Language Death, Swan Song, Revival or New Arrival? 9781611433890, 1611433894

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Language Death, Swan Song, Revival or N e w Arrival?

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Language Death, Swan Song, Revival or New Arrival?

Mary Altabev

The Isis Press, Istanbul

preSS 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2003 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

ISBN 978-1-61143-389-0

Reprinted from the 2003 Istanbul edition.

Printed in the United States of America

Born in 1948 in Istanbul. Educated at Dame de Sion French high school in Istanbul. After a short stint at the University of Haifa, settled down in the UK. Following a considerable time gap, resumed higher studies at the University of Sussex where she was awarded a B A in Social A n t h r o p o l o g y in 1992, followed by a D.Phil, in Sociolinguistics in 1996. Currently works in the U K as a registered interpreter and freelance researcher.

To my brother Daryo Muraben, who has been my support and role model from as far back as I can remember.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Glossary

9

Acknowledgement

11

Chapter 1: Introduction

13

Chapter 2: Methodology

19

Chapter 3: The People and the Language

37

Chapter 4: Literature Review on Language Death/Shift/Revival in General and with Respect to Judeo-Spanish in Turkey

67

Chapter 5: The Turkish Jews' Perception of Judeo-Spanish (in Istanbul/Turkey, 1994)

89

Chapter 6: Language and Social Identity: Judeo-Spanish and the Turkish Jewish identity

135

Chapter 7: Epilogue: Death, Swan song, Revival or New Arrival?

215

Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Appendix 5 References

....

243 245 246 246 247 248

GLOSSARY field:

data in the form of notes, collected in the first stage of fieldwork.

field2:

data in the form of notes, collected in the second stage of

dd:

data in the form of diary, collected in the first stage of

fieldwork.

dd2:

data in the form of diary, collected in the second stage of fieldwork.

t2:

interview tapes from the first stage of fieldwork.

t4:

interview tapes from the second stage of fieldwork.

fieldwork.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study could not have been accomplished without the help, advice and support of many. A m o n g s t them, I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof. Brian Street and Dr. Max Wheeler f o r their meticulous assistance in every detail of the study. They complemented each other in their comments and criticisms and gave me the benefit of their separate experiences with great enthusiasm; the Linguistic Subject Group in the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex for funding my fieldwork in Turkey; the Inter-library Loan Staff at the University of Sussex for their patience and perseverance in finding all the articles and books necessary for my work; the Turkish Jewish community in Istanbul for making me feel 'as if I had never left'. In particular, the participants w h o shared their views with me, and the community newspaper §alom's staff w h o gave me invaluable support allowing me to use their facilities and letting me join their w e e k l y editorial meetings.

In addition, I would like to name three special persons without w h o m my stay in Istanbul, and by implication my work, would have suffered. Meri Faraci offered the courtesy of her home, Meri A s a y a s and Ferda Berker reintroduced me gently to the community, the life style and local values. A l l three of them became my invaluable 'safety valves' without which I could have not survived the fieldwork period unmarked. I am also in debt to Moshe Shaul, editor of Aki Yerushalayim.

He was

the inspiration for the approach I took while constructing my methodology, working in the field, and also while analysing the data. Last but not least, I am grateful to Nisim Altabev for encouraging me to continue with my studies, and helping me out to overcome difficulties such as taking the responsibility of our children during my fieldwork abroad. A s for my children Karen and David Altabev, they have been extremely understanding and encouraging all along the way. I thank them all for their patience and emotional support.

1 INTRODUCTION

Reasons for choosing the research problem This research project started to take shape during the second year of my undergraduate studies in Anthropology. I was interested in cross-cultural communication, or rather, cross-cultural mis-communication, especially amongst people who came from different backgrounds but who apparently spoke the same language. I had chosen two courses which dealt with language and culture. One of the issues studied was language death. The first thing that came to my mind was one of the languages I grew up with and spoke until the age of seven, when I started primary school and switched to the compulsory national education language Turkish. The language in question is called JudeoSpanish (or at least it will be called as such for the purpose of this study) and it is supposed to be dying. At the age of seven I had decided that I no longer wanted to use Judeo-Spanish. The language I should speak 'properly' had to be the national language, Turkish. The questions which arise now in relation to that experience and my subsequent study of sociolinguistics are: What made me take this attitude towards a language I grew up with, at such a tender age? How did I come to the conclusion that Turkish should be my first language? Why did I feel uncomfortable with the different accent of my parents' generation when they spoke Turkish? During my teenage years I came across several similar cases of 'uncomfortable feelings' and this was reinforced by the linguistic situation of other Jewish teenagers who having a stigmatised accent, different to the Muslim teenagers, stood out in a classroom or a social event. The problem was exacerbated when I became aware of the mis-communication and resulting negative stereotyping between the two groups of speakers in the same language, namely Turkish. Something was wrong, but I did not know what, nor did I think too much about it. For me, at the time, the answer lay simply in the fact that the minority group I belonged to did not make an effort to learn Turkish 'properly'. The awareness of the complexity of the linguistic situation

14 J U D E O - S P A N I S H

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CONTEXT

came to me only when I concentrated on the subject recently. I also thought that the two groups (Turkish Jews and Turkish Muslims) did not know each other well enough and were full of prejudices and misconceptions about each other. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies I started to link some of the issues we were studying to the case of Judeo-Spanish. These were issues such as language prestige, language status, d o m i n a n t languages versus minority languages, national education, and so on. A chain of questions and speculative answers started to take shape in my mind. These were to become the core of my dissertation for one of the courses and later on developed into a full research project when I had decided that I would like to continue my studies further. As far as I was concerned I was very interested in the general theory, I had some of the tools needed for the study, e.g. training in Anthropology, the specific multicultural background and multilingualism needed for this study (Blom & Gumperz, 1972), and was therefore receptive to cultural differences. As to the specific problem I wanted to study, I had the advantage of knowing the community and the languages they communicated in. In addition to that, the Turkish Jewish community in Istanbul is considered to be the main Sephardic network remaining f r o m the f o r m e r Ottoman Empire (Harris, 1994:19). Thus, I had the opportunity to work with and on a good quality case study of a larger issue. A s a consequence, I thought there would be relatively few familiarisation problems. I never expected the number of problems I came across during my fieldwork despite my inside knowledge. I did start my fieldwork with a few advantages compared to a complete outsider but this did not mean that it would be an easy journey, only that I had different crosses to bear. The full account of these problems will be discussed in the chapter on Methodology.

The aim of the study. What did I expect to find? The aim of this research is to record and analyse evaluations of JudeoSpanish by the speech community members themselves. G u m p e r z defines a 'speech community' as a social group w h o share the "knowledge of the communicative constraints and options governing a significant n u m b e r of social situations" (Gumperz, 1972:16). He goes on to stress that "members of the same speech community need not all speak the same language nor use the same linguistic forms on similar occasions. All that is required is that there be at least one language in common and rules governing basic communicative strategies be shared so that speakers can decide the social meanings carried by alternative modes of communication" (ibid). The Turkish Jewish community living in Istanbul is a specch community in this sense: they do not all speak

INTRODUCTION

15

Judeo-Spanish but they all speak Turkish and share the knowledge of the c o m m u n a l c o m m m u n i c a t i v e strategies. Based on this f r a m e w o r k of the 'ethnography of speaking' (Hymes, 1968), I wanted to find out the reasons for the long-claimed decay of Judeo-Spanish, looking into the members' own opinions, attitudes, behaviour, world views and beliefs relating to intracommunity discourse and Judeo-Spanish as a group identity marker (Milroy, L „ 1987). Even though I knew that my final analysis and interpretation of the data would be an academic exercise, my objective was, and still is to some extent, to disentangle academic speculation from the intra-community discourse. I set out to find why this speech community gave the impression that JudeoSpanish was not j u s t in decline but almost extinct (Harris, 1982; BornesVarol, 1991), in the average Turkish Jewish respondents' view. T h a t is, I wanted to take into consideration the opinion of the ordinary speaker and nonspeaker, and not only the educated elite, in order to identify the grassroots explanations. On the other hand, the result will inevitably become academic since I shall systematically analyse this opinion pool to investigate the process by which the language is projected as dying, and write it within the f r a m e w o r k of an academic discourse which most respondents will not have access to (Asad, 1986:163). Even if they have, many may reject some of the arguments as 'splitting hairs' or 'not reflecting their reality' because some of the interpretations and presentations may deviate from their perception of themselves. I had a speculative hypothesis that if the extinction was real enough it was partly related to the speakers' identity with the language. In relation to this hypothesis, the main question to be answered was: to what extent were the Turkish Jews living in Istanbul relating to Sephardic identity and what were the implications for the language? From a more detailed viewpoint, that of a community m e m b e r , I wanted to find out if Judeo-Spanish really was dying, at least in the Turkish context. What if it was refuelling itself from the recent 500th year celebrations of the Sephardic Jews living in the Ottoman E m p i r e l , or even changing form? In other words, were some members of this social network developing a new awareness, possibly re-evaluating as worth saving an aspect of cultural heritage, which had been stigmatised and threatened with extinction? The research questions will be analysed within the sociolinguistic frame of inquiry of language death (Dorian, 1981), language shift (Gal, 1979), and codeswitching (Gumperz, 1982), and will link historical,

sociopolitical

and

^ During 1992 the 500th year of the arrival of the Sephardic J e w s in the Ottoman Empire was celebrated in various parts of the world, mainly in Turkey, the U.S.A and Israel in f o r m of seminars, symposia, and cultural activities such as Judeo-Spanish theatre and concerts.

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e c o n o m i c factors to issues of language, culture and identity. T h e study d i f f e r s f r o m other previous studies, firstly, because it is an e t h n o g r a p h i c investigation which t a k e s into c o n s i d e r a t i o n the s p e a k e r ' s as well as the n o n - s p e a k e r ' s opinion, considering the latter as the active resistance against the survival of J u d e o - S p a n i s h as a d a i l y l a n g u a g e . S e c o n d l y , as o p p o s e d to p r e v i o u s r e s e a r c h e r s , I a m in the u n u s u a l position of h a v i n g t h e ' c o m m u n i c a t i v e competence 1 (in G u m p e r z & H y m e s ' terms) in the local multilingual linguistic repertoire which consists mainly of J u d e o - S p a n i s h , French, and T u r k i s h with the recent addition of English. T h i s c o m p e t e n c e includes both f l u e n c y in these l a n g u a g e s and the a w a r e n e s s of the local v a l u e s attached to t h e linguistic strategies practised in the c o m m u n i t y . In the f o l l o w i n g c h a p t e r (2) I shall o u t l i n e t h e

methodological

strategies and ideology which guided this study. T h e long description of the insider researcher p r o b l e m s is particularly e m p h a s i s e d in the light of

recent

a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l a r g u m e n t s a b o u t the reflexivity of t h e r e s e a r c h e r and t h e textualisation of e t h n o g r a p h y ( A s a d , 1986). In other words, I a r g u e first that the fact that the researcher is an insider does not alter the r e q u i r e m e n t to be r e f l e x i v e because, similar to t h e outsider researcher, a l t h o u g h at d i f f e r e n t levels, the insider researcher has still to negotiate her/his status in the field, and this may affect the kind of data s/he can gather. A n d secondly, once outside the field, the distance between the subject of research and the analyst/writer can d i s p l a y an u n b a l a n c e d

p o w e r r e l a t i o n s h i p in the w r i t i n g g e n r e of t h e

e t h n o g r a p h y , irrespective of w h e t h e r the r e s e a r c h e r is an 'insider' or an 'outsider'. T h e research t h e r e f o r e n e e d s to c o n s i d e r the r e s e a r c h e r ' s o w n background and roles. C h a p t e r three gives the historical b a c k g r o u n d of the p e o p l e and t h e l a n g u a g e , w h i l e C h a p t e r f o u r p l a c e s p r e v i o u s s t u d i e s in

perspective,

c o n s i d e r i n g their r e l a t i o n s h i p to this study. Existing theories on l a n g u a g e death, shift, language and identity, c o d e s w i t c h i n g / b o r r o w i n g , and r e v e r s i n g language shift are presented as the backbone of this study. C h a p t e r s f i v e and six are the main chapters dealing with the empirical data, and link the questions w h i c h initiated the research to the f i n d i n g s a n d e x i s t i n g t h e o r i e s t h r o u g h a q u a l i t a t i v e a n a l y s i s of the data. In p a r t i c u l a r , chapter f i v e focuses on the participants' perceptions of their l a n g u a g e . A m o n g other f a c t o r s , such as e c o n o m i c and d e m o g r a p h i c c h a n g e s , it e m p h a s i s e s the dominant discourses and their influence on Judeo-Spanish speakers w h o refused the marginality imposed on t h e m by eliminating w h a t appeared to be the m a i n cause of their status, namely, their language.

INTRODUCTION

17

This is f o l l o w e d , in Chapter six, by a description of the different identity components which converge to form the bases of Turkish Jewish identity(s) and how they are reflected in the linguistic repertoire of the community. Codeswitching/borrowing is studied as part of the community's linguistic strategies used to construct, and at the same time mark, the social identity of the speaker. I argue that Turkish Jewish perceptions of the symbolic values of the languages involved in their historical repertoire have affected their usage of Judeo-Spanish. T h e chapter is rounded off by an exploration of the community's specific 'ways of speaking' relying on my special position as a researcher with 'communicative competence' in this multilingual setting. Finally, in Chapter seven, I conclude that, contrary to the previous statements of participants and outsider observers, there is a persistence of Judeo-Spanish in the Turkish Jewish social context despite all the negative evaluation it has received in the past, and still receives in the present, paradoxically in the form of revival efforts. The survival of Judeo-Spanish in the Turkish context, I argue, is linked to the process of passive acquisition during early socialisation, and to peer group acceptance of Judeo-Spanish in the current sociopolitical climate. Based on the definition of Jewish languages, I further suggest that rather than seeing Judeo-Spanish merely as a dying and/or as a surviving m i n o r i t y l a n g u a g e , a third option is possible: n a m e l y , to study the development of this language into another Jewish Language. In other words, while Judeo-Spanish is surviving in the current Turkish Jewish context, at the same time it is branching out and one of the branches can be interpreted as the birth of another 'language' which has emerged from a process of mutation.

2 METHODOLOGY

The following chapter will describe the method I chose in order to gather and analyse the data for this particular research project. The first part will consist of the description of data gathering methods, the reasons which supported my initial choices, and to what extent these choices worked during the actual research process. Simply put, I shall explain why I chose the particular methodological path, where it worked, where and why it was ill suited for this particular study, and how problems of a methodological nature were dealt with. The second part will describe the type of analysis applied to the data, and again the reasons for choosing it.

Participant observation The chosen method for investigation was mainly participant observation, in the sense of "living with and as the people one studies" (Ellen, 1984:23), with the addition of questionnaires and recorded informal interviews. Based on the assumption that speech interpretation is context bound, the workings of this relationship (i.e. speech variety and sociocultural context) was thought best studied investigating social interaction locally. The purpose of this exercise was to have the opportunity to observe social and linguistic interaction in its natural setting and from within the speech community itself, following the theoretical framework of the 'ethnography of communication' (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) which relates cultural norms to ways of speaking. In other words, the focus of this research will be on how "social norms affect the use and distribution of communicative resources" (Gumperz, 1982:155). Based on my initial research timetable, the fieldwork study was made in two parts. A first two months' stay (October-November 1994), in the form of pilot fieldwork research, was followed by a stay of approximately four months (May to eptember 1995) in Istanbul, with an academic term spent at the university in the UK in between. The idea behind this strategy was to come back and work on those miscalculations, problems, and questions which I anticipated might prove unproductive in the field since they had been prepared in a completely different setting, that is, the academic, university setting, far from the language used and issues the community was interested in.

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In s u m , t h e t e r m in b e t w e e n w a s g o i n g to be a m e t h o d o l o g i c a l r e a d j u s t m e n t period. In retrospect, this strategy was to have a n o t h e r positive implication: it served as a cultural shock a b s o r b e r . T h a t is, it g a v e m e the t i m e to r e a d j u s t and re-tune to a culture, w h i c h , although it w a s my native culture, had developed and changed in my absence. F r o m a d i f f e r e n t point of view, I had changed too. 1 had, to a certain extent, distanced myself f r o m m y native culture w h i l e living in the U K and had adopted s o m e of its cultural values and way of life. Thus, the first two m o n t h s served as a refresher course which w a s digested d u r i n g m y return to the U K . W h e n I returned f o r t h e second time it felt as if I had never left the country ( f i e l d : 2 ) ' . T h e fact that I did my fieldwork in t w o parts not only helped to readjust m y q u e s t i o n s and m e t h o d , it g a v e m e a v a l u a b l e 'experience', albeit a short o n e , w h i c h research students normally lack w h e n they venture on their first f i e l d w o r k . Unfortunately they typically h a v e only o n e c h a n c e to get it right to w o r k on the data they gathered and write their theses. Of course that did not mean that I ended with the perfect method strategy, but I had the opportunity to improve and enter the second stage with f e w e r uncertainties. On the second stage of m y f i e l d w o r k 1 w r o t e in my diary: "This t i m e , based on m y 'past e x p e r i e n c e 1 , 1 am trying to slow d o w n m y pace and try to digest the e v e n t s b e f o r e venturing to see a n y b o d y else. 'Sleeping on it' s e e m s to work" (dd2:7). In o t h e r words, I m a n a g e d to stop myself f r o m 'compulsory data collecting' ( K l e i n m a n & C o p p , 1 9 9 3 : 2 0 ) in order to reflect and do s o m e initial coding to the data collected during the day (Spradley, 1979:92). D u r i n g the p r e p a r a t i o n p e r i o d and at the very b e g i n n i n g of m y f i e l d w o r k , m y position as an e x - m e m b e r of the c o m m u n i t y seemed to o f f e r the ideal c i r c u m s t a n c e for participant o b s e r v a t i o n . W i t h time, I c a m e to realise that 'ideal' did not exist. A l t h o u g h my aim w a s to participate in the daily life of the c o m m u n i t y (which I did to a large extent) there w a s the limiting f a c t that I w a s there for a restricted period of time only. O n c e m y

fieldwork

was

finished I was going back to m y life in the U K . T h i s w a s reflected in s o m e of the participants' a n s w e r s to my arguments/evaluations in the words: "Oh, it is easy f o r you to say that, you are going back!". In retrospect, I b e c a m e a w a r e that full participation w a s not exactly possible despite m y existing links with the c o m m u n i t y (Patton, 1990:208). T h e d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n the r e s p o n d e n t s and myself w a s in the fact that I w a s a part-time Turkish J e w , with part-time responsibilities and o b l i g a t i o n s t o w a r d s the c o m m u n i t y , w h e r e a s they w e r e e n g a g e d in a f u l l - t i m e social p r a c t i c e w i t h f u l l - t i m e r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s arid obligations.

^See key to references to fieldwork data (Glossary).

METHODOLOGY

21

I had already started from the point of view that research in human interaction patterns cannot, or should not, have a hardline methodological strategy. Both the researcher and the researched are human and do not always follow the rules of rational thought (Powdermaker, 1966). Thus, the strategy I decided to use was a preliminary flexible plan of work which could be (and was) changed according the momentum of the study (Patton, 1990:61/238). I was driven only by the thought "does this strategy answer my research question?". If it did, the strategy was right, if it did not I adapted it to the required form. For example, at a very early stage of my fieldwork, I realised that the questionnaires I had prepared at home were not going to generate much of the qualitative data I was looking for. However I did not completely discard them. I thought of using them first, as a respondent's background information sheet, and later on, conscious of the 'ice breaking' effect they had on the respondents, I used them as a stepping stone between the respondent's fear of not being able to answer some of my questions and their realisation that the interview was not a test of cultural or linguistic knowledge. In other instances, I used them to direct the conversation which was straying away from the issues I wanted to talk about. A typical example is the respondent reaction after filling in the questionnaire. They usually finished it saying: "I did answer all the questions, I thought that I would not be able to answer some of your questions since I do not know much about the subject [Judeo-Spanish]. Now we can continue with the chat if you still want to". An example of straying conversation guided gently towards the main subject would sound like: [when the respondent slowed down, lost track of what s/he was saying, or went on to a completely irrelevant subject, I would interrupt gently saying] " ...in question number 2, in the first part, you mention that your mother-tongue is Turkish, do you mean that your parents spoke Turkish to you at home, even as a toddler, or do you mean that Turkish is your strongest language now?". Usually this was enough to put them back on track.

In the field Having read Mascarenhas-Keyes 1 (1987) account of fieldwork and the problems she encountered as an 'insider', I knew that entering the field as a native anthropologist is not as easy as it sounds. Nevertheless, I still had the cultural know-how and the links which I thought would help my re-entry into the community. I was still considered as part of the community: certain of the participants explained that they would not have answered some of the questions as frankly to an outsider. Others simply remarked on my personal credentials which made them feel more comfortable, and very few of them maintained that they would have given the same welcome to anybody. The participants' definition of 'outsider' varied between the religious, the cultural and the national dimensions of the researcher's identity. Each dimension, they

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c l a i m e d , had to be treated d i f f e r e n t l y . T h a t is, o n e had to g i v e d e t a i l e d explanation of religious c o n c e p t s to a n o n - J e w i s h researcher, s o m e cultural clarifications had to be made to a Jewish but foreign national researcher, and so and on s o forth. Nevertheless, as G u m p e r z points out, the shared b a c k g r o u n d "speed[ed] u p c o m m u n i c a t i o n " ( G u m p e r z , 1982:71), they all agreed that I w a s "one of them and I k n e w immediately what they meant". In Spradley's w o r d s , according

to

the

participants,

I

had

the

"translation

competence"

(Spradley,1979:20), that is, I w a s able to "bridge subtle d i f f e r e n c e s in culture" (ibid), to c o m m u n i c a t e , with the c o m m u n i t y and its s u b g r o u p s . A l t h o u g h I did not k n o w of these views at the outset of my f i e l d w o r k I had the conviction that I would be better accepted than an outsider and therefore I would not h a v e p r o b l e m s such as A n g i n , a T u r k i s h M u s l i m r e s e a r c h e r (on t h e structural aspects of J u d e o - S p a n i s h in T u r k e y ) encountered in the 1940s in gaining the c o n f i d e n c e of his w o u l d - b e i n f o r m e r s ( A n g i n , n.d.:7). H e m e n t i o n s that in s o m e cases they blatantly turned d o w n his request to listen to J u d e o - S p a n i s h stories, claiming that they did not speak the language. M y assumptions proved right on this issue; m o s t of the participants expressed their views saying that rather than the secrecy/invisibility issue (as w a s the case f o r A n g i n ) w h i c h is redundant in the present more liberal political situation, the advantage w a s that they could take 'short cuts' with m e (interview no. 026, not recorded on request of the participant). In other words, they did not have to explain the reasons f o r most of their actions in detail. T h i s state of a f f a i r s m a d e the interviews m o r e like an informal chat and it w a s easier to talk. T h e c h a n c e meeting of another researcher f r o m another European University w h o w a s trying to obtain data on minority education in T u r k e y m a d e m e appreciate the insider trait to its full extent. T h e researcher w h o w a s part of the mainstream majority expressed her concern a b o u t the quantity and the quality of the data she could gather in a period of a f e w years. Her m o r a l e w a s s o low that she w a s at the p o i n t of giving u p her project. T h e f e w r e s p o n d e n t s w h o w e r e a p p a r e n t l y willing to a n s w e r her questions e n d e d u p telling her only the 'accepted' truths w h e n she wanted to k n o w 'what w a s really going on' (dd2:48). C o m p a r e d to these t w o researchers, I had the cultural k n o w - h o w , the language(s), and the connections still very m u c h operative since I had kept in constant touch with f r i e n d s and f a m i l y . H o w e v e r I soon b e c a m e a w a r e that all of these a s s u m p t i o n s p r o d u c e d their o w n particular kind of problems.

Conflicting identities D u r i n g my previous contacts with the c o m m u n i t y I w a s a 'visitor' an ' e x - m e m b e r ' w h o c o u l d a f f o r d to d e v i a t e f r o m t h e n o r m , a r g u e ,

show

displeasure, in short I could be a misfit w h e n e v e r I c h o s e to. I could be 'self without risking any loss but a personal one. N o w h o w e v e r , I w a s expected to be 'one of them' again with the added responsibility of an 'objective researcher'.

METHODOLOGY

23

In this case, if I wanted to be accepted and taken seriously so that my questions would be answered candidly and honestly, I either had to comply with their perception of 'normal' or 'one of us' or endanger the quality and quantity of information gathered. In other words, my personal identity, the private 'self' and the public 'researcher' identity had to accommodate to the collective identity of the community. I could not afford a serious clash between the personal and the collective when I was at the receiving end. The implication is that it is difficult to reconcile the two dimensions of the researcher's identity without being blatantly hypocritical and/or unethical. I had to juggle and find a way to keep a very sensitive balance between the two. For example, my fieldwork notes (field:2) read: "They receive me always with great admiration and amazement at my husband's acceptance or as they put it 'permission' to do a job which was taking me away from my family for such a long time". Although I did not have to lie about my marital status like Powdermaker (1966:63), I nevertheless had to accept or to seem to have accepted their views (even if it was only by avoiding a confrontation) on the family structure with the men at the head of the family -patriarchal- and responsible for all decisions worth talking about. As for myself apart from being the product of this community, that is having the mixture of the Turkish, French and Jewish cultural values, I had the added bonus of having lived in two completely different cultures in the last twenty-five years, namely in Israel for four years and the UK for almost twenty years. Ovadia brings out this complexity in her article 'Translated lives' saying: I used to cry in Turkish reading stories written for European children ... Limitations on expressing feelings create alienation. ... The same goes for moral values. Alien moral values alienate the person who has to live by them. You start to think like somebody else and evaluate things like somebody else. This somebody else can be somebody close to us or a stranger who, through those near, comes into our very selves. We try to get on with our lives with their language, their moulds, their values. (Ovadia, 1990:19) In this sense, the questions were: How was I to distance myself in such a way so that it would stop me from being subjective and at the same time be 'part of them'? How can one swim without getting wet? And to what extent can a researcher be called 'native'? As with eveiy question presented as either/or in a social context I did not find a simple answer such as A is better than B, or vice versa. For example I decided that I was a 'native researcher' to the extent that the 'natives' wanted to accept me as 'one of them', and that fluctuated considerably

24

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SOCIAL

CONTEXT

according especially to the age factor and the context of discussion. In other words, I could not be considered 'one of them' if I was with a group of young Zionists; because of my age group, and knowing my background they could not consider me as 'one of them' in a political context, though I could be 'one of them' in the sociocultural context. My identity was negotiated at all times. A l t h o u g h most of my respondents knew something about me, they felt they had to check my credentials too. M o s t of the time it was with questions like: " W h o s e daughter/sister/niece/wife did you say you were?.... of course, now I see...". Once I was safely tucked away in a space they could recognise on the personal side, we had to settle the professional space either by my telling them what I was trying to do, f r o m which university I c a m e , or even by answering q u e s t i o n s on my k n o w l e d g e of J u d e o - S p a n i s h itself or its historical background and the general literature on the subject. However, this did not mean that I had passed the test and could relax as being accepted as 'one of them'. If I transgressed one of the cultural norms I was reprimanded. This was mostly visible in their face and body language and sometimes it was made clear orally too. For example in situations where I had to come back home late at night on my own, it took me a long time to negotiate the freedom I needed and the negotiations were usually based on my professional identity. On the other hand, in some other instances I was forgiven for some deviations on the basis of my 'ex-member' identity which allowed me to forget certain cultural norms. Thus, I found that the 'diplomatic immunity' M a s c a r e n h a s - K e y e s aspired to (Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1987:182) cannot be granted to a 'nativeresearcher' since this is a blanket privilege ascribed to a person with one distinctive sociopolitical role: the foreign emissary to another country. The 'native-researcher', on the other hand, has to fit in multiple social roles in their every day scenarios.

Perhaps this point will become clearer if I describe the conflict over my 'identities or roles' in the field situation. In the first stages of my fieldwork I naively set out to gather 'uncontaminated' information. I thought that if I did not show my personal views or knowledge which sometimes could conflict with what the participants were saying to m e , this would produce better quality information, since it would be what 'they' really thought about the issue debated. In time, I started to realise that my silences or nods were not taken as neutral but interpreted according to the previous k n o w l e d g e the respondent had of me. The subsequent conversation was shaped in relation to their perception of my role/identity, that is, mainly a female researcher, living abroad, studying at my age (mature student) with a family left behind to fend for themselves. This put me in a different category from the female researchers they came across f r o m within the Turkish Jewish community. These female researchers are at home when the family needs them, they usually work on a

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voluntary basis without any form of official recognition or financial reward; thus their activity can be evaluated as a hobby and as of secondary importance in relation to family responsibilities. However I was there, on my own, for a relatively long period of time away from the family, with my questionnaires on the University's headed paper, funded by the department, and the work was being done with a view to a doctoral thesis at the end. The whole image had a more official emphasis to it. Therefore, I was already different f r o m them, in the sense that I was not conforming to their norm of a 'married woman with children'. T o some I was the model of modernism with its positive values, whereas to others I was an eccentric intellectual with the underlying negative 'utopian' and/or 'selfish' values. They later manifested their opposition by way of allusions to my early return. If I could finish gathering the information (which, as they perceived it, I already knew and which would not serve a concrete/practical purpose anyway!) there would not be any reason for staying away f r o m my family who needed me more than Science did. Since I did not believe in (and to be honest, found it a tiring exercise without no apparent benefit) deceiving my respondents about my real 'self I decided to make a clear break between 'me', an ex-member, and 'me' the professional researcher, if challenged, and f o u n d to my d i s a p p o i n t m e n t that this was practically impossible. This is probably the stage when I started to talk and argue with myself because of the conflicting roles overlapping and contradicting each other.

Emotions as part of the data The problems mentioned above highlighted another issue that became salient as I went through my fieldwork experience. This was the issue of 'emotions' which at the first stages of thought I took for personal problems to be dealt with privately, and at the interim stage of my coming back for a term at the university, as a problem particular to the native anthropologist. In other words, they had nothing to do with objective scientific research. Further thought, reading, and analysis made me reconsider these 'emotions' as part of my data to be analysed and interpreted. M o r e o v e r , writing about these emotions, which I first evaluated as obstacles for the research activity, would help future researchers to deal with their own similar fieldwork experiences in a m o r e constructive way. In the words of Kleinman & Copp, I used my emotions as 'detectors' (Kleinman & Copp, 1993:51). If a participant response or attitude was disturbing me, making me angry, or uncomfortable, instead of dismissing it as a personal like or dislike, I started to look for the reason for my feelings. This usually led me to a better understanding of the participant's point of view and to find the subtle differences of world views which I had so far taken for granted.

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IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

Several ethnographers (Powdermaker 1966, Mascarenhas-Keyes 1987, Kleinman & Copp, 1993) have pointed out that the role of emotions during fieldwork should not be swept under the carpet, as if they never existed, and because they challenge the idea of objective scientific research. In the case of ethnography, following Powdermaker's clarification, I take it that, since the researched and the researcher are human and the researched problem has to do with human interaction and attitudes, emotions have to be part of the research. Systematically analysed, like any other part of the data gathered, the subjectivity 'emotions' carry should add to the veracity in the description of the field experience. Showing the reader from which vantage point the researcher is describing the experience can amplify the picture which perhaps was or will be described f r o m another vantage point. A s a result the reader or the f u t u r e researcher can view the d i f f e r e n t facets of 'truth' which give a f u l l e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the w h o l e ( D e y , 1993:64). Contrary to w r i t i n g and explaining about 'miscalculations' on the method of research which tidies up and opens up the road for the next researcher, I do not take the issue of 'emotions' as a miscalculation or oversight which has to be rectified, but as part of the data which rely on 'self as informant' ( M a s c a r e n h a s - K e y e s 1987:187). That is, one can use the researcher's own feelings and emotions as a bridge, an analytical tool, to further information about the community s/he is studying. Trying to a n s w e r the 'whys' can show the 'hows'. Certain emotional reaction on the part of the researcher can be a clear signpost to the community's beliefs or attitudes which do not coincide with the researcher's own views. An important factor, which could have gone unnoticed if emotions were restricted to the private/personal sphere, can emerge to give a better understanding of the situation. What used to be called the 'exotic', f o r the outsider researcher, to which I shall add 'the invisible normality', f o r the insider researcher, is belter detected when it challenges our rationality or our emotions. The similarities of emotional experiences for both the outsider and native researcher, if one is allowed to use this dichotomy if only to describe the two extremes of the researcher identity spectrum, are transparent when the fieldwork period comes to an end. For both 'there is no simple getting back from the fieldwork'. The emotional upheaval this exercise involves does not particularly apply only to the 'insider' researcher but also to the 'outsider'. The simple fact that the 'outsider' researcher stays in the field for a longer period of time (for the various reasons of learning the language, f i n d i n g contacts, learning the way of life, etc.) and creates new ties with the locals and their way of life can make the point of exit as painful. Unless s/he hates the whole picture it seems to me that the breaking of these new ties/relationships exposes her/him to the same sort of emotional upheaval an 'insider' researcher experiences.

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Bringing to light some of these problems is not only important from the methodological point of view, as explained above but can be used for future reference. They may, in other words, be used as models of past experiences which prepare the novice whose expectations are not ready for this kind of problems, but who hopes to find only the exotic/esoteric, or her/his community as s/he knew it.

Linguistic lag In sum, I had to change to the 'Turkish thinking mode 1 . That is, in addition to cultural readjustments, I had to get over some of the language problems such as my fossilised Turkish or usage of daily words which came to me automatically in English (dd2:6). The fact that I am a native and fluent Turkish speaker did not prevent the presence of a distinct difference between my 'old' Turkish vocabulary and the present-day 'modern' Turkish vocabulary. For the generations above the age of 40, I was using 'Muslim Turkish', whereas for the younger generations I was using 'Ottoman Turkish', partly incomprehensible to them and rather outlandish coming f r o m a Jewish woman. My 'old' Turkish vocabulary, some standard idiomatic expressions not generally used by the Jewish community, added to a non-Jewish accent, was identified as 'Muslim Turkish 1 (for more detailed explanation see section 6.4.2) for the 40+ generation. On the other hand 'old' became 'very old' for the younger generation who label almost any incomprehensible Turkish lexical item as 'Ottoman Turkish' and thus legitimise their lack of knowledge. Based on my anecdotal evidence, I would not like to speculate on the question whether this would produce the same reaction if the speaker was a man, but it would be interesting to find more about the generational difference in gender speech patterns used in Turkish by this community. A woman speaking 'Muslim Turkish' certainly would not have been accepted in the 1940s. As a member of the community said: Iyi Tiirkce konu§an kadinlara iyi bakilmazdi "Women speaking proper Turkish were not well judged" (field: 1). I must add that although I was able to re-adjust my Turkish I still had the problem of avoiding English loan words within Turkish conversations. Borrowing from English is the latest linguistic trend among the relatively educated Muslim as well as other Turkish-speaking minorities. The problem was that when my interlocutors laced their Turkish speech with English, it was perceived as 'intellectual', 'professional', or at least 'modern', whereas in my case it would have been perceived as 'snobbish', showing off the fact that I lived in the UK, had partly forgotten Turkish and felt more at home with English, thereby distancing myself from them. In this sense I was living a contradiction; if I used loan words from English I was considered to be a snob, on the other hand if I did not, I was sticking out like a sore thumb!

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Codeswitching to English (or French) has a prestige value which depends on the status of the speaker. My status was that of an ex-member w h o had to show and prove more loyalty to the traditions or the language. It was as if they were testing me for re-admission to the community. My efforts to use 'pure' Turkish nevertheless sometimes proved to be unfruitful, at least when I thought I needed to do it to blend in. Respondents usually ended commenting on the quality of my Turkish when all I wanted was to remain unnoticed. But in general, the linguistic change which I had missed during my absence became most of the time an asset rather than a disadvantage. Most of the time I was told that I spoke like a Muslim not only because of my accent but also because of the old fashioned lexicon I was using. This strongly indicated to me that if there was a 'speaking like a Muslim', there must be a 'speaking like Jew' and quite separate from the accent differences. Although the comment on my speech style was always meant as a compliment (which is significant in itself), I am sure it a f f e c t e d the answers of s o m e of my respondents, at least at the beginning of the conversation. Later on, the only way I could get round the problem was to play it by ear. In Gumperz's terms, I knew the linguistic c o n v e n t i o n s of the c o m m u n i t y which were "learned through constant practice by living in a group" and which are used in situations where the speaker " k n o w | s | s o m e t h i n g about the listener's background and attitudes" (Gumperz,1982:69). That is, if and when I noticed that the respondent was uncomfortable or trying hard to use 'proper Turkish' because s/he wanted to reciprocate in kind, I would intentionally use a word or an expression in a different language (Judeo-Spanish, French or English), always making sure that the languages I w a s switching to and from were acceptable and comprehensible to my respondent. That is, Judeo-Spanish to an elderly person, French to a person over 6 0 with a g o o d

educational

background, English to middle-aged professionals and the young generation (25 and below). This not only brought us closer but in some cases I w a s respected and taken more seriously than on previous occasions. Codeswitching to Judeo-Spanish demonstrated that I spoke the language I was investigating, and codeswitching to the other t w o languages demonstrated my cultural knowhow. Or, at least, switching to Judeo-Spanish showed that I had the expected amount of lexical and cultural knowledge. The addition of French signalled that I was educated in a French school (marker of a good level of education), and mixing some trendy lexical items from the English lexicon, that I was in touch with the modern way of speaking Turkish. It is interesting that my linguistic lag in the form of change of lexicon, or my unconsciously made literal translations from English, were picked up only by my Muslim friends as a point of conversation or even fun since they knew m y interest in the issue. Their Jewish counterparts only pointed out the positive sides of it. This suggested that they did not feel secure enough in their

29

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k n o w l e d g e of T u r k i s h e i t h e r to criticise or to m a k e f u n of m y linguistic s h o r t c o m i n g s , a d d i n g a n o t h e r p o i n t e r to their s e l f - d e v a l u a t i o n as n a t i v e T u r k i s h s p e a k e r s . A t the s a m e t i m e the l i n g u i s t i c i n s e c u r i t y c o u l d

be

interpreted as the participants not being able to i d e n t i f y e n o u g h with the national language (and culture) to call it their own (see chapter 6). In s u m , a d d e d to the linguistic lag, c o n f l i c t i n g identity, cultural readaptation p r o b l e m s , the physical adaptation to noise, pollution, c r o w d s , heat, lack of running water, lifestyle (dd:6), and the emotional pressure of missing t h e f a m i l y l e f t b e h i n d , l a c e d with s o m e guilty f e e l i n g s , p r e s e n t e d

a

considerable challenge when none or very f e w were expected because of my socalled 'insider' status as a researcher. In other words, 'experience on field' w a s not as neat as I anticipated because I had d o n e my h o m e w o r k and read about the issue of the status of a native r e s e a r c h e r a n d the p r o b l e m s s/he can encounter. T h e r e w e r e plenty of d i l e m m a s I w a s not prepared for, and the best a d v i c e I r e m e m b e r e d (and a p p l i e d ) f r o m m y p r e v i o u s r e a d i n g w a s to be flexible. B r i e f l y , c a r r y i n g out the f i e l d w o r k in t w o stages a p p e a r e d to be an a d v a n t a g e , not only because I had an opportunity in the intervening period to d i s t a n c e m y s e l f f r o m my f i e l d w o r k e x p e r i e n c e a n d r e a d j u s t m y m e t h o d of research technically, but also in the sense that t h e first stage w a s a 'shock absorber'. O n c e the initial stage of adaptation w a s o v e r and I had m y fill of b r e a k d o w n s , complaints, self pity and frustrations, I f u n c t i o n e d better and did not h a v e to go through the s a m e process (at least not to the s a m e extent) on the second part of m y fieldwork. I was prepared with the appropriate antidotes such as using m y s a f e t y valves m o r e o f t e n and k n o w i n g (but not a l w a y s applying that k n o w l e d g e ) that there w a s n o need to feel guilty a b o u t not 'really working'. S o m e partial a n s w e r s or s o l u t i o n s p r e s e n t e d t h e m s e l v e s

during

fieldwork and I applied them there and then. S o m e emerged later on, during the analysis of the data, and I applied t h e m at least to the analysis. T h e point I a m trying to m a k e is this: I did not and could not f o l l o w a strict methodological approach or stand f r o m start to end. T h u s , what might look like chronological and systematic line of thought in this written f o r m , in reality is the product of organised chaos.

