Greek and Turkish linguistic nationalism in language and history coursebooks

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.