Israeli Sociolinguistics: From Hebrew Hegemony to IsraeliPlurilingualism

Zhanna Burstein-Feldman, Alek Epstein, Nina Kheimets, ShulamithKopeliovich,

Dafna Yitzhaki & Joel Walters

In Martin J. Ball & Nicole Muller (eds.) Sociolinguistics around theWorld: A Handbook.Amsterdam: Routledge.

1.0 Ancient Multilingualism, Hebrew Hegemony and IsraeliPlurilingualism 2.0 Brief history of sociolinguistics research in Israel 3.0 Language Variation 4.0 Bilingualism and Multilingualism 4.1 Multilingualism in Higher Education 5.0 Language and culture, language and power, language policy 5.1 Arabic among Arabs and Jews in Israel 5.2 Language and Multilingual Identity of the RussianJewish Intel 5.3 English: Everybody’s Third Language 5.4 Language Policy 6.0 Pragmatics, discourse, and conversation7.0 Other topic: Linguistic dimension of the sociologyof communication 8.0 Conclusion, future directions

.

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1.0 Ancient Multilingualism, Hebrew Hegemony and Israeli

Plurilingualism

Israel’s geographical position as a land bridge connecting

Europe, Asia and Africa, its history of conquest and reconquest,

and its importance for three major religions have assured a long

tradition of multilingualism. Two thousand years ago triglossia

reigned, with Hebrew, Judeo-Aramaic and Greek playing meaningful

roles. Multilingualism was the norm for the Jewish people during

most of the Dispersion, with separate functions: Hebrew and

Talmudic Aramaic for religious and literacy purposes, Jewish

languages like Yiddish, Ladino or Judeo-Arabic for community and

home functions (Rabin 1981), and one or more “co-territorial

vernaculars” for communication with Gentiles.

Current Israeli multilingualism began to take shape with the

return of Jews to Palestine in the latter part of the 19th

century (Spolsky 1993). Subsequent revitalization of Hebrew

(Fellman 1973; Myhill 2004; Nahir 1988) was central to nation-

building process and to its growth into a national vernacular,

provided a common vernacular for the integration of a steady

stream of immigrants (Bachi 1956), and guaranteed continued

linguistic diversity (Cooper 1984).

The close of the 19th century brought a change in the

pattern of multilingualism. The language of Ottoman soldiers and

government officials was Turkish. Peasants and town-dwellers

spoke local dialects of Arabic. Classical Arabic was the written

language of the educated elite. Indigenous Sephardic Jews spoke

Arabic, too, but inside the community, the language was Judezmo

(a Jewish language based on Spanish). French, German and English

were encouraged by missionary Churches and foreign consuls (see

Spolsky & Cooper 1991). Ashkenazi Jews arriving from Eastern

Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century spoke

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Yiddish, also bringing with them co-territorial vernaculars like

Russian, Polish and Hungarian.

The late 19th century also brought a different kind of

immigrant – ideological Jewish nationalists committed to the

revival of Hebrew and its intimate connection to identity in

their homeland. Jewish nationalism took two distinct paths: a

non-territorial cultural nationalism that chose standardized and

secularized Yiddish as its language, and a territorialist

socialist movement that aimed to develop a ‘new Hebrew man’,

speaking Hebrew in the newly-redeemed land. The battle between

these two ideologies and languages was fought in Europe and in

Palestine, with Hebrew becoming the victor in the Holy Land

(Harshav 1993; Kuzar 1999, 2001; Myhill 2004). The brief

successes of Yiddish in Europe were weakened by migration and all

but wiped out by the Holocaust.

Revitalization of Hebrew, from the early teaching of Hebrew

in the schools in the 1890s, to its use as the main language by

Zionist socialists who founded the communal settlements, and

ideological monolingualism in the new ‘Hebrew’ city of Tel Aviv,

facilitated the spread of Hebrew through the entire Jewish Yishuv

[settlement]. By 1913, its supporters were able to succeed in a

bitter argument over the language of instruction to be used at

the first university, naming it “The Hebrew University of

Jerusalem” (Landau 1996). By the 1920s, Hebrew was a native

language for many and the public language of the Jewish community

of Palestine (Bachi 1956), although many leading academic and

literary figures were still far from speaking it comfortably.

