No abstract

Language echoes cultural values, norms and many other features of a society, and is regarded as an inseparable part of such characteristics. Despite the fact that values and features of a society may be kept apart from language in language education, this though would be an incomplete process of language instruction. With this study, we aim to highlight inner and outer circle (+expanding circle) cultural and societal characteristics of the target language, in our case, English. For this, we examined state recommended English course books used in institutions of the Turkish Ministry of Education. As a result of our evaluation, we found that the outer circle (+expanding circle) characteristics occupied a significant place in the content of material designed targeting learners of English. And, this was duly attributed to writers who similarly come from an outer circle (+expanding circle) culture. Whether this leads to a positively effective way of teaching is largely debated by scholars in the field.

No abstract

What makes a language global goes far beyond its linguistic features. Although status of globalization may be largely determined by political tradition, economic strength, militaristic might and respect for human rights, one significant requirement does seem to escape fair assessment of a 'globalized language'. Here is where English finds itself: the flow of an ever increasing number of lexical items to and from the language, and similarly, an ever expanding cultural heritage due to amalgamation with outer cultural and societal characteristics. In this study, we will look into to what extent cultural elements of the outer circle were carried over into the language by authors producing literary works in an inner-circle language environment. Plots, settings, and characters in these works were analysed and thematised to illustrate the striking phenomenon of how now English has ceased to be the so-called 'property' of the inner circle only. For this, textual analysis principles were utilized in this study.