Abstract This study explores how intergenerational transmission of Circassian is discursively constructed and negotiated among urban Circassians in Türkiye. Drawing on group-based interviews with twelve adults in İstanbul and Ankara, it shows how participants mobilize spatial imaginaries as discursive resources through which transmission is retrospectively organized and evaluated. Rather than treating transmission as a purely ecological or structural process, the analysis highlights its ideologically mediated nature. Participants move between three intersecting explanatory layers: ecological alignment, evaluative benchmarks of competence, and structural dynamics. Village life is remembered as enabling natural immersion and representing an idealized model of transmission, whereas urban settings are framed as fragmented and discontinuous. At the same time, transmission is assessed against an imagined ideal of full, fluent speakerhood, rendering partial and receptive competences insufficient. This evaluative regime narrows the boundaries of linguistic legitimacy even as cultural identification remains intact, producing an ambivalent configuration in which identity is partially decoupled from language. The findings suggest that sustaining minority languages in urban contexts depends not only on exposure or institutional provision, but also on rethinking the norms through which competence and transmission are defined and recognized.
Oral-Saribaş et al. (Thu,) studied this question.