This paper will explore the language practices and resources of Jewish individuals and groups in Luxembourg as they construct, negotiate, and position themselves (and are positioned) in relation to multiple borders and... [ view full abstract ]
This paper will explore the language practices and resources of Jewish individuals and groups in Luxembourg as they construct, negotiate, and position themselves (and are positioned) in relation to multiple borders and identities in their everyday lives. This work comes out of on an ongoing long-term ethnographic study based on participant observation at various celebrations, classes, family events, etc. of the Jewish community of Luxembourg. The borders of the Jewish world shift continuously depending on religious and political affiliation, blood, consent, community structure, and place. The Jewish community of Luxembourg contains significant variations in understandings of Jewishness, ritual, religion, and the place of Luxembourg Jews in transnational networks and the wider Jewish world. Additionally, the community has undergone a shift in demographics and relations in recent years, as the liberal sector has grown in numbers and dynamism and borders have been redefined between the liberal and orthodox, Ashkenazi and Sephardi.
Simultaneously, Jewishness and the community as a whole remain largely invisible in the public realm, except in very particular ways and contexts. Individuals must navigate the intersections of Jewishness and the borders of the nation in the face of a deeply Catholic influence in state institutions and the public imaginary and a national space where religion is increasingly considered a ‘private’ concern, but Christianity remains normative.
This paper focuses on the role of language in these processes of border construction and negotiation. As Blommaert (2003:613) argues, the movement of individuals across social and physical space impacts their language repertoires such that “their language practices undergo reevaluation at every step of the trajectory and the functions of their repertoire are redefined”. With this in mind, I ask first, what are the identities and language repertoires, resources, and ideologies of Jews in Luxembourg that are cultivated and used in Jewish and private spaces? Second, what are the state and nation-based language repertoires and identities that permeate public spaces in Luxembourg? And third, how do Luxembourg Jews access and use these to construct, understand, and negotiate social and physical borders?
Blommaert, Jan. 2003. Commentary: A Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4): 607-623.
