Jewish Argument Style among Russian Revolutionaries

Bibliographic Data

ID17823913
AuthorsGabriella Safran (Stanford University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume4
Issue1
Pages44-68
Publication date2016-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Jewish Languages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2213-4387 • E-ISSN: 2213-4638
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/22134638-12340063
OpenAlexW2312558604
LanguageEN
References cited14

Jewish speech was heard in Russian revolutionary contexts as characterized by emphatic tones, rhetorical questions, an argumentative stance, and sarcasm, all performative elements of Jewish English ( je ) as well. I examine depictions of Jewish Russian ( jr ) in the world of the non-Jewish Socialist Revolutionary ( sr ) leader Victor Chernov. This article first introduces Chernov, then analyzes his depictions of jr , and finally looks at transcripts of speeches by sr leaders for evidence of Jewish speech style. I use speech length, bold-face, exclamation points, and question marks as proxies for the heightened emotion and argumentative stance associated with jr . My analysis indicates no significant difference between the speech of Jewish and non-Jewish sr leaders as a whole, but shows that Chernov’s own speech contains a significantly higher than average use of these elements. This result complicates the notion of ethnolect and suggests that individuals’ evaluations of other people’s language should be examined in light of their biographies

Argumentative · Art · Judaism · Linguistics · Literature · Performative utterance · Rhetorical question · Theology · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism · Translation Studies and Practices

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