Language, Identity, and Social Division

Name: Language, Identity, and Social Division
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ISBN: 9780198240723

The Case of Israel

By: Eliezer Ben-Rafael

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Hardcover Published: 24th February 1994
ISBN: 9780198240723
Number Of Pages: 300

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The shift to Hebrew as a national language is at the root of the creation of Israel, yet many Jewish former immigrants still use the language of their country of origin. Ultra-orthodox communities retain their own codes, and the use of Arabic remains a clear marker of the Israeli-Arab town and village. At the same time Israel's position in international affairs has encouraged a wide penetration of the society, along class lines, by languages of world-wide communication. These very same languages, for example English and French, have different values in their local context, and play active and different roles in the formation of social boundaries. In his analysis Eliezer Ben-Rafael focuses on linguistic resources and symbols which reflect and reveal the complex structure of class, ethnic, religious and national identities and cleavages in Israeli society. More generally, he uses the Israeli case to show how sociolinguistic ideas may be related to sociological approaches to test some general sociological propositions about social aspects of language use. The book should be of interest to sociologists, sociolinguistics and cultural anthropologists interested in language as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as well as scholars with an interest in Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies. Eliezer Ben-Rafael is the author of "Status, Power and Conflict in the Kibbutz" and "The Emergence of Ethnicity: Cultural Groups and Social Conflict in Israel", and co-author of "Ethnicity, Class and Religion in Israel" with (S. Sharot).

Ben-Rafael's book is sure to make a valuable contribution. * Anthropological Linguistics *

List of Tables
Introduction	p. 1
Language in Society	p. 7
Language in Social Context	p. 7
An Object of Theoretical Deliberation	p. 8
A Comprehensive Schema	p. 10
Culture and Social Systems	p. 12
The Socio-linguistics of Social Systems	p. 12
The Symbolic Order	p. 13
Aspects of the Dominant Culture	p. 15
The Dimension of Language	p. 17
Social Divisions and Language	p. 19
Social Marking and Bilingualism	p. 19
The Sociology and Socio-linguistics of Class Cleavages	p. 22
Ethnicity in Sociology and Socio-linguistics	p. 24
Socio-cultural Groupings	p. 27
Structural Parameters	p. 29
The Various Profiles	p. 32
Directions of Change	p. 35
The Market of Languages	p. 38
Languages as Resources	p. 38
The Role of Power	p. 39
Linguistic Capital and Social Carriers	p. 40
A Typology	p. 43
Language Revival, Integration, and Elitism	p. 49
Ideology and Language	p. 49
The Languages of the Diaspora	p. 50
Hebrew Revived	p. 53
The Historical-Linguistic Debate and Present Dynamism	p. 55
Dugri Speech	p. 58
The Hebrew of the Kibbutz	p. 62
The Shift to Hebrew	p. 66
The Deletion of Russian, Polish, and Yiddish	p. 66
Rumanian and German Confronted	p. 73
Imposing without Coercing	p. 79
Hebrew among the Sephardim	p. 79
French, Arabic, and Spanish among the North Africans	p. 81
The Linguistic Transformation of Middle-Easterners	p. 84
Israel's Social Cleavages	p. 93
A New Class	p. 93
Ethnicity among Jews	p. 95
The National Religious	p. 100
The Ultra-Orthodox	p. 101
The Dominant Culture Confronted by Religiosity	p. 103
Jews and Arabs	p. 106
The Quantitative Dimension	p. 111
Languages and Stratification	p. 121
Arabic, Yiddish, and English as Class Markers	p. 122
Languages in the Class Structure	p. 124
Languages and Ethnicity	p. 132
Language and Community among Ashkenazim	p. 134
Non-Ashkenazi Communities	p. 138
New Challenges from Ethiopia and Russia	p. 145
The Languages of the Religious Cleavages	p. 152
Yiddish and Loyshen Koydesh versus Hebrew	p. 153
Elitism versus Mainstream	p. 159
The Case of a National Minority	p. 166
The Israeli Arabs	p. 166
Urban and Rural Communities	p. 168
French Education for Arabs	p. 171
The Languages of the Druse	p. 173
English in Society	p. 179
The Forces of the Linguistic Market	p. 179
The Sociology of English in Israel	p. 181
Identity Forged by Language	p. 183
The Social Transformation of French	p. 190
The High-School Students of French	p. 191
The Parents' Attitude towards French	p. 193
Teachers and Principals	p. 196
Is French still the Language of a Community?	p. 198
Yiddish in Israel	p. 201
Jews against Yiddish	p. 201
A Yiddish Theatre in Tel Aviv	p. 202
The Language of the Elderly	p. 204
Yiddish as a Linguistic Resource	p. 207
The Diffusion of Arabic	p. 209
The Language of the Weak	p. 209
An Object of Policy	p. 211
The Lack of Ethnic Backing	p. 212
A Weak Linguistic-Capital Value	p. 214
The Syndrome	p. 216
Identity, Boundaries, and Language	p. 221
The Facets of the Dominant Culture	p. 221
New Aspects	p. 223
The Impact of the Language Market	p. 229
A Multi-Cleavage View of Society	p. 232
Towards a Theoretical Approach	p. 237
Dominance, Elitism, and Desinvolture Langagiere	p. 237
Classes and Ethnic Groups as Socio-cultural Groupings	p. 238
Values of Languages and Social Status	p. 241
Appendix 1. Social Factors Relating to the Knowledge of Languages	p. 244
Appendix 2. The Non-Hebrew Israeli Press	p. 248
List of References	p. 253
Index	p. 275
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9780198240723
ISBN-10: 0198240724
Series: Oxford Studies in Language Contact
Audience: Professional
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 300
Published: 24th February 1994
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: GB
Dimensions (cm): 23.8 x 16.2 x 2.3
Weight (kg): 0.66