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CONTEXT

The data The data gathered is in the form of : a)

b)

c) d) e) f)

fieldwork notes: 1- diary: notes taken in chronological order. 2- reflections and after-thoughts: flash ideas, new questions, speculations. questionnaires: total of 69 presented in Turkish and giving the opportunity of answering in Turkish, Judeo-Spanish, French, or English. interview tapes: approximately 35 hours. event tapes: approximately 6 hours. articles from the local Turkish Jewish newspaper §alom. previous studies, historical data from international and Turkish sources

Nature of data The data is mainly extracted from recorded interviews and verbatim notes of natural conversations (different situations: telephone conversation, at the supermarket, informal social gathering, formal public gathering, etc.) during participant observ ation. In order to overcome Labov's 'observer paradox' (Labov, 1972-a:209), I preferred, especially during the second stage of my fieldwork, to use informal interviews including several members (usually previously known to each other) of the community. They invariably got involved in the conversation and ended up arguing between themselves without my interruption. In other words, I tried to focus their attention on one another's opinions rather than my presence during the speech event. In other words, I followed Labor's theory which suggests that 'natural speech' or the spoken style used when speakers are relaxed cannot occur when the speaker knows that s/he is under observation; and that without systematic observation the data gathered will not be focused enough to lead to meaningful conclusions. The data includes direct and indirect questions to participants about their interactional experiences with the Muslim majority but without recorded intergroup conversations in natural settings. It is clear that self-reported conversations or experiences are not sufficient for a systematic analysis and comparison of the different discourse patterns the two groups (Turkish Jews and Turkish Muslims) use. Thus the following analysis is presented only as a preliminary and exploratory study on Turkish Jewish discourse strategies. It provides a basis for further questions and research rather than a definitive survey of the Turkish Jewish speech variety and discourse strategies. Nevertheless, the data allow me to argue certain claims, for instance: I argue that the Turkish Jewish speech variety results in the compartmentalised and

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the (positive and negative) stereotyped perception of the other, and at the same time, is used as a linguistic strategy in in-group situations. As a whole, the speech variety functions as grounds to produce and signal a self-denigrating narrative of group identity. The reasons for not including recorded intergroup conversations between Turkish Jews and Turkish Muslims during my fieldwork were firstly my insider assumptions about the extent of integration and secondly, the time limit. As an ex-member of the community I started my fieldwork with the wrong assumption that if my generation (40+) spoke 'better' Turkish than our parents' generation it was due to the fact not only that we had been educated and socialised predominantly in Turkish but that we have had more social interaction with the Muslim majority and were much more integrated with the majority's language and culture. Friendships between the two groups flourished in an easy and natural way, at least for part of the young population. As an extension of this reasoning my expectation was to find a very integrated young Jewish generation, at least as much as our generation. I was proved to be wrong on several counts. On the one hand, for various reasons which will be explained below, my generation, or the social class I perceived as representative did not continue their social ties with their Muslim counterparts to the same extent once settled in adult life. On the other hand, internal immigration, mainly from rural to urban centres and especially to Istanbul, has created a great cultural gap between the inhabitants of the city. This results in the clustering and near isolation of the remaining minorities among themselves. As a consequence recording intergroup natural conversations proved to be more difficult than I had imagined. By the time I was aware of my miscalculation it was too late to adjust my data-gathering strategies and I had to rely on observation and self-reported intergroup experiences. The main reason for not adjusting my research strategies (that is, organising intergroup speech situations where recording would be acceptable) was a practical one. In the summer season most of my research was done in Biiyuk Ada, an island off the coast of Istanbul, where there is a great concentration of Turkish Jews who spend their summers there. As a direct result social interaction, more than ever, is limited to intragroup interaction. Thus, the discussion will focus on the available data which includes: a) the Turkish Jewish perception and evaluation of Judeo-Spanish. b) 'codeswitching' and 'borrowing' as a conversation strategy and as a signal of group identity. c) 'speaking differently', as perceived by the participants themselves with a few remarks from members of the mainstream society and my own observations. It will also include some illustrative examples from the recorded interview passages and from verbatim conversation notes. d) self-reported out-group interaction and discussion.

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T h e main thrust of the strategy of inquiry was on finding out 'what w a s g o i n g on' b e y o n d the explicit m a n i f e s t a t i o n s (verbal or n o n - v e r b a l ) of t h e studied group. W h a t w e r e the implicit multiple m e a n i n g s of the r e s p o n s e s or even the absence of responses, and h o w were they f o r m e d ? In other w o r d s , I f o c u s s e d on " h o w t h e n o r m s of a society are d e v e l o p e d , m a i n t a i n e d a n d changed rather than on what those norms are" (Feldman, 1995:8). O n e of the strategies used to test the e f f e c t of the linguistic c u e on the participant w a s to start the conversation in standard T u r k i s h . Of c o u r s e this needed specific c i r c u m s t a n c e s w h e r e I w a s neither k n o w n to the subject n o r i n t r o d u c e d since m y n a m e is s u f f i c i e n t m a r k e r of ethnicity m e m b e r s h i p . N e v e r t h e l e s s , it w a s noticed that even with the b a c k g r o u n d k n o w l e d g e of g r o u p m e m b e r s h i p it w a s possible to control the speech situation and obtain a hypercorrect variety of Turkish which usually is produced with an o u t - g r o u p standard Turkish speaker (Saul, 1983:345) w h e n an e f f o r t is m a d e to m a t c h her/his speech variety. D u r i n g the second stage of my f i e l d w o r k a very o b v i o u s c h a n g e w a s my approach to interviews. I had c o m e to the conclusion that 'interviews' were not the life and soul of my study. Feeling m o r e secure in m y researcher role and i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of f i e l d w o r k strategies, I applied G u m p e r z s u g g e s t i o n a b o u t ' c o n c e n t r a t i n g on g r o u p i n t e r v i e w s rather than w o r k i n g with s i n g l e individuals' ( G u m p e r z , 1972:25). I could n o w easily sit and chat i n f o r m a l l y and acquire the i n f o r m a t i o n I w a s interested in without the f o r m a l i t y of t h e i n t e r v i e w situation. T h e a d v a n t a g e of this strategy w a s that p e o p l e talked w i t h o u t controlling their speech (which w a s inevitably d o n e , at least at the beginning of the interview, w h e n the recorder w a s on), other parties j o i n e d in o f f e r i n g i n f o r m a t i o n or a r g u i n g b e t w e e n t h e m s e l v e s a b o u t t h e issue in question. T h i s , I considered an a d d e d b o n u s , since it g a v e m e a diversity of opinions not directed to m e (the researcher, thus, perhaps sanitised and m a d e m o r e p r e s e n t a b l e ) but d i r e c t e d to e a c h other, c o n s e q u e n t l y m o r e s i n c e r e , natural, and contrasted. I a m a w a r e of t h e d i f f i c u l t y in q u a l i f y i n g data as 'natural versus synthetic' which argues that if the respondents are controlling t h e i r s p e e c h d u r i n g an interview (synthetic), it m e a n s that t h e y h a v e t h e cultural k n o w - h o w of w h i c h register to use in that particular c o n t e x t and t h e r e f o r e the data should be considered as natural. Nevertheless, I felt that the data I w a s gathering with this method w a s richer, both in quality and quantity, since I w a s rarely influencing the f l o w of the discussion and gathering m o r e o p i n i o n s than I would h a v e d o n e with a o n e - t o - o n e interview. In addition to that, b a s e d on my p r e v i o u s e x p e r i e n c e , I w a s f e e l i n g m o r e s e c u r e in t h e k n o w l e d g e that I could n o w observe and notice the relevant linguistic a n d / o r non-linguistic behaviour of the participants. I k n e w that e v e n the i n f o r m a t i o n which s e e m e d irrelevant at the t i m e w o u l d be in my diaries since I m a d e the point of writing and describing in detail every event. T h i s w a s because I had the opportunity to do a pilot analysis of m y first data collection and realised that w h a t d o e s not look important here and n o w might h a v e a use, a d i f f e r e n t meaning, once I distance myself f r o m the context.

METHODOLOGY

33

Analysis Combining anthropological and sociolinguistic approaches, the analysis of the data was mainly qualitative. I considered that to measure the intensity of identification with one group or language would prove difficult since neither the community structure nor the speaker self-identification with the particular language of interest are categorical measurable units. One can count exactly how many but how do we measure the meaning of 'Sephardi', 'Jewish', or 'language death'? Or, for example if we count the speakers versus the non-speakers, where do we put the 'semi-speakers' (Dorian, 1978), especially if the speakers themselves do not have an accepted standard to measure themselves with, as in the case of Judeo-Spanish? Another problem arises when we expect the members of the speech network themselves to evaluate their level of competence in Judeo-Spanish, a stigmatised language, in which the speakers sometimes deny knowledge or feign partial knowledge. In other words, 'meaning' changes and fluctuates in time and space (Dey, 1993:37), the meaning of concepts such as identity and/or linguistic competence is too fluid, and depends on the inclusion or exclusion of different components which have to be counted in or out, and interpreted according to context and the background of the respondents. I used a mixture of qualitative analysis techniques recomended by several authors because no single method was adequate for the different field experiences or type of data. Mainly, Lofland & Lofland (1995) were helpful in the clarification of the apparently mechanical task of coding and classifying the data corpus; on the other hand Feldman's (1995) description of the four different theoretical approaches (ethnomethodology, semiotics, dramaturgy, and deconstruction) allowed me to combine and experiment on them and gain deeper insight into the subject investigated. Some changes were incorporated into these techniques because of the nature of the data. For example, historical studies and current accounts from the community newspaper were included in the appropriate files and were coded in the same way as fieldwork data. In this way it was possible to see the links between historical and fieldwork data clusters. The initial coding on field (stage one) was not as regular as Miles & Huberman or Kleinman & Copp advice (Miles & Huberman, 1994:65; Kleinman & Copp, 1993:20). That is 'previous set of fieldnotes' were not codified 'before the next trip to the site' for the simple reason that firstly, I was on the site for almost all the duration of my fieldwork. Secondly, despite all resolution to follow professional advice, as explained above, I felt that the initial coding/analysis on field was not good enough, almost as if the notes would be marked/evaluated by somebody else. Nevertheless, the advice was taken on board, and the initial coding of the data acquired in first stage of my fieldwork was completed during the academic term I was back in the UK. This improved the quality of the second stage investigation (during which much more importance was given to the process of initial coding) as mentioned above.

34

J UDEO-S PANI S H IN THE T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

F u r t h e r analysis, or in the w o r d s of L o f l a n d & L o f l a n d , ' f o c u s s e d c o d i n g ' of t h e r e a p p e a r i n g c o d e s led to t h e s u b d i v i s i o n of t h e e x i s t i n g categories into s o m e conventional and s o m e n e w categories. T h e s e in turn w e r e gathered into m e a n i n g f u l clusters w h e n e v e r p o s s i b l e in o r d e r to f i n d r e l a t i o n s h i p s , b e t w e e n the c l u s t e r s t h e m s e l v e s a n d / o r with o t h e r s i m i l a r studies and existing theories. Additionally, keeping a copy of the data base as a w h o l e , in a chronological order, g a v e m e a sense of t i m e and social context w h e n these were m a d e invisible in the coding process. In other w o r d s , I could rely on the c h r o n o l o g i c a l record to f i n d out a b o u t the i m p l i c i t c o n t e x t u a l m e a n i n g s of certain assertions or opinions presented by the participants in the particular social setting. Additionally, in order to o v e r c o m e the insider researcher's p r o b l e m of t a k i n g t h i n g s f o r granted, or to test if the a s s u m p t i o n s I shared w i t h the participants w e r e s h a d i n g my interpretation of the situation, periodically I looked at certain situations with the question: 'what would a Martian m a k e of this, had it landed on Earth at this point in t i m e and in this social context?'. T h i s strategy took extensive e f f o r t and time but in several cases 'the invisible normality' revealed issues I had overlooked, d u e to my unconscious acceptance of certain w a y s of life or values. F o r e x a m p l e , this strategy proved to be very fruitful in the analysis of the participants' c o n c e p t of literacy. A p p r o a c h i n g the analysis f r o m an e t h n o m e t h o d o l o g i c a l point of view, the aim w a s to find 'what was going on' and how the Turkish J e w s m a d e sense of t h e e r o s i o n of J u d e o - S p a n i s h . O n t h e o t h e r h a n d t h e s o c i o l i n g u i s t i c a p p r o a c h w a s useful in d e t e r m i n i n g w h a t the u n d e r l y i n g m e a n i n g ( s ) of the discourse w a s and h o w it was related to the social context. T h i s w a s d o n e by d e c o n s t r u c t i n g the d i s c o u r s e using t h e i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s , t a k e n - f o r - g r a n t e d e x p l a n a t i o n s , or alternative e x p l a n a t i o n s a n d filling in the h o l e s with my b a c k g r o u n d k n o w l e d g e . A s s e s s e m e n t s w e r e m a d e linking various linguistic s t r a t e g i e s , linguistic v a r i a t i o n s and s o c i o p o l i t i c a l , historical or e c o n o m i c background always keeping in mind "that the 'facts' we discover are already the product of m a n y levels of interpretation; that is, facts are events w h i c h w e r e g i v e n a m e a n i n g " ( M i l e s & H u b e r m a n , 1 9 9 4 : 1 4 5 ) . It w a s o n l y by d e c o n s t r u c t i n g the d i s c o u r s e that it w a s possible to o v e r c o m e (and possibly o n l y to a certain e x t e n t ) the i d e o l o g i c a l patterns of t h o u g h t , belief a n d explanations. T h e s e strategies at the end of the first round of analysis resulted in a general picture of the Turkish J e w s d o w n g r a d i n g Judeo-Spanish as a language. T h e second round focussed on finding out 'why' and the third round f o c u s s e d on 'how'. T h e d e c o n s t r u c t i o n of t h e local d i s c o u r s e a n d its c o r r e l a t i o n to the d o m i n a n t d i s c o u r s e ( s ) p r o v e d to be u s e f u l in i l l u m i n a t i n g the u n d e r l y i n g m e a n i n g s of their explanations f o r Judeo-Spanish's d e m i s e and the m e c h a n i s m by which it w a s implemented.

METHODOLOGY

35

Writing genre: writing in the first person 'I', as opposed to the neutral 'we', 'it' or 'one' Last but not least, I shall follow the relatively recent anthropological viewpoint on 'writing about culture' in a 'self-reflexive' style ( C l i f f o r d , 1986:14). The debate focusses on the problem of representation of the 'native's point of view' by the ethnographer/writer, into another culture. Asad, in pointing out the power of the 'ethnographic text' in the accepted scholarly style, and more often than not in a 'strong' language, questions the validity of the cultural translation, which "in the long run, ... is not the personal authority of the ethnographer, but the social authority of his ethnography that matters" (Asad, 1986:163). In other words, he points out the problematics of writing 'about' another culture and the interference of the author's voice (writing style, status, authority) in the story. Following this perspective, the reason for which I am choosing to write in the first person, 'I', rather than distancing myself from the text with 'one', 'it', or 'we' is that it reflects my close relationship with the community while I was on the field. Rather than putting them in 'a glass case' (Read, 1965 cited in: Spradley, 1979:206) and describe this community and their linguistic strategies with an 'antiseptic' (ibid.) writing style, I would have liked to include the colour, the smell, the background noises, the body language. The only way I feel I can remotely come close to this presentation is by partly using an a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l style w h i c h p l a c e s me, the ethnographer, in the world of the participants, at least during the investigation period. In this way the ethnography stands more chance of being produced, if not entirely 'from' the participants, 'with' the participants. Additionally, I want to take full responsibility of the end product: the written report. This research and fieldwork experience was mine. Although the data is gathered by empirical methods, the interpreting is done with my particular cultural/social/educational background, opinions, emotions and without doubt, preconceived ideas which shaped the inquiry, the analysis, and the ethnography. In other words, the written report, 'the ethnography of the Turkish J e w i s h c o m m u n i c a t i v e strategies' is my interpretation of the participants' interpretations of the issues investigated (Miles & Huberman, 1994). I believe that if the reader is made aware of the point of entry into the culture and writer's angle of description, s/he will be more cautious before accepting the text as a 'scientific' given. This strategy might leave m e open to additional criticism f o r my mis-interpretations, clumsy questions, misjudgements, and so on, but I take that all criticism will add a new angle of approach to the problem researched, thus beneficial in the long run.

3 THE PEOPLE AND THE LANGUAGE

The focus of this research is the language the Spanish Jews brought to the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The language (Judeo-Spanish) was passed on to their descendants and Jews from other ethnic origins living in the present-day Turkish Republic which replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1923. It has many names, among which, Judeo-Spanish is one. I shall start by clarifying the usage of the name of these people, their language, and give a general account of their past and present situation, including the geographical boundaries which this study is concerned with.

The people: the Sephardim and the Turkish Jews in Istanbul The name of the people Sephardim is a derivative of Sepharad, meaning 'Spain' in Hebrew, indicating 'the people coming from Spain'. However, the question "Who is a Sephardic Jew today?" is problematic. The narrow definition of the term indicates only the direct descendants of the Spanish (and Portuguese) Jews who left the Iberian peninsula around the end of the fifteenth century, and who today, scattered around the world, have a common language, Judeo-Spanish, and traditions. On the other hand, the wider definition, almost disregarding the language and the geographic origin, throws in all the Jews of the Mediterranean basin, the Middle-East, North Africa and sometimes, even the Far East. In sum, in the wider sense, s/he who is not an Ashkenazil Jew is a Sephardic Jew. La Lettre Sepharade (8th December 1993), a quarterly French newsletter, mentions this recently rekindled argument about the Sephardic identity. Citing B. Cordova (EDJ, 7 October 1993), it says:

Ijews of European origin, with their specific ritual, traditions and language (Yiddish).

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JUDEO-SPANISH

IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

Sephardi is not a hold-all which accommodates all who are not Ashkenazim. This Hebrew word means 'Spain'. Therefore, a Sephardic Jew is one of Iberian origin (including Portugal) and whose family keeps, or has kept until recently the usage of the Spanish language... 1 And more recently de Vidas disputes the same issue of definition in his article called 'El Sefaradizmo'. He says: The Spanish writer Unamuno defined language as the "blood of our soul". What a perfect way to describe the close connection of the Sephardim with their language, JudeoSpanish. One is the synonymous with the other. You cannot be a Sephardi if you, your parents, or your ancestors did not communicate in our beloved language. Even if you lost the use of Judeo-Spanish you still have in your heart, in your soul the longing for the link that made you part of the Sephardi people (English version in Los Muestros, 1995, n: 18:28). Both Cordova's and deVidas' neat definition of 'Sephardi' with a direct correlation between language and ethnicity cannot be applied to the cases of Ashkenazi or Romaniot Jews living in Istanbul who were assimilated into the then majority, Sephardic community with its specific traditions and language (Judeo-Spanish). Today, not only the descendants of these speak JudeoSpanish, but also recently settled Arab, Georgian or Kurdish Jews, albeit partly, use the language, whereas some of the new generation Sephardic members cannot speak Judeo-Spanish at all. At this stage I would argue that the heterogeneous ethnolinguistic character of the present Turkish Jewish social network weakens any assumed tight correlation between language and ethnicity. Thus, my contention is that framing the unit of study as only 'Sephardic', in the narrow sense above would not represent the local reality. The case of Judeo-Spanish among the present day Turkish Jews fits better Dorian's clarification of the issue. That is, language can be an important part of ethnicity without taking the form of the presence or absence of some particular language or dialect (Dorian, 1980:36). In the case of the Turkish Jews, Judeo-Spanish is certainly used and perceived as an identity marker but at the same time, one is not expected to be fluent or even a 'semi-speaker' (Dorian, 1978) in Judeo-Spanish in order to be considered part of the Turkish Jewish speech community. Other linguistic components can replace Judeo-Spanish to signal belonging to a certain group; for example: accent, specific borrowings or caiques from French or English into Turkish, as will be discussed below. ^All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

THE P E O P L E AND THE

LANGUAGE

39

According to Harris the Istanbul Sephardic community is "the only sizeable Sephardic community left in the former Ottoman Empire..." (Harris, 1994:19). However, the contemporary Turkish Jewish community living in Istanbul presents a complex and somewhat different pattern of ethnic and linguistic unit of study to those living in other regions or towns of Turkey. As opposed to the latter, the Istanbul Jewish social network is much more heterogeneous in character, i.e. Sephardic, R o m a n i o t , A s h k e n a z i , Arab, Georgian, Kurdish ethnic backgrounds with their specific languages cut a colourful picture of the community. Nonetheless, with the exception of the few Ashkenazi families, this community still perceives itself as generally Sephardic. Although not very high in their agenda, my informants/hosts very rarely categorically denied the added identity component 'Sephardic' whether or not they themselves descended from Spanish/Portuguese ancestors. 'Turkish Jews living in Istanbul' (hereafter Turkish Jews), as opposed to simply 'Sephardim' is a fairer description of this social network since it is inclusive of all the Jewish ethnic groups living in Istanbul and enables me, then, to consider the use of Judeo-Spanish as an identity m a r k e r or as a communicative resource. Furthermore, I shall refer to the 'Turkish Jews' as a 'speech community' whether they speak Judeo-Spanish or not, in the sense that Gumperz and H y m e s define 'speech community' (Gumperz and Hymes, 1989:16): speakers w h o share the cultural and communicative know-how, the 'rules of speaking' (Hymes, 1972:36), without necessarily using the s a m e language. In this sense, the Turkish Jewish community shares a c o m m o n communicative system regardless of the language they are using.

Sociopolitical history For an overview of the history of the people I shall use the borders of the Ottoman Empire at its peak (sixteenth century). It includes: parts of Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and the plains of Anatolia in the east, the Balkans (today's Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, the old Yugoslavia, and Albania) to the outskirts of Vienna in the west, and parts of North Africa and Egypt in the south. Although there is evidence of the existence of Jewish settlements in the Spanish peninsula before the Common Era and throughout the Middle Ages, until their expulsion in the fifteenth century, I shall limit myself to a very brief acknowledgement of this part of their history since the focus of this study will be on the Jews of the Turkish Republic in the 1990's. But I believe a short description of the sociopolitical and economic background will shed light on the questions I would like to be able to answer at the conclusion of this study. Geertz very eloquently described 'culture' as 'webs of significance' (Geertz, 1973:5), webs I take it, that have been spun with the history, the language and the traditions of the people. They are parts of a whole and cannot exist in a vacuum, in isolation.

40

JUDEO

SPANISH

IN THE T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

T h e t u r n i n g p o i n t , f o r the i n t e r e s t of this s t u d y , starts with t h e unification policies of Ferdinand of A r a g ó n and Isabella of Castile w h o saw C a t h o l i c i s m as a w a y , a m o n g s t others, to centralise their political p o w e r . Social discrimination against the J e w s in Spain had started well b e f o r e the f a m o u s courts of Inquisition as early as the twelfth century ( S h a w , 1992). It c u l m i n a t e d d u r i n g the f i f t e e n t h c e n t u r y a n d c h a n g e d to official physical expulsion in 1492 (Sephiha, 1977:10). T h e S p a n i s h Inquisition started a gradual m a s s e m i g r a t i o n of the o p p r e s s e d J e w s t o w a r d s first the m o s t accessible places like Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, France, North A f r i c a and the Ottoman E m p i r e . T h e latter, in the words of D i a z - M a s , "received them with open arms" ( D í a z - M a s , 1986:23; also L e v y , J. 1992:13; S e p h i h a , 1986:17). T h e pluralistic policies of t h e Ottoman E m p i r e and its long-term e c o n o m i c and cultural expectations (a large n u m b e r of t h e s e i m m i g r a n t s w e r e d o c t o r s , s c i e n t i s t s , s c h o l a r s a n d international traders and bankers) had a strong impact on this decision. T h e m u l t i c u l t u r a l and pluralistic policies of t h e sixteenth c e n t u r y O t t o m a n E m p i r e did not m e a n equality f o r all in the s a m e sense that current multicultural policies might imply. That is, the d e m o c r a t i c equality b e f o r e the law we are used to thinking a b o u t should not be transplanted into the past. W i t h o u t underestimating the value and i m p o r t a n c e of those pluralist policies they h a v e to be placed within their historical context, and stripped of their twentieth century m e a n i n g loaded with p o s t - e n l i g h t e n m e n t liberalism. T h e d e f i n i t i o n of 'multicultural' in the sixteenth c e n t u r y O t t o m a n E m p i r e w a s more of an acceptance of other cultures and religions (or m o r e likely the latter, as the criterion of otherness seems to be religion rather than culture or ethnic b a c k g r o u n d e v e n in the c u r r e n t T u r k i s h r e p u b l i c see s e c t i o n 6.1) in a hierarchical order. T h e O t t o m a n period (until 1923), c h a r a c t e r i s e d by its tolerance towards its n o n - M u s l i m subjects, is explained by Lewis in the light of its historical context. He says that 'tolerance' should not be d e f i n e d as 'absence of discrimination but as absence of persecution' ( L e w i s , 1961:349). B e i g e clarifies it f u r t h e r e x p l a i n i n g that although the n o n - M u s l i m s u b j e c t s were tolerated they were also second-class citizens since they had to accept the s u p r e m a c y of the Muslim population and the protection of the M u s l i m rulers (Beige, 1995:13). It is possible to c o u c h this a s s e s s m e n t in Goldberg's t e r m s w h i c h says a b o u t p r e s e n t day multiculturalism: "Liberal m u l t i c u l t u r a l i s m is w i l l i n g to share p o w e r on t e r m s of those already h o l d i n g it" ( G o l d b e r g , 1994:30). In other words, as long as e v e r y b o d y k n e w their place, paid their dues in f o r m of special taxes f o r the special protection, and as a sign of the a c c e p t a n c e of the s u p r e m a c y of Islam, peaceful coexistence and orderly rule w a s possible ( L e v y , J., 1992:18). M o r e o v e r , the O t t o m a n E m p i r e w a s not interested in religious conversion (except f o r the special military c o r p s called the Janissaries) nor in c o l o n i s a t i o n . T h e rulers' o b j e c t w a s to p r o d u c e i n c o m e f o r t h e n a t i o n a l treasury t h r o u g h c o n q u e r e d lands and not the e x p a n s i o n of their c u l t u r e or religion.

THE P E O P L E AND THE L A N G U A G E

41

Lewis explains the concept of 'otherness' in the Ottoman Empire by identifying the 'religious' and the 'political' as two main divisions in the system. In the first one, religion is subdivided into the 'believers' and 'nonbelievers'. Believers are the followers of the prophet Mohammed, whereas the non-believers are subdivided again into pagans and monotheist non-believers who are called 'the people of the book' ahl-al-kitab (Lewis, 1984:20). This includes Christians and Jews, and puts them in a different position from other 'non-believers'. This group of non-believers was established before Mohammed, and, although they did not accept him as the last prophet, deserved the respect due to people who held monotheistic beliefs. An important addition to this analysis is the internal division in the Islamic tradition. The two main divisions, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, Cohen claims, have a different approach towards non-believers. He also notes that the nonbelievers of the Sunni lands such as Turkey, Egypt and the Lebanon fared better than those who lived under Shi'ite rule such as in Iran or Yemen (Cohen, 1973). The political component of the classification Lewis mentions is not as clear as the religious one appears to be, but he explains the notion 'protection money' or dhimma, as a contract between the Muslim state and its nonMuslim subjects, the dhimmi communities. These latter had to pay dhimma as a special tax for the protection of their communities which had different ways of beliefs, cultures and languages to the ruling dynasty. On the other hand those who did not pay the dhimma, that is, the Muslim population, was roughly divided into two: those who had to pay taxes and those who did not. The Ottomans, in Istanbul, as the ruling class, the religious leaders, and the military did not have to pay taxes whereas the rest of the Muslim population did. The attraction of a country which gave the Spanish and Portuguese Jews some civil liberties and even protection in exchange for a special tax cizye as an indicator of the inferior status of religions other than Islam, is understandable in the light of the conditions in Spain or the subsequent host countries at the same period.

The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire Though the original Sephardim were refugees from Spain and Portugal, centuries later when people started to talk and write about the 'Eastern Sephardim' it was not simply about the direct descendants of the Iberian Jews, but an interesting mixture of people with different cultures and languages, having two things in common: their religion and their country of settlement. The religion was Judaism and the country they converged to from various parts of Europe was the Ottoman Empire, which had its own native Jews called the 'Romaniot' Jews. As evidence of pre-Sephardic Jewish settlement in Anatolia, Galante cites a synagogue dating from 318 AD. (Galante, 1940:25,

42 J U D E O - S P A N I S H

IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

v:l). The Romaniot Jews were remnants from the Byzantine Empire, whose culture and traditions influenced the subsequent Sephardic culture and language (Bunis, 1983:105; Sevilla-Sharon, 1992:20). Although present-day Turkish Jewish culture is given the blanket name of Sephardic culture, giving the credit to the dominant Iberian inheritance, it is almost impossible to envisage a culture or a language with a unidirectional influence. This goes beyond mere speculation if Sevilla-Sharon's suggestions about the strength of the already existing Romaniot culture are taken into consideration. He mentions Eliva Mizrahi and Moshe Kapsali's ingenious leadership as a synthesis of the Romaniot and Sephardic cultures: "these great community leaders' imagination and abilities did not come into existence out of nowhere or start all of a sudden" (Sevilla-Sharon, 1992:20). In addition a small number of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the persecutions in Europe had settled in the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth century (Avigdor I x v y , 1992:4). The Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century had already established themselves in Western Anatolia and expanded their rule to the Balkans and all the way to the Danube. The conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453 gave them a solid base from which they expanded their boundaries to Syria and Egypt and part of North Africa in the South East, and the environs of Vienna in the West (1529). As mentioned above, in 1492, after the official expulsion from Spain, the Iberian Jews dispersed to various parts of the world such as Portugal, the Kingdom of Navarre, Provence, North Africa, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. The last became a haven for the Sephardic refugees after the European countries closed their doors to them and discriminatory policies were implemented. Avigdor Levy estimates that the Sephardic migration to the Ottoman Empire which had started before 1492, accelerated with the addition of the new European expulsions (Avigdor Levy, 1992:4). The first settlements of Jews f r o m the Iberian peninsula were in Istanbul, Salonica, Safed and Jerusalem. Both Salonica and Istanbul were port cities and therefore prime targets for the new immigrants (Avigdor Levy, 1992:5). The Jews of Salonica, the 'new Jerusalem' of the sixteenth century, according to the 1519 Ottoman population count, represented "more than half of the city's total population" (ibid.6). Istanbul Jewry, on the other hand, consisted of only "about 11 per cent of the city's total number of households" (ibid.7). Safed and Jerusalem have been pointed out by several scholars as two of the main attractions of the Ottoman Empire as a new home. That is, its proximity to and later its rule over the Holy Lands meant that the Jews who wanted to travel to the Holy places would not need special passes (Avigdor

THE PEOPLE A N D THE

LANGUAGE

43

L e v y , 1992; L e w i s , 1984; S h a w , 1992). T h i s w a s an attractive n o v e l t y because in Spain and s o m e o t h e r E u r o p e a n countries J e w s needed a special pass in o r d e r to travel e v e n within the c o u n t r y ' s b o u n d a r i e s or in o r d e r to settle w h e r e they w a n t e d . In contrast, in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e they w e r e free to travel and settle a n y w h e r e they liked with the permission to organise their c o m m u n i t i e s a c c o r d i n g to their o w n religious laws and traditions (although there have been exceptions to the rule with the Ottoman resettlement policies called siirgiin 'exile', which were i m p l e m e n t e d f o r d e m o g r a p h i c or e c o n o m i c r e a s o n s r a t h e r t h a n d i s c r i m i n a t o r y reasons). A d d e d to the lure of social f r e e d o m w e r e the trade facilities the vast e m p i r e provided. A f t e r all, the new settlers would be at the centre of the international silk and spice trade routes of the time. T h e i r close f a m i l y n e t w o r k s soon turned this sort of operation into a f l o u r i s h i n g international trade. T h e s e f a m i l y n e t w o r k s w e r e not only used f o r intellectual and e c o n o m i c e n d s but s e r v e d in t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l political arena. Based on Wexler's statement of the influence of migration on Jewish languages: "Migrations, persecution and expulsion increase the likelihood that J e w s will be m o r e broadly exposed to h e t e r o g e n e o u s dialects and f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e s t h a n t h e r e l a t i v e l y m o r e s e d e n t a r y n o n - J e w i s h p o p u l a t i o n " ( W e x l e r , 1 9 8 1 : 1 0 3 ) , I i n f e r that t h e m a i n f a c t o r in t h e multilingualism of the J e w i s h population of the O t t o m a n E m p i r e w a s their relative f r e e d o m in travelling and their international family networks. T h a t is, the e x c h a n g e of ideas and k n o w l e d g e was m a d e accessible to all J e w s f r o m different parts of the country. Jews were accepted, or better still, encouraged to settle in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e because of their e c o n o m i c utility a n d because they did not p o s e a political threat like the Christian citizens. T h i s latter group s h o w e d their dislike of the Islamic rule by a l m o s t a l w a y s i d e n t i f y i n g and siding with Christian Europe's d e m a n d s and in return a s k i n g f o r special protection f r o m various E u r o p e a n k i n g d o m s , and later on nation states. J e w s on the o t h e r h a n d , had no s y m p a t h y t o w a r d s , or trust in t h e C h r i s t i a n E u r o p e a n rulers and w e r e m o r e inclined to be loyal t o the I s l a m i c state. M o r e o v e r , as L e w i s points out, they did not c o m p e t e in the religious context ( L e w i s , 1984:86). D e s p i t e all this, hostilities did o c c u r f r o m t i m e to time, but, at least at the beginning, they were not based on religious antipathy, but w e r e "rather t h e usual attitude of the d o m i n a n t to the s u b o r d i n a t e , of the m a j o r i t y to the minority, w i t h o u t that additional theological a n d t h e r e f o r e p s y c h o l o g i c a l d i m e n s i o n that gives Christian a n t i s e m i t i s m its u n i q u e and special character" (ibid.: 85). D u r i n g the f i f t e e n t h and sixteenth centuries the J e w s of t h e O t t o m a n Empire, which "was a m o n g the most advanced and well-administered states in the w o r l d " ( A v i g d o r L e v y , 1992:15), p r o s p e r e d financially and culturally. Assisted by t h e Ottoman e c o n o m i c and sociopolitical context w h i c h not only encouraged its minorities in e c o n o m i c expansion but also needed their skills, the O t t o m a n J e w s contributed to various fields of activities, such as printing, medicine, arts,

trade,

and m a n u f a c t u r i n g

industries.

T h e considerable

44

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CONTEXT

economic prosperity resulted in a rich cultural life which made Salonica, Istanbul and Safed the centres of Jewish intellectual activities of the time. Among other things, the first printing press of the Ottoman Empire was established in 1493, in Istanbul by the two Nahamias brothers. In 1494 they published the first book in the Ottoman Empire: Arba'ah Turim (The Four Columns), a code of laws by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1270-1340) of Toledo (Avigdor Levy, 1992:38). The history of the Jews during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries should nevertheless not be reduced to a unidirectional movement, that is, from Christian Europe to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, f r o m slavery and persecution to freedom and tolerance. It existed on a continuum of factors, readjusting itself according to the socio-economic and political needs and accepted views of the day. The fate of the Sephardic Jews was one of the great historical coincidences where the expansion of one country was synchronised with the exile of a community from another.

The Ottoman decline The failure of the second siege of Vienna in 1683 signals the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The reasons f o r this process are complex and multifaceted. Although I shall not dwell on it in great detail it is helpful to have an idea of the main reasons in order to project the parallel fate of its Jewish citizens. The Ottoman Empire was established on a system which sustained the state treasury by territorial conquests. By the end of the sixteenth century the Empire had expanded its boundaries to such an extent that the administration of these territories became a problem rather than an asset. The officially appointed governors started to act on their own initiative rather than following orders from the capital. Added to these administrative problems were changes in the world trade routes. The discovery of the New World and later on the conquest of the Americas injected new gold into the European market, tipping the balance of economic power. Moreover, the new trade routes shifted the importance of the Mediterranean and with the increase of European commercial power (Portuguese, French, British and Dutch) the Ottoman Empire began losing some of the control of its own ports to foreign powers. As a consequence Ottoman Jews who held part of the Mediterranean trade were incapacitated and the Greeks and Armenians started to replace them as go-betweens, interpreters and later on as traders in the Ottoman Empire. These events followed by inflation, unrest and the rebellion of some governors in the periphery led to the steady decline of the Ottoman Empire's central authority and with it its Jewish subjects who were so closely linked to its economic and social webs.

THE

PEOPLE

AND

THE

LANGUAGE

45

T h e economic decline of the elite affected the whole Jewish community. Because of its social structure, the Jewish social institutions such as schools, hospitals, etc., lost part of their financial support. Spiritual and intellectual decline mirrored the material decline. Other authors relate the reason for the decline to the Sabbatai Zevi affair. In Sephiha's account of the deterioration of the Jewish socio-economic situation the Sabbatai Zevi affair is one of the major events in Jewish history. It has been suggested that it assisted the decline of the Ottoman Jewry after the prosperous sixteenth century. In 1648 Sabbatai Zevi, a Jew from Izmir, proclaimed his messianic status. For international political and economic reasons, and because of rising messianic expectations, his promotion took off relatively easily and he established himself mainly in Salonica. His political power started to compete with both the Jewish and the Ottoman central authorities. The then Sultan, Mehmet IV, therefore saw no alternative but to propose yet again the choice between death and conversion, this time to Islam, for Zevi and his followers. A new religious sect was born: The Islamic conversos1 or donmes2. As a result, the Jewish religious authorities, which at the time were the leaders and organisers of the community, became suspicious of novelties and extremely conservative. On the other hand, from the Muslim point of view, Jews lost their credibility and Christians, with the additional help of European protection, started to fill the deserted official positions (Sephiha, 1977:29). By the beginning of the eighteenth century the dispersed Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire were converging in the more central urban areas such as Bursa, Istanbul, Salonica, Edirne, Damascus and Cairo. The outcome of these moves was a relatively more homogeneous Jewish population. Until then, the communities were divided by their Iberian place of origin or other geographical origins. For example, the families from Sevilla, Granada or Venice would congregate separately, in their respective synagogues. The comparatively more successful community life of the new centres is attributed to the injection of new Jewish immigrant blood into these communities, namely the Francos, French and Italian Jews who, lured by the commercial facilities, settled in these cities during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries and delayed their decline.

' j e w s who converted to Christianity voluntarily or under duress before and during the Inquisition in the Iberian peninsula were called marranos or conversos. 2 'converts' in Turkish.

