A corpus-based discourse analysis of the vision and mission statements of universities in Turkey

Abstract

This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision statements of 105 state and 66 private/foundation universities in Turkey. The paper combines a corpus-based approach with critical discourse analysis to interpret the data in relation to its institutional as well as socio-political context. It argues that the mission and vision statements are marked by a need for reassuring their legitimacy and the demands of a growing tertiary market. The historical and cultural backgrounds of the development of universities in Turkey, as well as political and economic conditions, are also decisive in the shaping of mission and vision statement of universities.

Keywords:

• corpus linguistics
• critical discourse analysis
• higher education institutions
• mission
• Turkey
• vision

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Sargın (2007) for different accounts of how and when universities came into being in Turkey.

2. The 2003 Public Fiscal Administration and Control Law (Law no. 5018).

3. The 1981 Higher Education Law (Law no. 2547).

4. A note on typography. We will use lower case italics for words in Turkish and single quotation marks for English translations (and single quotation marks and lower case italics for grammatical units). Asterisks at the end of lexemes refer to different inflections of the lexeme in question.

5. The strongest six collocates of çağdaş are uygarlık (civilization), öncü (leading), yenilikçi (modernist), bilim (science), katkıda (contribution) and eğitim (education) according to their respective MI scores.

6. Here, a note on terminology. Agency is constructed differently in sociological and linguistic terms. According to van Leeuwen, ‘sociological agency is not always realized by linguistic agency, by the grammatical role of “Agent”; it can also be realized in many other ways [ … ]’ (1996, p. 32). For our purposes we use the word ‘agent’ in van Leeuwen's sociological sense to define the executer of, or responsibility taker for, any process of whatever kind.

7. We do not use the term in the sense van Leeuwen uses it. In a study examining the linguistic behaviour of ‘individuals’ and ‘people’ in the official literature of life-long learning, Piper (2000) uses the term to explain this strategy in light of the theories of individualization in late modern culture and society, particularly those of Beck and Giddens.

8. Atatürk, literally meaning ‘the father of Turk’, began to be used by and for Mustafa Kemal, who was the leading figure of the revolutionary movement that led to the foundation Republic of Turkey. The set of ideas that came to be called Kamâlism/Kemalism and later Atatürkçülük (Ataturkism) are often described as the official and founding ideology of the Republic of Turkey.

9. ‘Büyüme, Kalite, Uluslararasılaşma: Türkiye Yükseköğretimi İçin Bir Yol Haritası' Raporu [The report of ‘Growth, Quality, Becoming International: A Road Map for Turkey's Higher Education’] by Prof. Dr Gökhan Çetinsaya. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from http://www.yok.gov.tr/web/guest/turkiye-yuksekogretimi-icin-bir-yol-haritasi.

10. See Tugal (2009) on how various Islamist governments have internalized the discourses and practices of neoliberalism since the rise of Islamist politics in the 1990s and increasingly during the Justice and Development Party (JDP) rule since 2002.

11. See http://yolharitasi.yok.gov.tr/.