The Commodification Of Language In The Area Of English Language

Background

The term ‘Commodification’ usually can be seen as a topic of Economics but actually, it can be used in every area. Even language can be commodified ,can be used as an economic resource where market value exists . There are many studies which are mainly based on language economics, and this area’s evolution has not deep-rooted history. It is evolving through time and thanks to the scientist now we have lots of educatory studies.Yarymowhich (2006) has used the term ‘language edutourism’ to point the language as a commodity. (p.2). He points that language education has become a tool for the pecuniary resource as tourism.It is crucial to comprehend what ways language is seen as an economic resource ,what ways language seen as a commodity. Heller and Duchene (2016,p.147) found that language commodification is ‘mimetic’ of the neo-liberal order of things. Crystal (1997) points that ‘ A language achieves a global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. That means that a global language has to be recognized by everyone and as we know it is English.

So most of the studies worked on English to see the globalization of language utterly. Lamb (2004) investigated the influences of globalization on the integrative motivation of Indonesian children whom ages are 11-12 concerning their formal study of English in high school. He found that TL is no more associated with the particular countries but it is more associated with the globalization. Another study was conducted by Gardner and Lambert (1972), they examined the relation among learner’s motivation and their linguistic performance and they described two kinds of motivation; integrative and instrumental. Learners who have an instrumental motivation want practical goals such as getting a higher salary, learner who has an integrative motivation want to learn the target language because they see it as a tool. At the end of the study, they found that having a motivation makes people successful but especially having an integrative motivation makes people more successful than others who have an instrumental motivation.Because most of the studies found that learners who have an integrative motivation go ahead with learning English for a long time ,however learners with instrumental motivation gave up learning languages when they achieved their practical goals for instance when they have an adequate level of English for appling a job .In second language teaching the term ‘motivation’became a vital component after Gardner and Lambert (1972) wrote the Attitudes on Motivation in Second Language Learning and they determined two kinds of motivation for learning a language.After that Dornyei (1990) clarified that two kinds of motivation is insufficient to explain learner’s intentions ,he added two more motivation in addition to Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) Integrative and Instrumental Motivations.

The first one is Intrinsic Motivation , this motivation type means people learn languages because they enjoy it ,they see it as a opportunity to discover to world and cultures and they do not learn languages because of external awards.The other one is Extrintic Motivation , this motivation occurs when people learn languages because of an external awards such as money or promotion in their jobs. Dornyei,Csizer, and Nemeth(2006) conducted another successful study which is the largest second language learning survey ever studied. It identifies how sociopolitical changes and globalization period has been affected the language attitudes and motivations. The other type of study conducted by Heift&Caws(2000), Berge (1995) Kelm(1992), Wang&Teles(1998), they found that in the second language teaching the role of the educator is less dominant and student attendance is run up. New technologies and their influences to educational approachs are the cornerstone attention in this area. The advance of technological instruments generates a different kind of learning conditions rather than the classical classroom approach. This is the main clue that globalization affects our classical classroom activities and motivations in language teaching.

There are many studies which are conducted on Globalization and Language Commodification of Tourism or Call Centers but only few of them conducted on Language Teaching and hardly any of them conducted in Turkey, this is why I wanted to study this topic. In Turkey, English as a global language takes an important place in language teaching and teaching methods are used by instructors for years and learners’intention in the sense of having two motivations are crucial to comprehend the effects of the commodification of language. I have adopted Marx’s views as a baseline and tried to find whether the commodification of language effect English language teaching and students’ motivation in Turkey.I will use Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) two motivation types instead of Dornyei ‘s (1990) four types because from my perspective Extrintic and Intrinsic Motivation bears a resemblance to Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) Instrumental and Integrative Motivation , both Extrinsic and Instrumental Motivations’ intentions are based on awards and practical aims and both Instrumental and Intrinsic Motivations’ intentions are based on exploring cultures and languages , both Intrinsic and Integrative Motivations are seeing languages as a benefical tools for improving themselves.This is why I will use Gardner and Lambert’s (1972 ) motivations for my study.