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The Tanzimat Reforms The Tanzimat Reforms were an important influence on the Jews of the Ottoman Empire (as well as other religious minorities). These reforms were the first attempt, made by the then sultan, Mahmud II (1784-1839), to follow the example of the West in the modernisation of the military and the bureaucracy. France, a political ally of the Empire (both the Ottoman and the French opposed the House of Austria) since the sixteenth century, was also its main trading partner in Europe. Continuous contact made France an ideal model for modernisation and development. The French influence on the Imperial reform policies which had started tentatively with Selim III, the ruling sultan before Mahmud II, continued in full force (Lewis, 1961:71/116). The state introduced equal civil and legal rights among its citizens irrespective of religion. In fact, by 1855 these went as far as compulsory conscription of the religious minorities in the military service as full-fledged subjects (Lewis, 1961:331). But the non-Muslim minorities continued to avoid military service by paying a special tax called bedel-i askeriye, 'military service price/cost". It was not until 1910 that this special tax was abolished and all male nonMuslim subjects were expected to do their military service along with their Muslim compatriots (Shaw, 1991:156; Rodrigue, 1990:32). By the time World War I started, Shaw claims that "Jews now served willingly in the Ottoman army, with special arrangements being made to provide for kosher food and observance of the Sabbath and other religious rituals by Jewish soldiers" (Shaw, 1991:226). Arising from the ideological discourse of the European Enlightenment the state focused its energy on the education of the masses. If there were going to be social changes, it had to be through the education of the future generations. The educational reforms, which started with the Hatt-i Hiimayiin (Imperial Prescript) in 1845, introduced the idea of a system of secular education. The American Robert College was founded in 1863 followed by the Imperial Lycée of Galatasaray in 1868, as a direct result of these reforms (Levy, 1992:110). In the educational institutions, such as the Imperial School of Medicine, provisions, similar to the military arrangements, were made for the special religious requirements of the students (Levy, 1992:110). Further on Levy adds: "Thus, it is important to note that the first organised effort to modernise and transform Ottoman Jewry through education came from the state; and its main purpose was similar to that which guided the government's efforts in creating a modern-oriented Muslim elite, namely state service" (ibid: 111).

T H E P E O P L E AND THE L A N G U A G E

47

The Alliance Israelite Universelle The legal and political emancipation of the West, in the postEnlightenment era, helped by early industrial capitalism, had transformed Western societies including their Jewish citizens. These latter's embourgeoisement resulted in their preoccupation with the fate of the less fortunate Eastern Jewry. With the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853-1856), European presence increased in the Middle East and the issue of minorities' rights in the Ottoman Empire became very important to the West. European Jewry especially saw themselves directly responsible for influencing the Ottoman policies in favour of their Jewish subjects who did not have a state to defend their rights. In this context Schroeter asserts that the Tanzimat reforms had a varying degree of influence on the legal status of the minorities. It depended mostly on the degree of closeness to the central authorities in Istanbul. That is, the periphery did not always apply the new emancipatory rules set by the centre. This depended heavily on the regional governor's loyalty and personal support for the precepts issued from the centre (Schroeter, 1992:24; Rodrigue, 1990:31). As a result, various Jewish communities scattered around the Ottoman Empire developed in dissimilar directions. However the issue of modernisation through education seems to have influenced them simultaneously. The European states negotiated, pressurised the Sublime Porte and obtained the same civil rights reforms applied to the Muslim citizens for the Christian minorities they felt responsible for. In the absence of a Jewish state the Alliance Israélite Universelle (hereafter, the Alliance), a French Jewish organisation founded in 1860, took this task upon themselves. According to Rodrigue "the aim of the organisation was to fight persecution and to bring about the emancipation of the Jews in those countries where it had not been yet achieved" (Rodrigue, 1990: XI). Further on he adds that this aim was modelled on "the idealised image of the emancipated Western Jew" (ibid. XII) who would 'regenerate' their Eastern brothers through the mission civilisatrice of the Alliance. The regeneration was to be transmitted via schooling in the "language of 'civilisation' par excellence" (ibid. XIII), namely, French. The Eurocentric approach to the East or 'the Orient', common to the period, is clear in Kesnin-Bey's description of the Jewish community of Istanbul in 1865: The Turkish Jew is something filthy, ragged, stinking and lousy: persecuted, degraded for centuries, he took on humble, cunning, cowardly ways. While his Western coreligionaires enriched themselves, he remained wretched and his poverty equals his ignorance. Such is the Jew of Constantinople: his squalid appearance only exceeded by the loathsome aspect of the Jew of Jerusalem (Kesnin-Bey, 1865:234).

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CONTEXT

A c c o r d i n g to this picture the O t t o m a n J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y is certainly in need of help; the responsibility fell on to the Alliance w h o s e perception of the local J e w i s h population is similar to that of K e s n i n - B e y ' s discourse. It describes its aims in the following words: T h e object of elementary schools, especially in the Orient, is not so m u c h instruction as e d u c a t i o n . E d u c a t i o n consists of both intellectual and moral e d u c a t i o n . T e a c h i n g as a w h o l e s h o u l d h a v e a moral c o n t e n t , m u s t a i m by secret w a y s and continuous but invisible efforts to elevate the soul and the spirit of the child... one of the principal a i m s of the teacher will be to especially c o m b a t the bad habits more or less widespread a m o n g the Oriental populations, egotism, arrogance, exaggerated e x p r e s s i o n s of f e e l i n g s , insipidity, blind respect of f o r c e and f o r t u n e and the violence of petty passions. T h e virtues that o n e seeks to inspire in the child are love of country, love of all men, love and respect of parents, love of truth... dignity of character, nobility of s e n t i m e n t , l o v e of the p u b l i c g o o d , t h e spirit of solidarity... l o v e of w o r k . ( A I U , Instructions, 2 8 - cited in Rodrigue, 1990:72) T h e Alliance's perception of the surrounding m a i n s t r e a m culture is not very d i f f e r e n t either. R o d r i g u e cites part of a c o r r e s p o n d e n c e b e t w e e n an Alliance teacher and T h e Secretary General on the issue of t e a c h i n g T u r k i s h civilisation in the Alliance schools. T h e latter's reply is as f o l l o w s : Y o u speak of Turkish civilisation. H a v e you reflected on the u n c o n s c i o u s irony 1 of this reflection? ( A A I U , T u r q u i e XIII. F. 29, A l c h a l e l , a n n u a l r e p o r t , H a s k o y , 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 1 0 ; c i t e d in R o d r i g u e , 1990:88). T h e i m p o r t a n c e of teachers' reports w h i c h e m p h a s i s e d the e x t r e m e d e g r a d a t i o n of Oriental J e w r y is, as R o d r i g u e points out, the f a c t that these teachers t h e m s e l v e s were locals, thus Orientals, w h o w e r e p i c k e d u p b y the Alliance and trained to teach in their o w n c o m m u n i t i e s m o s t of t h e m f r o m the Ottoman, Judeo-Spanish speakers (Rodrigue,

1990:73). A s he further

explains, the Alliance had, through its F r e n c h educational s y s t e m , m o u l d e d local Jewry to its o w n image. T h e local J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y which might h a v e f o l l o w e d the modernisation process along with m a i n s t r e a m M u s l i m society, f o l l o w e d instead the Alliance's F r e n c h m o d e l , a n d in the p r o c e s s , alienated itself f r o m its i m m e d i a t e m a j o r i t y c u l t u r e , that is, f r o m T u r k i s h c u l t u r e (Rodrigue, 1990:120).

'italics added for emphasis.

THE PEOPLE AND THE

LANGUAGE

49

Until the early nineteeth century the religious establishments held dominant political and social power in each community they represented. In the case of the Jewish community, especially after the Sabbatai Zevi affair, rabbinical power reached unprecedented strength (Lewis, 1984:177; Shaw, 1992:158; Avigdor Levy, 1992:13). The Tanzimat reforms followed by the intrusion of the Alliance with their modern and secular ideologies were not in the interest of the already established powerful religious elite. The secular education which was the main interest of the Alliance was in direct opposition to religious education and authority. The previous restrictions the different religious minorities had were in a way barriers erected to stop a two-way circulation: no one in, no one out. That is, the special legislation which had regulated for example, the specific dress code or the protection tax the Jewish community had to pay was a tool to keep them together inside the parameters of the Jewish faith as much as to e x c l u d e t h e m f r o m the d o m i n a n t community. Since these discriminatory provisions were not life-threatening and did not limit m o v e m e n t , one could look upon them as a d e f e n c e mechanism against the cultural/religious assimilation into the mainstream community. Thus, the new parameters the Tanzimat Reforms and the secular i n f l u e n c e of the A l l i a n c e led to c o n f l i c t a m o n g the r e f o r m e r s

and

traditionalists. But "by World War I, [the Alliance] had managed to establish a near monopoly over the field of education in most Sephardic communities, considerably weakening or displacing altogether the traditional education system" (Rodrigue, 1990:XIII). In the meantime the Ottoman Empire had started to show signs of disintegration; some of its Western territories gained their autonomy and later on their independence between the 1830s and 1920s. The 'Sick man of Europe' was ready to disintegrate under the pressure. Liberal ideas had started to seep through the new intellectual elite which formed the governing power of the state.

20th Century: Turkish Jews or Jewish Turks? T h e beginning of the twentieth century is marked by the Young Turk revolution and the second constitutional

period ( 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 8 )

(Lewis,

1961:207). On the international scene, it coincides with the surge of Zionist activities in Europe. In 1897, at the first Zionist Congress in Basel the aim of the movement was defined as the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine for the dispersed Jewish nation. According to Yetkin this movement did not find many sympathisers among Turkish Jewry w h o had stayed loyal to their host country for f o u r centuries (Yetkin, 1992:131). The response of the Turkish community is not very surprising when it is examined in the light of the Alliance's Enlightenment and emancipation ideology of "... dissolving

50

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IN THE T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

corporate c o m m u n i t i e s and gradually integrating the J e w s into the 'national' life of their respective countries..." ( R o d r i g u e , 1990:XI). In o t h e r w o r d s , the c o r p o r a t e identity of the m i n o r i t i e s had to be pushed b a c k to t h e p r i v a t e sphere, w h i l e the secular national identity, c o m m o n to all the citizens w a s b r o u g h t to the public centre. T h e integration of J e w s in their r e s p e c t i v e countries' ideology w a s in contradiction to the nationalist Z i o n i s t m o v e m e n t ' s ideology of creating an independent Jewish state in Palestine. H o w e v e r , both R o d r i g u e and B e n b a s s a reject the generally upheld view that Z i o n i s m did not h a v e a significant r e s p o n s e f r o m T u r k i s h J e w r y ( R o d r i g u e , 1990; B e n b a s s a , 1993). Both agree that the success of Zionist ideology was far-reaching within the l o w e r i n c o m e classes of J e w s in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e in response to the f a i l u r e of t h e A l l i a n c e

in r e a c h i n g t h e i r t a r g e t of r e j u v e n a t i n g

and

e m a n c i p a t i n g t h e s e s a m e p e o p l e . T h e e c o n o m i c a l l y d e p r i v e d part of t h e c o m m u n i t y w h o could not c o n t i n u e with their education f o u n d instead moral s u p p o r t in the classless and u n i f y i n g M a r x i s t Z i o n i s t i d e o l o g y w h i c h w a s o f f e r i n g them the idea of an egalitarian society in Palestine. A t another level, w h i l e part of t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y t o o k sides with the Y o u n g T u r k s and the succeeding Turkish Republic (1923) with the conviction that they would be an accepted part of the T u r k i s h nation and w o u l d be active in t h e national c h a n g e s , o t h e r s s a w this p r o c e s s as t h e disintegration of their o w n particular identity and preferred the Zionist stand. B e n b a s s a concludes that, added to the socially displaced and those opposed to integration, w e r e the disappointed masses w h o realised that at the end of the day although equal citizens on p a p e r , they w e r e still d i s c r i m i n a t e d against because of their religious d i f f e r e n c e s , such as in the c a s e of t h e capital tax, Varlik

Vergisi.

It is the c o m b i n a t i o n of these factors w h i c h a l l o w e d Zionist

ideology to flourish in the Turkish Jewish c o m m u n i t y (Benbassa, 1993). N o t w i t h s t a n d i n g the dismal c o m m u n i t y picture A n g i n paints in the mid-twentieth century ( A n g i n , n . d . l l ) and w h i c h is not very d i f f e r e n t f r o m Kesnin-Bey's approximately a century earlier, the general understanding is that within a f e w decades A l l i a n c e e d u c a t i o n had c o m e to f r u i t i o n . T h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h intellectual elite sided with the Y o u n g T u r k m o v e m e n t which aimed to establish a united O t t o m a n - T u r k i s h nation, with equal civil rights regardless of the e t h n i c or r e l i g i o u s i d e n t i t i e s of its c i t i z e n s ( Y e t k i n ,

1992:145),

f o l l o w i n g t h e W e s t e r n n a t i o n a l p a r a d i g m . D e s p i t e t h e i r g e n e r a l liberal t e n d e n c i e s , t h e nationalist f e r v o u r of the s u b j e c t p e o p l e of t h e E m p i r e , including the Turks themselves, directed the Y o u n g Turks' policies (influenced mainly by the French e n l i g h t e n m e n t discourse) t o w a r d s the T u r k i f i c a t i o n of t h e n o n - T u r k i s h M u s l i m s ( L e w i s , 1961:215). O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , the noriM u s l i m minorities w e r e e x c l u d e d f r o m the n e w T u r k i s h n e s s especially by G o k a l p , the national writer w h o gave the theoretical f r a m e w o r k of the n e w Turkish identity (Ak9am. 1995:24).

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51

Various claims have been put forward in connection with the role of religious minorities in the Y o u n g Turk m o v e m e n t . A c c o r d i n g to Lewis, "Ottoman non-Muslims played a small and diminishing role in the movement and the regimes that grew out of it; foreigners hardly at all" (Lewis, 1961:208). Nevertheless, Yetkin maintains that because of the similar fate of the Muslim and the Jewish population during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, that is, the economic and cultural decline in both communities, the Ottoman Jews identified more with the ideological aims of the Young Turks. The self-interest of both communities coincided, in the sense that both had something to gain f r o m the new national reforms (Yetkin, 1992:167), in contrast with the Christian population which was facing the danger of losing the protection of the European powers. Around the beginning of the twentieth century the Ottoman Empire, the sick man of Europe, collapsed. A f t e r several military clashes with European forces in 1923 the Turkish Republic was established. T h e Turkish I n d e p e n d e n c e W a r (1923) ended with the treaty of Lausanne, according to which religious minorities acquired special rights and c o n c e s s i o n s . A year later, in 1924, the Turkish Jewish c o m m u n i t y after deliberations decided to renounce these minority rights which were against the principle of equality of all the citizens before the law of the country and opted f o r the Turkish citizenship (Levy & Cohen, 1992:130). The sociopolitical reforms in the new Turkish Republic included the promotion of a secular state. The reforms of dress, writing system and national language were all carried out in the light of Western secular nationalist ideology. Religion had to be separated f r o m the public sphere and fixed in the private sphere. As a result, in order to diminish Islamic religious authority some extreme measures were taken. Some examples are: the banning of religious dress in public, the reading of the daily prayers, Ezan, in Turkish instead of Arabic (the language of the Koran). A s for the adoption of the Roman alphabet in 1928, Lewis' interpretation is: the basic purpose of the change was not so much practical and pedagogical as social and cultural and Mustafa Kemal, in forcing his people to accept it, was slamming the door on the past as well as opening a door to the future (Lewis, 1961:273). T h e s e measures had to be applied to all religions in order to be democratic; thus they affected the minorities, a m o n g which the Jewish minority was obliged to stop teaching Hebrew in schools. These measures were relaxed to a certain extent after the death of Atattirk (Sevilla-Sharon, 1992), and some of them completely discarded with the start of multi-party elections in the 1950s (Zurcher, 1993).

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IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

The establishment of the new Republic gradually led to Turkish Jewry's withdrawal from the political scene (Sevilla-Sharon, 1992:103, Benbassa, 1992; Bora, 1995:39). Despite the equal citizenship status they opted for in 1924, subtle discrimination by the authorities is evident in different domains of life, the most obvious one being the army. Although Jews had to serve in the army like any other Turkish citizen, until 1945 they were "not trained with arms, but given assignments in services, as clerks,... , they never attained the rank of officer" (H. Cohen, 1973:20). Added to that, isolated incidents such as the 1927 Niego murder and the reaction of the Turkish press (Avner Levy, 1996), the 1934 riots of Thrace (Trakya) against its Jewish population, estimated as: "the gravest known by the Turkish Jews in the past hundred years" (H. Cohen, 1973:21) point towards a second-class citizenship. Nevertheless, they continued their relatively peaceful existence within the Turkish Republic peaceful, no doubt, because "rather than an open ideological resentment, the attitude towards the minorities was one which ignored and dismissed their existence" (Bora, 1995:36). This statement is supportive of Edwards' description of the dominant majority's attitude towards the minorities (Edwards, 1985:50) and which will be discussed in the chapter relating to language and identity. The period of the second World War, reveals a certain degree of unease in Turkish Jewry. Although the Turkish state remained neutral in the conflict it showed signs of siding with Germany and the Nazi ideologies. The main pointer to that effect is the special capital tax, Varlik Vergisi, which was promulgated in 1942 (Lewis, 1961: 291; Sevilla-Sharon, 1992:103). According to this law ev ery Turkish taxpayer had to pay an additional tax on their property. "It soon became apparent that the really important data determining the taxpayer's assessment were his religion and nationality" (Lewis, 1961:292; see also Bora, 1995:38), and assessments relied on the personal whims of the local committees. Defaulters were labelled "Turks only in name" (Lewis, 1961:293). But as Lewis points out, it was the loyal w h o trusted the Republic and accepted its citizenship rather than staying under the protection of the Allied powers who were punished. This became a main source of disappointment which prompted several thousands of Jews to leave the country between 1944 and 1948 at the birth of the Israeli state (H. Cohen, 1973:99). Additional unrest in the form of the 1955 riots, mainly in Istanbul against the union of Cyprus and Greece, although not directed at the Jews in particular, had the same effect, and many Jewish families left the country to settle in Israel. Cohen estimates the 100,000 Jewish population of 1917 had shrunk to 38,000 by 1968 (H. Cohen, 1973:69) due not only to political but also to economic factors

THE

PEOPLE

AND

THE

LANGUAGE

53

Bora explains the Turkish Muslim anti-other behaviour as a reaction to the elitist one-party system which prevailed in Turkey until the 1950s, and to the Westernised elitist bureaucracy which alienated the rest of the Turkish population. These turned to anti-cosmopolitanism and developed an 'antiforeigner/minority' ideological discourse. Minorities were perceived as responsible for the alienating results induced by Western modernity in comparison to the 'pure' Anatolian Muslim Turkishness (Bora, 1995:39) on which the Turkish nationalist discourse was modeled. Both Cohen and Sevilla-Sharon suggest that the case of the Varlik Vergisi and other predicaments should be evaluated in their historical contexts (Sevilla-Sharon, 1992:104; Cohen, 1973:22). After all, the Turkish Jewish community had a relatively peaceful existence compared to the pogroms or massacres their coreligionists had to suffer in other Western countries, and the Jewish political status in Arab countries. But the fact remains that the religious minorities, and the specific focus of this study, the Turkish Jews were not made to feel part of the new Republic. The period after the establishment of the Republic shows a move towards democratic rule despite its few initial problems. Parallel to the political change, social change in the form of increasing literacy, improvement of communication systems, and urbanisation continued to spread.

The Turkish Jewish community in Istanbul today. Demographic portrait and patterns of residence According to the figures given by different sources (H. Cohen, 1973; Kastoryano, 1992; Sephiha, 1977) the Turkish Jewish population has steadily declined from the first official census in 1927, which counted 81,454 (47,035 in Istanbul) Jewish citizens within the Turkish Republic. The last census where 'religion' was classified as a separate entry, in 1965, counted 38,267 (30,831 in Istanbul), and relying on the number of people contributing to the communal levy, kizba1, an estimated 28,000 Jews live in the present-day Turkish Republic (t2:70). Approximately seven hundred of those are Ashkenazi Jews according to a spokesman from the Turkish Ashkenazi community (t2:89). The Eastern Jews, that is, Arab, Georgian or Kurdish Jews, are estimated to be about three thousand and the rest are recognised as Sephardic Jews (t2:69). Nonetheless, meaningful statistics on Jewish ethnic membership are practically impossible since marriages across the ethnic boundaries are becoming frequent. Past intra-ethnic community conflicts have been overtaken by the sharp increase in the feeling of an assimilation threat. The ambiguous relationship of the Karaites 2 with the Chief Rabbinate excludes them from this total. ^Centraiised community levy supporting all public Jewish institutions, such as synagogues, hospital, old peoples home. ^A Jewish sect which has rejected Rabbinic authority since the 9th C.E. century in Babylon. They have their own synagogues in Istanbul and observe different rituals.

54

J UDEO- S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

As mentioned above the reasons for the demographic decline after the establishment of the Turkish Republic vary f r o m the isolated, occasional outbreaks of violence in Turkey, to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In addition to emigration f r o m T u r k e y there was also a m o v e m e n t within the country's b o u n d a r i e s in which the remaining small J e w i s h communities converged towards Istanbul. A city of extreme contrasts, where 'East meets West', a cultural and linguistic mosaic, greater Istanbul is estimated to have between ten and twelve million inhabitants. Amongst these the Armenians, the Greek-Orthodox and the Jews are the main religious minority communities. The Jewish community members live generally in clusters in specific parts of the city during the winter months. In the summer they move in great numbers to the Princes Islands in the Marmara Sea (mainly to the islands of Buyiik Ada and Burgaz). This dense 'social network' aspect (Milroy, 1987) is relevant to the study of the linguistic change within the Jewish community in Istanbul precisely because it presents a number of clusters which are highly dense in their social interaction despite the fact that some of them share no local background and differ in their ethnic identities. Kastoryano describes it as "one single community" which is "defined above all by the transparency in the social relations between its members". Further on she adds: The control of social success more than religious conduct leads to a q u a s i - h o m o g e n e i t y of the g r o u p which while functioning as a distinct entity separate from the society as a w h o l e , a l s o u n d e r g o e s the s a m e c h a n g e s ( K a s t o r y a n o , 1992:262). This also supports my observations accumulated during fieldwork in Istanbul. Although the different Jewish ethnic groups mentioned above form a 'quasi-homogenous' community they all speak their own ethnic languages with sometimes the addition of Judeo-Spanish. Thus, it is possible to say that the c o m m u n i t y ' s local identity overlooks internal cultural and linguistic differences in the face of the common denominator of Judaism and perhaps the addition of the Istanbul identity component. The residence pattern has changed in the last decade because of internal migration of the Anatolian population swelling the numbers of the Istanbul inhabitants and consequently expanding the residential areas to the extreme boundaries of the city. As a result of this the Jewish community has moved f r o m established old districts to new ones such as Caddebostan, Suadiye and Bostanci on the Anatolian side, and Ulus and the heights of the Bosphorus on the European side of Istanbul. Whereas in addition to the Princes Islands, the

THE P E O P L E AND THE

LANGUAGE

55

Anatolian side used to be considered a summer residential area until approximately twenty years ago, today with the growing numbers of the Istanbul population (for more information see Mansel 1995:421-432) and the two new bridges linking the two parts of Istanbul, and making daily commuting more accessible, the relatively rural aspect of these parts is giving way to a very dense urban picture. Although it is still possible to find a few Jewish families in the very old Jewish districts (traditional Jewish districts before the 1950s) such as Balat with 'the Ahrida', the oldest synagogue in Istanbul, dating from the Byzantine period , Haskoy and Kuzguncuk, and a few more in their subsequent preferred residential quarters such as Kuledibi, Yeldegirmeni and Ortakoy, the only obvious evidence of the earlier Jewish character of these districts is the existence of some Jewish institutions, such as the Jewish hospital in Balat and the Home for the Elderly in Haskoy, and the local synagogues (Kastoryano (1992) estimates a total of twenty-eight currently existing synagogues in Istanbul).

The internal structure of the community Other than the synagogues, the Jewish community in Istanbul supports various charitable organisations (Appendix no:4). Most of these organisations are attached to the Chief Rabbinate in Istanbul, with the Chief Rabbi as the official representative of the Turkish Jewish community as a whole. The elected Chief Rabbi assisted by the Beit Din, the Judaic court, supervises the 'religious' and 'lay' council. A s the name implies, the former deals only with religious activities such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, religious divorces or funerals, and the lay council deals with the community's public affairs, or the running of its institutions. The twenty-one members of the lay council are appointed based on their performance within the community itself and their capacity to balance this performance with their sociopolitical and economic links with the majority. That is, they have to be members who have proven themselves to be responsible and professional within the community and integrated with the majority's life to such an extent that they can communicate efficiently with them. Because they are more in touch with the general public life and have a relatively high level of secular education, they act as advisors on public issues to the Chief Rabbi. In addition to these institutions, the Ashkenazi and the Italian communities preserve their separate councils but are still dependent on the Chief Rabbinate.

56

J U D E O S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

The community supports three Jewish schools: one primary, one high school and a new complex including the whole spectrum from primary to high school, which opened in 1994. The language of instruction for the first two is Turkish, with the addition of Hebrew and French as second languages. By contrast, the new school opted to use English (from the secondary level onwards) as first language of instruction with the addition of Turkish (compulsory for certain subjects such as Turkish literature, Turkish history and geography), Hebrew and French. The reason for the choice of English is the high demand for the language in higher education. Apart from secular education, the Mahzeke Tora, the religious Sunday school, provides religious teaching for the community's youngsters. Six social clubs (with an estimated 2,500 young members) provide the cultural activities for the Turkish Jewish community in Istanbul. In the last few years they have become the principal source of Sephardic cultural activities such as Sephardic music evenings, Judeo-Spanish theatre, and so on. They attract the young generation through their organisation of activities directed especially towards them. Saturday night parties, sporting activities, and Jewish cultural evenings are all organized with the interest of the young in mind. As one of the informants suggested: their aim is to keep Jewish culture and tradition alive, and by the same token, restrain assimilation. The weekly newspaper §alom, with one to two pages in Judeo-Spanish is the community's only surviving publication, recently supplemented (September 1994) by the periodical Tiryaki which is published in Turkish (see Appendix n: 1).

The name of the language The language investigated here, Judeo-Spanish, has been and is still called by various names depending on the preferences of the speakers and the fashion of the day. Harris cites some of them as "Ladino, Judezmo, Spanyol Muestro, Espanyol, Judeo-Spanish and Judéo-Espagnol" (Harris: 1982, ed. note). She also adds that according to recent research and her own findings (in New York and Los Angeles), Ladino is a name widely used by the speakers themselves (Harris, 1994:21). This is a phenomenon widely detected in low prestige languages according to Fishman (Fishman, 1981:8). It is also possible that the discrepancy in Harris's case is due to the language used during the interview and the attitude of the informant towards the language and the interview situation. In other words, according to my observations in the field, if the informant wanted to give authoritative international or academic support to

THE P E O P L E AND THE

LANGUAGE

57

the language, s/he referred to it as Ladino, and in the absence of such need, the language was referred to above all as simply ispanyolca, Spanish, or to disconnect it from standard Spanish, it was referred to as Bizim ispanyolca, our Spanish (since most of the interviews were conducted in Turkish). Ladino was used only during a few interviews conducted in French (almost 57% of a total of 37 references). This agrees with Harris' conclusion that, Ispanyolca (Turkish) as a direct translation of (E)spanyol (Spanish) was the most commonly used name for the language. This also concurs with other researchers' results such as Murphy (1986), Saul, (1983), or A. Malinowski (1982). When simply counted from the interview transcriptions, the reference to ispanyolca (which is the Turkish counterpart of [E]Spanyol comes up 265 times in comparison to 94 Judeo-Espanyol, 37 Ladino, 35 Musevice, 3 Judezmo, 2 Sefaradca, and 1 Yahudice.

Ispanyolca

265

Judeo-Espanyol

94

Ladino

37

Musevice

35

Judezmo

3

Sefaradca

2

Yahudice

1

Figure 1: Reference to language by participants (Total number of interviewees: 36) Since none of the interviews were conducted in Judeo-Spanish, Djudyo did not appear in the count, but during observed Judeo-Spanish conversations, the language has been referred to as Djudyo 'Jew' or 'Jewish', or la lingua muestra 'our language'. In addition to that, similar to Harris's observations (Harris, 1994:24), Bizim ispanyolca meaning 'our Spanish' was used for explanatory purposes, that is, so that it would not be confused with modern Standard Spanish. Yahudice and Musevice, both meaning 'Jewish language' were the counterpart for Djudyo in Turkish. Although Yahudice is used as a relatively derogatory term (Behmoaras, 1993:52) there seems to be a visible change in the usage of the term in the last few years. That is to say that while the name Yahudi for the people, or the name Yahudice for the language (instead of Musevi and Musevice) used to be used in an offensive manner, nowadays it is the people themselves who use it as a self-reference. One explanation for this change may be that the term has lost its offensive meaning, or another, that, due to recent sociopolitical change within the majority and linguistic change among the Turkish Jews, the latter's selfconfidence has been reinstated to a certain degree.

58

JUDEO

SPANISH

IN T H E T U R K I S H

N o t e that the s u f f i x ce-ca f o r e x a m p l e , Fransuca, Musevice,

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

in T u r k i s h m e a n s 'language s p o k e n by...',

l a n g u a g e s p o k e n by t h e F r e n c h , Yahudice

or

l a n g u a g e s p o k e n by the J e w s . T h i s is t o e m p h a s i s e that the

mention of religion, in this case, had no c o n s c i o u s d i s c r i m i n a t o r y p u r p o s e , but since the Turkish Jewish c o m m u n i t y existed b e f o r e the e m e r g e n c e of the State of Israel, religion in the absence of an a u t o n o m o u s state w a s one of the main g r o u p identity m a r k e r s , hence, the n a m e s Yahudi

a n d Yahudice.

In

a d d i t i o n to that B u n i s e x p l a i n s that this kind of ' s e l f - n a m i n g ' is a l s o a characteristic of other J e w i s h languages, such as Yiddish,

'Jewish': "they all

posses a language n a m e which derives f r o m the n a m e speakers use to refer to t h e m s e l v e s , either 'Jewish' or ' H e b r e w ' , s o that t h e l a n g u a g e s are called 'Jewish (language)' or ' H e b r e w (language)'" (Bunis, 1981:53). A m o n g others he gives the e x a m p l e s of: jidyo,judyo

or judezmo

w h e r e t h e first two r e f e r

directly to J e w i s h and the third one to J u d a i s m . Yiddish and J u d e o - P e r s i a n (called ebri, 'Hebrew', a m o n g Persian Jews), f o l l o w the s a m e pattern, with the speakers referring to their language as 'Jewish' or 'Hebrew'. H o w e v e r , there w a s s o m e objection to calling the l a n g u a g e Musevice or Yahudice precisely because its literal m e a n i n g is 'Jewish'. This, according to s o m e of m y i n f o r m a n t s , g i v e s the i m p r e s s i o n t h a t t h i s l a n g u a g e e n c o m p a s s e s 'all t h e J e w s ' , that is, t h e J e w i s h l a n g u a g e per se, t h u s u n d e r m i n i n g H e b r e w . It was interesting to o b s e r v e that m a i n l y t h e y o u n g g e n e r a t i o n ( 1 6 + ) of T u r k i s h J e w s m i s i n t e r p r e t e d t h e n a m e in T u r k i s h , Musevice or Yahudice, taking it to refer to H e b r e w , as they p e r c e i v e it, the universal l a n g u a g e of the J e w s . T h e y preferred to r e f e r to J u d e o - S p a n i s h as Ispanyolca, 'Spanish', or Bizim lspanyolca, 'our S p a n i s h ' ( d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g it f r o m s t a n d a r d S p a n i s h ) . T h e i m p l i c a t i o n is t h a t r a t h e r t h a n u s i n g it \Musevice or Yahudice\ as a b l a n k e t t e r m , i n c l u s i v e of t h e c o m m o n d e n o m i n a t o r (religion) to the Turkish J e w i s h network, and in its w i d e r s e n s e to all J e w s , they m a k e the distinction between ethnicity, nationality, l a n g u a g e a n d r e l i g i o n . M o s t of the i n f o r m a n t s w h o w e r e o p p o s e d to the n a m e Musevice or Yahudice e x p l a i n e d that the t e r m w a s a m i s n o m e r since it d e s c r i b e d 'the language spoken by the Jews' and w a s f a r too general. T h e i r c o n c e p t i o n of the Jewish l a n g u a g e par excellence w a s only H e b r e w w h i c h is t h e national l a n g u a g e of the only i n d e p e n d e n t J e w i s h State, Israel, a n d e n c o m p a s s e s the e l e m e n t s w h i c h a r e i m p o r t a n t f o r t h e l a n g u a g e to b e r e p r e s e n t a t i v e : state a u t h o r i t y a n d religion as an i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o m m o n d e n o m i n a t o r . In other w o r d s they associated t h e n a m e of the l a n g u a g e and r e l i g i o n / n a t i o n a l i t y with H e b r e w , a n d t h e n a m e of the l a n g u a g e a n d ethnicity/religion with J u d e o - S p a n i s h . T h e f a c t that s o m e T u r k i s h J e w s c a n p r o p o s e a n o t h e r national l a n g u a g e as 'Jewish l a n g u a g e ' (albeit t o a n o t h e r T u r k i s h J e w ) , and as a c o n s e q u e n c e can identify with a n o t h e r nation at t h e s a m e t i m e m a i n t a i n i n g their T u r k i s h national identity is i n d i c a t i v e of t h e sociopolitical a n d cultural c h a n g e a m o n g both t h e J e w i s h and the w i d e r M u s l i m c o m m u n i t y during the last decade.

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59

I further agree with Saul that in formal contexts or in print the language is generally referred to as Judeo-Espanyol whether the conversation or the text is in Judeo-Spanish or Turkish (Saul, 1983). For example the Judeo-Spanish page of the newspaper §alom is called 'Judeo-Espanyol'. The argument on what name the language should be given is not only controversial among its speakers but it continues within the academic circles which specialise on the subject. Although this is not the focus of this study I shall add for the benefit of the reader that the disagreement is on two levels: a) the difference between Ladino and all other names. b) the genesis of Judeo-Spanish: Was the Iberian Jewish Spanish different from the Christian majority's Spanish before 1492? In other words, when did the separation from mainland Spanish occurred, before or after the expulsion?

Ladino versus other names and the genesis of Judeo-Spanish Bunis and Sephiha, among others, differentiate between the vernacular, Judeo-Spanish, and the formal and liturgical form Ladino (Bunis, 1983, Sephiha, 1977 & 1986). Like the Christians' Latin, Sephiha says, Hebrew was the liturgical language. Some of the Jewish religious texts were translated into Ladino-Spanish around the 13th century and they became the reason for the Spanish language being transmitted to the next generations under the protective umbrella of religion. Sephiha notes: These [translations] displayed a certain amount of syntactic and semantic distortion, but by repeating these translations always the same, according to rigid rules... these texts although different in their structures, came to be assimilated in the vernacular, and the main text being sacred, its translation was sanctified too (Sephiha, 1977:17). To rephrase, phrases from the translations of the Hebrew-Aramaic sacred texts into Judeo-Spanish settled in the spoken vernacular because of their daily repetition. This variety of Spanish was reproduced remaining loyal to the original version despite its linguistic 'malformation' because the channel of transmission was sacred and could not be changed. Sephiha maintains it is particularly important to distinguish between what he calls 'Ladino' — i.e: the somewhat artificial literal translation of the Scriptures, which is frozen throughout time, and Judeo-Spanish, the vernacular language which developed after the seventeenth century "Ladino, existed before Judezmo [Judeo-Spanish], which was developed around 1620 from the Spanish varieties exported in 1492" (Sephiha, 1986:22).

60

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IN T H E T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

Bunis adds another level to this analytical f r a m e w o r k by introducing the c o n c e p t of "Rabbinical J u d e z m o " ( B u n i s , 1983:125), and s u g g e s t s that this latter is d i f f e r e n t f r o m Ladino

in its u s a g e of

Hebrew-Aramaic

c o m p o n e n t s w i t h o u t the H e b r e w syntax a n d is c l o s e r to s p o k e n J u d e o Spanish. In other words, Rabbinical J u d e z m o can be considered as the H [ i g h | and s p o k e n J u d e o - S p a n i s h , or the v e r n a c u l a r , as the L [ o w ] f o r m of t h e language. A t this p o i n t it is p e r h a p s a d v i s a b l e to m e n t i o n that t h e r e is an o n g o i n g a r g u m e n t a m o n g the scholars of the l a n g u a g e a b o u t the e x t e n t to which Judeo-Spanish existed before the departure f r o m the Iberian peninsula. It is not a central question for the purpose of this study but the reader should be a w a r e that Judeo-Spanish is not the name of an end product at any time during its lifetime (Penny 1992:126). A n d as opposed to s o m e of the speakers' views in which it is called 'fossilised', 'conservative', and 'old fashioned 1 , J u d e o Spanish, like every language changed and evolved into its present f o r m . T h e issue of the genesis of Judeo-Spanish as a distinct Jewish language b e f o r e 1492 is still debated by scholars in the field. A c c o r d i n g to s o m e of t h e m , even b e f o r e 1492 the Jewish spoken vernacular in Spain w a s d i f f e r e n t f r o m the m a i n s t r e a m population's S p a n i s h . T h i s w a s the result of religious dictates or their o w n social realities. For e x a m p l e the use of Dio ( s i n g u l a r ) , instead of Dios (plural), was a reflection of their strict m o n o t h e i c religion and a rejection of Christianisms ( D i a z - M a s , 1986:97). Others such as S e p h i h a , as m e n t i o n e d a b o v e , w h o c l a i m s that the v e r n a c u l a r d e v e l o p e d a f t e r 1620, are clearly opposed to this idea (Sephiha, 1973:47 & 1986:22).

