Receptive multilingualism in Turkish-Turkmen academic counseling sessions

This study examines a case of receptive multilingual communication in academic counseling sessions with participants of Turkish and Turkmen languages. In particular, the study aims to explore the contribution of linguistic and extralinguistic factors that might facilitate and/or constraint interlocutors' understanding in receptive multilingual communications. To this end, elicited conversations of a Turkish academic advisor and a Turkmen university student were video recorded and analyzed. The analysis shows that linguistic factors such as morpho-syntactic and lexical similarities between these languages do not guarantee but facilitate understanding. As for the extralinguistic factors, the study confirms that the use of institutional keywords in academic counseling sessions activates interlocutors' common institutional knowledge and, thereupon, the interlocutors' understanding is facilitated.