Rhythm Is a Marker of Ethnicity in Modern Hebrew

Evidence from a Perception Study and Actors’ Ethnicized Portrayals

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6440705
AutoresSophie Berrebi (0000-0002-6488-6301, Tel Aviv University), Sharon Peperkamp (0000-0001-5985-8878, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique)
Año2024
Volumen68
Número1
Páginas100-117
Fecha de publicación2024-04-22
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguage and Speech (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0023-8309 • E-ISSN: 1756-6053
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00238309241243025
PMID38647157
OpenAlexW4395011216
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas48

In Modern Hebrew, only three segmental markers are typically acknowledged as ethnically conditioned, and usage of these markers has significantly decreased in second and third generation speakers. Yet the sociolinguistic situation of diverging language backgrounds of first generation speakers, compounded with ethnic segregation in housing and the workforce, seems like a fertile ground for social identification from speech. We report two studies on prosodic variation in Modern Hebrew: a perception study and a “matched-pairs” corpus study. The results of the first illustrate that even in the absence of the known segmental markers, ethnicity perception of young native speakers may still diverge between two major ethnic identities, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (European). The main acoustic correlate was rhythm , measured as the proportional duration of vowels in the utterance. In the second study, actors’ speech rhythm was found to be modulated by their portrayed ethnic identity in the same direction, suggesting that this variable is socially salient—and for some speakers, controllable—enough to be involved in style shifting. This study joins a growing body of work illustrating that relatively mild rhythmic variation can contribute to social identification, and in the current case, also for ethnicity portrayal

Ethnic group · Hebrew · Identity (music · Linguistics · Perception · Rhythm · Sociology · Style (visual arts · Utterance · Variation (astronomy · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Social Psychology