The Judeo-Spanish Linguistic System It is generally accepted that the vernacular, J u d e o - S p a n i s h , stems f r o m mediaeval Spanish with the addition of H e b r e w loan-words, and several lexical items and grammatical c o m p o n e n t s f r o m local languages encountered along its historical j o u r n e y to its c u r r e n t f o r m . S o m e p r e f e r to d e s c r i b e it as a b a s t a r d i s e d l a n g u a g e , a d i s t o r t i o n , a j a r g o n , a m i x t u r e . T h i s h i s t o r y is paralleled by that of other J e w i s h languages, and in particular, Y i d d i s h (see Bunis 1981). F i s h m a n suggests that o n e of the d e f i n i t i o n s of a J e w i s h l a n g u a g e is "the view which recognizes J e w i s h w a y s of speaking (and, f a r less f r e q u e n t l y , writing) non-Jewish languages and that designates these by the prefix 'Judeo' ( F i s h m a n , 1981:6). H e goes on to say that they are the result of fusion

on o n e

hand, "but arise via fission (subdivision) on the other" (ibid. 10), b e c a u s e of cultural/religious necessities and changing inter-group relations. T h e y are all

THE PEOPLE AND THE

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61

invariably linked to the Sacred Language, Hebrew-Aramaic which, according to Rabin, is the key feature of Jewish languages (Rabin, 181:21). Bunis expands on the issue suggesting that Jewish languages (all but the earliest Jewish languages as Hebrew and Targumic 1 ) share four main components which are: (1) the Hebrew-Aramaic elements, (2) the prelanguage where the shift is marked, (3) the new variety, or the 'determinant', in Weinreich's terms, and (4) the 'international component' which enters the language through diverse contacts (Bunis, 1981:57). Conforming to the pattern of other Jewish languages, Judeo-Spanish "uses some variety of Jewish characters, and a Hebrew and Aramaic component" (Bunis, 1983:112), and has a "tradition of internal bilingualism" (ibid), that is, the vernacular and the liturgical. He lists the Judeo-Spanish linguistic components as: a) the Hebrew-Aramaic component, mainly in the form of lexical items such as sadaka 'charity', lashon 'language', kavod 'respect', benadam 'man/human'. b) Medieval Romaniot or 'Judeo-Greek' is the prelanguage, and the Hispanic (in particular linguisitic elements from Castille) with other Romance components are the 'determinant' as mentioned above. c) other Balkan languages and the more recent encounters with French and Italian, are the 'international elements'. d) the Turkish elements which today are "fully integrated constituents within the language's total system" (Bunis 1983:120). Turkish is considered to be another major 'determinant' since a large number of lexical and grammatical features are transferred from Turkish to JudeoSpanish (Bunis, 1981:55; see also Wexler, 1981). f) Arabic before and after the expulsion. Before the expulsion due to the contact with the Arab conquests of parts of Spain and after due to the Arabic linguistic elements which are integrated in the Turkish language. Their common evaluation as 'derivations' or even 'distortions', in other words their low prestige, is according to these authors another shared characteristic of Jewish languages. At a different level, Bunis and Wexler defend Judeo-Spanish as an independent language (Bunis, 1983:105; Wexler, 1981:103) mainly because it is very difficult to define a mixed language and the fact that "...although Judezmo [Judeo-Spanish] has borrowed elements from several linguistic sources, it has always synthesised and incorporated them into its own unique system" (Bunis, 1983:105). In other words, Judeo-Spanish's grammar (syntax and inflectional morphology) is almost entirely Spanish, borrowing mainly lexical items. It is perhaps advisable to mention that this 'unique system' has its regional variations (Bunis, 1983:110). Although regional varieties existed throughout its lifespan, they were mutually intelligible. Dfaz-Mas's citation of an article from a Salonican satirical journal emphasises this aspect: '.Jewish Aramaic.

62

J U D E O - S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

We J e w s speak Judeo-Spanish in a thousand w a y s and fashions. Every class of people has its own expressions, every category of men has their own variation of speech, every journalist has his own expressions and every one of them uses his own words. Despite this, all understand each other easily (Diaz-Mas, 1986:121).

The writing system Until the last few decades, Judeo-Spanish was written in its own specific writing system called rashi (Appendix no:3), which is: "[a] script developed from square Hebrew characters and named after the acronym f o r Rabbi Selomo Itshaki (1040-1105) whose Bible commentary was printed in this typeface in the first Hebrew book in 1475." (Saul, 1983:353). Bunis explains that while rashi was used for printing, the handwritten cursive script was called soletreo (Bunis, 1982:51). Nowadays, in T u r k e y , as in other places, where Judeo-Spanish is printed, such as The United States, Israel and France, J u d e o - S p a n i s h publications use the roman alphabet but follow different orthographic rules (see Appendix n: 2). The main change in the writing system developed when the Eastern Jews started to attend the Alliance schools in the second half of the nineteenth century and learned the Latin alphabet in order to f o l l o w the F r e n c h curriculum. However the coup de grâce came from the national education system after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. On the 1st of N o v e m b e r 1928 the R o m a n script w a s o f f i c i a l l y introduced, b e c a m e compulsory in all governmental offices (§im§ir, 1992:213), and the printing of other f o r m s of scripts w a s forbidden. T h e immersion in the R o m a n alphabet w a s completed with the c o m p u l s o r y Turkish primary school education policies. Turkish Jews, like any other Turkish citizen were educated in Turkish first and another international language such as French, English, or German, all in the Roman alphabet script. Already weakened by the lack of written material, rashi lost the straggle to the dominant discourse of literacy.

History of the language Unlike those who settled in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, the Iberian Jews who emigrated to North European countries did not continue to speak Judeo-Spanish. The dominant language of their respective host countries took over in a short period of time (Sephiha, 1977:12). In the case of the immigrants to the Ottoman Empire, however, they conquered the local Jewish dialect (Romaniot) with their own Judeo-Spanish. Albeit with a f e w additions f r o m the local lexicon and some structural re-adjustments, Judeo-Spanish survived as a whole.

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Some authors relate the survival of a language to the monolingualism of its speakers (Harris, 1994; Sephiha, 1986). Bunis, on the other hand refers to Judeo-Spanish as "one of the languages traditionally used by those Sephardim" (Bunis, 1983:103). This implies that the Iberian Jews spoke other languages in addition to Judeo-Spanish. Wexler supports this theory when he mentions the influence of migrations on the Jewish linguistic repertoire (Wexler, 1981) which could be applied to non-Jewish languages too. That is, the Iberian Jews, or at least some of them, travelling f r o m one country to another, f o r the various reasons their history shows (migration, trade, discrimination, etc.) must have picked up the indigenous languages on their encounters. A s a result, I prefer to base my study on the last two claims which refer to the multilingualism of the Iberian immigrants (rather than the claim of monolingualism) and look for the reasons for Judeo-Spanish's vitality then, and erosion n o w , elsewhere than in linguistic isolation or monolingualism.

In p a r t i c u l a r ,

the t h e m e s

I shall

explore

include

sociolinguistic factors, such as sociopolitical pressure or the influence of culturally d o m i n a n t discourses which a f f e c t the erosion of a minority language. It is important to note that during the lifetime of the Ottoman Empire (1453-1923) the accent was on multicultural rule, according to Mansel, its capital, Istanbul ( C o n s t a n t i n o p l e ) , "contained s e v e n t y - t w o and a half nationalities" (Gypsies counting for half a nationality) ( M a n s e l , 1995:7). Therefore except for the members of the ruling class, knowledge of Turkish was not considered to be a necessary condition for interaction in everyday life. Minorities, such as Greeks, Italians (remnants f r o m the Byzantine Empire), and Armenians, in addition to the Jews, conducted their private and business lives in their respective centres of settlement and in their own languages. It was not until the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 that education and language policies were applied on a national basis. Turkish became the compulsory language, at least in all primary schools, by the end of the 1920s, with the result that every Jewish child (male and female) learned Turkish at least as a second language, whereas before the nationalist m o v e m e n t took place, education had been conducted in the particular l a n g u a g e of the ethnic/religious group. In the case of the Jews, the educated elite spoke French as well as Judeo-Spanish because of the French influence the Alliance had on the community. A major effect of the Alliance schools was the downgrading of Judeo-Spanish which became predominantly the language spoken at home and by the uneducated. The loss of Judeo-Spanish's prestige was reinforced by the symbolic function of the national unifying element attributed to the national language, Turkish, starting with the Second Constitutional period (1908) and after the establishment of the Republic. The idea of Turkification assisted by education in the Turkish language had already taken root at this period also (Ak9am, 1995:21). As a consequence, it is no surprise that later

64

JUDEO-SPANISH

IN T H E T U R K I S H

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CONTEXT

the n a t i o n a l i s t ideology w a s b a s e d o n t h e c o n v i c t i o n that t h e T u r k i s h Republic w a s m a d e u p by T u r k s w h o spoke Turkish. By the late 1950s, w h e n the prevailing slogan advertised in public places was 'Citizen, speak Turkish!' minority languages had retreated to the private domain of the h o m e . J u d e o Spanish which w a s squeezed out first by French began to retreat b e f o r e the T u r k i s h linguistic o f f e n s i v e , particularly in the public d o m a i n s of education and business. Judeo-Spanish b e c a m e the language spoken at h o m e , mainly by w o m e n , w h o , in a c c o r d a n c e with the general f e m a l e socialisation process of the time, were restricted to the family d o m a i n . T h e limited use of the language started to cause a deterioration of its structure and of its lexicon. T h i s is in accord with o n e of Dressler's proposals, that "the l a n g u a g e of t e c h n o l o g y , c u l t u r e , f a s h i o n , etc. has c h a n g e d f r o m t h e r e c e s s i v e to t h e d o m i n a n t language" (Dressier, 1988). In other words, rather than using the etymological possibilities of the recessive l a n g u a g e in the f o r m a t i o n of n e w technological or cultural lexical items, its lexicon w a s updated with b o r r o w i n g s f r o m the d o m i n a n t language or even existing items were replaced with the equivalents in the d o m i n a n t language. T h e turning point in the fate of J u d e o - S p a n i s h w a s the arrival of the Alliance (1860) with its French c u r r i c u l u m and ideologies. I a m calling this p h a s e a 'turning point' b e c a u s e along t h e s l o w process of l a n g u a g e c h a n g e , J u d e o - S p a n i s h h a d c o m e i n t o c o n t a c t w i t h several l a n g u a g e s , n a m e l y , P o r t u g u e s e , Italian, G r e e k , French and T u r k i s h . Bunis, based o n t h e socioe c o n o m i c stratification of the O t t o m a n J e w s , m a k e s a similar break, that is, he calls 'Early Modern Eastern Judezmo' the Judeo-Spanish used between 1839 and W o r l d W a r I, and the 'I .ate M o d e r n Eastern J u d e z m o ' which f o l l o w e d this p e r i o d B u n i s , 1 9 8 2 b : 4 1 ) . T h e s u r v i v a l of J u d e o - S p a n i s h until t h e m i d nineteenth century m a y be attributed first, to the continuation of m o s t of the J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y m e m b e r s i n t e r a c t i o n in J u d e o - S p a n i s h b e c a u s e of a relatively dense social network. S e c o n d , the Ottoman E m p i r e did not present J u d e o - S p a n i s h with a strong national l a n g u a g e competition. T h e E m p i r e had already a different language situation to the current understanding of nation and l a n g u a g e issues i n a s m u c h as t h e m a j o r i t y d i d n o t h a v e a u n i f i e d arid institutionalised national language. T h e y used different languages f o r different purposes. According to T u r a n the M u s l i m citizens of the e m p i r e used A r a b i c f o r p r a y e r s and science, Farsi f o r literature, O t t o m a n T u r k i s h f o r o f f i c i a l p u r p o s e s , and Turkish f o r e v e r y d a y use (these last t w o c a n be described as H i g h and L o w Turkish) ( T u r a n , 1990:51). In c o n s e q u e n c e , I a r g u e that the presumption s o m e of the scholars of J u d e o - S p a n i s h have of the Turkish Jews' c o m p e t e n c e in Turkish during O t t o m a n rule is based on the d o m i n a n t national l a n g u a g e theory (i.e. all the c i t i z e n s c o m p e t e n t in the d o m i n a n t national l a n g u a g e w h i c h is used in o f f i c i a l p u b l i c d o m a i n s ) , and d o e s not fit t h e historical context in w h i c h J u d e o - S p a n i s h survived. F o r e x a m p l e , R e n a r d is amazed that the Sephardim did not "adopt the language of their n e w masters"

THE PEOPLE AND THE

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65

(Renard, 1971:719). This is presented despite his previous description of Judeo-Spanish as a prestige language that did not have serious competition in the various local languages (ibid. 187). Or, Benardete claims that "Jews refused to learn the language of the land" (Benardete, 1982:148; cf. also Harris, 1994:40) under the Ottoman rule. In the light of the additional information given above it is possible to say that rather than a case of negligence or lack of interest in the dominant language as these studies imply, there was neither need nor pressure for the Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire to acquire it. The conditions changed towards the end of the Ottoman rule and especially with the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Saul describes the model of language change developed by Galante (Saul, 1983:339) which partly predicted the decline of Judeo-Spanish in Turkey. Following the nationalistic ideologies of the Alliance, Galante, a strong advocate for the cultural and linguistic integration of the Jewish c o m m u n i t y to the Turkish majority, forecast the linguistic change in three stages: the Original Stage, where the speech network is monolingual in Judeo-Spanish, the Transitional Stage, where the younger generation is bilingual in Judeo-Spanish for the h o m e domain and Turkish for the public domain, and the Completion Stage, where the younger generation is monolingual in Turkish. This model developed on the transition f r o m Judeo-Spanish to French was illustrated in Galante's statement: "Today, there are several grandfathers who cannot understand their grandsons, because they can speak and read only Judeo-Spanish whereas their grandsons can speak and read only French" (Galanti [Galante], 1947:161, cited in Saul, 1983:339). T o summarise and reiterate the main focus of this study which will be discussed in the f o l l o w i n g chapters, it is possible to say that during the seventeenth century the Turkish Jewry's economic decline in tandem with the Ottoman Empire's decline triggered an intellectual decline and the language suffered in the form of loss of prestige. Using Aitchison's analogy of the rain infiltrating "the cracks which arc already there" (Aitchison, 1991:117), I assume that 'the cracks' were ready to be infiltrated by the then strong and fashionable French of the Alliance, and a f e w decades later Judeo-Spanish, already weakened, was confronted with the surge of Turkish as a national language, followed by the compulsory Turkish education at least at the primary school level. Turkish encroached in the Jewish h o m e domain alongside Judeo-Spanish and French. A s Aitchinson stresses, the question this study proposes to address is 'how and why' were the cracks there in the first place. At the present day, Istanbul Jews still generally feel that they speak a bastardised Judeo-Spanish similar to Farhi's description of the language 60 years ago (Farhi, 1937:151) if they can speak it at all. In their own words, they describe it as mesklatina 'mixture', or çorba 'soup'. T h e y o u n g generation (16+) is divided in the sense that some understand the language but very f e w can hold a conversation "without mixing in too many Turkish words" (dd2:13).

4 LITERATURE REVIEW ON LANGUAGE DEATH/SHIFT/REVIVAL IN GENERAL AND WITH RESPECT TO JUDEO-SPANISH IN TURKEY

This chapter will consist of an overview of the literature on language shift, language death, and language revival in general. A major objective is to tie in previous research on Judeo-Spanish to the general theory of language death/shift/revival, and identify where the case of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul converges with the general theory, or where it may diverge. It is not possible to provide a complete list of factors mediating language shift and death. The way each factor affects the language in danger can be different in each case. But scholars in the field of language death agree on the universality of some of the factors even if not on their degree of influence. These can be gathered in two main categories: the structural factors (for example: phonetics, syntax), and the social factors (for example: the prestige factor) which are the focus of this study. Although not an exhaustive review of the existing literature on the issues covered, my purpose is to give the reader a general idea of what has been done and said previous to this study and at the same time highlight the findings of this study which may shed some additional light on the general theory. Language shift and language death Language shift occurs when the functions of one language variety are gradually replaced by another. Several studies focusing on language shift/death have shown that social change introduces change in the evaluation of certain linguistic varieties (Fishman, 1991; Dorian, 1981; Gal, 1979). Distinction is made between bilingualism/multilingualism which permits a choice within the languages known to the individual speaker, and diglossia which does not necessarily involve distinct languages but can be two different varieties of the same language where the usage of the linguistic codes are limited to specific functional domains related to their comparative social status. In other words, in a diglossic situation two different linguistic varieties co-exist in the same community, each having their own specific domains of usage. One of these varieties is used for informal, private, and/or in-group communications and the other for formal, public, and/or out-group communications. They are referred to as L[ow] and H[igh] varieties of the language respectively (Ferguson, 1972).

68

J U D E O - S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

Gal notes that in the process of language shift the choice of language is used to assert a specific social identity or to express a "communicative intent" (Gal, 1979:174). In other words, rather than reflecting a lack of linguistic knowledge, or being unintentional, the shift signals the speaker's purpose. In Gal's view the choice of language indicates the group the speakers want to identify with, or conveys emphasis in argument. Grillo, Pratt and Street add another dimension to this explanation emphasising the factor of power and ideology in language use (Grillo, Pratt and Street, 1987:268). They regard language as a resource which can be used like a material resource (Gumperz, 1982 cited in: Grillo, Pratt, and Street, 1987). Fishman also attributes the factor of prestige in language shift to the existing power relationships between the two groups ( F i s h m a n , 1991:59). W h e t h e r e c o n o m i c or social, the dominant group controls the m a j o r resources such as policy making or education and influences the symbolic value given to each variety. When adv ancement depends on the degree of competence in the dominant language the threatened language is suppressed by the community (language suicide) (Denison, 1977). The point where the e n d a n g e r e d language LI is replaced in all functional domains by L2 is called 'language death' (Dressier & W o d a k Leodolter 1977; Dorian, 1981; Dressier, 1988). The process involves loss of prestige and receding functional domains, as mentioned above, and results in the non-transmission of the endangered language to the following young generation. Shrinking functional domains and decreasing frequency of language use can result in the contraction and/or deterioration of both its structural and stylistic forms. The issue of structural deterioration is mentioned by Denison who explains that although the mechanism of language death includes 'rule loss', it is not directly the "cause of death, though it may hasten the 'death wish' out of loss of 'self-respect'" (Denison, 1977:22; cf. also F i s h m a n , 1991:81). In other words, once again the language loses its prestige because the speaker perceives it as lacking normative rules, loses c o n f i d e n c e and further reduces its usage. As an extension to this argument Dressier & WodakLeodolter, based on their study of Breton, argue that the reason for its decay is the conflict situation of the primary socialisation in Breton and the secondary socialisation in French. The national language, French, is used in all public domains and Breton recedes to the private domains of daily life, reducing further its stylistic variation (Dresler & Wodak-Leodolter, 1977:39). In some cases the contracted lexicon and/or monostylism introduces also the idea that it is difficult to express modern concepts in the receding language (Kuter, 1989:82), the speaker is reluctant to use it in certain prestigious speech situations and increasingly borrows f r o m the dominant language. From the point of view of the decaying language, the process is named 'asymmetry of

LANGUAGE

DEATH/SHIFT/

REVIVAL

69

interference' (Dressier, 1988:185) indicating the power relation between the two competing languages. Hill & Hill call the same process 'relexification' and claim that in the case of Tlaxcalan Nahuatl it "contributes to the death of the language" (Hill & Hill, 1977:67) in the same way as the 'rule loss' mentioned above. Based on the same theoretical approach, that is, language loss due to loss of functions followed by loss of regenerative power (receding lexicon and/or grammar), Schlieben-Lange adds the effect of external pressures (pressures from the out-group) on the endangered language. She mentions the influence of the official language policies in her study of the speech community in Bagnols (France) regarding the abandonment of Provençal (Occitan). Schlieben-Lange observes that the changing official approach to the various minority languages in France has changed the dynamics of the language erosion situation of Provençal. In other words, the change from the centralist French ideology stressing the importance of 'one nation, one language' point of view to a more liberal language policy has slowed down the process of language death. In the Provençal language situation, the new political approach has heightened the ethnolinguistic awareness of the speech community who identify with Provençal as a symbol of their past, and perceive it as the language of autonomy and of intimacy (Schlieben-Lange, 1977). It is possible to say, then, that the factors which contribute to this process can take the form of a planned campaign, such as the official suppression of a specific language within the boundaries of a nation state, e.g. Gaelic in Scotland. Or it can follow an unplanned, unintentional shift to the dominant language because of the sociopolitical and even economic rewards such a move can bring. That is, language death does not occur because of something intrinsically wrong with one of the languages but because the social functions the weak language performs are themselves replaced by, or given l o w e r priority than o t h e r social f u n c t i o n s . It is not a technical/mechanical breakdown but a social breakdown. Scholars in the field agree that in most cases the weak language is not transmitted to the following generations and ceases to be a living language. In other words, parents cease speaking the endangered language to their children, which is the situation in Judeo-Spanish's case. Without a new supply of speakers, it is assumed that the language disapears with the old generation. An exception is mentioned by Hill & Hill whereby the receding language is transmitted through peer group rather than the usual parent to children channel (Hill & Hill, 1986:122). This seems to accord more with the current situation of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul and will be dealt later.

70

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CONTEXT

Role of standardisation in the survival of a language In her study of Hast Sutherland Gaelic, Dorian follows the issue of socio-economic change in relation to language shift/death and observes that the prestige of the endangered language is closely related to the changing official educational policies (Dorian, 1981:27) which can highlight the socioeconomic rewards of the dominant language to the detriment of the receding language at a very early stage of socialisation. The implication of such a move, which I call 'in-group pressure' for the purpose of this study, is that the t h r e a t e n e d l a n g u a g e s p e a k e r s can internalise the m a j o r i t y ' s

negative

perceptions of their language to the extent of denigrating it (Dorian, 1981:29; see also Watson, 1989:42), and even show surprise at the researchers' interest in the same 'unworthy' language (Watson, 1989:48). On the issue of language prestige, Watson adds: there is no doubt that both Irish and Scottish Gaelic suffer from a traditional lack of prestige as languages, e.g. they have not been the m e d i u m of important public institutions and personages, nor have they been perceived as the languages of education or as having a strong written tradition, but are associated rather with an unsophisticated, nonlearned folk culture... (Watson, 1989:49). In other words, Watson relates the issue of education and literacy and highlights the assumed importance of literacy and literary tradition reflecting a high culture and thus contributing to the prestige of the language. The role of literary tradition in the survival of a language is discussed by several other scholars w h o mainly discuss the issue on two levels: the role of a literary tradition as a prestige factor and the role of a literary tradition in presenting a standard norm as a point of reference for the endangered language. Dorian suggests that the lack of a literary tradition of East Sutherland Gaelic and the speakers' low level of education would hinder the promotion of this dialect even if financial support for maintenance efforts was available (Dorian, 1987:58). Her claim is based on the assumption that codification is advantageous to the promotion of a language. Other than the added prestige value, the language once codified, can be standardised and taught to interested would-be-speakers. But, she points out, standardisation in the f o r m of "nonlocal norms only has the effect of reminding local speakers of just how deviant their own everyday speech is" (Dorian, 1987:59) and thereby reduces speakers' self-esteem and self-confidence. Kuter relates Breton's prestige in France to political, cultural and socio-economic factors, and concludes that the symbolic opposition of French and Breton perceived along the dichotomies of national/regional, unity/separatism, modernity-civilisation/backwardness, and

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71

socio-economic mobility/deprivation, has affected the use of these languages in Brittany (Kuter, 1989:87). He argues that standardisation, in the Breton case, is inconceivable to native speakers who regard their regional differences as symbolic of their internal/micro-cultural diversity, and value them as such. However, the few second language learners who acquire Breton through the standard form and do not feel the subtle differences argue in favor of a standard in Breton (Kuter, 1989:85). Therefore one could conclude that in Breton's case as well as the East Sutherland Gaelic case, standardisation could possibly harm the future usage of the threatened language despite the possibilities it offers for the teaching of the language and the prestige it bestows on it. Whether positive, as a prestige factor, or negative as an alienation factor, the stress on codification and standardisation Dorian and Kuter make, indicates the tight relationship between the prestige value of standardisation, its implications, and the survival of an endangered language.

Perceptions of literacy and literary traditions as an active factor in language shift/death situations Similar to the authors above, Verhoeven's rationale about the role of the literary tradition in the survival of a language highlights the issue of codification and standardisation. He says: With respect to the written tradition of the ethnic language, the extent to which the language has been codified in the past proves to be very important. R u l e s for c o d i f i c a t i o n , e.g., orthographic rules, provide a f i r m basis f o r uniform written language use (Verhoeven, 1994:201). Since for a literary tradition to exist first needs a language which has a literacy tradition, and on the grounds that the Turkish J e w s themselves confuse the issues of literacy and literary tradition, it would be useful to give a brief account first on the research done on literacy, later connecting it to the literary tradition. Recent research on literacy stresses the need to place literacy in its social context (Street, 1993; Heath, 1983) rather than taking the dichotomous approach, that is, oral versus written, illiterate versus literate, favoured by some authors (Goody, 1968; Ong, 1982). I shall follow in particular Street who proposes an 'ideological model' (Street, 1994:95) in contrast to Goody's use of an 'autonomous model' of literacy (Street, 1984:64). Street's ideological model is useful because it is not literacy as such, but differential literacy in majority and minority languages that is relevant to language shift. In other

72 J U D E O

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IN T H E T U R K I S H

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w o r d s , f o l l o w i n g W a t s o n ' s model of l a n g u a g e shift m e n t i o n e d a b o v e , it is possible to concentrate on 'prestige' within which a n u m b e r of e l e m e n t s such as institutionalisation, education, or written tradition are evaluated against the majority's l a n g u a g e as the n o r m . F o l l o w i n g that, the lack of prestige of t h e e n d a n g e r e d l a n g u a g e is linked to the a b s e n c e of a literary tradition, and t h e s p e a k e r s t h e m s e l v e s are perceived as u n e d u c a t e d . Street's model of literacy e m p h a s i s e s the local cultural and p o w e r relationships involved in the concept of literacy, and the different f o r m s and functional d o m a i n s of literacies. Street, a m o n g others, challenges the apparent instrumental neutrality of literacy with its u n i q u e and implicit c o n s e q u e n c e s o n c o g n i t i v e , moral, o r e c o n o m i c d e v e l o p m e n t f o r its 'passive' receivers. B a s e d on e t h n o g r a p h i c research o n literacy such as Bloch's extension of the literacy concept into schooling and its association to the definition of k n o w l e d g e in non-Western cultural contexts (Bloch, 1993), Street concludes that the c o n c e p t of literacy is better explained as a social construct which has different m e a n i n g s according to context, rather than as a mechanical skill which o n c e acquired will have universal results. S t r e e t f u r t h e r a r g u e s that " l i t e r a c y has b e c o m e a s s o c i a t e d

with

educational notions of T e a c h i n g and L e a r n i n g and with w h a t t e a c h e r s a n d pupils do

in s c h o o l s "

(Street,

1995:106).

He calls this

process

of

institutionalised teaching and learning 'the pedagogization of literacy' which is culture specific, normative, and ideological in the sense that the individual is positioned in the social hierarchy according to the 'sign system' s/he uses and h o w well s/he applies the a c c e p t e d standard. H e a r g u e s that this a c c e p t e d standard is a p r o d u c t of "wider cultural a n d ideological patterns" (Street, 1995:127) w h i c h is m o u l d e d on the d o m i n a n t model of literacy a s s o c i a t e d with institutionalised education, and controls "the key aspects of language and t h o u g h t " (ibid: 106). G r i l l o m a k e s a s i m i l a r point w h e n s p e a k i n g of t h e relation

between

language

and

underachievement

in

institutionalised

s c h o o l i n g . Q u o t i n g Rosen & B u r g e s s ( 1 9 8 0 ) G r i l l o points out: "Universal e d u c a t i o n m a y h a v e b e e n t h e m o s t p o t e n t f o r c e in m a k i n g p e o p l e l o s e c o n f i d e n c e in the l a n g u a g e they s p e a k " ( R o s e n & B u r g e s s , 1980; in Grillo, 1989:199). T h u s , both Street and Grillo stress the importance of the perceived legitimacy of the authoritative school discourse and that "no m o d e or m e a n s of learning is neutral" (Graff, 1994:46). In o t h e r words legitimation of literacy is t h r o u g h e d u c a t i o n but e d u c a t i o n d o e s not n e c e s s a r i l y l e g i t i m i s e literary tradition. B a s e d on these p r e m i s e s , I take differential literacy a n d literary traditions as o n e of the most e f f e c t i v e f a c t o r s in the devaluation of J u d e o S p a n i s h a n d s u b s e q u e n t s h i f t t o o t h e r d o m i n a n t l a n g u a g e ( s ) as will b e discussed below. Literary tradition is placed in the sociocultural hierarchical o r d e r a c c o r d i n g to its a s s o c i a t e d o w n e r s ' / p r o d u c e r s ' status ( V i s w a n a t h a n , 1994:223). T h a t is, w h a t is accepted as 'literature' d e p e n d s on the n o r m s of the establishment and their criteria of prestigious literature.

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The role of social networks in language and collective identity So far the receding functional d o m a i n s and the decreasing f r e q u e n c y of use, including the non-transmission to the f o l l o w i n g generations, h a v e been related to the deterioration of the e n d a n g e r e d language's structure, style and prestige, and the speakers' negative attitudes towards the language. It has been mentioned that the geographical dispersal of the speakers, a n d the nature of their interaction are important factors in the survival of a l a n g u a g e ( G u m p e r z , 1972; W a t s o n , 1989). T h e s e features of g r o u p interaction are described by M i l r o y in her b o o k L a n g u a g e and Social N e t w o r k s ( 1 9 8 7 ) . S h e describes a 'social network' as a w e b of social relationships with the f o c u s on the links rather than the individual m e m b e r s ' status. T h e n e t w o r k can be described as relatively dense if the m e m b e r s linked to a person are also connected with each other. M i l r o y n a m e s the highly d e n s e parts of t h e n e t w o r k 'clusters', and d i f f e r e n t i a t e s b e t w e e n the interaction and the c o n t e n t of the link. Several c o n n e c t i o n s at d i f f e r e n t levels of social interaction results in a 'multiplex' relationship and o f t e n coincide with a d e n s e network. It is useful to add that in a d e n s e social n e t w o r k a higher level of e x c h a n g e takes p l a c e , t h e r e f o r e i n f o r m a t i o n t r a v e l s f a s t e r , the c o m m u n i t y ' s n o r m s tend to be relatively h o m o g e n e o u s and m e m b e r s are m o r e inclined t o e n d o r s e t h e m ( M i l r o y , 1980:61). A c c o r d i n g to Milroy the cohesiveness of a group and the density of the social n e t w o r k are important features in the process of language m a i n t e n a n c e (Milroy, 1987:182). In other words, a dense social network, although not the only m e a n s of c o n s e r v i n g or s u p p o r t i n g a c o m m u n i t y identity, n e c e s s a r i l y c o n s e r v e s values. T h e s e v a l u e s are t r a n s m i t t e d t h r o u g h the c o m m u n i t y ' s specific language w h i c h in turn b e c o m e s loaded with the s a m e c o m m u n i t y ' s world views and is inevitably associated with the c o m m u n i t y as an important part of its social identity (Giles & J o h n s o n 1987). T h i s a l s o a g r e e s with L a b o v ' s principle to the e f f e c t that "social attitudes t o w a r d s l a n g u a g e are extremely u n i f o r m throughout a speech c o m m u n i t y " , and as an implication he suggests that a speech c o m m u n i t y can be defined "as a group of speakers w h o share a set of social attitudes towards language" (Labov, 1972-b:293). T h e literature related to language as o n e of social identity's most salient a n d ' o b j e c t i v e ' c o m p o n e n t s is vast a n d uses d i f f e r e n t p e r s p e c t i v e s f r o m d i f f e r e n t d i s c i p l i n e s : ( E d w a r d s , 1 9 8 5 ; F i s h m a n , 1972; G u m p e r z ,

1982;

G u d y k u n s t & S c h m i d t 1987; Giles & J o h n s o n , 1 9 8 7 ; etc.). T h e definitions of the concepts I shall use hereafter and the brief account of s o m e of the relevant studies will give t h e r e a d e r the theoretical f r a m e w o r k and t h e u n d e r l y i n g assumptions

the l a n g u a g e and identity analysis is based on.

74

J U D E O - S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

In various social science disciplines, it is generally agreed that identity is a social concept encompassing ' m e m b e r s h i p of a social group'. Identity emphasises the subjective feelings of the members (Tajfel 1982) and the perception of distinctness f r o m others (out-group) d e f i n e s the

group

boundaries. In other words, it is a tie, a link, a bond between members of a particular community, and at the same time it is reflective in the sense that it is also defined in terms of the attitude of the 'other' and how this group is perceived by the 'other'. This shared character of identity brings along the feeling and concepts of ' u s ' , ' s a m e ' , ' g r o u p ' , and ' c o m m u n i t y ' . It has been described as positive, in the sense that affiliation to a group gives a feeling of security, sharing the same fate, c o m p a n i o n s h i p as opposed to isolation (Fishman, 1972). However, inclusion implies exclusion. In this sense, it has been described as negative, where 'us' is the result of inclusion, and ' t h e m ' , or the 'other', compared to which 'self/us' is measured, defined, and evaluated, is the result of exclusion (Goldberg, 1994:12). C a w s adds that 'inclusion' to the group may be the result of an imposition. One belongs to it by force rather than out of personal choice (Caws, 1994:371). The negative aspect of identity, Goldberg designates as 'bondage' (Goldberg, 1994:12). Furthermore, the definition of 'us' and ' t h e m ' shifts its meaning according to the social context. For example, in the case of the Turkish Jews 'us' can represent the universal Jew, the local Turkish Jew, the specifically Sephardic Turkish Jew, or the socalled educated and liberal section of both Jewish and Muslim population. In other words, the plurality of social identities can overlap or conflict with each other depending on the social context. O n e of the concepts used in the analysis of collective identity is 'ethnicity'. Ethnicity, taken as part of social identity presupposes a c o m m o n descent, which can be real or putative, and shared cultural characteristics which imply c o m m o n beliefs (cultural characteristics) and attitudes ( F i s h m a n , 1977:17). Thus, the ethnic group has to perceive itself as a distinct group which, to a certain degree, has a common fate. Furthermore, these different features are noticed by the surrounding society and ascribed to the group as distinctly theirs. In consequence the presence of the 'other' is a prerequisite for an ethnic identity. W i t h o u t the contrasting features of the o t h e r , the boundaries of ethnicity cannot be established. A s an extension, 'nation' is defined in Fishman's terms (1972:5) as an ethnic group on a larger scale, more inclusive, institutional!} and ideologically more organised, and having an autonomous geographical location, the national land. In sum, both concepts emphasise a sense of ' s a m e n e s s ' and 'groupness' and m a k e use of symbolic boundary markers such as language for unifying purposes. Having said that, we have to k e e p in mind that these b o u n d a r i e s are d y n a m i c , flexible and multidimensional. That is, members of a group can move between

the

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75

b o u n d a r i e s of d i f f e r e n t groupings a c c o r d i n g to the d i f f e r e n t m e a n i n g s they ascribe to the c o n c e p t of ' i d e n t i t y ' itself a n d additionally to the situation. In the case of the Turkish Jews, o n e can be a Sephardic J e w , a Turkish J e w , or a J e w i s h T u r k a c c o r d i n g to the m e m b e r ' s perception of the T u r k i s h , J e w i s h , Sephardic identity and according to the context w h e r e these f e a t u r e s b e c o m e relevant. G i v e n t h e f l e x i b i l i t y and the f l u i d i t y of t h e s e c o n c e p t s a n d t h e o v e r w h e l m i n g s e l f - r e f e r e n c e of Turkish J e w s as a Jewish c o m m u n i t y rather t h a n s p e c i f i c a l l y e t h n i c or n a t i o n a l , I shall f o l l o w A.P. C o h e n ' s ( 1 9 8 5 ) perspective on c o m m u n i t y which sees it having similar f e a t u r e s to an ethnic g r o u p o r a nation. In this s e n s e the c o n c e p t of c o m m u n i t y i m p l i e s " b o t h similarity and d i f f e r e n c e " (A.P. Cohen, 1985:12) in relation to the ' o t h e r ' , and although it includes the term 'locality', it is not central to the a r g u m e n t . M o r e important is that the individual 'acquires culture' through her/his experience in the c o m m u n i t y giving her/him the c o m m o n d e n o m i n a t o r f o r interpreting the m e a n i n g of t h e shared s y m b o l s ( G u m p e r z , 1982). A s in Street's cultural p a r a d i g m , the i m p o r t a n t thing is not w h a t c o m m u n i t y is but w h a t it d o e s (Street, 1993:25). T o r e p h r a s e and apply it to t h e particular c a s e of t h e Turkish Jews, o n e can have different ethnicities: a Sephardic J e w , an A r a b J e w or an A s h k e n a z i J e w , can trace one's roots to d i f f e r e n t localities in the past, but the fact that o n e lives and, most importantly, socialises in the c o n f i n e s of Istanbul J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y m a k e s o n e share the m e a n i n g of certain s y m b o l s regardless of the language in use (Gumperz, 1972:16). B y splitting the c o n c e p t of ethnicity i n t o ' o l d a n d n e w e t h n i c i t y ' ( G u m p e r z , 1982:5), G u m p e r z e m p h a s i s e s t h e c h a n g i n g c h a r a c t e r of social boundaries and converges to C o h e n ' s a r g u m e n t in t h e sense that both c o n v e y the sense of negotiation a n d multi-referential interpretation of m e a n i n g in group f o r m a t i o n (A.P. C o h e n , 1985). W h e r e ' o l d ethnicity' w a s supported by dense social networks and similarities, and w a s loyal to its particular language (as is a p p a r e n t in the c a s e of the T u r k i s h J e w i s h p r e - R e p u b l i c linguistic situation), ' n e w ethnicity' is supported by d i f f e r e n c e s f r o m the ' o t h e r ' , uses " l i n g u i s t i c s y m b o l s to establish s p e e c h c o n v e n t i o n s that a r e significantly different" and are m o r e than identity markers but also signal "adherence to a set of values" ( G u m p e r z , 1982:6). T o paraphrase G u m p e r z , n e w ethnicity feeds on d i f f e r e n c e s f r o m t h e 'other" rather than on similarities with the i m m e d i a t e 'us'. A s a result of political a n d / o r s o c i o - e c o n o m i c mobility the i m m e d i a t e 'us' is split into so m a n y sub-sections that sustaining its group identity or l a n g u a g e in its concentrated f o r m with relatively c l e a r boundaries b e c o m e s difficult. Instead the boundaries are negotiatiated at d i f f e r e n t levels and with different criteria. T h e particular language, as one of the criteria of 'old ethnicity', cannot be maintained, b e c a u s e of the dilution of t h e c o m m u n i t y a n d / o r t h e need to a c q u i r e and use t h e d o m i n a n t l a n g u a g e at an increased f r e q u e n c y , and is replaced by particular speech c o n v e n t i o n s w h i c h m a r k the identity and the world views, beliefs and ideologies of the speaker.

76

J U D E O - S P A N I SH IN T H E T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

F i s h m a n d i f f e r e n t i a t e s b e t w e e n three identity p h e n o m e n a . H e calls t h e m : "continuity of label, c o n t i n u i t y of s e l f - c o n c e p t and c o n t i n u i t y of cultural

implementation

(overt observances

and

the acceptance

and

i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of cultural values a n d attitudes)", a n d s u g g e s t s that "the original language-in-ethnoculture linkage is substantially w e a k e n e d as culture c h a n g e occurs" ( F i s h m a n , 1991:35). Mizrahi uses a similar criterion in her sociological study of the Sephardic identity in the United States. She adds a n e w d i m e n s i o n she calls 'affinity' w h i c h she uses f o r e x p l a i n i n g t h e subnational clusters within the A m e r i c a n S e p h a r d i m ( M i z r a h i , 1993:14). H e r results s h o w e d that "the Sephardim do indeed form a distinctive group within J e w r y , but that except f o r the Early A m e r i c a n s , national origin s e e m s to be a r e l a t i v e l y m i n o r , b u t f r e q u e n t l y statistically s i g n i f i c a n t c o n t r i b u t o r s

to

d i f f e r e n c e s in Sephardic Identity. O t h e r significant contributors to d i f f e r e n c e s in Sephardic Identity were: time of family's immigration to A m e r i c a , a m o u n t of education, use of no language other than English, and marital status". She c o n c l u d e s that "despite the c o n s i d e r a b l e diversity a m o n g s t the participants, strong c o m m u n a l feeling and pride was evidenced" (Mizrahi, 1993:71). In the c a s e of T u r k i s h J e w s , a l t h o u g h they share t h e s a m e identity s y m b o l s with o t h e r J e w s around the world, the m e a n i n g and value they attach to them are differently placed in the hierarchical ladder, as I shall demonstrate below. B a s e d on the p s y c h o l o g i c a l p r e m i s e that m e m b e r s h i p of a s p e c i f i c group d e f i n e s 'social identity' and that one can subscribe to several g r o u p s at the s a m e time, thus, h a v e overlapping social identities, Giles & J o h n s o n , in their study of the Welsh l a n g u a g e in relation to W e l s h identity, suggest three v a r i a b l e s w h i c h can i l l u m i n a t e t h e nature a n d d e g r e e of t h e i n d i v i d u a l ' s a d h e r e n c e or loyalty to the g r o u p . T h e s e are: the p e r c e i v e d vitality of the g r o u p , the b o u n d a r i e s w h i c h m a r k the d i f f e r e n c e s , and the multiplicity of g r o u p m e m b e r s h i p ( G i l e s & J o h n s o n , 1987). T h e vitality of t h e g r o u p is i n f l u e n c e d by status (with special f o c u s on t h e s o c i o - e c o n o m i c a s p e c t ) , d e m o g r a p h y , the concentration

and n u m b e r of g r o u p m e m b e r s ,

arid

institutional support. T h e y suggest that, rather than the absolute vitality, it is the ' p e r c e i v e d ' vitality of the group which will determine the salience of their social identity. S u b s e q u e n t l y , d r a w i n g on sociological and a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l theories they p r o p o s e that t h e e x t e n t to which m e m b e r s h i p of a g r o u p is s u c c e s s f u l possibly d e p e n d s on the quantity and quality of the b o u n d a r i e s s e p a r a t i n g e a c h g r o u p m e m b e r s h i p . In o t h e r w o r d s , p u l l i n g in M i l r o y ' s c o r r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n the d e n s i t y of social n e t w o r k a n d g r o u p l a n g u a g e m a i n t e n a n c e , they a r g u e that t h e f e w e r t h e o v e r l a p p i n g m e m b e r s h i p s of d i f f e r e n t groups, the stronger the social identity will be.

