“Mock Jewish” in Early Twentieth-Century Tunisia: Linguistic Form and Social Meaning
Abstract The article presents a sociolinguistic profile of “Mock Jewish,” or the stylized varieties of Judeo-Arabic deployed for humorous purposes in early twentieth-century Tunisian public culture. We assembled a corpus of texts from both print and audio-visual media, including newspaper columns, t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2021
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| In: |
Arabica
Year: 2021, Volume: 68, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 216-280 |
| Further subjects: | B
language ideology
B mock languages B Style B Arabic dialects B Tunisia B Judeo-Arabic |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Abstract The article presents a sociolinguistic profile of “Mock Jewish,” or the stylized varieties of Judeo-Arabic deployed for humorous purposes in early twentieth-century Tunisian public culture. We assembled a corpus of texts from both print and audio-visual media, including newspaper columns, television and radio performances, folktales, and plays, in which “Jewish” (yahūdī) or “Israelite” (isrāʾīlī) voices are stylized with exaggerated forms of linguistic difference. The purpose of the analysis is not to evaluate the inauthenticity of Mock Jewish vis-à-vis Judeo-Arabic proper, but to understand how performers deploy these markedly “Jewish” stylistic tactics to create diverse social meanings and assess the effects of these performances on language and society. We argue that Mock Jewish forms part of the broader “ideologies of linguistic differentiation” that construct Jewish speech as separate and distinct from non-Jewish varieties. However, the performances of Mock Jewish are not limited to sectarian polemic, but engage diverse targets, derive from different motivations, and provoke divergent responses from audiences. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Arabica
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700585-12341598 |