Globalization is an inevitable truth of our lives and economists studied what are the main effects of globalization that we see in our daily lives. This term also was riveting for linguists who wanted to see whether this unavoidable genuine effected language and language teaching. This is why I want to ask this question, to comprehend what linguists want to comprehend while they carried out studies about this.It will give us different perspective of understanding in the area of language teaching.

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As Appadurai (1996) said, commodification means ‘anything intended for exchange’ and commodification causes terming ‘Globalization’, and it effects the language teaching in the mean of students’ motivation. I want to learn what factors make students have different learning motivations,why different kind of motivations’ bring on different results in learning English and why having different kind of motivations determine the level of learners’ English.I want to compare my study’s results with previous studies and want to shed light on the language teaching issues in Turkey.

Data Method

For this study, 150 language learners with six different language schools/courses in Turkey selected, their status and ages are changeable and their English levels are from a beginner to advanced. Mostly 18-30 ages ranges are actively taking English courses in order the data. To study the influences of globalization on English learning students, ı have used the questionnaire method to investigate students’ motivation to comprehend their intentions of what pushes them to learn English. The questionnaire was based on two terms:İnstrumental motivation which included technological instruments as Internetand TV and Integrative Motivation like students’ intention of learning English because of their curiosity to learn about different cultures.

The questionnaire was carried open-ended to be face-to-face. Pre-testing step was done in order to ensure all questions was comprehensible. The questionnaire was carried out Turkish then translated into English for this study. I have added more items, and ı took out few. I have been used the five-level scale format and this scale includes strongly agreed or strongly disagreed answers. Participants understood the questions wholely and they were willing to answer items. Cronbach’s Alpa calculation was used to ensure that the questionnaire was reliable.The coefficient of realibilty was 0.9 , it shows that this study’s realibilty is strongly valid.

Data Analysis

For the data’s administration of the questionnaire, the PSPP program was used. In order the five-level scale format, the answers were enumerated into 5 scales as 1 strongly disagreed 2 disagreed 3 neither agree or disagree 4 agree and 5 strongly agree.

At the end of the study, it has been found that globalization affected English language learners both integrative and instrumental. Learners who have integrative motivation have been affected less rather than learners who have instrumental motivation. It is because instrumental motivation is based on technological devices and learners who have instrumental motivation are relies on global sources because they have more practical reasons than the others. Technology is the term that had been integrated even language teaching classrooms rather than conventional methods that had been used for years. After neo-liberalism, which is the main driver of globalization, commodification diffuse around the all respects also language teaching affected because also language teaching has a market value as an economic resource, as a commodity which can be bought and sold.This globalization can seen as a positive resource sometimes from different perspectives but in the area of language teaching, it can be distracter or can be an unwelcome tool from the other perspectiveThe results are in the Table 1 below.In Table 2 and 3 İntegrative and Instrumental motivation had been categoriesed according to learner’s intentions,their usage of global sources ,types of global sources that have been used by learners and how often they use them.

References

1. Block, D., & Cameron, D. (2002).Globalization and language teaching.London and New York: Routledge.
2. Dörnyei, Z. (1990). Conceptualizing motivation in foreign language learning. Language Learning
3. Dörnyei, Z., Csizér, K., & Németh, N. (2006). Motivation, language attitudes and globalisation .Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
4. Gardener, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972).Attitudes and motivation in second-language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers.
5. Heller, M. (1999a). Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography.London: Longman.
6. Heller, M., & Duchêne, A. (n.d.). Treating language as an economic resource: Discourse, data and debate. Sociolinguistics, 139-156. doi:10.1017/cbo9781107449787.007
7. Lamb, M. (2004). Integrative motivation in a globalizing world. System,32,3-19
8. Leeman, J., & Modan, G. (2009). Commodified language in Chinatown: A contextualized approach to linguistic landscape1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 332-362. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00409.x
9. Rahman, T. (2009). Language ideology, identity and the commodification of language in the call centers of Pakistan. Language in Society, 38(02), 233. doi:10.1017/s0047404509090344
10. Wolters, C. (1999). The relation between High School students‟ motivational regulation and their use of learning strategies, effort, and classroom performance. Learning and Individual Differences, 11, 281–299