The British Mandatory government bolstered the standing of

Hebrew in several ways. First, when General Allenby occupied the

country in 1918, use of German in schools was banned and teachers

interned. Even before the Mandate was formally proclaimed, the

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British Government had been persuaded that Hebrew was the

language of the Jewish population, and British regulations and

the Mandate established Hebrew as an official language alongside

Arabic and English. Second, to minimize its financial commitment

to the mandated territory, the British allowed the Jewish

community to conduct its own educational system. As the language

of instruction in Jewish schools and in the university, Hebrew

adapted to modern life and technology with the help of a Language

Committee, which was renamed The Hebrew Language Academy after

independence in 1948.

Under British Mandatory rule (1923-1948), English was the

main language of government, and Jewish and Arab communities

remained distinct, with separate school systems. Contact

bilingualism developed, English serving both communities as a

potential language of wider communication. And yet, new Jewish

immigrants who wished to integrate needed to acquire Hebrew, the

language of work, education and public cultural life. By 1948,

when the State of Israel was established, Hebrew was the

principal language of the bulk of the Jewish population of

650,000 (Bachi 1956). In the next decade, large numbers of new

immigrants arrived, and their linguistic heterogeneity (Arabic,

German, Romanian, Yiddish) contributed to the rapid acceptance of

Hebrew by the new arrivals and their children. Cooper (1984)

enumerated other factors contributing to the spread of Hebrew,

including: age on arrival (the younger, the faster), linguistic

proximity (Arabic speakers learned more quickly than speakers of

other languages), formal education and managerial, clerical, or

professional employment (rather than manual labor).

Revitalization of Modern Israeli Hebrew was central in the

nation-building process which culminated in statehood in 1948.

Over three short generations, this language succeeded in

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replacing the native language of most immigrants as the language

of wider communication. Nevertheless, today it is still the

native language of a minority of Israel’s 7.2 million citizens.

In addition to Arabic (which numbers 1.5 million native speakers:

1 million Muslims, a half million Jews from North Africa, Yemen

and Iraq, 150,000 Christians, and 120,000 Druze) and Russian

(1,000,000 native speakers), there are more than 200,000 native

speakers EACH of English, Romanian, and Yiddish. Another half

million native speakers of ten different languages (Amharic,

Bukharic, Georgian, Dzidi (Judeo-Persian), French, German,

Hungarian, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat), Ladino, Spanish and Polish) and

many other languages with 5-50,000 native speakers (Armenian,

Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Israeli Sign Language,

Italian, Portuguese, Tagalog, Thai, Tigrigna, Turkish( give

Israel multilingual vitality and make Hebrew, in a strange sense,

a minority language in its own borders.

2.0 Brief history of sociolinguistic research in Israel

In Israel, as elsewhere, sociolinguistic research cuts across the

disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, sociology, social

psychology, history, cultural studies and education. While the

field has no exact starting point, the joint presence of Fishman,

Cooper and Spolsky (each in the prime of his career) in Jerusalem

from 1969-1972 promised a strong foundation for research and

training. This period generated empirical research on the spread

of English (Fishman, Cooper & Conrad 1977), and later a volume on

the languages of Jerusalem (Spolsky & Cooper 1991). Cooper’s

interests turned to theoretical issues in language spread (Cooper

1984) and later to his seminal monograph on language policy

(Cooper 1990). Fishman, having left Israel, maintained strong

interests in Yiddish, endangered languages, and following

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retirement developed his intergenerational model of language

maintenance and revival, traveling the globe to promote language

minority rights. Spolsky also left Israel but returned in 1980 to

Bar-Ilan University, where he established the Language Policy

Research Center with Elana Shohamy from Tel Aviv University,

initially with a Ministry of Education funded project on language

and education. Later he conducted a study of language use in

Bethlehem (with Amara & Tushiyeh) and a study of language and

integration among Russian immigrants in Israel and Germany (with

Dittmar & Walters). His prolific writings include books on

testing, second language learning, sociolinguistics, and language

policy (www.biu.ac.il/HU/spolsky). In pragmatics, discourse and

social interaction, Shoshana Blum-Kulka’s depth and productivity

and mentoring of a large number of young scholars have left an

indelible mark on Israeli sociolinguistics. Her work on cross-

cultural speech acts is grounded in philosophy of language, her

studies of dinner conversation in discourse analysis, and her

research on children’s talk in a merger of sociolinguistics,

discourse analysis and developmental psychology (see section f

below).

Two international conferences at Bar-Ilan University in the

late 1990s led to the founding of the Israeli Association for

Language and Society (IALS), which holds a one day meeting

annually with papers and symposia primarily in Hebrew. Two other

regular national meetings are: ILASH (Israel Applied Linguistics

Association), an AILA affiliate, and SCRIPT (Israel Association

for Literacy) www.scriptil.org. Finally, the Jewish languages

website (www.jewish-languages.org) has been a source of

discussion for a wide range of sociolinguistic topics.

