Dissertation Research: Language Socialization and Language Maintenance in a Hasidic Community

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Despite predictions after World War II that Yiddish would disappear, Yiddish has thrived alongside English and Hebrew in many New York Hasidic communities, including the Bobover Hasidim of Boro Park, Brooklyn. Yiddish is critical to Bobover ethnic identity. The cultural meanings of Yiddish, however, are established in contrast to patterns of English use. These patterns of language choice - Yiddish and English - are gendered. In this project I use the language socialization research paradigm to investigate activities through which young children become competent members of a groups whose identity is enacted through gendered language practices and other self and community defining activities. My research will be based on the analysis of audiotaped natural speech between caregivers and four focal children in contexts of home and school as well as analysis of English and Yiddish children's literature published by the community. To date, there has been no research which focuses on Hasidic children and multilingual acquisition and practices. The Bobover provide a particularly illuminating case study for language socialization because language maintenance (especially Yiddish) and the reproduction of social identity are so tightly linked in this community. This study will be relevant more broadly for understandings of gender and religious fundamentalism, processes of social reproduction and change, as well as the relationship between Jewish ethnic identities and languages.