Dissertation: Linguistic Negotiation of Gender, Difference and Power by Israeli and Palestinian Women Activists

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research by an anthropological linguist studies the language used by Jewish and Palestinian Israeli and West Bank Palestinian woman peace and political activists. While the rhetoric used appeals to gender unity, the actual practices of coalition building reveal divisions of inequality both within and between groups. The focus of the research will be on how people manipulate specific linguistic structures (how things are said) and not simply semantic content (what is said) in order to negotiate identities and goals. The student will record speech in organizational meetings and public events, as well as interview activists, individually and in small groups, to gather demographic information, gender and national ideologies. She will test hypotheses concerned with how women's attempts to create a cohesive women's activist community correlate with their ability to maximize gendered language practices within Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic; and with how code-switching (switching between two or more languages or dialects) is used to attain personal and political goals. The research should advance our understanding of how linguistic structure and practice affects political activity and will further our understanding of the ways in which Israeli and Palestinian women peace and national activists translate international phenomena, such as peace treaties and global feminism, into local realities of building or failing to build bridges across boundaries of difference to achieve common goals. In addition it will add to our knowledge of this important region of the world