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Currently there is only one full-time active sociolinguist

at Israel’s higher education institutions, but many more whose

research draws from one of the parent fields or its methods.

3.0 Language Variation

Since Yaeger-Dror left Israel in 1992, there is no classical

Labovian variationist research going on in the country. Her

notions of hypercorrection and cognitive salience in the use of

Hebrew resh by Israeli singers drew from social psychology

(attitudes/ethnicity) and sociolinguistics. Variation is,

however, treated from a range of other perspectives, focusing

especially on gender and ethnicity. Bogoch’s studies of Israeli

courtroom language behavior, grounded in literature from legal

semiotics, feminist theory, identity and pragmatics, include more

than a dozen papers on ‘gendered courtroom discourse.’ Bogoch

(1999) examined address terms, interruptions, and the content and

pragmatics of courtroom proceedings in 656 segments from civil

and criminal cases involving interaction primarily among legal

professionals. Women attorneys were addressed less deferentially

and were interrupted more often, which Bogoch concluded

“undermined their professional status”. Other work on legal

discourse is found in Morris’ (1993, 1998,

http://ruthmorris13.googlepages.com) studies of the Demjanjuk

trial and Shlesinger’s (1989, 1990, 1991) papers on multilingual

court proceedings. Other papers on gender include Ariel and Giora

(1993, 1998), and Muchnik (2007).

The untimely death of Rafi Talmon in 2004 struck a severe

blow to research on Arabic dialectology. But Henkin (1994, 1998)

has continued this project with work on Bedouin Arabic dialects;

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and Galilean Arabic has been investigated by Geva-Kleinberger

(2004, in press) and Rosenhouse (1984). Among ethnic distinctions

Moroccan Hebrew and Arabic has been documented by Bentolila

(1994), Sered (1987) and Rosenhouse (1981).

4.0 Bilingualism and multilingualism

Research on bilingualism has focused primarily on acquisition and

use of English, Arabic, Russian and Hebrew. A German-Israel

Research Foundation project (Dittmar, Spolsky & Walters 2001)

showed how advanced adult Russian immigrant learners’ attitudes

were grounded in language preferences, proficiency and

codeswitching as well as lexical, syntactic and phonetic

variation (Harati 2001). Burstein-Feldman (2007) extended this

project, looking at cross-generational differences in attitudes

and identities through the use of reference terms (names of

people/places) and pronouns (we/they, us/them). This study

painted an integrated picture of multiple factors involved in

convergence toward and divergence from the immigrants' native

cultures and languages. Amara (1999) and Amara and Spolsky (2001)

show how identity is reflected in pronunciation of linguistic

variables such as [q] in the speech of Arab-Hebrew-English

multilingual communities in Palestinian border villages.

Walters’ (2005) model of bilingualism integrates

sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic information in a single

framework to account for language choice decisions (e.g.

codeswitching, translation). The primary sociolinguistic

information included in this model is social identity, context

(setting, topic, participants), and genre (conversation/scripted

speech), drawing on literature from sociology, ethnography,

discourse analysis and social cognition. Altman (2007) applied

the sociopragmatic-psycholinguistic distinction to show how

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different motivations account for codeswitching in three groups

of mature (ages 60-90) immigrant bilinguals (English-Hebrew,

Russian-Hebrew and Georgian-Hebrews) across the lifespan.

Early bilingual acquisition and implications for social

integration are currently under investigation by Armon-Lotem and

Walters with funding from the Israel Science Foundation

(www.isf.gov.il) and German Ministry of Education

(www.migration.uni-jena.de) These projects examine

morphosyntactic, narrative, lexical and pragmatic abilities along

with measures of identity and attitudes in English-Hebrew and

Russian-Hebrew pre-school children. Saiegh-Haddad (2003a, b) has

explored biliteracy acquisition among native speakers of Arabic

and Russian, her studies challenging anglo-centered research

with data on Arabic diglossia and Russian-Hebrew and Arabic-

English bilingualism. From an ethnographic perspective,

Kopeliovich (2006) investigated child-parent interaction in

Russian-Hebrew bilingual families using a “Communities of

Practice” framework, identifying four structurally distinct

contact varieties consisting of Russian and Hebrew elements in

family discourse.

