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Language and Social Identity: Israelis Abroad

Department of Russian and Language Studies, University of Melbourne

This paper explores the potential of social identity theory for explaining language attitudes and language maintenance and shift in an immigrant group. It reports a study of Israeli native speakers of Hebrew and their children in Melbourne from an intergroup perspective. The study investigates the Israelis' perceptions of the new intergroup setting in which as immigrants they find themselves and the social categories salient within it. As yordim (a Hebrew word with negative connotations referring to Israelis living permanently abroad) the subjects in the study report that they are stigmatised by Israelis remaining in Israel and by the wider Jewish community in Melbourne; this stigma is to some extent internalised. With reference to the Gentile community, subjects are stigmatised both as immigrants and more particularly as Jews, an experience which the intergroup situation in Israel precludes. The multiple group membership of subjects (yordim, Jews, immigrants) is a key to understanding the intergroup relations involved. It was hypothesised that the transformation of the social identity of the subjects is accompanied by language attitudes favouring English over Hebrew among the immigrants and a rapid shift to English among their children. This was confirmed in the data.

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