1 Universita' Degli Studi Di Napoli Federico Ii
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UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE POLITICHE SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO IN SCIENZE PSICOLOGICHE PEDAGOGICHE E LINGUISTICHE DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN LINGUA INGLESE PER SCOPI SPECIALI XXVI CICLO TESI DI DOTTORATO A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF JEWISH CHILDREN’S STORIES IN ENGLISH ON THE WEB: FROM LANGUAGE TO IDENTITY CANDIDATO DOTT. ROBERTO IACONO RELATORE COORDINATORE DELDOTTORATO PROF.SSA VANDA POLESE PROF.SSA GABRIELLA DI MARTINO NAPOLI 2014 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 8 INTRODUCTION 9 CHAPTER 1 Today’s Youth and the Media 13 1.1 The Relationships between ESP and Narrative 13 1.2 The Youth and the Media 22 1.3 Learning Informally on the Web 26 CHAPTER 2 Language, Narrative and Identity 31 2.1 Children’s Narrative 31 2.2 Ideology in Children’s Narrative 32 2.3 Children’s Short Stories 35 2.4 Children’s Stories on the Web 38 2.5 Children’s Narrative and Socio-Cultural Identity 41 2.6 Children’s Narrative and Ethnicity 50 2.7 Ethnic Narrative: A definition 53 2.8 Children’s Ethnic Narrative 55 2 CHAPTER 3 Linguistic Features of Written- and Ethno-based Narrative 58 3.1 Ethnolect: A definition 58 3.2 Ethnolect: An Over-representing Term in Narrative 61 3.3. An Ethno-oriented ‘Distinctive Linguistic Repertoire’ in Narrative 64 3.4 Written- and Ethno-based Distinctive Linguistic Repertoire vs. Code-switching in Narrative 69 CHAPTER 4 Jewish Children’s Stories and Websites: Towards a Visual Representation of Jewish Identity on the Web 73 4.1 Jewish Children’s Stories 73 4.2 Contemporary Judaism and the Age of the Internet 74 4.3 Jewish Websites: A definition 78 4.4 The Jewish Websites in the Corpus 79 4.4.1 Jewishmag.com 81 4.4.2 Final Remarks 91 4.4.3 Nishmas.org 91 4.4.4 Final Remarks 98 4.4.5 Shemayisrael.com 99 4.4.6 Final Remarks 103 4.5 The Role of Images in Jewish Children’s Stories 104 4.5.1 A Critical Analysis of ‘Jewish Images’ in the Corpus 108 4.5.1.1 Jewish-Orthodox Clothing 111 4.5.1.2 Jewish Characters’ Physical Features 117 3 4.5.1.3 Jewish Ritual Objects 120 4.5.1.4 Final Remarks 122 CHAPTER 5 Language Contact in Online Jewish Children’s Short Stories (OJCSSs): Towards a Verbal Representation of Jewish Identity on the Web 125 5.1 Foreword 125 5.2 Language Contact: An Introduction 128 5.3 Written-based Language Contact 130 5.4 A Brief History of Language Contact between English and Yiddish 132 5.5 Constructing Jewish Identity through Language in OJCSSs 136 5.6 Findings of the Linguistic Analysis of OJCSSs 139 5.6.1 Lexical Findings: Loanwords 139 5.6.1.1 Jewish Religious Loanwords 142 5.6.1.2 Jewish Cultural Loanwords 178 5.6.1.3 Jewish Affective Loanwords 198 5.6.1.4 Final Remarks 204 5.6.2 Morpho-Syntactic Analysis and Findings 208 5.6.2.1 Anglicisation of Hebrew-origin Nouns into English Adjectives 211 5.6.2.2 Pluralisation of Loan Nouns through Morphology from English, Yiddish and Hebrew 221 5.6.2.3 Transformation of Yiddish Verbs into English Verbs 235 5.6.2.4 English Noun Formation from Yiddish-origin Verbs 246 5.6.2.5 Use of ‘Complex Verbs’ (English Verb + Yiddish / Hebrew Noun) 250 5.6.2.6 Final Remarks 263 4 CONCLUSIONS 267 BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 68 Figure 2 72 Figure 3 82 Figure 4 83 Figure 5 89 Figure 6 90 Figure 7 93 Figure 8 97 Figure 9 98 Figure 10 100 Figure 11 102 Figure 12 102 Figure 13 111 Figure 14 112 Figure 15 113 Figure 16 113 Figure 17 113 Figure 18 114 Figure 19 115 Figure 20 115 Figure 21 116 Figure 22 116 Figure 23 117 Figure 24 118 6 Figure 25 118 Figure 26 119 Figure 27 121 Figure 28 121 Figure 29 121 Figure 30 206 Figure 31 207 Figure 32 265 Figure 33 266 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my special appreciation and deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Vanda Polese, who has supported me throughout my years as a PhD student with her patience, offering so much advice, teaching me how to persevere and to research with a critical eye. I would also like to thank her for the great amount of time she has dedicated to the supervision of my doctoral dissertation. I am equally thankful to Professor Gabriella Di Martino, who put her confidence in me, allowing me to enter this PhD programme and giving me the inestimable opportunity to research on this specific and, I would say, quite unexplored aspect of contemporary (English-speaking) Judaism. My ‘thank you’ also goes to all other members of the PhD Board, in particular to Professor Cristina Pennarola and Dr. Amelia Bandini for always giving me precious advice. Moreover, I would like to thank the former Department of Teorie e Metodi delle Scienze Umane e Sociali , now Scienze Politiche of the University of Naples Federico II for making me feel part of it. Another ‘thank you’ goes to Dr. Sole Alba Zollo for her many tips, to my PhD fellows and, of course, Mrs. Mena Vilardi, our secretary, who is always ready to help. Last but not least, I am very grateful to my parents for supporting me throughout all my studies at University. Without them, I would have never reached this as well as other important life-goals! 