Studies of codeswitching in Israeli have included Ben-

Rafael’s (2001) typology of codeswitching in French-Hebrew

contact; Maschler’s (2002a, 2002b, 2003) studies of bilingual

discourse; Regev’s (2004) dissertation on academic service

encounters during course registration in a university English

department; Baumel’s (2002) study of ultra-orthodox use of

Hebrew, English and Yiddish; Altman’s (2007) investigations of

codeswitching and crossover memories in aging adults; and

Raichlin’s (2005) multi-task (spontaneous speech, elicited

imitation, retelling) study of sociopragmatic and

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psycholinguistic motivations and directionality of codeswitching

among Russian-Hebrew pre-school children.

4.1 Multilingualism in Israeli Higher Education

Influenced by European nationalism, the leaders of the Zionist

movement gave a high priority to the revitalization of Hebrew as

a national language. However, in contrast to European national

movements, the universities played a relatively marginal role in

the nation-building process, and the cultural revolution took

place outside of academia (Shapira 1996). Scholars of modern

Hebrew appeared only later and were not particularly involved in

revitalization.

Israel’s seven research universities, 27 academic colleges

and 15 colleges of education today have over 200,000 students,

more than double the number in 1980. A large portion of this

increase resulted from a government decision to allow degree-

granting status to more than 35 public and private colleges. By

2005 more than 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees (B.A., B.Ed.,

B.Sc.) were conferred by colleges, not universities.

Although founded as ‘The Hebrew University’, this

institution has never been monolingual. Early on European

languages/literatures were recognized as essential for students

at the Hebrew University. Since many, if not most, faculty

members were themselves graduates of German universities (even

though there was still no German Department), German scholarship

played an important role at the Hebrew University (Kheimets &

Epstein 2005a). While Hebrew was the language of instruction,

students were required to be able to read in English, French, or

another modern European language. In 1949 the Yiddish department

was founded as well.

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Nevertheless, language study has never been popular among

Israeli students; the numbers who elect a language or literature

major has been decreasing. In 1969, 12% of university students

majored in languages/literatures, while by 2000 this proportion

had dropped to 8.6%. Although English is compulsory at all

universities and colleges, only 1.5% of university students major

in this field, and the level of English achieved by most has been

described as less than optimal. In small contrast, the number of

students in Asia Studies and Spanish almost doubled during the

1990s (Kheimets & Epstein, 2005b).

Israeli universities’ language policy is quite clear:

English is the dominant language with regard to promotion

opportunities and preferred language for publication (a perenniel

joke being that God would not have received tenure since the

Bible was not written in English). However, virtually all

instruction, examinations, seminar papers and most M.A. theses

and Ph.D. dissertations are still written in Hebrew (Guri-

Rosenblit 1999; Kheimets & Epstein, 2005b). This appears to be

changing somewhat in the sciences, where successful employment

requires higher levels of English. Furthermore, most scientific

conferences in Israel are conducted in English and journals in

law, medicine and natural sciences are published in English.

Finally, even Hebrew language journals tend to include abstracts

in English.

Israeli higher education in the colleges has become

increasingly multilingual and multicultural, partly due to a

relatively liberal policy of admissions for Arabic speaking

minority students as well as Russian and Ethiopian immigrants.

This is especially true at colleges in the Galilee and Negev,

some of which have up to 50 percent language minority students in

student bodies ranging from 1,000-3,000. These students are the

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first generation of their families in higher education and come

to college as speakers of Hebrew as a second or third language

and of English as a third or fourth language, putting them at a

severe disadvantage in comparison to native Hebrew speakers. The

liberal admissions policy has not been accompanied by serious

thinking as to how to deal with academic limitations and

failure/dropout rates among these populations.

5.0 Language and culture, language and power, language policy

Israel’s social cleavages are almost as numerous as its political

parties and as deep as the Syrian-African rift. Jews and Arabs,

Muslims, Druze and Christians, immigrants and sabras (native-born

Israelis), Ashkenazim and Sefardim, religious and secular

confront each other in battles which play themselves out

everywhere from the Knesset (Parliament) to the soccer field,

with the mass media eagerly fanning the fires. In these

conflicts, where words are weapons and symbolic identity is more

important than legal rights, language is the maker of collective

identity and ideology.

