English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Framed upon the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this work is an analysis driven by a linguisticconstructivist approach that will focus on the impact of language-use in historic documentation and contemporary discourse on memory, perception, and identity. The semantics, ambiguity, and implications of language used regarding the conflict (c. 1850-present) in various media and historiographic sources will be examined. Through a comparative analysis of Palestinian and Israeli perspectives and linguistic description, contrasts will be drawn in an effort to more clearly render the etic reality of the conflict, as understood through these two emic perceptions of it. This research intends to not only reveal the power of selective language use in shaping perception and identity (in local, national, and international socio-political spheres), but to reveal the implications of the concepts of language structure and language agency as processes that guide and influence human conceptual understandings of conflict. Language is a profoundly powerful instrument of human intellect. Through its diverse manifestations, logic and order are transposed upon the universe in ways that are meaningful to speakers of the earth‟s many tongues. Of its diverse capacities, language‟s ability to influence and shape perception, memory, and identity is of considerable interest when considering the role of language in describing historic and contemporary conflicts among cultures. Perhaps in no other instance is this better illustrated than in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Through linguistic choices regarding historic and contemporary events and circumstances – linguistic constructivism, Palestinians, Israelis, and others have (wittingly and unwittingly) impacted all parties involved in profound ways. Historic and linguistic anthropological analysis of these language choices elucidates the interrelationships between language, history, and identity, and reveals the gravity of linguistic constructivism in the conceptualization of historic and lived discordance. Where the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is concerned, linguistic constructivist analysis has vast implications regarding the contrasting Israeli and Palestinian conceptual models of this schism. In order to make these implications as evidential as possible, an historic contextualization of the struggle is necessary. The Southwest of the Levant currently referred to as Israel and the Palestinian Authority area, has undergone a series of extensive transformations throughout its history. It is an area that has seen the rise and fall of state, national, and imperial polities whose reigns lasted from merely decades to several centuries. Approximately 3,200 years ago, the southwest Levant area was primarily occupied and settled by Jewish, Philistine (Palestinian), and Canaanite peoples. In his work on the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Charles Smith sheds light on the nature of this formative context in which identity became echoed in the region‟s associated anthroponymy: “The names “Israel” and “Palestine” derive from two peoples who entered the region at approximately the same time, the twelfth century before the Christian era. The Jews, who called themselves Bnei Israel, “the people or tribe of Israel”, believed that the land had been given to them by God. Palestine refers to the Philistines, a people of Greek origin who settled in the coastal plains of the area at about the same time the Jews took over the hill country in the interior.” 1 By the year 1,000BCE, the area came to unified by the Israelites under the rule of King David, placing the Palestinian people in a marginalized position both in terms of demography and influence. Despite the hegemonic nature of the 10 century BCE emergence of the unified Israeli polity, the prior historic claims of both Jewish and Palestinian peoples remain sound regarding their historic presence in the Levant. In the 5 century BCE, the writings of Greek historian and philosopher appeared as the first literary reference to the Levant region as “Palestine”. In terms of demography, Jews maintained a majority in the region until the Babylonian invasions of 6 century BCE. From the 5 century BCE onward, however, Jews in the area were placed in an increasingly marginalized and discriminated position as the region underwent changes in the hands of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule. Language, History, and Collective Identity: An Interpretive Approach to Linguistic Constru... DOI: 10.9790/0837-191261824 www.iosrjournals.org 19 | Page Under Roman and later Byzantine rule (c.63-638CE), Palestinian Jews experienced the most severe deterioration of their autonomy and livelihood. Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this historic environmental context is likely the catalyst that triggered waves of Jewish emigration from the Levant. By the 4 century CE, emigration of Jews from the Levant to the Rhineland region contemporary Germany and central Europe had begun producing a new cultural identity – Ashkenazim 5 . Literally translated from Hebrew as “German Jews”, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities that developed in central and eastern Europe synthesized and absorbed several of the cultural elements they were exposed to over centuries of co-existence with various European cultures. Despite the term‟s literal translation, by the 10 century CE its use came to be applied to all Jews of European descent (i.e. born and enculturated in Europe). This historical development of a distinct Ashkenazi Jewish identity and polysemous inclusion of all European Jews warrants recognizing, as it will later bear on linguistic constructivist analyses regarding Israeli identity. The arrival of Arabic and Islamic cultural influences in the 7 century CE continued the historic trend of change in Palestine. From 638-1918 CE, the region was under the Muslim rule of Arab and later Turkish Caliphates, and the area‟s demography reflected this shift in cultural authority in the majority status of Arab and Palestinian peoples throughout this expansive period. Throughout the reigns of the various Caliphal powers that controlled the Levant, Jews maintained a minority status for centuries. Beginning in the mid-19 century, the emergence of Zionism affected and forever altered this minority position. The minority and often marginalized status of Ashkenazi Jews has characterized the majority of the interactions between Jewish communities and Europeans from the 420 centuries CE. Aware of the constraints that this position imposed on Ashkenazi Jews‟ socio-political ambitions and autonomy, several prominent figures within the European Jewish community began to forward the concept of establishing a Jewish national homeland. Of the figureheads that emerged to champion the Zionist cause. Theodore Herzl (18601904) served as the primary engine of progress and change. Through his efforts, the World Zionist Organization (hereafter WZO) was founded in its first congress in Basel, Switzerland, 1897. Though the WZO managed to foster international political and financial support from the Zionist Fund (hereafter ZF) and the British Parliament, the ultimate goal of Zionism presented a serious obstacle regarding their historic absence from Palestine. Meira Weiss relates this conundrum effectively: “Zionist ideology has been continuously preoccupied with creating a national mythology that would link its present project of nation-building with the remote Jewish history in the Land of Israel (Zion). The problem faced by Zionism was how to construct a historical bridge to a land from which the Jewish people had been exiled for nearly two millennia.” This dilemma within Zionism‟s ideological legitimacy did not deter settlement in Palestine. With the support of the ZF, WZO, and British Parliamentary backing, Zionist settlement steadily rose from the late 19 th century onward. Zionist immigration into Palestine came in five primary waves referred to in Hebrew as aliyah, each the result of socio-political developments in Europe that placed an increasingly discriminatory position, the growing inertia and influence of the Zionist movement, or both. In 1914 World War I erupted, bringing a halt to the second aliyah. The provincial territory of Palestine was under Ottoman control under which the Palestinian people had experienced relative autonomy within the relatively decentralized form of Turkish government. At this time, the Palestinian population maintained majority, but was growing increasingly aware of continued settlement owing to Zionist immigration. Before the end of the War, the British government, at the request of Zionist interests, forwarded the Balfour Declaration. Through the signing of this document, the British government vaguely committed itself to a supportive role in the securing of a Jewish national homeland, and in so doing effectively omitted any reference to the Palestinian people as an existing or historic presence in the region. In 1918, World War I ended, the Ottoman Empire collapsed into the modern nation of Turkey, and the British assumed control over what they deemed British Mandatory Palestine. The British Mandatory Government occupied Palestine from 1918-1948. During this period, Parliament fulfilled its commitment posited in the Balfour Declaration through a combined effort with the ZWO. This entailed the continuation of Jewish immigration, the expansion of Jewish settlement into historically Palestinian territory, and the manipulation and exploitation of historic Palestinian landholdings under Ottoman law through a series of hostile an illegal land purchases. The cumulative effect of these actions left the Palestinians to witness the increasingly rapid transition of ownership of Palestine, and the gradual polarization of demography in the region. This process was punctuated by the fifth and most intense aliyah from the mid 1930s, paralleling the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws

Language, History, and Collective Identity: An Interpretive Approach to Linguistic Constructivism In The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict