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Using Yiddish: Language Ideologies, Verbal Art, and Identity among Argentine Jews
- Journal of Folklore Research
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 48, Number 1, January-April 2011
- pp. 37-61
- 10.2979/jfolkrese.48.1.37
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay focuses on the struggle among conflicting language ideologies that occurs in immigrant communities. Specifically, it analyzes verbal art performed in Spanish and Yiddish among second-generation Argentine Jews, the offspring of Eastern European Jews who emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the prevalence of Spanish in daily communication and the use of Hebrew as an emblematic language, Yiddish is still used in certain poetic speech forms. This analysis addresses the effects of contradictory language ideologies—hegemonic and otherwise—on the performance of verbal art and on performers' reflections about their speech forms.