5.1 Arabic among Arabs and Jews in Israel

One crucial point of conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel

revolves around the issue of nationality. Israel was established as

a Jewish state with Arabs (both Muslims and Christians) and other

minorities (Druze, Circassians, Maronites, Copts, Armenians)

acknowledged to have equal rights. The conflict is complicated by

the notion of 'national minority' according to which Arabs are

entitled to citizenship rights while maintaining their own

‘national’ identity. Although both Hebrew and Arabic have

official status since 1948, ‘de jure’ rights do not always find

expression in practice. While Hebrew is used in all public

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contexts (Parliament, courts, academia, government documents,

commerce) and in most television and radio programs, Arabic is

used for most local matters in Arab villages and towns (Spolsky &

Shohamy 1999). Hebrew's actual strength is derived not from its

legal status but rather from its position as a symbol of a

Jewish-Zionist national identity. This unique status has been

constantly and actively promoted from the early days of statehood

(Harshav 1993; Kuzar 1999, 2001).

Arabic has been seen both as a reflection of the ongoing

political conflict and a link between political and linguistic

dimensions of the conflict. Shohamy and Donitsa-Schmidt (1998)

showed how negative attitudes of Israeli Jews towards peace in

the Middle East were correlated with negative stereotypes of

Arabic and low motivation to study the language. Suleiman (2004),

writing from Edinburgh, sees the relation between Hebrew and

Arabic in Israel as 'linguistic conflict', where language is used

as a 'loaded weapon' (pp. 218). He believes that the opposition

of members of the Language Council (forerunner of the Hebrew

Language Academy) to borrow lexical items from Arabic (pp.140)

were powerful in shaping negative perceptions of the Arabic

language and its users. Spolsky and Cooper (1991) and Ben-Rafael

et al (2006a) examined the use of languages on public and private

signs, showing that a Hebrew-Arabic pattern is very rare in

Jewish environments, whereas Hebrew was found in Arabic areas

mainly for business purposes. Ben Rafael's (1994) interviews with

Israeli Arabs indicate that despite general proficiency of Arabs

in Hebrew, the need to retain Arabic as a symbol of national

identity is what has impeded the process of shift to Hebrew

dominance.

In summary, the scant presence of Arabic in Israel's public

spheres and negative attitudes towards Arabic are a reflection of

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an ongoing conflict between distinct collective identities.

Israeli Arabs struggle for recognition of their language as a

sign of their national identity in the context of Hebrew

dominance – a majority language which functions as a unifying

symbol of the state's Jewish character.

5.2 Language and Multilingual Identity of the Russian Jewish

Intelligentsia

The mass immigration from the former Soviet Union in the 1990's

created a rich ethno-linguistic community with its own economic,

social and political networks based on Russian language and

culture reflecting identity choices ranging from assimilation to

separatism.

As a result of Soviet language policy aimed at suppressing

minority languages (e.g. Yiddish and Hebrew) in favor of Russian,

the contemporary cultural world of former Soviet Jews has been

mediated mostly in Russian. The ethnolinguistic vitality of

Russian has been assessed as very high for former Soviet

immigrants in Israel (e.g. Olshtain & Kotik 2000). Such

“exaggerated loyalty” towards Russian was attributed by

Yelenevskaya & Fialkova (2002: 207) to the fact that “upon

immigration [people] tend to emphasize the significance of their

past”. They further argue that the Soviet “attitude to minority

languages and speakers of minority languages” has been

transferred by the immigrants to the linguistic situation in

Israel, giving a minority language (Russian) more cultural and

educational potential than the majority language (Hebrew)

(Yelenevskaya & Fialkova 2003: 45).

Using sociolinguistic surveys and interviews with Russian-

speaking community leaders in several towns in Israel, Ben-Rafael

et al. (1994, 2006b) report a strong desire to maintain the

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Russian language and culture, which is perceived by immigrants as

a source of collective pride. Similarly, Remennick (2003a), in a

study of Russian speaking immigrant families, interprets use of

Russian in public realms and high self-esteem among bearers of a

Russian accent as indicative of rising sociolinguistic status of

Russian speakers in Israel. Kopeliovich (2006) claims that, in

addition to putting a strong emphasis on Russian language

maintenance, the post-Soviet immigrant intelligentsia in Israel

retain Russian cultural values, even when these values are

expressed in Hebrew or English. She argues that cultural

maintenance by Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel is

characterized not by imitation of their pre-immigration

experiences, but by integration of authentic cultural values with

the new reality and mutually enriching communication with other

cultures. Russian language and cultural maintanence in Israel, on

the background of Hebrew-English bilingualism, has resulted in

the creation of triglossia in this population (Kheimets & Epstein

2001). Specifically, Russian is used within the family and

community framework, Hebrew is employed for social and civil

integration, while English is required for academic and

professional advancement.