8 INTRODUCTION For the majority of young people living in the Western World it is nowadays impossible to imagine how it would be like to grow up without some of the most popular technological devices, e.g. the Internet. This is also the case of young Jewish people, who, most often, see the media as an integral part of the culture of contemporary Judaism. Like other world’s cultures, Judaism is going through important social changes, including those caused by the advent of the new technological devices, like the World Wide Web, a means that helps contribute, among other things, to the development of identity, including Jewish identity. The Internet, in fact, represents a significant medium for the dissemination and storage of information linked to Jewish culture and identity. Moreover, as a didactic tool, the World Wide Web offers, through playful leisure time activities, the opportunity to enhance Jewish learning. In addition, many of these activities serve the important function to acquaint the Jewish youth with part of their cultural and religious heritage, highlighting Jewish values. In the light of these brief introductory observations, the analysis of Jewish stories on the Web, ideally targeted at a young Jewish readership of Yiddish-heritage, provides an interesting case study of how new technologies represent a valuable supplemental resource aiming at enriching Eastern Ashkenazi Jews 1’ knowledge about their own heritage culture. The present research study highlights the importance of both verbal and non-verbal resources in this written- and ethno-based type of narrative texts tailored for a young Jewish readership, by analysing different verbal and non-verbal phenomena occurring in the Corpus. With regard to the linguistic analysis, phenomena developing out of language contact situations between English (the ‘mainstream language’) and Yiddish or Hebrew, traditionally considered the ‘heritage languages’ 1 The expression‘Eastern Ashkenazi Jews’ refers to Jews of Eastern European origin who historically spoke and still speak the Judeo-German language, also known as Yiddish. The Hebrew term Ashkenazi means ‘German’ and refers to those Jews who settled along the Rhine-river in Germany before the Middle Ages. ‘ Ashkenazi Jews’ is, thus, a descriptive term for descendents of German Jews, including those who, for various socio-historical reasons, established communities in Central and Eastern Europe centuries later. 9 of the majority of English-speaking Jews of Eastern Ashkenazi heritage. In particular, the research study aims at providing an answer to the following questions: 1. Which are the linguistic phenomena developing out of language contact situations between the above-mentioned languages that occur within Jewish children’s short stories on the Web? More specifically, which linguistic resources do the authors of these stories select and use in the stories they write? 2. Which level or levels of language do these linguistic phenomena involve? 3. Do the authors of Jewish children’s short stories on the Web select and use such linguistic resources for a specific purpose? In other words, do online Jewish children’s short stories featuring language contact situations between English and Yiddish, or between English and Hebrew, represent a goal-oriented type of child- tailored, written- and ethno-based communication? If so, which goals can be detected to be pursued in the stories under scrutiny? For this purpose, a Corpus of fifty-five online Jewish children’s short stories taken from three different Jewish websites containing stories featuring language contact situations was collected. The linguistic analysis follows the principles of the ‘Distinctive Linguistic Repertoire’ approach (Benor 2008, 2010), based on the notion of ‘Distinctly Jewish Linguistic Repertoire’, according to which Jews (in this case, Eastern Ashkenazi Jews) ideally have access to a whole array of linguistic resources at all levels of language, in order to distinguish their speech and writing from those of non-Jews. With regard to the non-verbal resources of the above-mentioned type of texts, the analysis will focus on the role of Jewish visual images occurring in different stories making up the Corpus. More specifically, this type of analysis will focus on how Jewish identity is constructed, expressed and transmitted through the different visual images contained in the stories.