The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism

This important book is a powerful reminder that language is deeply intertwined with state practices, ideology and power. In the case of Israel, the hegemony of Hebrew over Arabic and other languages results in everyday Palestinian multilingual navigations that are inherently political, as Hawker ably shows. Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights, The University of Alberta, Canada A sobering contribution to the unveiling of Israel's repressive and marginalizing policies against its Palestinian citizens, Nancy Hawker's fascinating sociolinguistic lens and passionate fieldwork show how third-class citizens create cracks in hegemonic structures and carve out discursive spaces of humor, boldness and talent which defy determinism. Amira Hass, journalist and author In this extraordinary and compelling book, Dr. Nancy Hawker captures the complex play of politics on the Arabic/Hebrew interface, showing the effects of modern late capitalism and Israeli state policies on multilingual Palestinian Arabs. Contributing new understandings of language avoidance and social class, this book is a must-read in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and Middle Eastern studies. Norma Mendoza-Denton, Professor of Anthropology, University of California at Los Angeles, USA The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism is a tour-de-force thick description, examining the discursive and multilingual repertoires employed by Palestinians to escape the politico-linguistic straitjacket in Israel where Arabic is repressed and suppressed. It is a wonderful multidisciplinary welcomed addition to the slim shelf of literature on language as politics and politics as language. Yehouda Shenhav, Professor of Sociology, Tel Aviv University, Israel