From monolingualism to elitist multilingual spectrum: investigating linguistic habitus of Turkey’s primary linguistic educationscapes

This critical sociolinguistics study delved into the depths of multilingualism to present an extensive analysis of the linguistic habitus of Turkey’s primary educationscapes. Data comprised 9964 linguistic educationscapes photographs with longitudinal walking-tour method in 2021-2024. Drawing on Bellewes’s ecolinguistics and Backhaus’s critical sociolinguistics framework, the systematic educationscapes examination demonstrated the extent of signage across public and private primary schools. Linguistic educationscapes revealed semiotic and linguistic discrepancies among private and public primary schools, which suggested a tendency to promote elite multilingualism with heavy presence of English and other non-indigenous varieties in private schools. Such linguistic diversity did not reflect Turkey’s societal multilingualism, instead, linguistic educationscapes created a romanticised multilingual habitus with elite linguistic choices. Turkish-monolingual habitus in public primary educationscapes lacked indigenous de facto varieties. Descriptive statistics, thematic content analyses displayed diverging linguistic and functional patterns across educational landscapes. While signs in private schools navigated global concerns such as world citizenship, sustainability, Turkish-monolingual signs reinforced nationalist, patriarchal values in public schools. Such practices construct hierarchised and ideologically loaded lines of multilingualism, in which selective linguistic visibility mediates local-global spectrum of school identity establishment. The study contributes to critical multilingualism discussions with its systematic examination of educationscapes as reflections of hidden curriculum.