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I shall use the above-mentioned theories on the role of community, social networks, the perceived vitality and the implications of these for social identity, and for language as the medium for reflecting identity f r o m Gumperz & Gumperz's perspective of language as a social tool. Language as a resource, as a tool for communication, is also a tool for the production and maintenance of social identity and ethnicity. Language, in this sense, is a resource in the political process; it is used and manipulated to channel certain goals or interests. G u m p e r z & Gumperz's focus of attention is on conversational interaction, its process and strategies. In order to discover the role of the communicative phenomena in the exercise of power and control, they use parameters such as class, ethnicity and gender, pointing out that these are not constant but "communicatively produced" (Gumperz & Gumperz, 1982:1). In other words, social identity cannot be described as an object with definite contours/borders, or as a concept which given certain dimensions will fit the model we want to describe. Social identity is fluid, flexible, multiple, overlapping, thus, everything but static, thus its m a i n t e n a n c e through linguistic resources is negotiable too.

Codeswitching/Borrowing and/or Speaking communicative resource and speech convention

differently

as

In multilingual communities such as the Turkish Jewish community in Istanbul, the choice of linguistic code(s) and their alternation within the same speech act is part of what is called 'ways of speaking' by Hymes (1989). They are intended to carry information about the speaker ( G u m p e r z & Gumperz, 1982) and at the same time can attract stereotyping (Lippi-Green, 1994). Codeswitching and/or borrowing are categories used in the description of 'ways of speaking' in language contact situations. Distinctions in the terminology are disputed among scholars of the field (see Eastman, 1992) with reference to the number of lexical items or the syntactical adaptation of the loan item(s) to the main code. Since this is not of primary importance for this study 1 shall use both terms jointly as codeswitching/borrowing (hereafter CS/B) and focus on their use as a communicative resource. The criteria of 'marked or unmarked' will be used as a further distinction of the the CS/B process in Eastman (1992) and Heller's (1992) terms which point out that according to the visibility and the extent to which the foreign loan is accepted or not CS/B can be 'marked or unmarked'. That is it can be noticed as a foreign addition or can be nativised to such an extent that the user and/or receiver will not be aware of its existence.

78

JUDEO

SPANISH

IN T H E T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

B. M a l i n o w s k i f o l l o w e d by H y m e s had d r a w n o u r attention t o the importance of the "context of situation" and the "additional knowledge, besides verbal e q u i v a l e n c e " (B. M a l i n o w s k i , 1 9 9 4 : 6 ) in the u n d e r s t a n d i n g of a language since "language is essentially rooted in the reality of the culture, the tribal life and c u s t o m s of p e o p l e , and that it c a n n o t be e x p l a i n e d w i t h o u t constant reference to these broader contexts of verbal utterance" (ibid:5). B. M a l i n o w s k i s u m s u p his theory pointing o u t one of the social f u n c t i o n s of l a n g u a g e , 'phatic c o m m u n i o n ' (ibid: 10), t h r o u g h w h i c h the i n t e r l o c u t o r s identitfy with each o t h e r t h r o u g h certain speech c o n v e n t i o n s . T h e s e speech conventions

are

independent

of

the

language

used.

It

is

not

the

literal/dictionary m e a n i n g of the w o r d s but their m e a n i n g in the social context in which they w e r e used t o g e t h e r with the additional non-linguistic signs, such as pitch and b o d y l a n g u a g e , that c o n v e y the m e s s a g e

(Volosinov,

1994:52) That is, the listener's assessment of the speaker is independent of the latter's c o m m u n i c a t i v e c o m p e t e n c e in the co-available l a n g u a g e "phonology and i n t o n a t i o n " ( L i p p i - G r e e n , conventions'

can

take

the

1 9 9 4 : 1 6 6 ) . T h i s is b e c a u s e the form

of

subtle

'speech

linguistic

cues,

c o d e s w i t c h i n g / b o r r o w i n g , or a d i f f e r e n t w a y of s p e a k i n g , u s i n g culturally specific lexicon, non-standard g r a m m a r or accent/prosody as will be discussed in section 6.4.2. T h e y are the s i g n p o s t s w h i c h " s i m u l t a n e o u s l y signal both content and a b o u t c o n t e n t " ( G u m p e r z & G u m p e r z , 1982:13). G u m p e r z calls them the 'contextualisation c o n v e n t i o n s ' (ibid: 18). In other w o r d s , they give b a c k g r o u n d i n f o r m a t i o n t o t h e i n t e r l o c u t o r s w h o o n the b a s i s of t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n bring in their a s s u m p t i o n s a b o u t rights and obligations and their expectations. I use C S / B as f o r m s of 'contextualisation conventions' and take it that the lack of k n o w l e d g e of these speech c o n v e n t i o n s can result in misc o m m u n i c a t i o n or ' n e g a t i v e - c o m m u n i c a t i o n ' because it can r e p r o d u c e social distance or reinforce old stereotypes. F u r t h e r m o r e , as L i p p i - G r e e n points out in her study of linguistic discrimination within the legal s y s t e m , I c o n s i d e r that the d i f f e r e n t d i m e n s i o n s of 'speech conventions' are of no interest to the lay person, for w h o m the w h o l e lot is thrown in together u n d e r the n a m e of ' a c c e n t ' , a n d w h o e v a l u a t e s a n d a c t s on t h e m s u b j e c t i v e l y r a t h e r t h a n 'scientifically': T h e general public however, does not m a k e such distinctions. F o r m o s t p e o p l e , a c c e n t is a dustbin c a t e g o r y : it i n c l u d e s all t h e technical m e a n i n g s , and a m o r e general subjective one: a c c e n t is h o w the other speaks. It is the first diagnostic for identification of geographic or social outsiders (Lippi-Green, 1994:165). B o t h G u m p e r z and A.P. C o h e n underline the i m p o r t a n c e of personal experience, interaction, in the learning and interpretation of these conventions. F o r C o h e n , interpretations a r e s u b j e c t i v e but not r a n d o m , " t h e y are, rather, responsive to the circumstances of interaction" (A.P. C o h e n , 1985:17),

in

LANGUAGE

DEATH/SHIFT/

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79

other words, they a r e learned through interaction and negotiable. In the s a m e v e i n , G u m p e r z s u g g e s t s that ' c o n t e x t u a l i z a t i o n c o n v e n t i o n s ' are l e a r n e d t h r o u g h interaction w h i c h implies shared k n o w l e d g e ( G u m p e r z , 1982:30). T a n n e n , based on her findings on 'indirectness in discourse' refines the claim in suggesting that: "...repeated interaction does not necessarily lead to better u n d e r s t a n d i n g . On the c o n t r a r y , it m a y r e i n f o r c e m i s t a k e n j u d g e m e n t s of o t h e r s ' p e r s o n a l i t i e s and intentions" ( T a n n e n , 1981:236). T h e d i f f e r e n c e between T a n n e n ' s and G u m p e r z ' s definition of interaction lies in the quality a n d not t h e q u a n t i t y of it. A s I shall s u g g e s t b e l o w such f e a t u r e s of the T u r k i s h J e w i s h conversational style are m o r e resistant to c h a n g e than m o r e a p p a r e n t m a r k s of ethnicity such as retention of p a r e n t s ' or g r a n d p a r e n t s ' l a n g u a g e ( T a n n e n , 1981:236) because of the quality of the social interaction between the Turkish J e w s and the Turkish M u s l i m s . This is m o r e in line with Vassberg's study of Alsatian language choice and identity. In her study of the use of Alsatian and the relationship of the Alsatian c o m m u n i t y to the G e r m a n and French establishment with which they c a m e into contact d u r i n g and a f t e r the second W o r l d W a r , V a s s b e r g maintains that better u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the other, positive evaluation a n d motivation in language choice d e p e n d s on the "quality of group contact" (Vassberg, 1994). T h u s , I take it that since those s a m e speech conventions w h i c h reflect and maintain group identity are a product of social interaction, and identity is reflexive, both in and o u t - g r o u p interaction h a v e a significant input into the process. F i s h m a n suggests that the "location of shift in the total sociocultural space of a s p e e c h c o m m u n i t y is an indication of j u s t w h e r e t h e stress and strains of cross-cultural c o n t a c t have e r o d e d t h e ability of t h e s m a l l e r and w e a k e r to w i t h s t a n d t h e stronger and larger" ( F i s h m a n , 1 9 9 1 : 5 5 ) . O r as D i m m e n d a a l m a i n t a i n s on the relative evaluation of cultures in contact: "It is only w h e n they start interacting with n e i g h b o u r i n g groups w h o s e cultures are v i e w e d as m o r e p r e s t i g i o u s that their o w n l a n g u a g e s b e c o m e particularly threatened" ( D i m m e n d a a l , 1989:18). It is, t h e r e f o r e important to understand the impact of the broader society and the historical roots of the c o m m u n i c a t i v e practices. T h e r e b y w e can see the f o r m a t i o n of the specific c o m m u n i c a t i v e practices within the f r a m e w o r k of sociopolitical change, while these practices c a u s e s h i f t in p o w e r relationships a n d at t h e s a m e time, in t h e o p p o s i t e direction, i l l u m i n a t e t h e s h i f t in p o w e r r e l a t i o n s h i p s p r o d u c i n g d i f f e r e n t c o m m u n i c a t i v e practices (Fairclough, 1996). T h a t is, w e h a v e to align group identity a n d the c o m m u n i t y ' s c o m m u n i c a t i v e practices with the p r e c e d i n g cultures, political histories, etc., in which they were e m b e d d e d , as the breeding g r o u n d f o r the p r e s e n t f o r m ( C a l v e t , 1987; W e b b e r , 1994). F o l l o w i n g D o m i n g u e s ' s a n a l y s i s of cultural identity as a site of c o n f l i c t s and p o w e r struggle which brings to light the political implications in t h e c a s e of the E a s t e r n J e w s in I s r a e l , m y q u e s t i o n will be: " W h a t a r e t h e d i s c u r s i v e processes, interactive and social as well as political, by m e a n s of w h i c h w h a t w e understand as Turkish Jewish identity has been produced, r e p r o d u c e d , and maintained?"

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CONTEXT

'Reversing language shift' (Fishman, 1991) In connection with and as a reaction to language shift and language death the next step which preoccupies sociolinguists is the revival of a decaying language. Is it at all possible to reinstate an endangered language? How can the process of erosion be reversed? How can erosion be defined, or when can erosion be defined as deterioration or innovation? Why should one make the effort to save a dying language at all? Are the efforts to reverse the process of language death useful or advantageous to the speakers, or d o they present

a problem

in r e p r o d u c i n g

the

minority/powerless/marginal

representations? These questions have been asked by several researchers a m o n g s t w h o m Fishman coined the n a m e of the process as 'reversing language shift' (hereafter RLS) (Fishman, 1991). He suggests that although the case of each endangered language is different and therefore solutions should be prescribed in accordance with the specific problems of each one (Fishman, 1991:86), generally speaking there is no reason why the process of erosion should or could not be reversed. Fishman's argument is that, although language is not the only means by which a specific ethnic identity can be reproduced and expressed, it is nevertheless an important carrier of values and world views which cannot always be transplanted to another language. While accepting that ethnocultures change regardless of language shift, he suggests that change in this form is 'internally regulated' (Fishman, 1991:27). Compared to that, an ethnoculture cannot remain true to its source, even when through language shift some of the symbolic linguistic structures and meanings have been transferred into the new language, because of the loss of 'untranslatable figures of speech' (Fishman, 1991:25). In other words, social change without language shift is controlled by the group, and continuity of their ethnocultural identity is sustained to a certain degree. On the other hand, social change including language shift will result in the decrease of the "implementational continuity of ethnocultures" (Fishman, 1991:35) or will be a continuation of identity in n a m e only. Since he is an advocate for diversity, multiculturalism and m u l t i l i n g u a l i s m , he a r g u e s that l a n g u a g e s are an i m p o r t a n t part of ethnocultures and therefore should be protected. As language shift/death processes are the result of sociopolitical and economic pressures, RLS efforts should be implemented by the reversal of these factors. T h a t is, by encouraging and supporting the density and vitality of the social network (i.e. reversing physical/demographic, social and cultural dislocation) it is possible to arrive at a stable state of bilingualism (diglossia) where both minority and majority languages have their own particular domains of usage (Fishman, 1991:85). As a consequence it is important to pinpoint the domains of usage and their specific problems, tackling each separately. Fishman maintains that the failure of some RLS efforts is due to the direction taken by the

LANGUAGE

D E A T H / S H I F T / R E V I V A L

81

enthusiasts. That is, instead of targetting the core (home, family, neighbouhood) they aim to influence through the more easily accessible channels such as the school and the media where the audience is relatively more accessible, receptive, and controllable (Fishman, 1991:67). In a further article Fishman expands his view on language planning including both the minority and the dominant majority who should be targetted at the same time since both have to change their linguistic attitudes and habits for RLS to progress (Fishman, 1994:97). Previous studies are indicative of the importance of this last point. Based on her studies on dying languages Dorian questions the "value of language maintenance efforts" (Dorian, 1987). She suggests that the success of these programs relies on economic and political change which can rehabilitate the endangered language's status (see also Schlieben-Lange, 1977). In other words, both change in the minority's attitudes, and the majority's social policies are equally important factors in the direction the RLS efforts takes. But, Dorian adds, it is more difficult in the case of a "local form of a language" (as in the case of East Sutherland Gaelic) and, "if decline has progressed beyond a certain point" (Dorian, 1987:61) where the existence of the last native speakers coincides with the RLS efforts the resulting revived language is not the same as the local variation. Furthermore, similar to Fishman's argument presented above, Dorian adds, factors such as the density and vitality of the network and the attitudes of the would-be-speakers are important issues to be taken into consideration because it is possible to follow the unsuccesful story of the Irish experience in which state support did not "recruit the people... themselves" (Dorian, 1987:62). Both Fishman and Dorian stress the importance of the direction support comes from. In Dorian's terms support was handed down from top to bottom, without the bottom (which is the locus of change) being consulted. In Fishman's terms instead of aiming at or recruiting the core unit (family, home) RLS efforts were directed from the elite to the common people. Nevertheless, Dorian concludes that despite some negative results of language maintenance efforts which are not necessarily directly related to "marked political and/or economical change" (ibid:58), these efforts have at the very least the positive effect of developing an ethnolinguistic awareness, self-confidence and in some cases an economic advantage for the speakers. Moreover, even if the receding language does not turn out to be a vernacular of equal value to the dominant language, language maintenance programmes with g o v e r n m e n t support makes the language/culture accessible to the interested.

An important issue in the RLS efforts is the process of transmission of the endangered language. According to Denison: "the direct cause of 'language death' is seen to be social and psychological: Parents cease to transmit the language in question to their offspring" (Denison, 1977:22). However, the

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CONTEXT

channel of transmission cannot be appropriated to parents only. Peer-groups can be as important as if not more important than family. Hill & Hill comment on Mexicano, " This pattern, of 'learning a first language, second', has also been reported from other indigenous communities in Mexico..." (Hill & Hill, 1986:122). In other words, language shift/death is not simply about whether parents transmit the language to their children. The children may use a different channel of language acquisition - they can learn from peers. This is relevant to the case of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul where transmission is taking place in later years, to those entering adult life (see chapter 7). Last but not least, Fishman like several other scholars (Gal, 1989; Hoenigswald, 1989) places the locus of language shift within the power relationships of the two (or more) cultures in contact and stresses the importance of the historical knowledge of the 'sociocultural space' for any RLS effort to succeed (Fishman, 1991:55;59).

Literature on Judeo-Spanish in the context of 'endangered languages' According to many of its speakers, and to several scholars over a very long period of time, Judeo-Spanish has been considered a language in decay and a language about to die. The following authors have been selected to illustrate the argument that the 'quality' of Judeo-Spanish is a reason for its erosion, and to illustrate the possible effect authoritative academic discourse has had on its speakers. A s far back as in 1930 Wagner stressed the 'loss of rule and functions' and described Judeo-Spanish as a private family language which, although it had conserved some of its archaic character, was deteriorating because of the mainly Turkish borrowings which were "weakening the syntax and style", and which the speakers themselves referred to as a jargon (Wagner, 1930:15). In 1937, in her article on the 'Linguistic situation of the sephardic language (sepharadite) in Istanbul' Farhi mentions language shift to Turkish and implies that Judeo-Spanish is being replaced by Turkish and consequently its death is imminent (Farhi, 1937:158). In 1964, in his study of the evolution and survival of Judeo-Spanish in the East, Cantera refers to Judeo-Spanish's general comatose state and the nontransmission of the language to the younger generations:

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DEATH/SHIFT/REVIVAL

83

Judeo-Spanish has numbered years to live. Once the current generation disappear it |Judeo-Spanish j will cease to exist as a living language (Cantera, 1964:257). In the same year, Nathan, in his sociological study of the Jews of Turkey agreed with Cantera on Judeo-Spanish's current state stressing again the generational non-transmission as a clear sign of language death: On the basis of this inquiry, as well as of general observation by informed students of the subject, it seems inevitable that Ladino [Judeo-Spanish] will fade out in Turkey, and will certainly cease (within less then a quarter of a century) to be the mother tongue of the nation of the Sephardim (Nathan, 1964:184). T w o years later Renard (1966) approached the subject from a historical perspective. The decline of Judeo-Spanish, he maintains, starts with the separatist national movements which dismembered the Ottoman Empire and had several implications for the Sephardim and their language. In the first place, he notes, the Ottoman Sephardic community was physically, socially and culturally dislocated due to the establishment of new independent states; and in the second place, the relative internal autonomy the community enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire gave way to the nationalist language and education policies of the country they f o u n d themselves living in. Following these sociopolitical factors, the rise of local Turkish and Greek capitalism replaced the Sephardic commercial monopoly and with it the language lost one of its important functional domains. Social change in the form of a new bourgeoisie with its new values distanced the Sephardim from their religion and tradition which were part of the supportive factors f o r linguistic continuity. But, according to the same author, the blame falls mainly on the organisers of the Jewish community, namely, the rabbis (ibid: 190) who willingly obstructed the supply of books (printed in Latin characters) from Spain or Venice with the main aim of cutting themselves off f r o m Western culture (ibid: 190). The rabbis' hostility to outside interference and change is apparently due to the Sephardim's conservative ways of thinking (ibid. 185). It comes as no suprise to Renard that in these conditions the declining Sephardic culture favours mainly French through the Alliance schools.

Renard adds that, interestingly, the Zionist movement had the same negative effect on Judeo-Spanish inasmuch as it maintained that the only true Jewish language was Hebrew. A s a result, the decline of Judeo-Spanish is fuelled both by the reluctance to change and the wish to change. That is, the decline set in train by rabbinical obscurantism is apparently sustained by the intellectual elite's indifference to the traditional language preferring to use the more prestigious French (ibid: 191).

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CONTEXT

Efforts to revive Judeo-Spanish had not the expected results either. On the contrary, Renard notes, they had an adverse effect on speakers. One of the revival efforts, at the beginning of the century, was the change f r o m rashi script to Latin script in order to facilitate the reading of Judeo-Spanish and at the same time reinforce its link with standard Spanish which presumably would refuel its restricted lexicon. This form of revival effort was doomed according to Renard, because writers were already strongly under French influence (ibid: 192; see also Sala, 1961:189; Saul, 1983:336). W e have also seen that a t e n d e n c y to imprecision and slackness — very perceptible in the pronunciation — had affected Judeo-Spanish as a result of the use of an inadequate system of transcription; the rabbinical alphabet or rashi. This system is also in part responsible for the limitation of the Sephardim to an essentially Hebraic-oriental culture and for their separation from the western world (Renard, 1966:200). In other words, first the different writing system, rashi, is the reason for an intellectual isolation f r o m the West, and at the same time, causes the phonetic change f r o m the original language. The later switch to the Latin alphabet does not help either because the language is already decimated and has lost its prestige. Other enthusiasts tried to enrich the Judeo-Spanish lexicon while maintaining the original script and founded El Mundo Sefardi, Revista para la vida social y cultura in Vienna to no avail. Spain's indifference in this matter is another source of the language's decline. Renard claims that had the Spaniards promoted Spanish education in the 'Oriental World' as the French and the Italians did, it would no doubt have been successful in the promotion of Judeo-Spanish which would have renewed its links to Hispanic culture and language (ibid: 193). T h e question in this case would be: had Judeo-Spanish modeled itself on standard Spanish could it still be called an autonomous l a n g u a g e ? Or, as A i t c h i s o n maintains for Creole languages (Aitchison, 1991:198-199), and Sala mentions in the case of the competiton between Judeo-Spanish and Romanian, would the similarities of the two languages make the official dominant language easier to adopt for the speakers of the disadvantaged language (Sala, 1965:1374)? Renard finally claims that although in Istanbul and Tel Aviv there is still some resistance to Judeo-Spanish's disappearance, it looks as if its usage is limited to the family domain. Since the young generation has adopted Turkish or Hebrew, as the dominant local languages, Judeo-Spanish will be obliterated when the current speakers eventually die (Renard, 1966:203).

LANGUAGE

DEATH/SHI

FT/REVIVAL

85

In sum, Renard's study of Judeo-Spanish is in line with the general theory of language death in that he links the decay and eventual death to the loss of functions and rules. This is due to sociopolitical and economic factors, and lack of support f r o m metropolitan Spanish. T h e result is in loss of prestige and the non-transmission to the coming generations. Nearly two decades later, in his study of the sociopolitical factors which affected the Sephardim of Turkey and their relation to language shift in the second half of the nineteenth century, Saul (1983) affirms that the political (nationalism) factors together with the economic factors affected the Turkish Jewish community. It was the economic deprivation of the community which compelled them to welcome the Alliance's French curriculum and by the same token the expectations of economic mobility. Saul mentions that shift to French took place to such an extent that another Judeo-Spanish scholar preferred to call the Judeo-Spanish press of the time Judeo-French (Saul, 1983:336).

In o t h e r w o r d s , i d e n t i f i c a t i o n

with

French

culture

and

modernisation which was made through the Alliance's French language curriculum was in full bloom (Gerber, 1992:239). On the other hand, shift to Turkish was restricted to oral borrowings because of the higher prestige value the "Hispanicized French term" (ibid:337) had in writing. Attempts to revive Judeo-Spanish modeling it on Castilian did not succeed in overthrowing the prestige of French either. Saul conlucdes that the shift away f r o m JudeoSpanish which had started due to e c o n o m i c factors during the nineteenth century, was accelerated and sustained by political factors during the 20th century. Evaluating the current situation, he comes to the conclusion that "In the 1970's it would be very unusual to find a teenager w h o could freely communicate in Judeo-Spanish" (Saul, 1983:348). T h e situation of the Sephardim in the United States shows a similar pattern of linguistic change. In her study of cultural transmission among three generations of Sephardim in the States, Matza highlights, a m o n g other factors, the importance of culture competition within the dominant American culture and between Ashkenazi culture and Sephardi culture. In other words, the fact that the Sephardim who arrived in the United States at the turn of the century had different priorities or had different ways (different to the accepted norm) of preserving their culture made them invisible in the twentieth-century history of the American Jews. The Sephardim's efforts to comply with the accepted norms of the host culture on one hand, and of the Ashkenazi culture on the other, made them distance themselves f r o m their ethnic inheritance (Matza, 1990).

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CONTEXT

L a t e l y , a l s o in the U n i t e d S t a t e s , in her book entitled Death language.

The history

of Judeo-Spanish,

of a

Harris gives a c o m p r e h e n s i v e

structural and social portrait of t h e l a n g u a g e . B a s e d on results f r o m h e r research during the s u m m e r s of 1978 and 1985, on the N e w Y o r k , Israel and Los A n g e l e s S e p h a r d i c c o m m u n i t i e s , Harris s u g g e s t s that J u d e o - S p a n i s h ' s imminent death

is d u e to t h e s t r u c t u r a l

changes which

"impair

the

c o m m u n i c a t i v e e f f i c i e n c y of the original language" (Harris, 1994:258) and the social factors such as the diminishing d o m a i n s of usage, the non-transmission of the l a n g u a g e to the y o u n g e r generation, the d e m o g r a p h i c d e c r e a s e of the s p e a k e r s , the lack of monolingual J u d e o - S p a n i s h speakers, and t h e lack of institutional support. Like Saul, and M a t z a , she also m e n t i o n s the a d v e r s e e f f e c t o n the l a n g u a g e of the e c o n o m i c and social adaptation p e r i o d t h e S e p h a r d i m w e n t through in the United States. She adds: "By the t i m e the S e p h a r d i m had t h e leisure to think a b o u t maintaining their m o t h e r t o n g u e , it w a s t o o late" ( H a r r i s , 1994:226) i m p l y i n g that the e c o n o m i c a n d social adaptation of the Sephardim to the United States had an adverse e f f e c t on the l a n g u a g e they b r o u g h t f r o m the B a l k a n s and Asia M i n o r . In her c o n c l u s i o n , similar to the authors quoted above, Harris also asserts: "Today Judeo-Spanish is a d y i n g l a n g u a g e in the United States, Israel, a n d T u r k e y , t h e t h r e e c o u n t r i e s that n o w h a v e the largest S e p h a r d i c p o p u l a t i o n s in t h e w o r l d " (Harris, 1994:197). T h r e e recent studies in the s a m e geographical area (Istanbul) as this study are f r o m A . M a l i n o w s k i ( 1 9 8 2 ) , Ger§on ( 1 9 8 6 ) , and B o r n e s - V a r o l (1991). A t this point it would be useful to point out h o w this w o r k d i f f e r s f r o m these last three studies especially. T h i s study d i f f e r s in the a p p r o a c h to the s u b j e c t e x t e n s i v e l y studied within the last seventy years mainly f r o m the point of view of the researched unit. In other words, prev ious researches focussed specifically on the Sephardic c o m m u n i t y and the speakers of Judeo-Spanish as the main source of the data c o r p u s . T h e i r c o m p e t e n c e in J u d e o - S p a n i s h w a s s t u d i e d , m e a s u r e d a n d evaluated. The

results

were explained

in r e l a t i o n

to e c o n o m i c

and

sociohistorical factors. A m o n g the three studies in the last decade, Ger^on's M . A . study f o c u s s e s on in particular "the Sephardic C o m m u n i t y

intergroup

relations p r o v i d e d by the t w o l a n g u a g e s that h a v e b e e n i m p o r t a n t f o r t h e g r o u p especially in the last 15 years or so: J u d e o - S p a n i s h a n d F r e n c h " and their relation to the group's ethnic identity (Ger§on, 198615); A . M a l i n o w s k i ' s study is focussed on the 'evolution' of the l a n g u a g e contact situation, taking Istanbul Judeo-Spanish speakers as part of a larger study c o n c l u d e d in Israel. O n the other hand B o r n e s - V a r o l ' s study is a structural description of J u d e o Spanish as spoken in Istanbul.

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DEATH/SHIFT/REVIVAL

87

In contrast, this ethnographic study approaches the problem focussing on the Turkish Jews residing in Istanbul as a speech network, whether or not they are users of Judeo-Spanish. As I explained previously (see chapter:2) the main reason for this strategy is to identify their perception of the state of the language, their reason(s) for using, for not using, and sometimes for not even admitting competence in Judeo-Spanish. Furthermore, I shall look into how the results of these earlier studies, that is, the academic discourse, is internalized by the speech community and affects their perception of JudeoSpanish. In other words, the ethnographic approach allows me to challenge the assumptions and generalisations made by previous studies without denying their contribution to the field. In addition to that, extending Harris's account of the state of Judeo-Spanish in the USA and Israel, this study has a cumulative value in relation to Judeo-Spanish and the Sephardim in particular, and has implications f o r language revival policies/strategies in relation to social change and multiethnic group relationships in general, as discussed in chapters 6 and 7. As a supportive secondary source of data, I shall also introduce some of the local knowledge in the form of Turkish Jewish and Muslim authors' views on the minorities in relation to the national Turkish language, culture and identity, and their influence on the current linguistic situation. I believe that this is an important dimension of an ethnographic study such as this one. The aim is to include local representations of minority and majority language, culture, and identity in order to illustrate how the 'meaning' of these concepts are formed and defined in the Turkish social context. Proceeding f r o m their researches in Istanbul, both A. Malinowski and Gordon point out the factors contributing to Judeo-Spanish's demise such as the sociopolitical changes, with special stress on the official language and education polices, the physical dislocation and loss of network density of the speakers, the generational d i f f e r e n c e in c o m p e t e n c e . A . Malinowsi is convinced that without a systematic language maintenance program it is unlikely that Judeo-Spanish will survive the process of erosion it is subjected to (Malinowski, 1982:19). Ger§on (1986) on the other hand, is less certain about the death process and its link to generational transmission, because of her findings in the generational speaker competence which does not show a clear cut picture of decreasing competence in the younger generations (Ger§on, 1986:50). She links the survival process to a possible stress on 'education' since her respondents expressed the view that educated speakers did not 'mix' languages. Therefore she proposes, the low prestige assigned to Judeo-Spanish because of its 'mixture' image could be reversed if the speakers were perceived as 'educated' (ibid:96). in other words, if the 'educated' spoke Judeo-Spanish the others could possibly follow and use it.

88 J U D E O - S P A N I S H

IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

Bornes-Varol focusses her study on the Judeo-Spanish speakers in Istanbul. Her structural description of Judeo-Spanish, as spoken during her ten-year stay in the 1980's, aims "to save what is left of the disappearing language and culture" (Bornes-Varol, 1992:24), but since she does not elaborate on the 'disappearing culture' we do not know how she links the two elements. In consequence her focus is only on the speakers of Judeo-Spanish and her analysis of the language in the multilingual context. Bornes-Varol concludes that Judeo-Spanish, although related to medieval Spanish, is an autonomous

language

(Bornes-Varol,

1992:513).

The

permanent,

characteristics of Judeo-Spanish are its hispanicity and paradoxically its linguistic 'mixture', the underlying presence of biblical Hebrew, the semantic predominance of the pejorative and derision and the abundance of poetic procedures (ibid:514), with the evergrowing importance of codeswitching between different languages which have different social values. Explaining Judeo-Spanish's dominant Hispanic character, since the knowledge of the speakers about the origin of the language is relatively recent, Bornes-Varol points out that this is not due to the loyalty of the speakers to the original mother language but to its particular function of 'secret language' which could not be understood by the 'other' (ibid:518). Thus, this linguistic 'mixture' she concludes, is part and parcel of, and is seen as, a particular characteristic of the speaker's identity (ibid:527). Bornes-Varol links this change to the lack of necessity for JudeoSpanish usage. That is, with the emergence of the State of Israel and the Hebrew revival, Ladino's function as a liturgical language linking Hebrew, the biblical texts and the tradition in the diaspora has disappeared. It is replaced by a real link and an objective reference, the state of Israel and modern Hebrew. T h u s it is possible to adopt one or several languages without risking an identity loss. She suggests that this is where one should look for the reasons for the rapid erosion of Judeo-Spanish despite its five hundred year survival, an issue this study focusses on in chapter 6. The consensus is almost unanimous: Judeo-Spanish is dying and it is d u e to mainly: the result of rule and f u n c t i o n loss in connection with economic and sociopolitical factors. Both affect the speakers' attitudes to the language and motivate them to abandon it. It is possible to expand on the issues above, but for reasons of clarity in connecting the specific case of the present-day Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul to the larger theoretical issues, I shall to go into the details as I go along with my analysis and interpretation.

5 THE TURKISH JEWS' PERCEPTION OF JUDEO-SPANISH (in Istanbul/Turkey, 1994)

As mentioned previously, one of the aims of this study is to find out how the speakers themselves perceive their language and what the relation of this perception is to the current situation of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul. While academic research has predicted Judeo-Spanish's inevitable demise throughout the last half century, the speakers themselves seemed to disagree and continued to use it, and are still using the language (see Gerson, 1986:50), or as some would prefer to say, what is left of it. Whatever the case, Judeo-Spanish is currently used in Istanbul, although the speakers are almost exclusively over the age of thirty (see chapter 7). If we consider that the predictions of JudeoSpanish's death started in the 1930s, and that in each case, the primary sign post appeared to be that 'none of the new generation is/can use it fluently', it is interesting that the non-fluent young generation of each of those studies, over a period of almost seventy years, used Judeo-Spanish, and in some cases, has even transmitted it. From the point of view of the participants the definition of 'speaker' was problematic in general. It became more so when the definition of what constitutes a 'language' was not clear. That is, Judeo-Spanish is considered as a 'mixture', and no speakers agree on what constitutes Judeo-Spanish and what does not. In other words, opinions about the nature of 'correct', 'proper' Judeo-Spanish vary from 'the language our forefathers brought from Spain 500 years ago', that is, old Castilian, to a variety 'without all the Turkish loans', or 'without the French loans'. From the speakers' point of view the crucial parameter was lexical borrowing. In this sense, very little consensus was available as to who speaks the language competently, since the norms against which this was measured varied from speaker to speaker and even from nonspeaker to non-speaker (since generally non-speakers also feel that JudeoSpanish is part of their common heritage. Although they do not speak it, they have an opinion of what it is and what it should be and react accordingly). It must also be noted that the so called 'pure', 'proper' Judeo-Spanish used in some of the community newspaper's articles was criticised by several participants, precisely because of its purity of language and the resulting inaccessibility to the average reader.

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In this c o n t e x t , s o m e q u e s t i o n s were: first, f o r w h a t r e a s o n s d o t h e individuals w h o consider t h e m s e l v e s as 'speakers' c o n t i n u e or r e f u s e to use J u d e o - S p a n i s h as m e a n s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n ? At the other end of the spectrum, for the individuals w h o considered themselves as 'non-speakers', why did they not acquire it, or after acquiring it in early childhood, why did they abandon it? Second, as happens in some extreme cases, w h y did s o m e speakers conceal the extent of their c o m p e t e n c e in the disadvantaged language, as seen in Watson's c o m p a r a t i v e study of Scottish and Irish Gaelic w h e r e the speakers even d e n y any k n o w l e d g e of G a c l i c ( W a t s o n , 1 9 8 9 : 4 2 ) ? R a t h e r t h a n t h e v i s i b l e linguistic signals I was interested in the invisible linguistic signals, that is, the m e a n i n g of n e g a t i o n / d e n i a l / a b s e n c e , e x p e c t i n g t h e m to b e a r as m u c h i n f o r m a t i o n as the visible signals. A n d third, in t h e c a s e of t h e 'semispeakers', w h y do they consider t h e m s e l v e s 'semi-speakers', and w h y do they or do they not use J u d e o - S p a n i s h ? A s a result, the q u e s t i o n of w h a t their perception was of a 'language' model was a d d e d to the list of issues to be clarified during my second stay in Istanbul. T h e first round of analysis of my data highlighted the T u r k i s h Jews' a c c o u n t f o r the shift resulting in J u d e o - S p a n i s h ' s d e m i s e - w h i c h are the significant issues which initiated and supported the present situation w h e r e J u d e o - S p a n i s h is c o n s i d e r e d a r e d u n d a n t l a n g u a g e by m o s t of the T u r k i s h J e w s . T h e classification of the answers and observation notes resulted in three m a i n categories of reasons f o r Judeo-Spanish's d e m i s e . T h e s e w e r e similar to t h o s e in p r e v i o u s s t u d i e s , t h a t is: t h e i n a d e q u a c y of J u d e o - S p a n i s h , sociopolitical pressure and socio-economic change. T h u s , based on the a b o v e m e n t i o n e d participants' opinions, m y o w n o b s e r v a t i o n s and interpretations, and the support of historical evidence, I a r g u e that the l o w status/prestige of J u d e o - S p a n i s h is the o u t c o m e of the national sociopolitical p r e s s u r e a n d e c o n o m i c c h a n g e , and the national and international E u r o c e n t r i c d i s c o u r s e which w a s internalized by the Turkish Jews and resulted in the displacement of J u d e o - S p a n i s h by F r e n c h , closely f o l l o w e d by T u r k i s h . T h e p r o c e s s w a s circular in the sense that the low status w a s in turn, o n e of the reasons f o r n o t using J u d e o - S p a n i s h . T o r e p h r a s e it, ' p r e s s u r e ' with the a d d i t i o n of 'change' initiated the low status of the language and the speakers refused to use it. A t this point 'cause' and 'effect' influence each other simultaneously and the process turns out to be a vicious circle. T h e collected research suggests that the three main streams of ideas (i.e. the inadequacy of Judeo-Spanish, socio-political pressure, and socio-economic c h a n g e ) which h a v e i n f l u e n c e d the local linguistic practice a r e b o t h f r o m w i t h i n a n d f r o m w i t h o u t . In o t h e r w o r d s , J u d e o - S p a n i s h a p p e a r s to be s q u e e z e d out by both the i n - g r o u p a n d o u t - g r o u p pressures. T h e r e f o r e , f o r analytical p u r p o s e s , I shall present t h e m u n d e r t w o h e a d i n g s w h i c h I call: external ( f r o m the m a j o r i t y o u t - g r o u p ) , a n d internal ( f r o m the i n - g r o u p ) . Presented in a historical/temporal perspective and not in order of importance, they can be described as:

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1 - External pressures : (a) the national language and education policies, (b) the sociopolitical ideology and the exclusion of the other from the majority's national identity, and (c) socio-economic mobility; 2 - Internal pressures: (a) the role of institutional education and the literacy discourse, (b) the formation of new internal divisions of social class, at the same time as (c) the emerging nationalist political ideology which highlighted the h o m o g e n e o u s nation/language ideal-type, internalised by the Turkish Jews, with the addition of (d) local demographic changes. They all contributed to the devaluation of Judeo-Spanish by its speakers. Note that none of the factors can be taken on its o w n , at face value, as a direct cause for the devaluation of the language. It is rather a multi-directional movement where each i n f l u e n c e s and is influenced by the others. T h e T u r k i s h

Jews'

presentations of these factors were overlapping and sometimes contradictory. Nevertheless, they were consistent with the historical evidence.This will be f o l l o w e d by J u d e o - S p a n i s h ' s position in relation to the T u r k i s h J e w s definition of a language. T h e ensuing analysis will f o l l o w the links shown in Figure n: 2. However, it is important to keep in mind that the process of change is not linear as the diagram would suggest, but an interactive process. The diagram is j u s t a tool to facilitate the c o m p r e h e n s i o n of the path taken during the analysis and not the events themselves.

