The Creation of Israeli Arabic

About this book

This book sheds light on the ways in which the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict has shaped Arabic language instruction in Jewish-Israeli society. It explores how 'Israeli Arabic' has been constructed by means of a closed network of Jewish-Israeli actors focused on political and security considerations rather than on a desire for open communication. The book argues that 'Israeli Arabic' has evolved as a silent, passive language that gave its users a limited set of language skills, especially decoding texts, with an emphasis on newspapers. This has enabled its students to observe the Arab world but not to interact with Arab people in general and the Palestinian citizens of Israel more particularly. The interdisciplinary nature of the book gives a unique perspective on Jewish-Israeli society and its production and reproduction of knowledge in the field of Arabic, and would therefore be of great interest to academics and researchers on security and Middle Eastern studies as well as those specialising in language and linguistics.