Roey Gafter
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190625696
- eISBN:
- 9780190625726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190625696.003.0011
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
Among Israelis, Jewish ethnicity is usually understood as a dichotomy between Ashkenazi Jews (of European descent) and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern descent). The feature most stereotypically ...
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Among Israelis, Jewish ethnicity is usually understood as a dichotomy between Ashkenazi Jews (of European descent) and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern descent). The feature most stereotypically associated with Mizrahis is the production of the pharyngeal segments ([ʕ] and [ħ]), which all extant research suggests has been lost in the speech of most contemporary Israelis. In this chapter I examine Israeli metalinguistic discourse, and demonstrate that, despite the reported infrequency of pharyngealization, it is highly salient in the speech community. I argue that pharyngealization is enregistered as a Mizrahi feature, and that it is a stylistic resource with a rich set of indexical meanings that goes far beyond an ethnic marker. Using data from two Israeli reality TV shows, I show that participants on these shows, who do not consistently pharyngealize, do so when performing attributes associated with a stereotypical Mizrahi persona.Less
Among Israelis, Jewish ethnicity is usually understood as a dichotomy between Ashkenazi Jews (of European descent) and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern descent). The feature most stereotypically associated with Mizrahis is the production of the pharyngeal segments ([ʕ] and [ħ]), which all extant research suggests has been lost in the speech of most contemporary Israelis. In this chapter I examine Israeli metalinguistic discourse, and demonstrate that, despite the reported infrequency of pharyngealization, it is highly salient in the speech community. I argue that pharyngealization is enregistered as a Mizrahi feature, and that it is a stylistic resource with a rich set of indexical meanings that goes far beyond an ethnic marker. Using data from two Israeli reality TV shows, I show that participants on these shows, who do not consistently pharyngealize, do so when performing attributes associated with a stereotypical Mizrahi persona.