Along with Russian language maintenance, recent studies

present data showing that the relative salience of Russian vis-à-

vis other languages has decreased over the last ten years.

Kheimets & Epstein (2007) report low interest in the idea of

establishing a Russian-speaking university in Israel among

immigrant scientists. Another threat to the salience of Russian

is posed by a rapid convergence process: Hebrew elements

penetrate the speech of Russian Israelis, turning “immigrant

Russian” into an contact language comprehensible only to

bilinguals (Remennick 2003b).

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In their studies of younger generation immigrants, Nizhnik

(2002) and Kopeliovich (2006) report a rapid shift away from

Russian language use among adolescents and children together with

positive attitudes to their parents’ cultural heritage.

Similarly, adolescents examined by Burstein-Feldman (2007)

reported language and behavior patterns typical to their Israeli-

born peers, while at the same time expressing satisfaction with

their being “different” as a result of exposure to the “more

cultured” Russian values fostered by their families. This complex

interplay of two interacting identities exhibited by immigrant

children may be problematic for the future of the Russian

maintenance in Israel.

5.3 English: Everybody’s Third Language

With some foundation from the 19th century, the role of English

grew after the conquest of Palestine by the British and the

subsequent Mandate for Palestine (Spolsky & Cooper 1991). Under

British Mandatory rule, while English was the main language of

government, contact bilingualism developed, and English served

both Jews and Arabs as a ‘neutral’ albeit imperial language of

wider communication.

In Israel English is one of the four compulsory subjects in

secondary school matriculation exams; university students must

satisfy an English-proficiency requirement at both B.A. and M.A.

levels. English is a requirement for a substantial proportion of

jobs; it is a vehicle for international pop culture; and it is

the language most likely to be used between an Israeli and

someone from abroad, whether the foreigner is a supplier, a

customer, a tourist, or a relative. Cooper (1985b) maintains that

English, as a marker of educational status is a key determinant

of socioeconomic status. The high status of English in Israel has

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been claimed to be one of the reasons North American immigrants

do not attain the same level of Hebrew as former Soviet citizens

(Beenstock 1996), since their ability to speak English reduces

their need to learn Hebrew.

By the early 1970s the effects of globalization were obvious

to the Israeli public, and English saw growth in status and

competence (Spolsky & Shohamy 1999, pp. 156–186). The teaching of

English moved from pre-1960 concern for literature and culture to

a focus on English as an international language of communication.

That change has brought increased emphasis on oral ability over

the years. Besides access to business, science, education, and

travel, English is the language of some major Jewish diasporas

(e.g. Canada, UK, US, South Africa). There has also been

significant influence of English-speaking immigrants who arrived

in Israel soon after 1967. This group was the first to speak a

language which could compete with Hebrew in standing, and they

provided a stock of native speakers of the language, many of whom

became English teachers (Spolsky 1998). About 40% of teachers of

English in Jewish high schools are native speakers of the

language, a figure probably not matched in other educational

systems anywhere (Spolsky 1997). The demand for English has

continued to increase (Cooper 1985a). Parental pressure forced

the schools to begin teaching English at the early elementary

level. Fears have been expressed that English may become a threat

to Hebrew. In the meantime, as Ben-Rafael (1994) suggested,

Hebrew-English bilingualism is becoming a possibility for the

future.

5.4 Language Policy

There is no single comprehensive document which regulates

government policy towards the languages spoken in Israel. Two

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important documents are the Declaration of Independence (1948)

and Article 82 of the Palestinian Order in Council (1922). The

former establishes the character of Israel as a Jewish state and

Hebrew as its national symbol and at the same time grants equal

status to all citizens. The latter is the document which

recognizes Hebrew and Arabic as the official languages in Israel.

Nevertheless, the Declaration of Independence does not have legal

authority and Article 82 concerns only official governmental and

municipal publications. Over the years, a number of Parliamentary

laws have passed, most concerned with use of Arabic, a few

regarding Russian and Amharic [see Deutsch 2005 for a review].

Nonetheless, the social dynamics of Israeli society dictate a

different reality. Arabic is a de facto minority language while

the public usage of Russian is prevalent despite the scarcity of

legislation.

At the turn of the century, an educational language policy

was proffered by the Israeli Ministry of Education in 1995 and

1996. The policy reaffirms the importance of Hebrew and Arabic as

mother tongues and as languages of instruction in the two

educational systems as well as the need for members of each

community to learn the other language. In addition, English is

designated as the first foreign language and immigrants are

encouraged to maintain their home languages while acquiring

Hebrew (see Spolsky & Shohamy 1999).