Pressure from the dominant majority (external) It is clear that the pressures felt in the past are projecting themselves in present-day Turkish Jewish attitudes to Judeo-Spanish even if some of these pressures no longer exist. In other words, the Turkish Jews' concern about 'feeling different' stems mainly f r o m past experiences and makes them more sensitive to the present experiences. The majority of the Turkish Jews have internalised the dominant majority's negative evaluation of Judeo-Spanish as was apparent in A. Malinowski's quotation f r o m the account of one of her young respondents on his usage of Judeo-Spanish at school and his teacher's disapproval:

92

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SOCIAL

CONTEXT

Listen, I a m going to explain s o m e t h i n g to you. Y o u w e r e exiled. T h e l a n g u a g e you are s p e a k i n g is the l a n g u a g e of the country you have left, of the country that exiled you. It w a s we w h o gave you shelter. ... A n d w h y d o you not w a n t to s p e a k the Turkish language? Isn't the language of a country that exiled you a tainted language?" ( M a l i n o w s k i , A., 1982:17).

INTERNAL (5.2) R o i e o f institutional education & literacy

r->

:

discourse (5.2.1)

J

I

New internal divisions (5.2.2)

J

y

[

;

jntemalized national lang, ideology (5.2.3) Local demographic c h a n g e s (5.2.4)

*

*

]

;

I

n r r r JUDEO - SPANISH

EXTERNAL (5.1) (National lang. & education policies (5.1.1) [Sociopolitical ideology (5.1.2) [Socioeconomic mobility (5.1.3)

] [] ]

Figure 2 - Classification of 'pressures' on Judeo-Spanish based on participants' opinions. Like D o r i a n ' s c a s e in the E a s t S u t h e r l a n d G a e l i c , J u d e o - S p a n i s h s competition with Turkish a p p e a r s to be due to political and e c o n o m i c control of t h e d o m i n a n t culture (Dorian, 1981:12-24). N e v e r t h e l e s s , she adds: "it is i m p o r t a n t to recognize that a school policy of excluding the h o m e l a n g u a g e does not 'necessarily' lead to the decay or d e m i s e of that l a n g u a g e but that it does so only in a context of hostility and prejudice toward the language and its speakers" (ibid: 27). In the Turkish J e w i s h c a s e , this is especially o b s e r v a b l e in t h e area of education and l a n g u a g e policies w h i c h w e r e applied strongly d u r i n g the period of construction of T u r k i s h national identity to m a k e t h e m feel different f r o m the majority and discriminated against. D u r i n g that period, and even n o w a d a y s , the usage of a l a n g u a g e other than T u r k i s h is associated with 'foreignness' by the d o m i n a n t majority. W i t h the exception of the very

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f e w Muslim T u r k s w h o grew up in the old c o s m o p o l i t a n Istanbul setting 1 and are acquainted with s o m e of the T u r k i s h minority l a n g u a g e s , most Istanbul residents today believe that if one speaks a different language, one is certainly a foreigner. I have witnessed cases where the evaluation w a s candidly m a d e of T u r k i s h J e w s w h o not only spoke Turkish a m o n g o t h e r languages, but lived a m o n g and h a v e been k n o w n personally to their assessors f o r a long period of t i m e . R e g a r d l e s s of t h e s p e a k e r s ' f l u e n c y in T u r k i s h , they w e r e taken for foreigners, albeit f o r e i g n e r s w h o had lived in T u r k e y f o r quite s o m e time and s p o k e T u r k i s h . T h e f o l l o w i n g q u o t a t i o n t a k e n f r o m an i n t e r v i e w

is

representative of the issue of 'foreignness'and its internalisation by the Turkish J e w s mentioned above: [ h e a r i n g J u d e o - S p a n i s h s p o k e n in p u b l i c p l a c e s ] I get a n n o y e d , it should not be used in public places because I believe it c r e a t e s p r o b l e m s , n o t o n l y J u d e o - S p a n i s h , unless it is a tourist, and if s/he is speaking a f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e in a bus I do not a p p r o v e , b e c a u s e it automatically gives t h e impression of secrecy, it creates suspicion and hatred, it f u e l s suspicion and animosity feelings towards the f o r e i g n e r that's w h y I don't like it, b e c a u s e if you are T u r k i s h you s h o u l d s p e a k T u r k i s h . . . . (t2:56) that is, I a m not against the use of (J)Spanish but in public places, if you are in T u r k e y , |you should] speak T u r k i s h , but at h o m e you can d o whatever you like (t2:57).

National language and education policies Institutionalised schooling, in the W e s t e r n sense, first a p p e a r e d on the O t t o m a n s c e n e in the e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y in the f o r m of military schools monitored by French instructors. T o reiterate briefly, around the beginning of t h e nineteenth c e n t u r y with increasing relations with E u r o p e , the O t t o m a n E m p i r e sought to imitate the e c o n o m i c and technological d e v e l o p m e n t in E u r o p e and d e c i d e d to r e j u v e n a t e and m o d e r n i s e its military s y s t e m . T h e project w a s initiated by the opening of naval and military schools administered mainly by French instructors (1773-1793) (Lewis, 1961:56; §im§ir,1992:18). French b e c a m e the c o m p u l s o r y m e d i u m of instruction f o r these institutions ( L e w i s , 1 9 6 1 : 5 9 ) . U n d e r l y i n g all t h e s e r e f o r m s w a s t h e i d e a t h a t institutionalised Western education was the prerequisite to social and e c o n o m i c d e v e l o p m e n t (Lewis, 1961:175).

The Turkish Jews, and also a number of Turkish Muslim Istanbul residents who have lived there for several generations, are concerned with the changing profile of the 'Istanbul resident'. The influx of large numbers of immigrants from rural areas coupled with the departure of the mainly Greek population of Istanbul has changed the city's cosmopolitan image and way of life, including its linguistic characteristics, and the residential patterns. This change has induced much talk about the 'Istanbul culture' among the intellectual elite of the city and could be an interesting further research issue, (for additional information on Istanbul's current residential patterns see Mansel, 1995).

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THE

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With the new system of military education, discussion on the Arabic writing system used to represent Ottoman Turkish and its apparent problems started to emerge. The arguments were based, first, on the assumption that the literacy level of Western European countries was the direct cause for their advancement, second, on the assumption that the roman alphabet is easier to acquire, therefore to disseminate, and thirdly, that institutionalised education in the Western form was the only way to spread literacy. Arabic script was condemned as a factor which slowed down the process of development (§im§ir, 1992:19). Despite some counter arguments from the Turkish intellectual elite, such as from the national poet Namik Kemal (1840-1888), the argument for the adoption of the latin alphabet started to gain ground (Lewis, 1961:422). The driving force of the counter argument was the idea that the use of Arabic script would bring together the Muslim citizens which formed the majority of the Empire's population. Compared to that, the opposite group based their arguments mainly on the universality and the easy acquisition process of the latin alphabet and the benefits it would bestow on the masses. §im§ir s interpretation of the alphabet reform which followed these discusions is explicit in his description of post-reform Turkey: At the beginning of 1929 the outlook of Turkey changed completely. Within the space of a f e w months T u r k e y had managed to discard the 'Eastern' image. Until then, f r o m the point of view of the Westerner, 'East' started f r o m the borders of Turkey, and its most visible symbol was the Arabic script. A striking, an amazing revolution/reform was m a d e in T u r k e y now. T o a certain extent, if the hat reform 1 is left to one side none of the other reforms had changed Turkey's outlook in such a short time and in such a categorical/conclusive way. Within the space of three to four months Turkey had stripped off its 'Eastern' image. The A m e r i c a n c o n s u l a t e w a s d e c l a r i n g : 'Istanbul now looks like a Balkan city', f o r e x a m p l e , like Bucharest where the Latin script dominated. Perhaps it could be compared to a Western European city too. But what was clear was that with the alphabet reform Turkey had broken out f r o m the East. At least f r o m the point of view of external image it did not count and was not counted as an Eastern country .The application of the new script in the streets not only helped its easier dissemination to the people, it has, at the same time, changed Turkey's outlook (§im§ir, 1992:233). All the positive 'Western' attributes Turkey acquired were thanks to the latin script which replaced the Arabic script in 1928.

^The Western style men's hat replaced the religious turban or fez by law in 1925.

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The same 'autonomous literacy' discourse was taken on board by the Turkish Jews and several scholars of Judeo-Spanish. They presented the rashi script as one of the main factors for their cultural decline starting from the end of the seventeenth century (as will be discussed below in section 5.2.1 in more detail). The Western model of education taken on board by the military was followed by Catholic and Protestant missionary schools providing their services in several parts of the Empire, a process Sephiha calls "the cultural and economic conquest of the Sublime Porte" (Sephiha, 1986:31). The impact of those schools and the respective languages they taught on Ottoman social stratification and social change is observable in Lewis' account of the Tanzimat reforms and its results. Lewis explains that the knowledge of a Western language, in particular French, had given access to the new Enlightement ideas to a certain group of officials who in turn formed the base for the Ottoman reform process (Lewis, 1961:116). The analogous strong influence French had on the development of the Turkish Jews linguistic repertoire will be described in the following chapter, section 6.3.4. On the 1st November 1928, five years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the Roman script was officially introduced and became compulsory in all government offices (§im§ir, 1992:213; Zürcher, 1994:197). §im§ir claims that the greatest victor)' of the script reform is witnessed in the fast progress of the literacy rate at schools (§im§ir, 1992:229) disregarding the amount of support, effort and official thrust the process of teaching the new script had from the government. This begs the question: would the same support in Arabic script not have given the same sort of result? Following the alphabet reform, the first Turkish linguistic congress was held in 1932 and the Turkish Language Society (Tiirk Dil Kurumu) was founded. The national policy of distancing itself from its Ottoman/Eastern past surfaced in the language reform in the form of aiming for a 'pure Turkish language'. New words were pulled out from old literary sources, regional dialects, or were artificially created (neologisms). The Turkish language reform took the radical step of adopting the Sun-Language Theory, Giine§ Dil Teorisi, officially accepted in 1936. This theory claimed that Turkish was the first original human language therefore lexical items borrowed from European languages did not need to be eliminated since they were etymologically Turkish in the first place (Zürcher, 1994:198). Thus, it legitimised some of the already nativised borrowings from other languages. It was not long before the 'one language, one nation' ideology took hold of the nation. The Jewish community who felt marginalized because of their linguistic differences, abandoned their children's primary socialisation in Judeo-Spanish and/or French replacing them with Turkish.

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CONTEXT

Similar to Andersen's claim: the standard view o i second language acquisition (by immigrants and their children) makes it seem as if the chronologically firstacquired language will always be totally native and 'successful' and s u b s e q u e n t l a n g u a g e s will be n o n - n a t i v e and o f t e n unsuccessfully acquired (Andersen, 1989:385). In the case of the Turkish Jews, the need to have the children speaking 'proper' Turkish, e n c o u r a g e d the idea that a multilingual setting w a s detrimental to the child's full acquisition of the dominant language (t2.18). One of my respondents pointed out how his child who started as a bilingual was slow in the acquisition of both languages. On their doctor's and school's advice, they abandoned Judeo-Spanish and switched to monolingual Turkish interaction with the child w h o showed better progress in his acquisition of Turkish (dd.10). Another one said: school is a big problem, we do not want them |the children] to be looked down upon, clearly this is the problem... m-why will the accent change r- that's what we are afraid of, that they won't be competent enough in Turkish, and that they will fare badly in Turkish exams. This is the apprehension that w e have. W e want them to be good students and do not want to take the risk of this being impaired by speaking [J] Spanish. (t2.59) The participants were convinced that if they socialised their children primarily in Judeo-Spanish with the addition of T u r k i s h , later on, the children's competence in Turkish would suffer. Hill & Hill describe a similar situation in the case of Mexicano versus Spanish. They found that parents were reluctant to use Mexicano at home because they feared that their children would suffer at school w here the language of education was Spanish (Hill & Hill, 1986:113). The young Turkish J e w s were expected to use standard Turkish in all levels of public life. It was better to start early and not 'contaminate' their future T urkish competence or accent, or so the participants argued. Analogous to several studies (Dorian, 1981; Kuter, Haugen, Mertz, in Dorian, 1989; Dressier & Wodak-Leodolter, 1977; Hill & Hill, 1986) the influence of national education, or teachers' suspicion of interference with the children's national language (Turkish) competence was mentioned as a factor which prompted several parents (and sometimes on the child's own initiative) to choose between the tw o languages in the home setting as well as the public setting. Quite apart from any lexical or grammatical shortcomings, first language socialisation in Judeo-Spanish, would at the very least transfer the

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prosodic features f r o m LI (Judeo-Spanish) to L 2 (Turkish). M y personal experience was that in the sixties none of my Jewish friends spoke JudeoSpanish at home. That is not to say that some of them were not competent in the language, but only that they were reluctant to use it. The pressure f r o m peer group (in-group as well as out-group) as well as from the Turkish subject teachers cut short any a t t e m p t to use J u d e o - S p a n i s h . S i m i l a r to A. Malinowski's account on Judeo-Spanish's negative evaluation at school (A. Malinowski, 1982:17), the usual argument coming from the teachers was: "This country welcomed you as a citizen, and the least you can do for your country is to speak its language properly". I do not think that saying that this is a common experience to the Turkish Jews is a gross exaggeration since this approach is still valid. While talking about the prosodic transfer problem, one of my young respondents (in her early twenties) mentioned: at the same time it does, that is, at school the teachers etc. correct you, for example my friends mocked me a lot at the time, and I was very aware [of my accent], automatically I started to correct myself (t4:l 15) A s a conclusion one can say that the impact of both the Alliance and national education policies had a special impact on the new Turkish Jewish generation because they excluded Judeo-Spanish f r o m the curriculum and as a legitimate medium of communication within the school boundaries. T h e low assessment of the value and utility of Judeo-Spanish came as an inevitable result of the competition between Judeo-Spanish and French followed by Turkish.

Sociopolitical ideology and exclusion from majority's national identity In addition to the 'one nation, one language' belief also internalised by the Turkish Jewish minority, political ideologies such as antisemitism or anti-Zionism f r o m part of the dominant majority have had a direct effect on Turkish Jewish linguistic behaviour. The direct correlation of Judeo-Spanish to Jewish, and after 1948, by implication to Israel and Zionism, give the impression that every Jew inevitably is Zionist and therefore disloyal to the Turkish nation state. A d d e d to that, the Turkish Jews have inherited the negative awareness of official and/or unofficial discrimination through stories f r o m their elders about discriminatory incidents in Turkey. T h e Turkish religious minorities' representation as 'the foreigners w h o look/sound like Turks', "Tiirkumsii yabancilar" (Orhun, 1934, in: Bora, 1995:40), or in Lewis's words "Turks only in name" (Lewis, 1961:293), as a negative element, forced the Turkish Jews to transpose the stories derived from the Second World W a r experience of the holocaust into their present social setting and act upon these.

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T h e feeling of vulnerability as a minority g r o u p is best illustrated in the w o r d s of these participants: "we should not get involved since we are minorities" antisemitism certainly exists [in Turkey],... in general it is only mentioned j o k i n g l y , indirectly, but s/he [the M u s l i m Turk) socialised like this,... a f t e r 1948 antisemitism c h a n g e d to antiZ i o n i s m . it is all 'let it not be recognised that the children are Jewish, let them speak Turkish properly'... (t2:67) Although

one

cannot

speak

of

systematic

institutionalised

discrimination in the c a s e of the T u r k i s h J e w s , it is clear that an u n o f f i c i a l discrimination against, or at least a marginalisation of the minorities took place and still does so. Current e x a m p l e s mentioned by t h e participants w e r e referred to as situations during c o m p u l s o r y military service, e.g. not being posted to certain sensitive military areas or services, or the f a c t that there w e r e no minority m e m b e r s in the Foreign Ministry, (see Birikim, 1995, f o r m o r e information on the treatment of minorities). ...it is e n o u g h to be a T u r k i s h citizen to be in the T u r k i s h army but go and try to b e c o m e a pilot or a staff o f f i c e r , they will n e v e r d o it. but n o b o d y can s t o p you f r o m g o i n g there (t2:67) T h e participant m e a n s that a l t h o u g h e v e r y T u r k i s h citizen is legally entitled to a p p l y to any of t h e s e m i l i t a r y p o s i t i o n s , it is as if a silent a g r e e m e n t exists a m o n g the officials, an a g r e e m e n t which will put invisible b a r r i e r s b e f o r e citizens of religious m i n o r i t i e s w h o w a n t to attain t h e s e positions. T h e f o l l o w i n g participant explained the reluctance to transmit J u d e o Spanish as: it has not been transmitted b e c a u s e there is this fear,... there isn't n o w but the habit is there,... (t2:23) T h e f e a r is the fear of discrimination, which this particular participant believes does not exist any more. A n o t h e r o n e explained the reasons f o r w h i c h she prefers to use the language of the majority, precisely because she f e e l s that people respond negatively. c- it is not b e c a u s e I d o not w a n t to attract attention or s o that it is not rude, I d o not w a n t to stick out... but in T u r k e y I feel something different, I feel a reaction f r o m the people around me m - do you still feel this c - o f course I feel it," (t2:33)

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While the first participant is asserting that linguistic discrimination does not exist any more the following participant maintains that s/he still feels it. This contradiction does not mean that they are just imagining things, the experience is part of their everyday realities. But the contradiction is illustrative of the different forms of discrimination and the participants' different level of awareness and sensitivity. That is to say, discrimination has different meanings for the two participants. The first one, who is nearing her sixties, sees/feels it in its stronger form, i.e. overt discrimination. On the other hand, the second one who is in her thirties is sensitive to its more subtle form, i.e covert discrimination. This suggests that the fear was generally of prejudice against cultural minorities, in which case Judeo-Spanish is but one a m o n g many distinguishing marks.

Socio-economic mobility External pressure reflects itself in the realities of everyday life. The Turkish Jews have adopted not only the affective element of Turkish nationalist linguistic ideology but also its instrumental element which is the focus of this section. It is to the advantage of the individual to speak the accepted standard dominant language in every social setting (Dorian, 1981:24; also. Kalin in Giles & Franklyn-Stokes, 1989:129). In the case of the Turkish Jews, the setting is in almost every part of their daily life. Turkish competence not only helps in gaining jobs or in a classroom setting, but it is essential for every sort of situation they come across, including in-group communication, where they are also evaluated on their linguistic abilities (dd2:57). None of the respondents to whom I put the question directly, or participants, where the setting was different in the sense that I only sat and listened without actively giving cues on the issue, thought that Turkish as a national language could be a second language. All were in agreement that one should speak first and foremost the national language. A few said that this does not exclude the learning of one's own ethnic language, however, if there was to be any choice, the national language had to take precedence: (d2.13); (t2.12); (t2.29); (t2.34). Some participants added that in addition to ideological reasons, the changing sociopolitical and economic climate m Turkey, and by implication in the Turkish Jews' situation, promoted the importance of Turkish as the dominant national language. According to these Turkish Jews,

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the y o u n g Jewish generation who w a n t e d to a d v a n c e socially

and/or

economically in this national community could no longer be satisfied with trade and small businesses, but would choose professions where the national language is the communicative resource. A s a consequence, the imperfect usage of the national language is perceived as detrimental to their f u t u r e prospects: mo- In Turkey it has to be Turkish, because today's young generation is not selling cloth in Tahtakale or M a h m u t Pa§a [both well known business districts in Istanbul], they are participating in educational programs, going to conferences you are carrying behind you a bad heritage, a negative component... (t2:68) At a second level, this passage illustrates the intra-community reaction to Judeo-Spanish speakers, amplifying the belief of Judeo-Spanish' nonlanguage status which will be discussed below, in the next chapter.

Pressure from within the group (internal) Since I argue that the c u r r e n t Turkish J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y has internalised the earlier perceptions of Judeo-Spanish language and culture, which labels them as an 'inadequate language' and a 'non-existent culture' respectively, and at the s a m e time evaluates the Judeo-Spanish speaker negatively as 'backwards', 'loud', 'traditional', 'uneducated', etc., it is important to follow the historical process and describe its influence on the present day linguistic situation. That is, how was the process of marginalisation of the l a n g u a g e and the s p e a k e r s a s s i m i l a t e d by the c o m m u n i t y m e m b e r s themselves?

The Turkish Jewish discourse on literacy and its potential to affect the survival of Judeo-Spanish: "a language has to be written in order to be alive" T h e issue of 'written' as opposed to 'oral' surfaced well before I explained my focus of interest in Judeo-Spanish, at the beginning of the interviews or at informal social gatherings. The usual response was "How will you do research on Judeo-Spanish? There is practically nothing written in the language". In addition, several participants answered the direct question "Do you think of Judeo-Spanish as a dead language?" saying "Of course, a language has to be written in order to be alive", "Canli olmasi ¡9m yazilmasi lazim" (dd:5). The predominant importance of a language's literacy over its

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orality in its survival (Verhoeven, 1994:201) was also expressed clearly by yet another participant: "a language lives by its writing before its speech", "n- une langue vit avant de vivre par son parler elle vit par son ecriture"(t2:79). Both Grillo and G r a f f s historical model, and Street's culturally specific ideological model described in the literature review are helpful in the description of the Judeo-Spanish case in the Turkish Jewish context. The historical perspective, i n c l u d i n g the wider national and international influences, will illuminate the historical sources of certain uncritically accepted definitions, functions and impact of literacy in the Western sense, such as the neutrality of literacy and its unique impact on the economic, moral, intellectual or cognitive development of the individual and collective. In contrast, the observation within the 'ideological model' framework, paying attention to the particular Turkish Jewish context, will inform the reader about the local use of the concept of literacy, and its effect on Judeo-Spanish's current situation.

Historical Perspective T h e Turkish Jews were affected by the Turkish national education reform trend (i.e. the Western model of education taken as a model f o r development) which w a s also further reinforced by the Alliance schools. During those reforms literacy/education was associated with 'high culture', with particular emphasis on the importance of the French language as the language of culture, science and rationality. Turkish followed at the beginning of the twentieth century, as the dominant national language to be taught at schools. Both French and Turkish, with their established classical literary traditions, and both endorsed and legitimised by their respective states, tipped the already precarious balance for equal competition between Judeo-Spanish and other 'dominant languages' (Grillo, 1989). At the same time, as mentioned above, language shift to French and Turkish was followed simultaneously by a shift in the Judeo-Spanish writing system. The Turkish Jews were introduced to the systematic teaching of the latin alphabet by the Alliance's French curriculum, and later on, with the establishment of the Turkish Republic, they were immersed in it by the Turkish national education system. The ban on printing in any other than latin script f r o m 1928 until the 1950's forced the Turkish Jews to print JudeoSpanish using the latin alphabet with either French or Turkish conventions depending on the writer's educational background. According to Bunis the shift in writing system took place at two different levels depending on the socioeconomic class of the writer. The frankeados, those who c a m e into contact with French and Italian, "and many upper and some middle class speakers switched to French- and/or Italian based roman orthographies in Turkey and Greece", while the lower classes continued to use the rashi/soletreo based on Hebrew script (see appendix n:2) until 1928 where they too did not have any choice and turned to the latin alphabet (Bunis, 1982:51).

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W i t h an official ban on the writing system and a c o m p u l s o r y primary education in Turkish it was not long b e f o r e the rashi script b e c a m e an esoteric piece of k n o w l e d g e a m o n g the T u r k i s h J e w s . Literary w o r k s such as the liturgical and ritual literature, or t h e f a m o u s M e a m L o e z , t h e p o p u l a r c o m m e n t a r y on the Old T e s t a m e n t , published by Rabbi J a c o b Huli in 1730 and continued by several other rabbinical scholars until the nineteenth century, fell into oblivion. It is interesting that even a J u d e o - S p a n i s h scholar such as W a g n e r d o e s not mention this e n o r m o u s w o r k in the c h a p t e r of the literary and intellectual life of the Sephardim (Wagner, 1930:53-64). Apart f r o m a vast oral l i t e r a t u r e ( f o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n s e e A r m i s t e a d ,

1996) there

was

substantial s e c u l a r literature w h i c h f o u n d n e w v i g o u r at the turn of the century, including romansas (ballads), refranes (proverbs), konsejas (folktales), and the r o m a n s o s (novels). A c c o r d i n g to A l t a b e at least 115 original w o r k s w e r e printed between 1900 and 1933 (Altabe, 1977-78) which subsequently b e c a m e u n a v a i l a b l e to readers. T o this list of literary w o r k s , A n g e l a d d s dramatic works, poetry and j o u r n a l i s m as other genres of literacy practices in Judeo-Spanish of the s a m e period (Angel, 1991:164-178). This n e w vigour in the Sephardic intellectual life is in s o m e w a y s the result of the haskalah, the J e w i s h e n l i g h t e n m e n t m o v e m e n t in W e s t e r n E u r o p e . T h e i r i d e a s w h i c h filtered through the French language and were supplemented

by t h e

n a t i o n a l i s t / m o d e r n i s t i d e o l o g y of t h e Y o u n g T u r k s t o o k root within t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h intellectual elite. O n e of the f a m o u s w r i t e r s of the t i m e , C a r m o n a ( 1 8 6 9 - 1 9 3 1 ) , w r o t e in J u d e o - S p a n i s h b e c a u s e , he s a y s , "having noticed that the person w h o reads Spanish k n o w s neither Turkish nor French, I began to write in a popular language so that children as well as adults could understand, and thereby my little stories began to have m u c h sucess" (Angel. 1991:167). T h e official l a n g u a g e and education policies of the n e w T u r k i s h Republic put a decisive end to this literary production. T h e historical a s s u m p t i o n s on literacy c u m education and high culture are a well established model f o r several authors w h o wrote on J u d e o - S p a n i s h and Sephardic culture. T h e following authors, especially Benardete and Renard, a r e t a k e n as r e p r e s e n t a t i v e e x a m p l e s of t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h i d e o l o g i c a l baggage. D e s p i t e his later claim that "the creation of nationalities is the chief c a u s e f o r the complete decline of J u d e o - S p a n i s h " at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries (1982:139), Benardete maintains that o n e of t h e m a i n reasons f o r that d e c l i n e is t h e p r e f e r e n c e of the E a s t e r n S e p h a r d i m f o r rashi, the cursive writing system based o n H e b r e w , which cut t h e m off f r o m the Spanish m o t h e r l a n d literature. B e n a r d e t e , d e s c r i b i n g the reasons for the cultural erosion of the S e p h a r d i m after the sixteenth century, is crystal-clear: " A m o n g the direct contributory causes of the i m p o v e r i s h m e n t of the Spanish language in the Orient is the exclusive use of H e b r e w alphabet in

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its various f o r m s for the transcription of Spanish." (ibid: 117). This does not seem to have been a problem while they lived in Spain and were immersed in the S p a n i s h

l a n g u a g e proper.

Mistakes

in a r t i c u l a t i o n s of

Hebrew

transcriptions of Spanish could be corrected. In the case of the displaced Eastern Sephardim, however, "These distortions of pronunciation were not altogether impossible of correction, but the Jews had no access to Spanish works written in latin characters." (ibid.). In the absence of the latin alphabet, the Eastern Sephardim could not keep up with the new ideas in the West, and so Benardete maintains, sunk in the obscurity of religious traditionalism characteristic of the c o m m u n i t y of the time: "The dessicated

and sterilized

the Sephardic

field of thoughtK

Hebraic

alphabet

... With a slender

vocabulary, a faulty syntax, a rough hewn style, and the aid of foreign words and phrases, the Sephardic Jew wrote Spanish books in Hebrew characters" (ibid.118). I shall comment on this from a theoretical perspective below. About a decade later (Benardete's first edition was in 1953), Renard agreed with him and adds that the change to the latin alphabet with the Turkish national education system did not help to stabilise Judeo-Spanish either. Confusion in the codification of Spanish sounds with the help of the Turkish alphabet became the source of imprecise writing rules: "One can conclude that the Judeo-Spanish mode of transcription has hindered the language from playing its normative role" (Renard, 1966:142). Later on, in a following publication Renard, in his description of the death of J u d e o Spanish, takes into consideration the economic and political factors but he reminds us that the factors essential to the erosion of Judeo-Spanish operated at the cultural and linguistic levels (Renard, 1971: 720). The d a m a g i n g linguistic f a c t o r s w e r e : "an i n a d e q u a t e , basic lexicon, an i m p r e c i s e transcription system [which] had condemned [Judeo-Spanish] to sclerosis and bastardisation" (ibid:). Renard is assertive in his contradictory diagnosis: Despite the change in its writing system (which caused havoc) Judeo-Spanish cannot develop itself, it is static (sclerosis) and at the same time, it is not, because it changes by borrowing f r o m other local languages, mixes two or more different linguistic systems (bastardisation), and all that in a disorderly writing system. Harris follows the same line of thought and reaffirms that T h e a b a n d o n m e n t of the Latin alphabet had disastrous consequences for the future of Judeo-Spanish after expulsion, since the Sephardim became isolated from the W e s t . . . The fact that the Jews in the Balkans did not have access to Spanish books printed in Latin characters also contributed somewhat to their intellectual decline (Harris, 1994:215).

1 Italics added for emphasis.

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T o w a r d s the end of the seventeenth century, when the so called Sephardic intellectual decline started, Spain was hardly in a position to be a model of a technologically or intellectually advanced culture. This fact is overlooked by all these authors who focus on the mode of transcription as a cause for intellectual decline; this leads to suggest that their objection to rashi is value laden. One has to look only to the case of modern Hebrew and its writing system, or the Japanese writing system, neither of which appears to have affected their respective c o m m u n i t y ' s intellectual or technological development. A s to the argument of the rashi script being the cause of 'distortions of pronounciation' one can only present the case of American English and UK English where these 'distortions of pronounciation or transcription' are present despite the same writing system used by both communities. On the other hand, the speakers do not have much choice in the matter either, since they do not have a 'proper' language in which elevated thoughts if, according to some descriptions, they can manage to have them at all - can be expressed. In other words, the Eastern Sephardic 'field of thought' appears to be 'sterilized' because it cannot produce concrete evidence in the form of a prestigious literature. Thus we have the language and the speaker trapped in the vicious circle which can only be broken by the introduction of a civilised/authoritative/standard language through education: T h e French language indeed brought enlightement to the Sephardim of Tunis, Morocco, the Balkans, and Turkey in Asia. ... Moral self-respect was inculcated through more knowledge, better appearance, better manners, less clannishness. M o r e education raised the standard of living, awakened the desire for better dwelling quarters. ... The French schools combatted the defects deeply rooted in the Sephardic character: selfishness, pride, exaggeration of personal sentiments, blind respect for strength or wealth, violence of mean passions (Benardete, 1982:149). Not only the individual but the family benefitted: The Sephardic home received some benefits through their children's training" in the sense that they were able to aim at new careers and new 'more prosperous lands', which without any doubt are Western lands (ibid.151). (And when they could not afford to travel to the West, they ended up in Israel.) T h e question is: how did they "inculcate moral s e l f - r e s p e c t " when Benardete, himself a Sepharadi is describing the Sephardim as he is. H e is obviously accepting all the charges as if supported by scientific evidence

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because two authors, namely Nehama, a scholar from Salonika who described the Sephardic Jewish character in the sixteenth century, and an unnamed 'Ashkenazic social worker' in New York in the twentieth century, are mentioned as having c o m e to the same conclusion in two parts of the world at different times in history. Benardete presents his argument in these words: The chief obstacle encountered however was the recalcitrant character of the Iberic Jew, which refused for a long time to submit to discipline. Since the traits that made for separation in the sixteenth century were in evidence again in the twentieth century among the Sephardim who migrated to New York, it is not out of place here to quote the words of Joseph N e h a m a on the character of the Iberic Jew. W e shall have the occasion to r e f e r to a report by an A s h k e n a z i c social worker on the diminutive units of Sephardic Jews in New York, wherein we find analysis that remarkably coincides with that of Nehama. In an empirical fashion this social worker arrived at conclusions resembling on the whole those Sephardic Jews who have given thought to the dispersive tendencies in their character. If we find the s a m e spiritual mechanism f u n c t i o n i n g in the twentiethcentury Salonica, it means that aside f r o m similar sociological situations, the innate tendencies of Sephardic Jews are at the bottom of their centrifugal behaviour (Benardete, 1982:113). In sum, for these authors, the Eastern Sephardim are firstly cut off from Western culture because of their different writing system, and second, their later adoption of the latin alphabet does not help either since the new alphabet cannot represent the Spanish sounds accurately and results in a language transcribed differently according to the whims of the author. JudeoSpanish does not h a v e a written standard grammar (Renard, 1966:143) therefore cannot be systematically taught at school which is the source of cognitive development and high culture. They argue that the rashi writing system stagnated the development of Judeo-Spanish speakers who could not keep up with the advanced Western culture. As a result the Eastern Jews suffered a cultural decline which is reflected in the poor state Judeo-Spanish is in. In their literacy discourse these authors follow the same line of thought as Goody or O n g w h o argued for the instrumental neutrality and direct consequences on the individual or collective development of literacy based on the Western model of latin script (Goody, 1968; Ong, 1982). From this point of view the relationship between the abandoned Spanish latin script, its replacement with the Judeo-Spanish rashi script and the collective cultural decline is problematic. If the cultural decline could be halted by adhering to the Spanish latin script as these writers seem to suggest it would also imply that

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Western culture would be accessible via the Spanish language. The question is: 'what use would the latin alphabet be without the 'languages of culture'?' Since Spanish was not at the forefront of culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century 1 take it that the writers above associated Western culture with the writing system (as did their Turkish nationalist counterparts rather than relating the power relationships between the 'languages of culture' and the 'languages of folklore'. When one approaches the issue from the 'ideological model' (Street, 1994:95) it is possible to disentangle the role of international and local power relationships which give the norm which the value of marginalised local literacy is measured by. Observed from the point of view of this framework, the Turkish Jewish local literacy practices can be seen in a different light altogether. For example, it is interesting that contemporary with the claimed decline and degradation of the Eastern Sephardim, viewed in terms of literacy practices, the nineteenth century also witnesses the beginning of a prolific Judeo-Spanish press, and literary work (as described above) despite the 'polyglottic chaos' (Benardete, 1982:148). We come across Judeo-Spanish newspapers and journals using the rashi or the latin script, newspapers published simultaneously in Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish translations, and the extreme case of the Selanik (published in Salonika, 1869-1874) in four languages: Judeo-Spanish, Turkish, Greek and Bulgarian. (Benbanaste, 1988:63) (For detailed newspaper and journal publication list in Istanbul see Appendix 1). In 1966, on the other hand, when the same people are supposed to be more enlightened, Renard can only find two monthly published newspapers: §alom and La Vera Luz (Renard, 1966:101). My interpretation and critique of these previous studies does not aim to deny their value but to deconstruct certain assumptions on central issues about language erosion in general and the Turkish Jewish case in particular, under the light of new research frameworks. Or, to rephrase, it aims to look at old issues with new insights. Implicit to the model of 'culture and language' used by these authors is the evolutionary perspective of language, literacy, and high culture. Current research emphasises the influence and importance of the local and the wider international context and the prevailing power relationships in the same context(s). Thus, the explanation of some of the contradictions which are apparent in the relationship between writing systems and cognitive development in different social contexts, or the evaluation of a culture in terms of the literacy/education/literature level of its members is helpful in order to disentangle the different level of arguments.

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Authoritative Knowledge The Turkish Jews learned with the French language French culture, its values, its world view and all that was presented as the ultimate goal the individual or the community as a whole could achieve in order to lead a civilised and fulfilled life. The direct link of literacy, schooling and education was fundamental to this project. Furthermore, the expectations or assumptions were that these attributes would lead the bearer/receiver to a better life in all respects: moral, economic, cognitive, and so forth. That it made a difference to the level of the Turkish Jews' education there is no doubt. But the question is, at what price? Could the devaluation of Judeo-Spanish have been prevented, or could the education program have been better presented, that is, without the speakers losing their self-respect? And did the Alliance's program serve its basic purpose? That is, had the Alliance not discarded Judeo-Spanish from its educational program as unworthy, would Judeo-Spanish have survived its critics? And are the Turkish Jews more ethical, better citizens, better off economically, or more knowledgeable as a direct effect of the Alliance's program? Or, is social change due to the contribution of other factors which were just as important; factors such as the Turkish national education reforms of the late 1920's, the economic boom of the 1950's, or the American influence and pressure on Turkish internal politics at the same time? These questions of course beg other questions such as: Whose knowledge is the accepted norm? What happens to local knowledge?, on whose authority?, and what is the definition of 'success' (Bloch, 1993:93) for the donor and the receiver? I shall discuss these several, just mentioned questions in reverse order. That is, I shall look first into the definition of authoritative knowledge in the Turkish Jewish context, followed by the Alliance's role and influence on the socio-economic changes within the Turkish Jewish community and on the erosion of Judeo-Spanish. The current Turkish Jewish understanding of authoritative knowledge in relation to literacy and education is based, I argue, on the same historical assumptions described above. That is, competing dominant languages, whether French, or Turkish, have officially accepted standards taught at schools. Both languages are fixed in their respective written grammars and are endorsed by authoritative literature. The grammar gives the rules for the 'proper' usage of syntax, and the literature the model for 'proper' style. The style is important in the sense that it provides the mould in which the educated elite, people in the know, use(d) and develop(ed) the language. In comparison, for some, Judeo-Spanish was an oral language and did not have all this necessary equipment to claim the right of an autonomous language. The blunt evidence, according to the participant Turkish Jews in my research,

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was that Judeo-Spanish borrowed indiscriminately f r o m all the languages with which it c a m e into contact, both on g r a m m a t i c a l and lexical levels. Others argued that despite its o v e r w h e l m i n g orality, Judeo-Spanish w a s a language in its own right because it provided the c o m m u n i c a t i o n of a cultural group united by c o m m o n history, although this did not necessarily m a k e it a suitable and effective c o m m u n i c a t i v e tool f o r all speech events, since it did not have a well developed lexicon. A n d the way to d e v e l o p a large and m o d e r n lexicon w a s to h a v e written literature, w h i c h o v e r t i m e is s u p p o s e d to a c c u m u l a t e t h e legitimate lexical items and guard against the i m p r o p e r use of the l a n g u a g e , giving it a point of reference. Consequently, literacy, f o r the Turkish J e w s w a s directly associated to e d u c a t i o n . T h e r e is no 'illiteracy' p r o b l e m in the c o m m u n i t y . Historically, religion has been the m a j o r activator of literacy. At least the m a l e m e m b e r s w e r e partly literate in H e b r e w since they had to go t h r o u g h the b a r m i t z v a h ritual and learn how to read the prayers. T h e r e f o r e , the Turkish J e w s d o not think in terms of 'literate' as o p p o s e d to 'illiterate', but in t e r m s of 'educated' as opposed to 'uneducated'; the H e b r e w reading and writing skill acquired f o r the b a r m i t z v a h

is not r e g a r d e d as ' e d u c a t i o n ' p e r se, b u t o n l y as a

s u p p l e m e n t a r y skill recquired by the religious traditions. E d u c a t i o n , as the Turkish J e w s perceive it, has a f u n c t i o n a l , secular, scientific and m o d e r n aura which is the prerequisite of authoritative k n o w l e d g e , 'high culture' with moral and s o c i o - e c o n o m i c implications, t h e r e f o r e highly valued. T h a t is not to say that religious education is not valued, but only that the simple r e a d i n g and w r i t i n g skills of H e b r e w , w i t h o u t t h e a d d i t i o n a l and d e e p e r

religious

k n o w l e d g e acquired through f u r t h e r rabbinical studies at Yeshivas, are not a generally accepted f o r m of education. In addition, it is possible to argue that to a certain degree, the source of this admiration of scholarly e d u c a t i o n in the Western sense, is the historically valued rabbinical 'authoritative k n o w l e d g e ' , which w a s challenged and o v e r p o w e r e d by the secular E n l i g h t e m e n t ideology based on rationality and scientific evidence. In other words, the rabbinical elite had o n l y to be replaced with the secular intellectual elite. It is a generally a s s u m e d and accepted f a c t that institutional e d u c a t i o n is the p r e c u r s o r of scholarship, moral and cognitive d e v e l o p m e n t , and to a certain extent, socioe c o n o m i c success, hence the source of 'authoritative k n o w l e d g e ' . B u t in the a b s e n c e of institutionalised e d u c a t i o n any f o r m of literacy is better than nothing. In the f o l l o w i n g passage, taken f r o m a conversation/interview d u r i n g my f i e l d w o r k , the participant w a s explaining to m e h o w his great-grandfather f o r b a d e his g r a n d m o t h e r to go to French schools because he w a s a rabbi and b e l i e v e d that w o m e n s h o u l d not be a l l o w e d to learn f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e s . T h e result w a s that t h e g r a n d m o t h e r c o u l d o n l y read rashi, a n d thus her access to books was limited to J u d e o - S p a n i s h books. Later on, the participant

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continued, she would have felt completely an outsider within her own family, since all of her children were highly educated in French or German, had she not read some modern novels translated into Judeo-Spanish, transcribed only in rashi at the time. n- yes, she used to read rashi, rashi was very important at the time, had she not known rashi the woman would be finished, that is, she would be no different from the peasant woman from Erzurum 1 , in fact, she used to read a lot. (t4:56) In other words, the participant's grandmother derived her wisdom from literacy, or whichever positive attributes the participant wanted to emphasise comparing her to the 'woman in Erzurum', who is supposed to be backward, because she is unaware of the advancements of rational modern thought, and is, probably illiterate. A s the participant explained in another conversation, the positive value of her reading was due to her reading translations into Judeo-Spanish of Alexandre Dumas and other French writers' works. Whatever the case, his grandmother was evaluated higher compared to the peasant woman in Erzurum, in this case because she possesed the literacy skills which allowed her to read 'Western literature' (even if in translation). The Turkish national education system affected the Turkish Jews who were already prepared by the Alliance discourse of nationality, citizenship, and loyalty to the nation and its unifying language, and of education and literacy directly related to individual and collective development. The Alliance's French schooling system instilled the idea that French language is the language of culture: "la culture se manifestait en parlant le français", "culture was manifested speaking French" was how one of the participants expressed it (t2, interview :003). This led to the new internal stratification of the Turkish Jews with the French speakers at the top: that is, a class of school-trained people with more linguistic knowledge emerged, then [Judeo] Spanish became the language of the uneducated - and I cannot find its equivalent in Turkish - . . . it became 'méprisé', despised (t2:6).

