This book observes and critiques controversies on the genesis and the character of Israeli Hebrew. Was its emergence a process of language revival? What conceptual framework should be used to assess Ben-Yehuda’s role in it? Is the language genesis completed, and is Hebrew now a normal language? How can language normalcy be defined? How is the nation speaking this language discursively constructed?
Revivalism, the hegemonic linguistic ideology in Israel, views contemporary Hebrew as a revived form of Classical Hebrew, and claims that this singular condition defies ordinary sociolinguistic analysis. General schools of linguistics – philology, structuralism, generativism – are shown to have been applied to Hebrew in accord with various national discourses. Points of convergence and tension between linguistic, sociological, historiographic and political discourses are presented. Various Zionist positions are extensively reviewed. The scope of nationalist options is examined through Canaanism, a small challenger to Zionism, which reconceptualized the linguistic and national processes, but remained revivalist and nationalist.
The subject position of the Hebrew speaker has shifted from the non-native, proud speaker of a revived tongue to the native, insecure speaker, discursively constructed by pseudo-biblical normativism, and vulnerable to authoritative ideological guidance. The effects of revivalism on language education in Israel are discussed, and argument is made in favor of a non-revivalist linguistic research program and education policy.