
Language, Identity, and Social Division
The Case of Israel
Eliezer Ben-Rafael(Author)
Clarendon Press
Published on 24. February 1994
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-19-824072-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
Ben-Rafael's book is sure to make a valuable contribution. * Anthropological Linguistics *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Oxford University Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
tables
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
582 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-824072-3 (9780198240723)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
Part 1 The social fabric of languages: language in society; culture and social systems; social divisions and language; the market of languages. Part 2 Language and integration: language revival, integration and elitism; the shift to Hebrew; imposing without coercing. Part 3 The languages of social cleavages: Israel's social cleavages; the quantitative dimension; languages and stratification; languages and ethnicity; the languages of the religious cleavages; the case of a national minority. Part 4 The social market of languages: English in society; the social transformation of French; Yiddish in Israel; the diffusion of Arabic. Part 5 Theoretical perspectives: identity, boundaries and language; towards a theoretical approach. Appendices: social factors of the knowledge of languages; the non-Hebrew Israeli press.