A question has recently been asked whether a distinction

should be made between different types of linguistic minorities

with relation to the state's legal obligation towards their

speakers. More specifically, it is claimed that the state has a

stronger obligation to the languages of national and indigenous

minorities than to immigrant languages on sociological and moral

grounds (Kymlicka 1995, p. 76-8). Applied to the Israeli context,

18

this question would distinguish between Arabic, the language of a

national minority, and Russian, an immigrant language. Up to now,

this issue had been discussed in the Israeli public discourse and

by Israeli legal scholars (Saban 2004) but it certainly requires

sociolinguistic examination as well.

6.0 Pragmatics, discourse, and conversation

Israel has been richly fertile for this branch of

sociolinguistics, producing work grounded in

philosophy/linguistics (Ariel 1985 on the given-new distinction;

Ariel, 2002 on literal meaning; Dascal, 1987, 1989; Kasher,

1998), in poetics/semiotics (Giora’s 1995, 2003 studies of irony,

salience, metaphor), in developmental psycholinguistics (Berman’s

and Ravid’s work on narrative development) and integrative

approaches (Blum-Kulka on discourse and socialization; Walters on

bilingual socialization).

The greatest abundance of research has emerged from Blum-

Kulka’s laboratory communication.mscc.huji.ac.il/shoshanacv. It

was she who initiated the cross-cultural pragmatics project

(CCSARP) in the early 1980s, looking at speech acts such as

requests, hints, compliments, apologies with other Israeli

(Weizmann, Olshtain) and German scholars (House, Kasper). Among

those who have come from this lab, Weizmann’s early work was

grounded in the philosophy of language (speech acts), focusing on

the interpretation of indirectness in journalistic language and

literary texts (Dascal & Weizman 1987, Weizman & Dascal 1991,

2006) and on the realization of indirect speech acts (Weizman

1985, 1993). looking at cross-cultural variation in speech acts,

hints, irony, misunderstandings, and more recently at political

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and journalistic writing. It later developed into a pragmatic

analysis of literary texts, with particular interest in the

translation of irony (Weizman 1999, 2003).

Blum-Kulka’s research moved later to family (dinner-time)

discourse (Blum-Kulka 1997), and most recently to children’s

pragmatic development. This level of activity was certainly

instrumental in IPrA’s decision to hold its biennial meeting in

Tel Aviv in 1999, but alas, politics and the academic boycott of

Israel soon after led to a rift which made many Israeli scholars

feel unwelcome at these conferences.

In a paper introducing peer talk research, Blum-Kulka argues

that “certain questions about social development can only be

fully addressed with recourse to discourse analysis of peer

interactions”. She goes on to indicate that these questions

include issues as broad as gender identity, social relationships,

empathy/perspective taking, race, ethnic and cultural

differences. Despite the wide net she has cast, each one of these

questions is grounded in theoretical terms a sociolinguist will

readily understand. Methodologically, her bias is ethnographic;

nevertheless, the scholars she has mentored know their way around

a variety of designs and methods, and her call for looking at

peer talk with multiple “analytical tools” shows an openness not

evident in some branches of linguistics.

From structural, functional and developmental perspectives,

Berman, Ravid and their students have looked at narrative and

expository discourse – with funding over ten years (1997-present)

from Spencer, Ford, BSF and GIF. They have examined background

information, temporality, verb tense and semantics in narrative

discourse; and topic introduction, generality, nominal structure

and content in expository texts. Among the most innovative

20

aspects of this work is the notion of information density (Ravid

& Berman 2007).

Finally, discourse markers, little words and phrases used

almost exclusive in spoken language (and numbering 50-100 in most

languages), have been shown to convey a variety of structural

purposes to mark changes in topic, to connect clauses, and to

frame conversation; sociopragmatically to create relationships

between speaker and listener, to convey affect and emotion; and

psycholinguistically to allow a speaker time for planning and

maintain fluency in production. Israel has been a center for work

in this area, beginning with Jucker and Ziv’s 1998 volume, where

four of the ten articles dealt with Hebrew (Ariel, Ziv, Maschler,

Shloush). Maschler (2002a, 2002b, 2003) has looked at a variety

of Hebrew discourse markers (k’ilu, kaze, nu, tov) in talk-in-

interaction. More theoretically, Ariel (1998) has examined form-

function relations of discourse markers.

