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Hebrew, Yiddish and the creation of contesting Jewish places in Kazimierz

Abstract

This paper examines the use of Hebrew and Yiddish in the linguistic landscape of Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland. Specifically, I examine how the use of these languages in primarily symbolic modes as a part of the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire is a part of the creation of three different types of Jewish places in the quarter. These places present different stances towards whether or not Jewishness can exist in present-day Poland, which are, in turn, reacted to by American Jewish visitors to the quarter. This work shows that nonvernacular and fragmented use of languages, while in some cases is a part of the construction of a purely commodified “Disneyfied” landscape in which users of those languages have been displaced, in others, it can be perceived as a sign of more authentic community revitalization.

Department

English

Publication Date

1-12-2021

Journal Title

Journal of Sociolinguistics

Publisher

Wiley

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12451

Document Type

Article

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