' A remote city in the East of Turkey.

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Role of books (printed material): "you cannot accept as a language a language which does not have any accepted rules, no books" Rodrigue comments on the importance of the Meam Loez saying that "it legitimated the usage of Judeo-Spanish in intellectual discourse" (Rodrigue, 1992:179) in the eighteenth-century Judeo-Spanish speech network. But knowledge about works like the Meam Ixiez, or other popular literary works which f o l l o w e d it, was lost for several decades. While the Alliance's Eurocentric discourse demoted Judeo-Spanish unofficially, the official ban on rashi, and the compulsory primary education in Turkish, completed the ideological cycle. On the other hand, economic hardship, and severe fires in Salonika and Istanbul (Gerber, 1992), transferred the Turkish Jews' focus of attention to more m u n d a n e activities. Although these literary works are coming to light nowadays (see chapter 7), most participants are either still unaware of them or dismiss them as 'popular', therefore not a prestigious literary product. T h e same issue is picked up by Matza, in her study of cultural transmission a m o n g three generations of Sephardim in the States. She suggests that "current notions of cultural preservation are often based on concrete, written manifestations of it and not on what lives on in the hearts and minds of a people" (Matza, 1990:352) Following this line of thought the participants argued that authoritative knowledge reflected in 'high culture' is transmitted through books. The whole argument of language deterioration in relation to standardisation, education, and high culture is reflected in the enthusiastic explanation of this participant who in response to my inference that Judeo-Spanish was still used among the Turkish Jews said: r- what is spoken? Judeo-Spanish is spoken, not Spanish, they are different. m- O.K. but there are plenty of words in Turkish which are borrowed from English r- no, is it the same thing? There are such beautiful books... read the poems of Nazim Hikmet m- look at B.. he doesn't have any [borrowings] r-no, all of them, even B., have mixed vocabulary,... not a development... a soup, a mixture, you cannot accept as a language a language which does not have any accepted rules, no books, it does not have any particular rules, all [the speakers] have made a soup according to their taste. Did it have any rules, did it have any educational b o o k s ? It didn't, t h e r e f o r e every family was bringing up a different Judeo-Spanish. Some

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families used more some less Turkish, some families started to mix French and Judeo-Spanish,... in my opinion the reason for its [Judeo-Spanish] death is because it is not a perfect [in English inintervievv) language, it is a made up/patchwork language, a perfect [in English in interview] language is a stable language, Turkish is a perfect language, it has roots, Atatiirk made it possible to establish it. Turkish is a new language too but it has a root in central Asia, there is a root, a structure,... it [Judeo-Spanish] could never become a state language,... Yiddish too. Perhaps it needs a state because there is the publication of books,there is this school..., Armenia [for example] it has books, it makes a big difference, ... Armenian has deep roots, that's why it does not die, it has schools, books, books are an imperative for the survival of a language, a structure is essential, ... it won't survive without les chef-d'oeuvres [in French in interview |. (t2:60) My argument that Judeo-Spanish was still used among certain circles of Turkish Jews today did not stand a chance because this respondent was convinced that Judeo-Spanish was not what one would call a 'proper language'. What is spoken, she insisted, "is Judeo-Spanish", not a proper language such as Spanish, Turkish or even Armenian all of which can produce evidence of their existence in the form of books. Books or other forms of accepted written material (i.e. printed) are taken for concrete hard evidence of the existence of a 'high culture' as mirror of the language and its speakers. Besides, the argument continues, without the existence of books there cannot be rules which the speaker can refer to, no concrete written past, no base to build on, therefore the language deteriorates through intensive borrowing. Note the use of chefd'oeuvres in French rather than in Turkish, the main language of the interview. The speaker is a very competent user of Turkish and could easily use its Turkish counterpart, edebi eserler. In this case the French chefd'oeuvres is used as an intensifier to give her argument more vigour. Further on, in the conversation she is more assertive, and makes her views more obvious: she cannot even visualise Judeo-Spanish as a language. This does not stop her from asking for my support on her opinion as the available 'expert/authority' who should know better than to argue to the contrary: I do not accept Judeo-Spanish as a language, there is Spanish, our community took it and destroyed it, this is not a language, you know that, you have studied language [tonality changes, it is more respectful, affirmative], English is a language, French is a language, all of them are rooted in latin but they are separate/different. Spanish is a language but not Judeo-Spanish [in English], (t2:61)

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T h e importance of books as a lexical source or support f o r a language is expressed by another participant: today, a person w h o says s/he is speaking L a d i n o [JudeoS p a n i s h ] speaks it with 3 0 0 - 5 0 0 words... there is n o source, that is, if you do not w a t e r the roots of a tree, that tree is bound to die. (t2:52) Others too were convinced that a written g r a m m a r as a concrete form of authoritative k n o w l e d g e , would m a k e a substantial d i f f e r e n c e , if not all the difference in the survival of Judeo-Spanish. Another participant explained: n- f o r e x a m p l e , see, f r o m g r a m m a r . . . , w e did not h a v e a g r a m m a r for 5 0 0 years, we d o not h a v e a g r a m m a r , there is not o n e g r a m m a r book, there is no school m - there is nothing in writing n- there is n o t h i n g in w r i t i n g , w h e n there is n o t h i n g in writing w h a t did w e do, w e f o r g o t the simplest g r a m m a t i c a l rules, and we threw them a w a y . (t4:52) T h e participant took my interruption 'there is nothing in writing' mean there are no Judeo-Spanish g r a m m a r books, rather than m y i n f e r e n c e the p o s s i b l e existence of unwritten rules of a l a n g u a g e . His a s s u m p t i o n clear, rules h a v e to be w r i t t e n , f i x e d on stone or p a p e r in o r d e r to recognised, respected, and survive.

to to is be

He w a s not, by far. the only one to think that the written rules w e r e the sign of a language, a real language': but it d o e s not h a v e the f o r m of a l a n g u a g e , b e c a u s e w h a t c h a r a c t e r i s e s a l a n g u a g e ... at t h e e n d of t h e day is t h e grammar.... (t2, int:003) It is not only the fact that writing, in the form of a specific g r a m m a r , is prescriptive, therefore supports the l a n g u a g e , it is also an i m m o r t a l source of empirical historical reference: b- oh, writing, writing stays [survives]... T o d a y , I can f i n d the way J e w s lived and s p o k e in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e in t h e archives, although it is ¡written in] a very d i f f e r e n t l a n g u a g e . T o d a y , 1 do not have an a r c h i v e in Istanbul. S o m e b o d y w h o wants to get i n f o r m a t i o n about the J e w s here, even if s/he goes to the Chief Rabbinate the chances that s/he will find s o m e t h i n g which will satisfy her/him are very slim. A s a c o n s e q u e n c e , can you g i v e m e the roots of a f a m i l y w h o lived h e r e u n d e r this n a m e , can you find it? W e cannot f i n d it, w e say no, but they have it in England, in Belgium...

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m- That is, it is the fixity [of writing] that is important b- What stays is writing. I say Sanskrit, there are so many other dialects or writings which have disappeared apart f r o m Sanskrit, but something c o m e s out of stones, archeology or parchment and libraries to study it... it gives it life... writing is essential... (t2:13) Thus, through the permanence of writing, according to this participant, it is not only possible to trace back historical information but writing is language's source of life. Furthermore, he is assuming, that he can extract the Jewish way of speaking in the historical moment the writing was produced. He is not the only one to think that writing is not only permanent but also normative: there are certain things which are said in a certain... a manner which is not exactly adequate, whereas when it is written it has gone through a revision. (t2, int:003) The written material is revised therefore grammatically correct and fixed for posterity who will use it as a model. T h e s e arguments (and many others) which dwell on the assumed objective referential value of the written lexical items lead me to the view that the written text is accepted by Turkish Jews as a decontextualised f o r m of representing a language. In other words, writing is a m o n u m e n t to the language, which not only provides the support, in the form of revised and time-tested lexicon and prescriptive grammar, but also proves the existence of a language. It is in this sense that the 'autonomous literacy' discourse, i.e. the folk model of language and its written form, is affecting the survival of JudeoSpanish.

Literacy, school and education M o r e o v e r , the Turkish Jews' conception of literacy is 'naturally' associated to schooling which is the direct link to education, and a prerequisite f o r 'high culture'. The a s s u m p t i o n is that literacy and its associated developmental attributes are transmitted through scholarly education, or institutionalised education. The role of institutionalised schooling in relation to language and the cognitive attributes of the speakers is reflected in the words of this participant who is one of the very rare current Judeo-Spanish writers. T h e subject of the conversation is the number of loan words in Judeo-Spanish and he is trying to convince me that Judeo-Spanish's extensive borrowing has changed the

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language to such an extent that o n e cannot call it J u d e o - S p a n i s h any m o r e if it d o e s not go through a s o m e sort of purification process. W h e n I p r o b e d and compared

the borrowings

to the s a m e

process

in o t h e r

prestigious

international languages such as French or English and asked if the c h a n g e in J u d e o - S p a n i s h could not be perceived as a local variety in tune with its local culture he went on explaining: Did we h a v e e n o u g h m o n e y to construct our o w n culture, w h e n we c a m e f r o m Spain? O u r e c o n o m i c state... we c a m e with charity... with... the money... we saved ourselves with t h e help of the Jewish c o m m u n i t y here, Kapsali's and others' help, if not w e were paupers. It is because of this that people c o m i n g f r o m Spain had to a c c e p t the lowest j o b s . S o m e m o v e d u p w a r d s to the Scrail, that is a n o t h e r issue. T h e y are the e x c e p t i o n s , but the m a s s e s , their existence... that is, Spanish is a mirror, here language is a mirror, [it is] something which shows the level of the masses, of the people living in public. T h e s e people did not e s t a b l i s h s c h o o l s , they did not set u p s c h o o l s [ c h a n g e of tonality |, w h a t they b r o u g h t with t h e m and they w e r e bright people because high level intellectuals c a m e also, they did not f o u n d schools, until 1867 w h e n the Alliance... (t2:5) In o t h e r w o r d s , not o n l y w e r e t h e m a j o r i t y of S p a n i s h J e w s economically deprived and unable to produce 'culture' w h e n they arrived in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e , but w h a t w a s w o r s e w a s that their intellectuals did not bother with the establishment of their o w n schools. Implicit to the m e a n i n g of school is 'secular, institutionalised, e d u c a t i o n in J u d e o - S p a n i s h ' since w e both k n o w that religious schools did exist. T h e 'school' he is talking a b o u t is the 'school' modelled by the Alliance, and the only w a y f o r w a r d . N o t w i t h s t a n d i n g the e c o n o m i c difficulties of the n e w r e f u g e e s , had the initial settlers f o u n d e d schools J u d e o - S p a n i s h ' s f a t e could h a v e t a k e n a n o t h e r turn. But they did not, and not only did the l a n g u a g e s u f f e r as a result but the s p e a k e r s ' c u l t u r a l level s u f f e r e d too. T o p u t it s i m p l y , t h e l a n g u a g e d e t e r i o r a t e d because of the speakers' lack of education (in J u d e o - S p a n i s h ) f o l l o w e d by their low-level cultural aspirations, which in turn ruined the s a m e l a n g u a g e w h i c h w a s the initial c a u s e of their cultural p r e d i c a m e n t . O r , n o t f o r m a l l y taught, J u d e o - S p a n i s h could n e v e r p r o d u c e prestigious literature to support its speakers' cultural level, w h i c h in turn was r e f l e c t e d in the p o o r state of the language. H e went on explaining the process of lexical deterioration as: w h y was the word lost? T h e word was lost because there w a s no teaching [education] and because the m a n in the street in order to c o m m u n i c a t e , to express his ideas tends to rely on t h e easiest language, he doesn't think.... (t2:7)

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In other words, Judeo-Spanish shows the low cultural level of the Jewish community at the time they used it as a daily language but never learnt it at school. The reasoning is circular in the sense that the link between Language and Speaker is reflexive. If' the language is 'not adequate' the speaker cannot develop cognitive, moral or socio-economic assets; on the other hand, if the speaker is not educated in the same language, that is, if s/he does not know the rules of usage, s/he cannot produce valued literature/culture and therefore the language stagnates and deteriorates; or as is given in the same argument, the language (without the authoritative blessing of the people in the know) borrows and deteriorates. Thus it is because of the lack of institutionalised education in JudeoSpanish that the language was replaced by the Alliance's instruction in French which "add|edj a genre to communicative repertoire" (Besnier cited in Street, 1995:109)

and formed a new internal social division within the Turkish

Jewish community as will be explained below (5.2.2). The new elite preferred to turn to French, and written material in Judeo-Spanish declined rapidly. it was the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th, but at the end of the 19th suddenly there was the constitution which made us equal citizens, we changed politically, and secondly the Alliance which came and opened its schools..., it is the same thing... it changed our way of thinking, and the Alliance which produced its results m u c h later, then this elitist class which was the patron of Judeo-Spanish abandoned Judeo-Spanish completely and turned to French. N o w when the elitist class abandoned Judeo-Spanish, the number of newspapers started to decrease, translations started to decrease... thus this language was left without a patron,... Judeo-Spanish degenerated more in 50 years than in the previous 400 years.... (t2:79) In other words, in addition to the political change, the schools provided by the Alliance changed the Turkish Jews way of thinking: it opened other vistas through the French language, and the new ideas it offered drove the intellectual elite to write in French rather than in Judeo-Spanish. JudeoSpanish in the printed form declined, and with no one to show the light the language was left to deteriorate, no doubt, with the help of the uneducated speaker in the street, as one of the participants mentioned above. Furthermore, education, or as some of the participants expressed it 'high culture', had no real value, at least in economic terms, until recently. In other words, it was a c o m m o d i t y a p p r e c i a t e d by the very f e w privileged m e m b e r s of community.

the

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Now look, in our time education was not valued, times change. Before your time, I don't know, [they had] stupid [ideas such as] finish your primary school, [go in to| commerce, learn a trade, a skill, start working with a dressmaker, you will not starve. (t4:37) Nowadays, according to this participant, institutionalised education, together with its cognitive and intellectual value, has an economic value too and is taken more seriously by the Turkish Jews.

Different perceptions This not to say thai some of the participants did not point out that the reason for Judeo-Spanish's erosion lay not only in its orality but also in the wider sociocultural context: Can you conccive that it is possible to invent television in a place where there is no electricity? There is no electricity in Turkey.... (t4:37) The participant is referring to the wider Turkish sociocultural context which was in decline when Judeo-Spanish started its descent. According to him, these conditions were not conducive to either the cultural or the economic advancement of the minorities. The political and sociopolitical conditions the community had to endure until the 1950's had this effect on the speakers: m- if there were more books b- I don't know if we would read [Judeo-SpanishJ if there were books, but of course if there had been books and if we had read them this language would not have disappeared, I don't know anything apart from §alom, even if there were literary pieces, would we use it, I don't know?... it does not lose its value but would we read it?... one has to buy it... we buy French [books] but we are not the only ones to go to French schools, Turks went [to the same schools] too, they buy them [French books] too.... (t2:24) The participant underlines the fact that the existence of prestigious printed literature does not necessarily mean that there would be potential buyers/readers. It was not as simple as it looked. When one bought a book in a foreign language such as French, one was not that visible because there were the Muslim majority educated in French schools who bought them too. But, the participant stresses, would they have the courage to buy books in JudeoSpanish and stand out in the crowd?

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Even prestigious literature is not sufficient reason for a language to survive as a living, daily language, as articulated very loquaciously by this participant: m- if there were more books m- no, nothing would have changed... even Ovid could not save Latin. (t4:7 or by arguing pragmatically, i- no, no, books would not be helpful, books need an effort, [spoken| language is practical, that is it is a living thing, books are dead things, one has to push books but language goes without pushing. (t2:67) Others pointed out that comprehension and reading skills present difficulties despite Judeo-Spanish's Turkish transcription in the roman alphabet in the current Judeo-Spanish pages of the community's newspaper. It was not possible to lay the blame on books, it was the lack of reading practice which discouraged the potential reader. m- do you read the Judeo-Spanish page in §aloml b- I cannot read it, I cannot understand anything if I read in [J] Spanish, in the name of God I cannot read it Mary. I do not get [§alom\ but if I come across it in some places I cannot read its [J| Spanish page m- but your [J1 Spanish is good b- but I cannot understand it... perhaps it is the different style in writing, because the spoken form is different, it is foreign [alienating 11 am not able to read it. (t2:21) Theoretically, reading Judeo-Spanish in Turkey today should not present a problem to anybody who is literate in Turkish since it uses the latin alphabet with the Turkish writing conventions. The problem this participant is encountering is a common one among the Turkish Jews who are used to experience Judeo-Spanish orally but find it difficult to recognise and interpret it in its visual form. Personally, when I first started to be interested in the language and started to read the Judeo-Spanish page in the community newspaper, I had to make an effort and read some parts aloud. In this way I was hearing the words, and was finding the auditory effect more helpful than the visual form. But this again was blamed on the lack of written indigenous JudeoSpanish prestigous literature.

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With J u d e o - S p a n i s h and rashi t h e Jew w r o t e h e r / h i s r e l i g i o u s literature in the popular f o r m | t h e vernacular, L o w L as o p p o s e d to High L], T h e r e is no publication. W h o wrote l o v e p o e m s ? N o b o d y . T h e r e is no literary w o r k , e v e r y t h i n g has been t r a n s l a t e d , only t h e n e w s p a p e r s are indigenous. Literature is an art, w e did not h a v e the i n f r a s t r u c t u r e , [we] l a c k e d the i n f r a s t r u c t u r e . W h a t w a s its [the c o m m u n i t y ' s ] a v e r a g e e c o n o m i c structure a n y w a y to f o u n d a s t r o n g cultural structure on top of it? T h e r e w e r e wealthy p e o p l e but t h e s e wealthy people spent on the charities, that is not on s c h o o l s or such like. They invested in Orahayim or K i p a t Halav, not in culture, on the c o n t r a r y they o p p o s e d it. T h e J e w did not w a n t to m o d i f y her/his conservative character and the wealthy and enlightened J e w paid her/his tax in order not to be blamed. Even w h a t the Alliance called education e m p h a s i s e d vocational training p r o g r a m s , not t h e c u l t u r e , p o p u l a r l i t e r a t u r e y e s but not h i g h [ p r e s t i g i o u s ] l i t e r a t u r e . T h e r e is no i n f r a s t r u c t u r e , a h u n g r y bear c a n n o t d a n c e , to look f o r b e a u t y a n d goodness o n e needs the m e a n s [to do it]. (t2:78) L o c a l literacy or 'vernacular literacy', is m a r g i n a l i s e d b e c a u s e its p r o d u c t is in the f o r m of popular literary w o r k s or the local n e w s p a p e r s . T h e a b o v e participant points out that despite the e c o n o m i c reasons which c a n n o t be overlooked the f a c t remains that the T u r k i s h Jews d o not h a v e anything to s h o w in the f o r m of prestigious literature. A s a direct implication, a l a n g u a g e w h i c h is not 'written', (i.e. w i t h o u t a p r e s t i g i o u s literature, as o p p o s e d to popular literature) could not be perceived as an 'adequate', 'proper' language and is c o n d e m n e d to die sooner or later. m - 1 have the feeling as if we were talking about an actually dead language, that is a language w h i c h exists only in books..., or is it my interpretation? b- h o w many people are there in the world w h o can currently write Judeo-Spanish? (t2:12) B y 'write' he m e a n s 'write in an accepted p r e s t i g i o u s literary f o r m ' . W r i t i n g in the popular style is transcribing the oral l a n g u a g e and this is not e n o u g h b e c a u s e the oral style is not 'high culture' and will not s u r v i v e as a prestigious literary f o r m . His question, in this sense is rhetorical, he k n o w s that a language which is not written is bound to die! T h i s view c o r r e s p o n d s to B l a n c h e - B e n v e n i s t e ' s s u g g e s t i o n a b o u t t h e representation value of a text. She notes that "the representation of a written text implies a h y p o t h e s i s on the content of the text, in the w a y w e usually represent official documents" (Blanche-Benveniste, 1994:64). T h a t is, the f o r m 'writing' is presented in is an i m p o r t a n t s o u r c e of a u t h o r i t y and t h e r e f o r e accepted k n o w l e d g e . In the T u r k i s h J e w i s h c o n t e x t the prevailing o p i n i o n is that the existing popular literature was not presented in the accepted f o r m .

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Popular literature was not enough to sustain the interest of the elite who turned to other literary sources and the rest followed them. In addition, later on the literature written in rashi was inaccessible to the French/Turkish educated generation. This generation internalized the discourse of marginalisation and abandoned all effort not only to speak Judeo-Spanish but also to transcribe or replace those works in the latin alphabet. In sum, the Turkish Jews are convinced that had Judeo-Spanish been taught at school from the day they had settled in the Empire, the language would not have lost its hold on the speakers. It is generally assumed that instruction implies formal books which are the essence of authoritative knowledge. A l t h o u g h the participants a c k n o w l e d g e d the e f f e c t s of sociopolitical and economic pressures they nevertheless inferred that had they had a better point of reference, i.e. grammar and prestigious literature, in the past, the language would not be as debased as it is today.

Formation of a new social class: 'the new elite' For reasons mentioned in the history of the Alliance's curriculum, the community equated scholarly education, modernism, emancipation with the French language (see Gerber, 1992:239-245; Sephiha, 1986:30). Since the local community schools were inadequate in their level of secular education, members of the community who attended the Alliance schools and other foreign missionary schools were separated from the mainstream by their different kind of schooling and knowledge of foreign languages, and were open to the latest new ideas of enlightenment and emancipation blowing from the West. Similar to Dressier & Wodak-Leodolter's observation of the decay of Breton and its restriction to the private domain because the "intellectual abilities and expressiveness are dependent on it [the French way of life] to a large degree" (Dressier & Wodak-Leodolter, 1977:9), the new division in the social stratification of the Turkish Jews formed an intellectual elite who replaced Judeo-Spanish with French in most public or private domains (Sephiha, 1986:30). Perhaps with the exception of the religious domain, where Judeo-Spanish was still used with Hebrew, French infiltrated everyday life. The already reduced lexicon of Judeo-Spanish started to lose ground (t2:79). The relatively more educated Judeo-Spanish speaker needed a lexicon appropriate to new ideas, technology, etc. It was felt Judeo-Spanish could not provide for this demand using its own resources. But more relevantly, as opposed to Hebrew and with Yiddish as examples of other Jewish languages (Fishman, 1981:14) where modernization, or the corpus planning of the language was linked to national unity in the first case and autonomy from the

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source language in the second case (Fishman, 1981:14), there was little motivation to seek such a lexicon f r o m within the language's resources. Judeo-Spanish had lost contact with modern Spanish, and had followed the local national intellectual decline (Benardete, 1982), in the process losing its authenticity together with expressiveness. The increasing frequency of French usage by the elite for every situation where any linguistic insecurity m a d e them borrow from French, exacerbated the contraction of the Judeo-Spanish lexicon. A s Denison puts it: the rule/lexicon loss is not directly the "cause of death, though they may hasten the 'death wish' out of loss of 'self-respect'" (Denison, 1977:22). The fact that the elite started to borrow from French, if only to compensate the lack of modern lexical items, set the pattern. T h e vicious circle of the speaker blaming the inadequacy of the language and the language, in its turn, suffering from the speakers' negative attitudes still continues today among the Turkish Jews. French mixing became a 'power code' (Hill & Hill, 1986), a symbolic positive evaluation of the prestigious language loan-word, in the sense that it led the way to upwards social mobility. Similar to other cases of language shift (Dressier & W o d a k Leodolter, 1977) children started to be socialised in French as a first language even if it was not the parents' first language: now, God bless her soul my grandmother wanted to speak French to me and for a period, an important period of my childhood... at the same time my grandfather too spoke French and they always spoke French to me... they did not speak French to each other, they spoke Judeo-Spanish, but perhaps they spoke French for me but they were not like some Jewish families where French was part of their lives. (t2:73) Or as in Ovadia's eloquent description of the current linguistic situation a m o n g the Turkish Jews, the last three or f o u r generations'

primary

socialization were all in a different language, depending on the 'power code' of the day: Lately, in our community, every generation began to speak a different language. I speak Turkish to my daughter, French to my father, my f a t h e r J u d e o - S p a n i s h to his mother... My mother's mother-tongue is not my mother-tongue, my mothertongue is not my daughter's mother-tongue (Ovadia, 1990:17). Every generation chose the prestige language, the 'power code' used by the 'educated' elite of the time. Following the national economic and cultural decline, the community's educational standards were at their lowest. Jewish communal schools were not preparing the students (who could not afford to attend these schools in the first

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place) in the Western model which was the an 'ideal type' of modernity, emancipation and in consequence, social mobility, and advancement. In Fishman's terms, the 'social dislocation' (Fishman, 1991:59) of Judeo-Spanish was in process. Thus, rather than a conspiracy theory, the Alliance shaking the already vulnerable status of Judeo-Spanish, it is more likely that the events which cemented the process of displacement of Judeo-Spanish from the Turkish Jews' everyday linguistic repertoire came 'at the right time and at the right place'. Thus, the process of social change is not the direct outcome of one or two of the factors mentioned above, but of several factors which are tightly interrelated. It is no suprise that, with very few relatively recent exceptions, the Turkish Jews are reluctant to be the pioneers and dismantle the stereotype image of the Judeo-Spanish speakers who, are assumed to be: — 'uneducated': the social level which speaks Judeo-Spanish is different... perhaps that is why it is sort of repellent, because they are making it [Judeo-SpanishJ sound vulgar, -... it has a bad image,... the reason for this is... euh... lack of usage, and they [ the residents of §i§hane] are continuing [in reproducing the same image], it is used by people who have not left that place, not opened up, not much educated, in consequence we did not speak it [the young generation). (t2:49 or, — 'loud': a- the Jews who live here are not even good Turkish speakers and they speak loudly in the streets,... that is, they speak |J]Spanish loudly [his wife continues the argument] w- perhaps one of the reasons for not using it |JudeoSpanish | is that the speakers... for example you see two women speaking loudly in a boat and you ask yourself why are you shouting that much,....you ask him/her too [the loud Turkish speaker], but the Judeo-Spanish speaker sticks out more. (t2.49) An element of good manners, correct public behaviour is included under the 'educated' label. For the general Turkish Jew scholarly education is associated with all the positive values of acquiring and processing knowledge in private as well as public domain. Simply put, an educated person is supposed to know how to behave her/himself in private as well as in public. A s a consequence, the Judeo-Spanish speaker who is loud in public is perceived as uneducated too. Perhaps this is an oversimplification but stereotypes are made of oversimplifications, and since most of my participants

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mentioned the 'loudness' factor as the linguistic aspect they found the most offensive and objectionable, I believe that this stereotype is still in working condition, loudness in other languages did not seem to bother them as much as in the Judeo-Spanish speaker. The general consensus is that this dimension of the Judeo-Spanish speaker reproduces and reinforces the negative Jewish stereotype image amongst the Muslim majority. That is, if they cannot speak the national language correctly, it is because they are foreigners, cannot be loyal citizens, cannot be trusted, etc. The current Turkish Jewish argument boils d o w n to 'something is wrong with the language', on the one hand, and 'something is wrong with the speaker of the language' on the other. The problem with the language is that it is old, archaic, fossilised, not adequate to express higher level of thoughts, etc. and at the same time, it is a mixture, it borrowed too much, etc. as explained a b o v e . The p r o b l e m with the speaker on the other h a n d , is one of representation. The Judeo-Spanish speaker is the prototype of the uneducated, old-fashioned, or (in a more politically correct description) more traditionalist and therefore more loyal to the language. For example N.A. would have this conversation in JudeoSpanish, he speaks Judeo-Spanish at home, he f o l l o w s the religion, same age as us, he is not a graduate from university or high school,... and he is more traditionalist, the ones w h o are not like this it seems to me are the exceptions, ... personally I think that the ones who speak Judeo-Spanish at home are the ones who keep to the traditions. (t2:63) Renard too associates language loyalty with b a c k w a r d n e s s , low education level, or social class. H e maintains that Judeo-Spanish is generally disappearing, with the exception of few families and communities in the Middle East which are "socially and culturally under-developed" (Renard, 1971:721). Although she does not say it in so many words, A. Malinowski seems to follow the same stereotype of the Judeo-Spanish speaker when she describes her respondents: Yet despite the redistribution of population, I was able, with no great difficulty, to meet and interview m e m b e r s of the community in all of the old quarters of town. Quite often, it was apparent that their financial situation had not permitted them to join in the movement to the suburbs (A. Malinowski, 1982:9). The question is why did she specifically direct her research to the old Jewish quarters of Istanbul? Even if her point of entrance to the community was through one of these families why did she aim, or why was she directed towards only that part of the community? Did she or her informants assume

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that the data (the Judeo-Spanish speakers) she required could be found only in those social circles? The point I am trying to make is that this kind of direct and indirect links to minority languages by the authoritative discourse of 'experts' reinforce and reproduce the stereotype of the less privileged minority language speaker. Similar to Dorian's Gaelic speakers, who "are often heard to denigrate Gaelic" (Dorian, 1981:29), or Watson's Irish and Scottish Gaelic speakers' "unsophisticated, non learned, folk culture" image, or Hill & Hill's Mexicano described as mezclada 'mixture' (Hill & Hill 1977), the Turkish Jews have internalised the negative evaluation of Judeo-Spanish, and more often than not, do not accept it as a language in its own right. The Judeo-Spanish speaker stereotyped as uneducated and old fashioned became a pariah within his/her own speech network. The language gave in first to French and then to Turkish as the dominant national language (although not without its contradictions. Though the association of French and the New Elite is easily made one should keep in mind that this is not only because of the linguistic competence in French and all the cognitive and intellectual values attached to it, but also because of the relatively more comfortable economic status of the French speaking Turkish Jews. That is, most of the students who could follow the Alliance's education to the full had to be able to afford, if not the tuition fees, at least their living expenses. Most students who came from economically deprived family backgrounds did only partial courses, and some only vocational courses. Those students, even if they were non-paying students, had to leave early in the course of their studies because they had to support their families with the extra income they could generate by working rather than studying. It should be noted that the elite who identified with Zionist ideology advocated the abandonment of the diaspora Jewish languages, and their replacement with Hebrew. After the establishment of the Turkish Republic a parallel behaviour is observable where a section of the Jewish intellectual elite emphasised the importance of Turkish as a national language (Galante, 1947:159).

Identification of the Turkish Jews with the Turkish nationalist discourse The emerging Turkish nationalist political ideology which highlighted the homogeneous nation/language ideal-model was approved and sanctioned by some of the Alliance-educated Turkish Jews. They embraced the 'one nation, one language' stance and in the belief that they were part of the Turkish nation they advocated the learning of Turkish as the primary language of the Turkish Jew.

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Similarly, s o m e of my participants expressed the feeling that the m o s t important duty of a citizen w a s to speak the national l a n g u a g e fluently (see also M a l i n o w s k i , A . 1982:18). T h e y w e r e T u r k i s h citizens; t h e r e f o r e , their first language had to be Turkish. .. but y o u a r e l i v i n g in T u r k e y a n d o n e of t h e m o s t important requirements is to speak the language of that country. (t4:4) yes e v e r y b o d y in their o w n country should speak their [the national] language. (t4:76) ... p e o p l e living in T u r k e y h a v e to be s e n s i b l e , the least t h e y can d o is s p e a k T u r k i s h . . . . b e c a u s e they a r e living in T u r k e y , that is, think of it this w a y , I think that not speaking the l a n g u a g e of this c o u n t r y is a sort of d e f i c i e n c y , it is a deficiency.... (t4.86) Several of t h e m e m p h a s i s e d 'Turkish' with the clarification ' M u s l i m T u r k i s h ' , 'Miisliiman T u r k § e s i ' , e x p l a i n i n g to m e that a l t h o u g h the n e w generation w a s c o m p e t e n t in T u r k i s h , the 'singing' quality of J u d e o - S p a n i s h was still heard especially a m o n g the adult T u r k i s h speakers; they had a Jewish accent. In o t h e r w o r d s , it w a s i m p o r t a n t to use T u r k i s h w i t h o u t p r o s o d i c transfer f r o m Judeo-Spanish. This issue will be the f o c u s of the chapter n a m e d 'Speaking differently' later on (see chapter 6). M o s t of participants when asked about the reasons f o r not using or not liking to hear Judeo-Spanish in public m a d e allusion to the issue of visibility. In fact, the word most of them used in explanation, w a s in order not "to stick out", "goze b a t m a k " , as in the e x a m p l e cited a b o v e in t h e c h a p t e r 5.1.2.2. T h e y did not like to be obvious, different; they would prefer to blend in with the majority. W h e n challenged about the fact that the speakers were reluctant to use Judeo-Spanish even in in-group settings, that is, outside the i m m e d i a t e f a m i l y and c l o s e f r i e n d s , w h e n they w e r e with o t h e r T u r k i s h J e w s , t h e y pointed out that they did not want to be considered as uneducated or vulgar, or e v e n e c c e n t r i c s h a v i n g to p r o v i d e a rational e x p l a n a t i o n . O n e of t h e m explained: o n e or t w o h u n d r e d f a m i l i e s started to speak J u d e o - S p a n i s h at h o m e and we w e r e looked d o w n , w e did not speak it outside, that is, let m e put it this way, say you c a m e to our house, I w o u l d not s p e a k J u d e o - S p a n i s h in your presence, w h y , I a m giving it as an e x a m p l e , w h y didn't I speak euh b e c a u s e you are studying, [how should I explain it] at §i§li Terakki, I§ik Lisesi or H i g h School or D a m e de Sion [all well k n o w n high schools in Istanbul], you will say look at t h e m they are still lagging b e h i n d this era, y o u will not understand, in order not to start a r g u m e n t s or criticisms w e started to place [put] it in the background. (t4:67)

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Most participants expressed their apprehension of being noticed and assessed according to the linguistic code they used. This indicates two sorts of visibility concerns: Firstly, one of being visible, obvious, to the dominant majority group, either because of ideological empathy as described above, or at the

other

extreme,

out

of

f e a r of

socio-economic

discrimination/

marginalisation (Saul, 1983:345). In other words, some feel that language is the binding agent of a nation, and since they are, or have been accepted as Turkish citizens they feel that have to use the national language as first language. A t the other extreme, some feel that they are or have been discriminated against on the basis of linguistic differences, therefore their best curative strategy is to eliminate these differences (the first group take the use of the national language as a natural right whereas the second as an obligation/payment of debt). Hence, the inclination to blend in with the Turkish-speaking majority prevails. Secondly, the ideological value ascribed to Judeo-Spanish by its speakers makes up an important part of their reluctance to use the language even in certain in-group situations. In other words, they are also concerned about the in-group evaluation of the JudeoSpanish speaker. The Alliance instilled the then prevailing 'citizen-nation' ideology through their educational policies from within, preparing the grounds for the later national policies, such as compulsory national primary education in Turkish, or the policy for enforcing the Turkish language, to be internalized thoroughly by the Turkish Jews. Incompetence in Turkish was translated as 'foreigner' by the dominant majority, and as 'deficiency' by the Jewish minority. The non-standard Turkish of the Turkish Jews m a d e them feel different, like a 'foreigner'. The only remedial action was to blend in with the majority. The loss of their language was not a big sacrifice since it had already lost its prestige, and the pivotal axis being their religion, their ethnic language became a relatively secondary component in their identity kit. Added to that, in a relatively short time span, the State of Israel proclaimed its independence (1948), producing an officially accepted identity where their main prop, the Judaic religion, could be directly associated (see chapter 6; also Bornes-Varol, 1991). In other words, the work of the Alliance, with its ideology of equal citizenship rights and obligations, prepared the ground for the ensuing ideas (the importance of the national language and the disadvantages of first language socialisation in Judeo-Spanish) to take root within the Turkish Jewish community. An analogous hostility to minority languages within the French culture is described by Dressier & Wodak-Leodolter (1977) and later on by K u t e r (1989) f o r Breton, and Schlieben-Lange (1977) f o r Occitan. Although they are in a different national context, the dominant discourse seem to be the same. That is, they all converge on the issue of a comparative evaluation of the national education language and the minority language.