From a socio-pragmatic perspective, Elda Weizman has studied

positioning in news interviews on Israeli television (supported

by the Israel Science Foundation). In two edited journal issues

(Journal of Pragmatics 2006, Questions de Communication 2006) and a

forthcoming book on ‘Positioning in News Interviews’, she argues

for the relevance of implicit challenge strategies to the co-

construction and dynamic negotiations of interactional and social

roles, focusing on discursive practices such as address terms and

irony. Her cross-cultural interests include a comparative

analysis of news interviews on Israeli television and Al Jazira

(Weizman, Levy & Schneebaum 2006). Zohar Livnat has applied a

discourse-analytic approach to political speeches, bumper

stickers (Livnat & Schlesinger 2002), the daily press (1998),

legal discourse (Livnat & Qayam 2004, and scientific writing

(Livnat 2006). This work focuses on the relations between

21

addressee and audience, and examines the social role played by

the text in the discourse community.

Finally, in the area of religious discourse and rhetoric,

Muchnik (2005) investigated the argumentative strategies of a

‘repentance preacher’ who adapts himself to the cultural

background of his audiences and the media, presenting quasi-

scientific arguments as facts that seem to lead to unequivocal

conclusions, denying the legitimacy of explanations given to the

same phenomena by scientists and secularists, while making

intensive use of word play, intonation and stress, rhyme, and

alliteration.

7.0 Other topic: Linguistic dimensions of the sociology

of communication

The sociology of language and the sociology of communication are

well-established fields in Israeli social sciences. However, they

have followed different, independent tracks. Several books have

appeared on the history of the Israeli press (Caspi, 1986; Caspi

& Limor, 1999; Peri, 2004, etc.) and its functioning in the

shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict (Cohen & Wolfsfeld, 1992;

Wolfsfeld, 1997; Liebes, 1997; Wolfsfeld, 2004, etc.), but little

research has focused on multilingualism in the Israeli media.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (2004), only about

56 per cent of Israeli newspapers and periodicals appear in

Hebrew; yet not one monograph has analyzed the development of the

foreign-language media. Though a few studies of press in foreign

and community languages exist (e.g. Russian (Wartburg 1994;

Zilberg & Leshem, 1996; Ben-Yaakov 1998; Caspi & Elias 2000;

Caspi, Adoni, Cohen & Elias 2002; Elias 2005; Elias & Caspi

2007), Arabic (Mansour 1990; Jubran 1999; historical analysis of

the Arab press in Palestine in the first half of the 20th

22

century, Khoury-Machool 2008), German (Gelber 1988), English

(Frenkel 1994), Romanian (Bar-Haim 1992), Yiddish and Ladino

(Ares 1998), no systematic comparative research of the non-Hebrew

Israeli media has been published to date.

Scholars who dedicate their research to the study of Israeli

society usually emphasize the important role of the media for

Israelis. However, they seem to underestimate the importance of

linguistic pluralism in the Israeli mass media and pay little

attention to the fact that due to the large number of indigenous

and immigrant minorities, the country’s newspapers and magazines

appear not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic, English, Yiddish,

Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French, German, Amharic and other

languages. Language policy research has basically ignored this

topic. Research serving as a “bridge” between the sociology of

language and the sociology of communication in various languages

in Israel is yet to be carried out.

8.0 Conclusion, future directions

Multilingualism was not necessarily envisioned by the founders

of the state when they legislated both Arabic and Hebrew as

the official languages of the country in 1948. Nor did Jewish

refugees who came from Europe, North Africa and the Middle

East think they were coming to a place known for its

pluralism. But the years since perestroika have been

paralleled in Israel by unsurpassed demographic changes from

immigration and natural birth rates among Muslims and

religious Jews far beyond those of the secular population – to

a point that Israel can be seen today as a nation in a

struggle to clarify a very complex collective identity.

Multilingualism is strong among languages like Arabic, English

and Russian, where vitality comes from demographics and/or a

long literary tradition. Endangered languages such as Yiddish23

and Syriac (among Maronite Christians) hope to earn a place in

the Israeli mosaic. Israeli sociolinguistics cries for more

intensive study of the country’s major social cleavages,

between Arabs and Jews, Ashkenazim and Sefardim, young and

old, and between elites and the disenfranchised. This kind of

research is labor intensive in data gathering, transcription,

coding and interpretation. Tough issues are often treated by

descriptive, media-oriented approaches, some of them imbued

more with ideology than science. It’s too bad that despite the

large number of dissertations cited in this chapter, very few

young scholars have found a place in academia. Fortunately,

the diversity of languages, language users, and language

issues in polyphonic Israel offers fertile ground for many

more devoted sociolinguists.

24

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