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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
