Linguistics and Zizek

[Ertug Altinay]

Hello,

My name is Rustem Ertug Altinay. I am an independent
researcher/future graduate student from Turkey. At the
moment, I am working on a research project that seeks
to apply Zizek to linguistics. 

The title of my paper is "Bulent Ersoy: Lost Between
Words." I am writing on the word choice of Bulent
Ersoy, a prominent Ottoman Turkish classical music
singer, and the most influential transgendered
individual in Turkey. I seek to understand how she
chooses words to establish herself as an upper class,
Muslim, nationalist woman, and how this is relevant to
the general context of Turkey and its language
policies.

The most significant element of Ersoy's lexicon is her
abundant use of Ottoman Turkish words. Ottoman Turkish
was the language of the Ottoman elite. Yet, the new
language policies adopted after the establishment of
Turkish Republic as part of the Kemalist cultural
reforms removed these words from daily language, and a
new vocabulary has been established. Only few families
that had the necessary cultural and social capital
managed to teach this vocabulary to their children. As
they are no longer in use - and many of them are
borrowed from Arabic and Persian - these words also
connote an ancient, possibly religious knowledge.
Therefore, the use of this vocabulary has become a
symbol of social status, if not also class, for
multiple reasons. And it seems plausible to claim that
Ersoy - as a transgendered individual in a
patriarchal, heterosexist society - would be expected
to use all signifiers of status that she can. Yet,
interestingly enough, Ersoy does not use the
vocabulary correctly. She often makes up and distorts
words, makes mistakes of meaning. She also uses slang
words that do not seem to fit in the lexicon she
normally uses on national television - like when she
said people think that she is a "slut" while she is
not.

What I am tempted to say with reference to Zizek is
that the words she makes up, she uses incorrectly, and
the slang words she most unexpectedly uses are
"spectres" that point to a gap between her Real - all
her experiences, her fantasies, and so on - and her
reality -the way she constructs herself in accord with
the heterosexist, capitalist, Muslim, nationalist
ideology, which has been the dominant ideology in
Turkey, especially since the 1980's. While her lexicon
seems to present a meaningfully ordered totality at
the first sight, the "spectres" I mentioned above
point to the fact that there is more to her "Real."

I would be more than happy to hear any comments and
suggestions.

Ertug



 
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