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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 476

Part of Session 129: Multilingualism and emotions in urban settings (Other abstracts in this session)

Mixed cities, mixed languages, mixed feelings; Family language policy in Israeli Arab families

Authors: Tannenbaum, Michal
Submitted by: Tannenbaum, Michal (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

Israel is a country with high rates of immigration that also includes an indigenous minority of Arabs distinguished by national, religious, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. In the Jewish majority group, most use Hebrew as their L1. Arabs, who are mostly Muslim with a small percentage of Christians, use Arabic as their L1 and tend to live in separate geographical areas. About ten percent of Israel’s Arabs live in ‘mixed cities,’ a term describing urban jurisdictions including both Jews and Arabs. Since neither side defines them as homogeneous, these cities may afford rich insights about Israeli reality as a space for mediation that results in a ‘hybrid urbanism,’ an idiom resonating with references to colonial discourse.

      Although a ‘mixed city’ suggests images of integration, data point to an asymmetry reflecting the hierarchical power relations between Jews and Arabs in Israeli society. A growing tendency of Arab parents living in mixed cities to send their children to Hebrew speaking educational settings, especially in pre-school years, could be another reflection of these power relations.

      The purpose of the present study was to understand this phenomenon from both sociolinguistic and psychological perspectives, viewing language as closely related to power and identity on the one hand, and to emotions and close relationships on the other. Viewing L1 as a symbol of emotions related to early childhood experiences and to first object relations, and as closely associated with identity-formation, it was hypothesized that these parents might put their communication with their young children at risk. Hindering free and spontaneous communication with their children in L1, hearing their child communicating only or mainly in L2, may have significant effect on the relationships between parents and children, on feelings associated with their own and their children’s identity, and on the functionality of the family as a system.

      Information was gathered using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, focusing on the parents’ motives to send their children to these educational settings and on the impact of this decision on the family’s language policy. Overall, findings reveal how the external urban setting interacts with the internal family system in terms of dynamics and relationships. The mixed city context appears to invade the family language policy in mixed ways, and socio-political dimensions appear to interact closely with emotional ones. Findings are followed by suggestions for further research and recommendations to families raising children in such contexts.

References:

Rabinowitz, D., & Monterescu, D. (2008). Reconfiguring the “mixed town”: Urban transformations of ethnonational relations in Palestine and Israel. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 40, 195-226.

Tannenbaum, M. (in press). Family language policy as a form of coping or defense mechanism. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.