolic nature of formulaic expressions helped the participants to gain legitimacy in alternative speech communities and claim ownership of English. The findings of the study provided implications for teaching practices that would improve language teaching in Turkey and the role of international student and scholar offices in the United States to improve the socialization of international students.