This award will support the dissertation research of a cultural anthropologist from the University of Texas. The project involves the negotiation of social identity through the strategic use of language among Arabs and Jews in Haifa, Israel. The project will investigate how social groups form and transform their identities in everyday interaction through the strategic manipulation of language. Objectives include collection of a representative sample of speech recorded in natural settings; eliciting the pragmatic meaning associated with variation in such speech; and analyzing the power relations being negotiated in such interactions. Results will contribute to social and linguistic theory and will address practical issues of achieving harmonious social relations in Israel.
