Turkish Language And Alphabet Reform And Its Historical Role In The Construction Of Modern Country

With historical documentary method,the article depicts the background and development of Turkish alphabet and language reform,a successful top-down language planning in the history of world language planning,and analyzes the reform,its motivation and effect particularly,under Cooper’s framework.Then the author uses Vedung’s goal attainment model and side effect model to compare the motivation and effect of the policy to analyze the its implementation effect.The article finds that the primary goals of Turkish language and alphabet reform are: 1.Identity and ideology(Establish the link between Turkish language and Turkish Identity);2.Instrumental(Set up an easy-to-learn alphabet system suitable for Turkish and for the contact of western world);3.Insecurity(Avoid the impact of loan words and raise the prestige of the language).In the practice of the reform,it boosts the development of Turkish society,economy and culture with replacing old alphabet system with the new alphabet system suitable for Turkish and improving the literacy of Turkish people.It also strengthens the link between Turkish language and Turkish identity.However,it fails in the abolishment of Arabic and Persian loan words,whose reason possibly is the impact of Sun Language Theory which does not allow the strict abolishment,or introduces the western loan words when abolishing the Arabic and Persian ones,which causes the Turkish language still in the insecurity of loan words.Besides that,Turkish language and alphabet reform brings about the side effect against the primary goals—the reform results in the language separatism due to political reason;the reform reduces literacy of the old alphabet system,breaking apart the people’s link to their traditions.In addition,the reform on vocabulary results in the semantic ambiguity and the lack in verbal repertoire,which brings new inconvenience in the pragmatics of Turkish language 。 In terms of historical significance,Turkish alphabet and language reform is a very important part of Turkey’s modernization,which directly reflect the “six principles” of Kemalism.It is an important measure to achieve "secularism." Besides,it has greatly reduced the illiteracy rate in Turkey and laid the foundation for modern Turkish education.