The Languages of Diaspora and Return

Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-90-04-33838-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 122 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 113 g

Until quite recently, the term Diaspora (usually with the capital) meant the dispersion of the Jews in many parts of the world. Now, it is recognized that many other groups have built communities distant from their homeland, such as Overseas Chinese, South Asians, Romani, Armenians, Syrian and Palestinian Arabs. To explore the effect of exile of language repertoires, the article traces the sociolinguistic development of the many Jewish Diasporas, starting with the community exiled to Babylon, and following through exiles in Muslim and Christian countries in the Middle Ages and later. It presents the changes that occurred linguistically after Jews were granted full citizenship. It then goes into details about the phenomenon and problem of the Jewish return to the homeland, the revitalization and revernacularization of the Hebrew that had been a sacred and literary language, and the rediasporization that accounts for the cases of maintenance of Diaspora varieties.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Spolsky, Bernard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sprachsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Section 1 Introduction – Diaspora and diasporas
- Defining diaspora
- The classical Jewish Diaspora
- Diaspora attitudes
- Living in Diaspora

Section 2 – Non-Jewish diasporas - some dimensions of diaspora languages
- Case 1 - The Chinese diaspora – a large diverse collection of communities
- Case 2 – South Asian diasporas
- Case 3 - A return from exile: the Navajo case
- Case 4 - A homeless diaspora? Rom or Romani
- Case 5 - The Armenian diasporas – an analogous case
- Case 6 - Exiles from Arab lands: Syrian and Palestinian diasporas
- Case 7 - Russian diaspora communities – old and new
- Case 8 - Pasifika in Aotearoa
- Dimensions of diaspora languages

Section 3– Babylon – the first Jewish Diaspora
- The Egyptian captivity
- Captivity in Babylonia
- The shift to Aramaic
- Attitudes to Diaspora
- The persistence of Hebrew

Section 4 – The Diaspora in Greek cities
- The growth of the Diaspora
- Jews in Greek colonies

Section 5 – Jews in the Arab world
- Pre-Islamic Diaspora
- Jews in Islam
- The Jewish variety of Arabic
- The Reconquista and Jewish Spanish

Section 6 The European Diaspora
- Jews in Europe
- Language shift
- What is a Jewish variety?
- Yiddish origins

Section 7 – The Shtetl: the mythic classic Jewish Diaspora
- Jews in Slavic lands

Section 8 – The Ottoman Sephardic Diaspora
- Expelled Iberian Jews move East
- The Ottoman welcome and its limits
- Jews in the Ottoman Balkans
- The development of the millet system

Section 9 – The emancipated, secularizing, assimilating Diaspora of modern times
- The effect of emancipation
- France
- Germany
- Netherlands
- Belgium
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Poland
- The Soviet Union
- The Arab world
- Algeria
- Morocco
- Tunisia
- Egypt
- Iraq
- Syria
- Lebanon
- Iran
- Turkey

Section 10 – “Bring us back”
- The problem of returning from diaspora
- The challenge of Global English
- Rediasporization in Israel

Section 11- Diaspora and diasporas
- A tertiary diaspora – a note on a new Israeli diaspora
- The effects of diaspora on language repertoires
- The future of diasporas

References

Über Autor(innen)

Bernard Spolsky (Ph.D. 1966, Hon.D.Litt 2008) is Professor Emeritus at Bar-Ilan University. He has published ten monographs (three translated into Japanese, Chinese or Latvian), 150 book chapters and 94 papers in peer reviewed journals, and edited three international academic journals and 26 books.