Non-standard and minority varieties as community languages in the UK were discussed at a symposium at Westminster University, London, on 16-17 April 2019. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çise Çavuşoğlu represented Research Centre for Applied Linguistics (RCAL),Near East University, at the symposium as a guest speaker.

The symposium was organisedas part of the Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community Programme funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Open World Research Initiative (OWRI). Teachers of community languages, researchers and representatives of community/complementary schools from different minority groups in Great Britain attended the symposium where the importance of teaching languages other than modern foreign languageswere discussed. The symposium had a special focus on the difficulties involved in the teaching and learning of non-standard linguistic varieties (other than the official languages) used by the minority communities in the UK context. In her presentation titled “Learning ‘Posh’ Turkish in London: Young People’s Perceptions of Standard vs. Cypriot Varieties,”Dr. Çavuşoğluemphasized that, especially in Turkish complementary schools in London, the students felt frustrated when their knowledge of Cypriot Turkish was ignored by the school and teachers. In addition, delegitimisation of the linguistic capital of the students in the name of language teaching within the school context reduced students’ interests in learning Turkish and their feelings of belonging to the community. Dr. Çavuşoğlu explained that by taking the non-standard varieties as assets that young people already possess, cultural and linguistic capital of the young people can be developed in complementary schools and this can help the efforts of languuage and identity maintenance in diasporic settings for minorities.