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Local demographic and socio-economic changes T h e Turkish J e w s that I interviewed are well a w a r e that the p r o b l e m with Judeo-Spanish does not lie merely in the cultural or sociopolitical realm. T h e y o f t e n mentioned the d e m o g r a p h i c c h a n g e in Istanbul within the larger f r a m e w o r k of national and international political history and related it to the changing socio-economic physiognomy of the group. In order to present the Turkish Jews' explanations in an analytical order it is a d v i s a b l e to o r g a n i s e the d e m o g r a p h i c c h a n g e as a t w o - d i r e c t i o n a l m o v e m e n t . T h a t is, t a k i n g Istanbul as the starting p o i n t , o n e m o v e m e n t , aliah, emigrating to Israel, or the W e s t (out-bound), and a second m o v e m e n t i m m i g r a t i n g to Istanbul f r o m t h e p r o v i n c e s ( i n - b o u n d ) . T h e f i r s t o n e , emigration to Israel, w a s partly a result of the Zionist organisations' calls, arid partly a result of the unsatisfactory political and s o c i o - e c o n o m i c situation in T u r k e y . T h e e s t a b l i s h m e n t of the State of Israel, in 1948, i n c r e a s e d this m o v e m e n t , and considerable waves of emigration, aliahs, are noticed d u r i n g 1942, 1948, 1956, and late 60's. G o l d s c h e i d e r & Z u c k e r m a n call these t h e 'pull and push' factors in their explanation of Jewish immigratory m o v e m e n t s to Israel (Goldscheider & Z u c k e r m a n , 1984) arguing that the push factors w e r e a stronger than the pull factors. In other words, the motivation behind such a d e c i s i o n is not t h e a t t r a c t i o n of t h e t a r g e t c o u n t r y b u t a b o v e all the unsatisfactory situation in the primary c o u n t r y of residence. It is hardly the place to a r g u e f o r or against this statement in this study; s u f f i c e it to say that in the case of emigration waves of T u r k i s h J e w s to Israel it s e e m s that both f a c t o r s played important roles since they c o m p l e m e n t e d each other, i.e.: the w a v e of 1942 w a s d u e to political unrest f o r the minorities in provoked by a special capital tax, V a r l i k V e r g i s i , s u p p o r t e d by the f i r s t h o r r o r stories filtering f r o m Europe, alongside Zionist ideology, and h o p e s f o r a n e w start. A p p l y i n g their parameters, it is possible to say that the t w o main factors, the ideological motivation (pull) and the s o c i o - e c o n o m i c situation (push) of t h e Turkish J e w s were the basis f o r emigration to Israel. Emigration to the W e s t w a s a b y - p r o d u c t of e d u c a t i o n in the W e s t e r n countries, in the sense that students w h o went to study abroad did not w a n t to return because they had p r o f e s s i o n a l or e c o n o m i c o p p o r t u n i t i e s not a v a i l a b l e in T u r k e y , or o t h e r ideological reasons. O n the other hand there w e r e also those w h o left attracted by the lure of rags-to-riches stories. T h e o p p o s i t e m o v e m e n t , that is, the internal i m m i g r a t i o n

from

periphery to centre, f r o m the provinces to Istanbul, occurred, firstly, d u e to the individual e c o n o m i c g r o w t h of t h e p r o s p e c t i v e i m m i g r a n t l o o k i n g f o r n e w m a r k e t possibilities. S e c o n d l y , t h e d e c r e a s i n g n u m b e r s of the local Eastern J e w i s h c o m m u n i t i e s instigated c o n v e r g e n c e t o w a r d s the well e s t a b l i s h e d Jewish c o m m u n i t y in Istanbul.

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The Eastern Jews spoke their own ethnic languages such as Arabic or Georgian in addition to Turkish, and had their own specific cultural traditions (e.g. different culinary traditions). A s a consequence, in the early 60's when the new immigrants were a very small minority and married mainly into Judeo-Spanish speaking families, communication with the old Turkish Jews was only possible through Turkish, the c o m m o n language for both sides. Subsequently some of them learned Judeo-Spanish by osmosis. Later on when the number of Eastern Jews increased and the young generation of Turkish Jews started to feel comfortable with Turkish as L I , the need to learn JudeoSpanish lost urgency. Currently several Jews of Eastern origin (over the age of forty) said that although they did not need Judeo-Spanish any more they seemed to have learnt and used it unaware of the process. They had started to use it as a joke, to signal their Jewishness in cases where there seemed to be a doubt, or even sometimes as a secret language. Only two newly married young women mentioned their parents-in-law who, although they did not use Judeo-Spanish directly to them, used it on family occasions. A s a result they started first to understand, and later on to use words which developed into sentences and so on. Some of them, like the general Turkish Jewish young members of the community are not aware that they can c o m m u n i c a t e in Judeo-Spanish. In a few instances when I noticed them communicating in Judeo-Spanish, h o w e v e r briefly, and pointed it out to them. T h e y were genuinely surprised and they usually said: "well, yes I can speak it, but I cannot speak good Judeo-Spanish". T h e question 'what is good JudeoSpanish?' still remains to be addressed. Moreover, the usage of Judeo-Spanish during religious practices has decreased, since the rabbis feel that they have to address the w h o l e congregation which sometimes contains several Eastern Jews w h o do not speak Judeo-Spanish (dd:34:1503). W e used to think in [J]Spanish and speak in Turkish, it is still so, I used to speak [JlSpanish at the altar, during the last two years it is Turkish because there are the Arab Jews, I have to I d o it for their sake, and so that the young understand... I speak Turkish to the children [JlSpanish to the adults... now I have stopped this too. (t2:18) The total effect of these migratory movements, both in and out, was the dislocation of a large number of Judeo-Spanish speakers f r o m the Jewish residential parts of Istanbul. In the process of spreading out and the addition of the growing population of the city, the Judeo-Spanish speech network is said to have lost its density.

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W h i l e these large migratory m o v e m e n t s w e r e a f f e c t i n g the n u m b e r of J u d e o - S p a n i s h speakers, a smaller m o v e m e n t within Istanbul w a s influencing t h e social n e t w o r k ' s residential p a t t e r n s a n d by i m p l i c a t i o n , the J e w i s h traditional way of life and the c o m m u n i t y ' s linguistic practices. U p w a r d l y mobile socio-economic c h a n g e was followed by change in residential quarters. T h e n u m b e r of extended families living in very close proximity decreased, and to s o m e extent the f r e q u e n c y of the families' reunions decreased at the s a m e time.

In t h e a b s e n c e of t h e o l d e r g e n e r a t i o n ,

t h e p r i m a r y tool

of

c o m m u n i c a t i o n b e c a m e T u r k i s h . T h e s t a t e m e n t of M a t z a ' s i n t e r v i e w e e is representative of the c h a n g i n g character of the network ties and at the s a m e time points out the e f f e c t s new technology had on the traditional w a y of life Y o u had to be observant. And besides, it w a s the only m e a n s of entertainment. W e had no cinemas. W e had no radio. W e had no television. So w h a t did we e n j o y ourselves with? G o i n g to s y n a g o g u e , s i n g i n g , d a n c i n g , p a r t a k i n g in t h e s e r v i c e w a s beautiful (Matza, 1990:342). Talking a b o u t the c h a n g i n g p h y s i o g n o m y of the J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y in I s t a n b u l , several of m y r e s p o n d e n t s m e n t i o n e d also t h e f a c t o r of h a v i n g J e w i s h maids at home. T h e claim w a s that b e f o r e the m a i n emigration w a v e to Israel (1948) J e w i s h families which w e r e e c o n o m i c a l l y deprived survived with the support of the f e m a l e m e m b e r s g o i n g into service in o t h e r J e w i s h h o m e s . W h e n t h e s e f a m i l i e s left T u r k e y , t h e y w e r e r e p l a c e d by M u s l i m f e m a l e s c o m i n g f r o m the rural parts of T u r k e y . A s a c o n s e q u e n c e , children w h o c o m m u n i c a t e d with t h e m had to switch f r o m J u d e o - S p a n i s h to T u r k i s h , thus m a k i n g the latter language their first language (dd:30; dd: 10; t2:23). Similarly, many of my participants referred to the c h a n g e in the w a y of life. T h e y called it 'the breaking u p of the traditional extended f a m i l y structure' w h i c h in turn s h o w e d reduction in c o m m u n i c a t i o n in J u d e o - S p a n i s h . A n d with the latest addition of television, in the last twenty years, they maintained that children grow up only with Turkish (dd:25). we a r g u e a lot a b o u t this, no d o u b t that this T u r k i s h . . . because we are m o r e integrated, adapted. People started to live in separate places |districts], they started to interact with T u r k s more, in c o n s e q u e n c e they started to speak Turkish to the Turks. In the past, I don't k n o w , apparently there were specific places [districts]... in those type of places p e o p l e interacted within the group, they p r e f e r r e d it, that is they had d i s t a n c e d t h e m s e l v e s f r o m the T u r k i s h culture but n o w w e are m o r e a m a l g a m a t e d , that is, education, n o w e v e r y b o d y studies at the university, that is we have merged with the out-group (t4:30) it s e e m s to m e that in the past the J e w s w e r e [living] m o r e together, now ... there isn't m u c h , it is scattered. (t4.36)

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H o w e v e r , neither the c h a n g i n g pattern in residential q u a r t e r s nor the a p p a r e n t d i l u t i o n of social ties led to t h e d i s i n t e g r a t i o n of t h e g r o u p ' s cohesion, a t h e m e which will be taken on in m o r e detail, in the c h a p t e r on the 'Language and Identity' (see chapter 6). T h e c h a n g e in occupational pursuits by the Turkish J e w s w a s presented as yet another reason f o r the demise of Judeo-Spanish. T h e period between the 1950s and the 1960s w a s one of social and e c o n o m i c g r o w t h f o r both Jewish and M u s l i m Turkish citizens. T h e Turkish J e w s have m o v e d f r o m being small b u s i n e s s m e n , m i d d l e m e n , artisans, into the p r o f e s s i o n a l c l a s s e s and s o m e times in the salaried c l a s s e s . In o t h e r w o r d s , f r o m b e i n g a ' m i d d l e m e n minority' ( B o n a c i c h , 1973) w h e r e they o p t i m i s e d their e c o n o m i c survival concentrating on specific occupations in between the upper and l o w e r levels of the national social hierarchy, n o w they h a v e started to break o u t f r o m this pattern and enter the other professional levels. In so doing, they h a v e had to integrate to the larger society linguistically as well as socially. In s u m , the T u r k i s h J e w s are a w a r e that in addition to the sociocultural f a c t o r s , the recent d e m o g r a p h i c c h a n g e on t h e local and national scale has affected the use of Judeo-Spanish. T h e displacement of c o m m u n i t i e s added to the strong influence of the recent d e v e l o p m e n t of m a s s m e d i a technology and the change in occupational pursuits have limited the use of Judeo-Spanish.

The speaker's model of language Once the sociopolitical and e c o n o m i c f a c t o r s which w e r e considered as f u n d a m e n t a l in the decay of Judeo-Spanish have been grounded in the analysis as covered a b o v e in sections 5.1 and 5.2, the next step is to f i n d the reasons for the denial to Judeo-Spanish of the status of a 'proper' language 'dogrudiiriist bir lisan'. W h a t did the T u r k i s h J e w s m e a n by 'language', a n d w h a t w a s the position of Judeo-Spanish in relation to their definition of l a n g u a g e ? T h e concept of language involved various aspects. Judeo-Spanish was a l a n g u a g e in the sense of s o m e sort of m e a n s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n ; but it w a s not a language, in that 'it b o r r o w e d so m u c h that o n e c o u l d hardly call it a l a n g u a g e in its o w n

right.

A m i x t u r e of a f e w languages a real salad, that is w h a t w e use here, b e c a u s e it has w o r d s f r o m T u r k i s h , w o r d s f r o m French, the Judeo-Spanish I know doesn't have a proper g r a m m a r or whatever, it doesn't have its rules, it is not a proper language, it is a patchwork language. (t2:35)

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even the language is superficial, the language has h u n d r e d s of T u r k i s h w o r d s , a h o t c h p o t c h ... it is not a l a n g u a g e , w h a t l a n g u a g e are w e t a l k i n g a b o u t , it w a s a n o n s e n s e s p o k e n a m o n g s t us 5 0 0 0 people, ... not a d e v e l o p m e n t . . . a s o u p , a m i x t u r e , you c a n n o t c o n c e i v e a l a n g u a g e w i t h o u t rules or books, a perfect language is a settled language. (t2:37) W h e n I interrupted and gave the e x a m p l e of o n e J u d e o - S p a n i s h writer k n o w n f o r his taste f o r the Hispanisation and purification of J u d e o - S p a n i s h the participant did not relent: no, all of them, even B. has mixed words |lexicon], (t2:58) In order to go beyond a simple description of w h a t the m e m b e r s of this c o m m u n i t y saw as a l a n g u a g e I f o l l o w e d F e l d m a n ' s ( 1 9 9 5 ) (cf. ch: 2.2.1) a d v i s e o n strategies on q u a l i t a t i v e a n a l y s i s and started to l o o k into t h e m e a n i n g of other lexical items the participants used in c o n n e c t i o n with the w o r d language. In lieu of a formal attitude test where I could have presented t h e m with a list of attributes to c h o o s e f r o m , I wanted t h e m to c o m e u p with their o w n attributes, a d j e c t i v e s , a n a l o g i e s . F r o m the very b e g i n n i n g a l m o s t every time the issue w a s mentioned, Judeo-Spanish w a s a 'dialect/mixture'. A. M a l i n o w s k i also suggests that: their [ i n f o r m a n t s | r e m a r k s reflect not simply an observation of actual practice but also to s o m e extent the prejudices which h a v e in t h e c o u r s e of t h e y e a r s b e e n t r a n s m i t t e d t o t h e m ( M a l i n o w s k i , A.. 1982:16). It is understandable that this n o m e n c l a t u r e f a v o u r e d by several J u d e o Spanish scholars and described above is well internalized and reproduced by the speakers themselves whenever the occasion arises. It w a s an 'archaic', 'old', 'fossilised', 'under-developed' l a n g u a g e which in contrast, had 'changed too m u c h , b o r r o w e d indiscriminately'. In order to save it o n e should go back 'at least 5 0 years, to the Spanish they b r o u g h t to the O t t o m a n E m p i r e , to standard Spanish', etc. Similar to Denison's p a r a d o x where: on the one hand a no longer d e v e l o p i n g l a n g u a g e is seen as a 'dead' l a n g u a g e ; and on t h e o t h e r h a n d w e tend to r e g a r d a language which c h a n g e s too drastically, too abruptly (or, if over a long period, even gradually), as no longer 'the s a m e language' as the earlier ' état de langue'. W h e t h e r or not we are inclined to s p e a k of the earlier stage as 'dead' l a n g u a g e s e e m s to d e p e n d u p o n the degree of codification of that earlier stage and u p o n h o w irremediably its most influential speakers d u g its grave by a t t e m p t s at o n c e - f o r - a l l - t i m e p r e s c r i p t i v e s t a n d a r d i s a t i o n (Denison, 1977:14).

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In other words, language is conceptualised as an evolutionary process, and the participants assumed that 'past' equals 'genuine' and their model of language indicates a hierarchical order. In the case of a threatened language which is already weakening, the direction is f r o m past-genuine to presentartificial/bogus, good to bad. In this sense, past-genuine is supposed to be static, it is the changed f o r m , the dynamism within the language which is disputed. The contradiction appears when the evolutionary model does not fit the development of dominant languages where change appears to have a positive value. In the case of Judeo-Spanish in Istanbul, the opinion of the vast majority was that Judeo-Spanish had borrowed and mixed far too much from other l a n g u a g e s w i t h o u t the speaker m a k i n g any contribution to the language's substance using its own resources. That is, Judeo-Spanish speaker did not try to produce the lexicon needed for new concepts or did not produce the 'international' (with connotation of 'authoritative') literature. This is in direct contradiction with the view expressed, that Judeo-Spanish was 'an old language', 'a fossilised language', a 'frozen language' which implied that it had not changed. When faced with the apparent inconsistency the argument offered was that the process of 'renewal' or 'change' was wrong that, instead of looking on the parent language's evolutionary course of action, it simply borrowed from the most accessible language in sight, the everyday language, the language used in the streets, Turkish. The difference was in the legitimacy of 'change'. The authoritative source language, Standard Spanish, has an official state and literature to back it up. Thus, 'language' as the participants perceived it, was opposed to the most accessible layman's language, which lacks the precision and clarity needed on a higher level of conversation or writing. The fact that the ordinary speaker of standard Spanish might also have a reduced repertoire compared to a professional speaker of the same language and might be borrowing f r o m the regional/local dialect(s) was besides the point since they had the standard model to fall back on in case of need. Or as Harris points out in the case of the American Sephardim: It makes no difference that other Spanish speakers may not regard New York Puerto Rican Spanish with the same high esteem as the Sephardim do. For the Sephardic informants, including the older speakers, any Spanish other than their own is more prestigious (Harris, 1994:233). Judeo-Spanish is accused of being mainly a 'mixture', 'not a real language' Ham bir lisan,

hakiki

bir lisan elegit.

This concurs with other

studies made among the Sephardim in Turkey and other parts of the world, as mentioned above, where the informants agree on the inferior status of the language, just like most of the participants in this study:

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certainly, probably it should not disappear but perhaps my, when speaking it is a very old language, OK? a language which stopped 500 years ago, it incorporates Turkish [words], French, that is some people present it as a very cosmopolitan language, what a nice language everybody will understand wherever you go, perhaps they are right but for example to Turkish, that is even Turkish, if it is going to be Turkish let it be Turkish, if it is going to be English let it be English, that is a language should be a language, that is there should not be to much mixture, for example if it going to be Spanish let it be Spanish, that is let it be real Spanish, why is there so much confusion, that is it is very backward, I don't like the fact that it is backward (t2:41) an old Spanish, ... perhaps it did not renovate itself in Spanish, ... because all languages change, ...it is a language... ... too much of a mixture, stopped [stagnated] at Spanish and took too much from other languages (t2:51) Museviceyi bir dil olarak gortiyorum, ama olu§um siireci konusunda bunu soylemek gerekiyor, birazicik oldugu yerde saymi§, fazla geli§ememi§, bir dil olarak gortiyorum (t4:8) I see Judeo [Spanish] as a language, but one has to say that in the space of its evolution I see it as a language which has not progressed, which has not developed (t4:8). But there are other members who disagree with this view which denies an autonomous language status to Judeo-Spanish. Although their numbers are few their voice is starting to be heard (see chapter 7). Amongst them this writer expresses his indignation in these words: ... This is a genuine Jewish language. It is not that I want to deny this language's Spanish roots, or its latin origin, which to tell you the truth does not interest me at all, and I could not care less if it is like this or not. What I know best is that this language which we are speaking together and through which we understand each other has a Jewish smell, a Jewish taste, a Jewish colour and a Jewish ring to it. Whatever anybody says, take away its Jewish character and throw it in the dustbin, because it won't serve a purpose any more (§alom /22/02/95/Altinta§, Y.) To summarise, this chapter has suggested that Judeo-Spanish speakers were and still are affected both by external and internal economic, sociopolitical pressures and demographic changes. That is, there is a two-way pressure. From one direction the speakers are motivated to give up the use of

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Judeo-Spanish because of their fear of being discriminated against by the dominant majority on the basis that it is not the national language and is taken to be indicative of the users' disloyalty/foreignness, thus becomes an obstacle in their socio-economic advancement. Whilst f r o m another direction, that is, their own community members, the speakers are driven not to use Judeo-Spanish because of its negative social image. The negative social image, I argued, is constructed mainly because speakers have internalised the authoritative Eurocentric discourse through the Alliance's French curriculum and the Turkish national discourse which emphisised the unified 'one nation, one language' ideology. Furthermore, both French and Turkish discourses presented the Turkish Jews with an ideal-type national language. That is, a language with an historical pedigree, lexical and grammatical stability, and a literary tradition as evidence of its sophistication and development. Compared to the French and Turkish languages, JudeoSpanish was seen as a jargon, firstly because it borrowed far too much from other languages and secondly - a n d in contradiction to t h a t - because it had not developed a lexicon fit to express modern ideas. This characterisation is, of course, typically applied to minority subordinate languages in many cultures. Under these conditions, with very few exceptions, the Turkish Jewish community's perception of Judeo-Spanish as their ethnolanguage changed. The language as the community's identity marker is replaced by other identity components as will be discussed in the following chapter 6.

6 LANGUAGE A N D SOCIAL IDENTITY: Judeo-Spanish and the Turkish Jewish identity

In this section, the data analysis will draw upon cross-disciplinary theory and research (sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, ethnolinguistics, Judaic studies, history, etc.) in order to interpret the relationship between language and social identity, in the particular case of Judeo-Spanish within the contemporary Turkish Jewish community. It will focus on language as one of the salient components of the Turkish Jews' social identity, bearing in mind that it is only one of the features among several group-identity markers such as nation, ethnicity, gender, age, and not necessarily linked directly to group identity. "The erosion of an original language ... does not inevitably mean the erosion of identity i t s e l f ' (Dow, 1991:3); nevertheless, shift in language involves a certain degree of change in group identity. T h e aim is to develop the analysis around two different aspects of language related to identity, that is, the role of language in the construction of identity, and language as a marker of identity. In other words, based on the premises that both language and identity are flexible and adaptable - t h u s including social c h a n g e - , I shall look into the Turkish J e w s ' linguistic repertoire first as a container of their traditional values, the values imported from the surrounding sociohistorical context, and as the producer of their 'self image. Following that, the analysis will focus on the ways in which the Turkish Jews signal their identities, create and maintain social boundaries, through their specific language or 'ways of speaking'. M y main contention is that the apparent decline of Judeo-Spanish is related to the Turkish Jewish identification with the language. That is, for various reasons, Judeo-Spanish as the binding agent of the community has been overtaken or replaced by other identity components such as religion, peoplehood, or nationhood. Its function as an identity marker, on the other hand, is replaced by a 'way of speaking differently'. The discussion will be presented in the f o l l o w i n g f o r m : 1 - C o n s t r u c t i o n / r e c o n s t r u c t i o n and maintenance of Turkish Jewish identity; 2-Language(s) as identity marker(s): codeswitching and speaking differently.

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In addition I shall argue that in intergroup situations with the Muslim majority, the Turkish Jews assume a marginal identity in the sense that they converge towards the dominant language by trying to make their linguistic distinctiveness

invisible.

This

is partly

b e c a u s e they f e e l

socially

discriminated against and partly because they have internalised the Turkish national language policies which advocated a united, homogeneous, secular nation supported by the national language, Turkish. The mechanism by which these values have becomc internalised by the Turkish Jews is explained in the following pages. At the present day Jewish identity draws on its distant historical connections, local historical connections and recent sociopolitical issues. Most of the participants involved in this study defined their collectivity in terms of religious, national, ethnic, or cultural community, sometimes using the terms jointly with the others and sometimes on their own. The strands which are highlighted depend on the individual experience of each one of them . T h e tendency to combine these identity c o m p o n e n t s in d i f f e r e n t w a y s , selecting different elements of the local national tradition or the universal Jewish way of life, giving them different symbolic meanings, ties in with C o h e n ' s (1985) and Gumperz's (1982) approach to the concept of community with the emphasis on social interaction and relating it to shared symbolic meanings mediated through language or speech conventions. Language, then, is not only part of an identity kit, but as the other 'objective' components, has an active part in the construction of identity. Following this, the principal assumption in this study will be that the Turkish Jewish social identity separates them from the mainstream society. This, therefore, requires attention to the concept of ' b o u n d a r i e s ' (however flexible and fluid). One of the salient boundary markers is the Turkish Jews' different linguistic repertoire: they employ a separate linguistic system, JudeoSpanish, or different speech conventions, codeswitching/borrovving, and speaking differently. The study will include the role of inter- and intra-group boundaries, their relevance to the Turkish Jews' linguistic repertoire, social change, and the crystallisation of specific ethnic identities within the same community. Having pointed out the importance of an interactive perspective, I now provide a broader contextual elaboration of the present Turkish J e w i s h situation with respect to the Turkish identity as a nation followed by a focused description of a general Jewish identity components.

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Turkish National Identity Lewis begins his book entitled The emergence of Modern Turkey with this sentence: "The Turks are a people who speak Turkish and live in Turkey." (Lewis, 1961:1). He goes on to explain the ambiguity of this claim based on purely on language and territory. Turkish identity, he continues, nevertheless encompasses a major religious element, namely Islam. He suggests that modern Turkish national identity derives from four main sources: the Islamic, the Turkish ethnic, the local, and relatively recent, Western civilisation. Islam is "still clearly a major, if not the m a j o r element in the collective consciousness of a large proportion of the Turkish nation" (Lewis, 1961:11). Starting from the Ottoman Empire (1453-1923), referred to as 'the Lands of Islam', the Turks saw themselves as the representatives and protectors of the faith against Christian Europe. Their ethnic identity includes, as a major component, their religious identity which was institutionalised by the Ottoman state. The Turkish pre-Islamic past was obliterated to such an extent that the Ottoman Turks considered themselves primarily Muslims. The Turkish element is most visible in the f o r m of the Turkish language (Lewis,1961:324). The additional, but less visible Turkish element is the nomadic character of the Turkish ethnic tribes which constituted most of the Ottoman population. It is through the process of sédentarisation of these tribes, with their local customs, their urbanisation and their amalgamation with "the cosmopolitan civilisation of Constantinople and Rumelia 1 " (Lewis, 1961:10), that the Turk overcame the Ottoman Muslim and the modern Turkish nation was born. At this point, perhaps it is important to add that although it appears that the Turkish tribes dominated the other Muslim ethnic groups, these latter did resist complete ethnic and linguistic assimilation and continued to maintain their distinct language and identities as is reflected in the current political situation in Turkey (for example the Kurdish problem). Western influence initiated by diplomatic contacts, mainly through French military and technological advisors to the Imperial state from the beginning of nineteenth century, introduced new ideologies to the educated élite with a knowledge of foreign languages. These languages, especially French, were at the same time carriers of new Western ideologies and values. The citizens of the Ottoman Empire had to adjust themselves to the European norms of civilisation, and did so not without a few bruises to their selfesteem. Europe and its civilisation was seen as the perfect model compared to the old Ottoman ways.

'The European part of the Ottoman Empire.

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Subsequent to the Ottoman era, L e w i s interprets the Kemalist Turkisli nation-building theories in c o n j u n c t i o n with building the self-respect w h i c h the Turkish people had almost lost due to Western prejudice: It is d i f f i c u l t n o t to s y m p a t h i s e w i t h t h e f r u s t r a t i o n a n d discouragement of the y o u n g T u r k , eager for enlightenment, w h o applied himself to the study of Western languages, to find that in m o s t of them his name w a s an insult (Lewis, 1961:353). S o m e objections w ere made to the direct adoption of certain European w a y s throughout the nineteenth century r e f o r m s and the f o l l o w i n g Republican reforms, but although r e f o r m s had taken root in the traditional life structure of the T u r k i s h people, they left "the ultimate identity of T u r k and M u s l i m iri T u r k e y still unchallenged" (Lewis, 1961:418). T h e n e w Westernised official e g a l i t a r i a n policies of the T u r k i s h R e p u b l i c , in relation to t h e religious minorities, were not reflected in day-to-day life. L e w i s describes the situation as: In s o m e respects the participation of n o n - M u s l i m s in the public life of Turkey actually decreased after the establishment of the R e p u b l i c , although their legal status on p a p e r w a s h i g h e r than ever before. Certain f o r m s of discrimination continued - f o r e x a m p l e , n o n - M u s l i m s were called u p f o r military service but did not bear a r m s and were not c o m m i s s i o n e d , while the n u m b e r of n o n - M u s l i m s in t h e civil s e r v i c e d w i n d l e d r a p i d l y . . . Significantly, religion still appeared on identity cards and o t h e r official d o c u m e n t s , and the designation T u r k w a s in c o m m o n u s a g e restricted to M u s l i m s ; the rest w e r e k n o w n as T u r k i s h citizens, but never as T u r k s (Lewis, 1961:351).

Jewish Identity T h e next step is a brief account of the analytical d i m e n s i o n s used in the d i s c u s s i o n a b o u t the c o n c e p t of J e w i s h identity itself. E v e r y o n e of m y participants identified her/himself as Jewish first, rather than Sephardic. Even those w h o are positively inclined to or active in the preservation of J u d e o Spanish and Sephardic culture consider the Judaic identity c o m p o n e n t to be the m o s t i m p o r t a n t . In this sense, J u d a i s m w a s d e f i n e d as t r a n s c u l t u r a l , allinclusive, global, in the sense that it included all the J e w s without distinction of geographical locality, nationalities, d i f f e r e n c e s in traditions or rituals, the extent to w h i c h they applied the Judaic laws, and s o on. A s o p p o s e d to this. Sephardism w a s defined as local, as a colourful addition to the Judaic tradition at its best and as separatist at its worst.

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In the introduction to his book entitled: T h e other in J e w i s h t h o u g h t and history. C o n s t r u c t i o n s of J e w i s h culture and identity Silberstein traces "the c o n f u s i o n over the parameters of J e w i s h identity" (Silberstein, 1994:1) to the nineteenth century Zionist discourse w h i c h introduced a secular a n g l e to the religious outlook. T h e n e w a p p r o a c h put the e m p h a s i s on the people and the cultural heritage, thus, shifting the f o c u s of attention f r o m the u n i f y i n g distant past to the m o r e recent past with the d i f f e r e n t cultures e m b e d d e d in the whole. Silberstein goes on to a r g u e that Jewish identity and culture, like any other identity and culture, has to be studied f r o m a nonessentialist point of view. J e w i s h identity is not a given, but a process. Identity is not f i x e d , but d y n a m i c , influencing and influenced by the culture it is e m b e d d e d in, in sum, in a discursive process rather than a state of being. T h e question of continuity is approached by Eisenstadt w h o claims that the h e t e r o g e n e o u s J e w i s h e x p e r i e n c e is best understood in t e r m s of J e w i s h civilisation, in the sense that it is not o n l y a set of religious beliefs but a distinct w a y of life based on specific ontological p r e m i s e s , and the w h o l e regulating social life with the e m p h a s i s o n the c o n t i n u o u s r e f o r m u l a t i o n of these premises

(Eisenstadt,

1992:277). The concepts

of

nationhood,

p e o p l e h o o d , religion or ethnicity can all be applied to the J e w i s h experience w i t h o u t resulting in a clear u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the reasons of their continuity d e s p i t e all o d d s . F r o m his perspective t w o m a i n f o r c e s c o n t r i b u t e d to the c o n t i n u i t y of this c i v i l i s a t i o n : t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l J e w i s h

communication

networks, and the nature of their incorporation in the respective host nations which influenced their Jewish local culture. I would like to take a f u r t h e r step and link the local to the national and the international discourse which is not necessarily only J e w i s h . In order to c l a r i f y this step with a c o n c r e t e e x a m p l e I shall d e s c r i b e the c a s e of t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y w h i c h w a s n o t only a f f e c t e d by their distant history, the local culture, and the national sociopolitical history, but by the d i s t a n t n e w i d e o l o g i e s , their d i s c o u r s e s and the e x p e r i e n c e s of

other

c o m m u n i t i e s to w h i c h they felt they were linked by their distant past, in the sense A n d e r s o n uses the c o n c e p t 'imagined c o m m u n i t i e s ' ( A n d e r s o n , 1991). T h a t is, t h e intervention of the A l l i a n c e , during the nineteenth century, with its own ideology and discourse already influenced by the Western eurocentric discourse, the experience of the H o l o c a u s t (which did not a f f e c t m o s t of t h e local c o m m u n i t y directly) by their coreligionists, Zionism as an international idea, and a l s o t h e T u r k i s h national d i s c o u r s e left their m a r k in t h e T u r k i s h Jewish c a s e as will b e discussed below. T h e question of distinctive J e w i s h c o m m u n i t i e s being e t h n i c groups or not is d i s p u t e d by E l a z a r w h o is o p p o s e d to using t h e w o r d 'ethnicity' f o r differentiating between J e w s . H e argues, they are f r o m the s a m e "single

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ethnos, or people" (Elazar, 1989:24). Taking an essentialist view of ethnicity, he bases his claim on a definition of ethnicity which emphasises kinship on the basis of country or region of origin. He concludes that the wrong concept is applied to the Jewish case since, h o w e v e r distant, Jews have a unique ancestry. This generally accepted view does not explain the participants' further references to self or other, as culturally or geographically different. Thus, he reduces the collective identity of the group to the very distant past, overlooking the sociohistorical change due to migratory m o v e m e n t s , the internal divisions it created and the group's perception of these differences in different contexts. Despite this claim he goes on to describe the Eurocentric discourse used by the mainly Ashkenazi Israeli establishment and its adverse effects on the Israeli Sephardim (a term, he uses in its wider sense, as explained in section 3.2.3). The apparent contradiction in the acceptance of unity, sameness, and at the same time of diversity within the Jews in Elazar's argument is also present in various participants' versions and will be dealt with f u r t h e r , during the presentation of the T u r k i s h J e w i s h identity components. The issue of the marginality of the Sephardic identity, as an Eastern culture, in comparison to Ashkenazi identity, as a Western culture, in the United States is picked up by Angel. He describes his experience as a Sephardic Jew, "a minority within a minority" (Angel, 1971: 64), "somehow inferior as Jews, somehow only borderline Jews." (ibid: 65). Although his experience, as a rabbinical scholar, ends up by discovering that the Sephardim are not exactly the "wild arabs (sic) you see running in Israel" (ibid.65), most Sephardim still carry the myth of Sephardic folklore as opposed to the Ashkenazi culture (see discussion below). Matza is supportive of Angel's views. She describes the integration of the Sephardim into the American way of life underlining the fact that although the organisers were sometimes appreciative of the Sephardic culture they nevertheless "encouraged the immigrants to learn English quickly and to abandon the folkways that marked them as backward and old-fashioned)." (Matza, 1990:347). The same pattern seems to be present in the Sephardim of Sydney, where Sephardi is used in the wider sense (i.e. all the Jews w h o are not Ashkenazi) by Gale (Gale, 1991:338). She explains that this group was identified as Asian by the Australians and Ashkenazi Jews giving them a double cause for their "marginal self-identity" (ibid.345). The same academic: discourse where Sephardim 'religious obscurantism' is opposed to Ashkenazi 'orthodoxy', and the Ashkenazi 'culture' to the Sephardic 'folklore' appears to be well internalised among the Turkish Jews (see also Nathan, 1964; p: 17-18; Renard, 1971; Benardete, 1989). The participants often mentioned that the Sephardim were 'religiously indifferent' as opposed to the Ashkenazim w h o were 'liberal or reformist' and that the Sephardim did not have a 'culture' worth mentioning (t2:57).

'italics added for emphasis.

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In addition to the religious or ethnic distinction, the Zionist nationalist ideological stand provides yet another internal division depending on one's adherence to, or rejection of the Zionist ideology. A s mentioned before both Rodrigue and Benbassa maintain that Zionist ideology found its supporters first in the lower income classes during the Ottoman rule, and second in the disappointed Turkish Jewish citizens of the new Republic. Without going into the details of Turkish Jewish Zionist history it is important to bear in mind that Zionism offered the young, in particular, a self-respect they lacked, a positive collective identity compared with the negative stereotype image the Jew had in Turkey. According to Rodrigue, Turkish Zionism, rather than focusing on emigration to Palestine, concentrated its efforts on a 'cultural revival' which was supported by the concept of a Jewish nation with its own particular language, namely, Hebrew (Rodrigue, 1990:136). T h e generally accepted complexity of the concepts compels me to emphasise that my description of the Turkish Jewish social identity in relation to their linguistic repertoire is an interpretation at a particular point in time and space. I do so not because generalisations cannot be derived f r o m this study, but to make the reader aware of the importance of the constant change and ' m o v e m e n t ' which is involved in both processes. That is, while some of the parameters I shall use are derivatives of an historical process (religion, Zionism, ethnicity, etc.), s o m e may be relatively new (the other), or it is possible that they are old parameters seen in a different light (i.e.: Zionism as the claim for an independent Jewish state in the land of Palestine before World War Two, and the recent interpretation in the form of support for the State of Israel).

Construction/reconstruction and maintenance of Turkish Jewish identity Based on the assumption that the Turkish Jewish social identity separates them f r o m the mainstream society which is not a monolithic society either, I compare the Turkish Jews only with urban middle-class Turkish Muslim society. T h e first part of the discussion will focus on the Turkish Jewish perception of their own identity, and the different languages used in the Turkish J e w i s h repertoire which are c o n s i d e r e d i n s t r u m e n t a l

to the

construction and maintenance of this collective identity. The second part will explore the concept of 'boundaries' within the Turkish J e w s ' different linguistic repertoire, I examine how those boundaries are marked and signalled with the assistance of J u d e o - S p a n i s h , as a separate linguistic system, c o d e s w i t c h i n g / b o r r o w i n g , and speaking differently, as d i f f e r e n t speech conventions.

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I a r g u e that the Turkish Jewish identity is marginal b e c a u s e they feel that they are not considered as part of the national majority mainly b e c a u s e of their d i f f e r e n t religion (cf. L e w i s , 1961; A k ^ a m , 1995; B o r a , 1995). T h e d i f f e r e n c e is visible in m o s t n o n - M u s l i m n a m e s , or the non-standard w a y of speaking Turkish (Saul, 1983:345). J u d e o - S p a n i s h is alleged to be the m a i n influence on non-standard speech f o r various reasons. It is argued that because the T u r k i s h J e w s s p o k e / s p e a k J u d e o - S p a n i s h at h o m e their T u r k i s h is not s t a n d a r d , that is, J u d e o - S p a n i s h is b l a m e d for the a c c e n t that c o m e s into T u r k i s h and this m a r k s them as different. Turkish M u s l i m s are seen o n the other hand, as s p e a k i n g T u r k i s h , if not a l w a y s with the standard a c c e n t , at least with a m o r e 'genuine T u r k i s h ' A n a t o l i a n accent. A s a c o n s e q u e n c e t h e T u r k i s h J e w s d i s t a n c e t h e m s e l v e s f r o m J u d e o - S p a n i s h and d o n o t w a n t to identify with it. T h e analysis of the data yielded several categories which were organised as in Figure 3. I shall argue through e a c h of these categories in turn and explain their r e l e v a n c e / r e l a t i o n s h i p to my central a r g u m e n t w h i c h is: the E u r o c e n t r i c Alliance discourse and the Turkish nationalist discourse had a doubly negative i m p a c t o n t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h i d e n t i t y , in t h e s e n s e that w i t h i n t h e international discourse the) are placed to the East of the other European J e w s tagging along all the negative evaluations the Eurocentric d i s c o u r s e carries. Likewise, within the nationalist discourse they are marginalized as a minority which does not belong entirely to the Turkish nation as a w h o l e . R e s i s t a n c e to m a r g i n a l i t y is indicated in their refusal t o use o n e of the m o s t salient f e a t u r e of their Easternness and J e w i s h n e s s , n a m e l y their s p e c i f i c l a n g u a g e Judeo-Spanish.

f igure 3

Plan of discussion.

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Turkish versus Jewish The results of the analysis show that for the Turkish Jews, identity is grounded mainly on the difference between 'Jewish' and 'Turkish'. Very few of the participants pointed out that the concepts are different in character/nature in the sense that the first one, Jewish, refers to religion, and the second one, Turkish, to nationality. This is not to say that the rest were not aware of this conceptual difference but they did not pay attention to the details in everyday situations since in popular speech 'Turkish' includes the Muslim religious component. In other words, the point of reference or the norm is 'Turkish', but the dominant majority has assigned to this secular dimension a religious one too. Thus, as illustrated by the examples below, although it is never mentioned as such, 'Turkish', used on its o w n , by implication m e a n s 'Muslim' to the great majority (Kastoryano, 1992:267; Lewis, 1961:8). So much is this so that A. Malinowski describing the residential patterns of the Jewish families in Istanbul mentions that "all the old quarters have now a predominantly Turkish population" without a second thought, and Ger§on, in her M.A. study of the Sephardic Jews of Turkey, feels compelled to say: "where of course^ by 'Turkish' is meant ' M u s l i m ' (Ger§on, 1986:63). The same 'shared definition' of the concept 'Turkish' referring to the Muslim majority is reflected in the examples picked from two interviews. The following participant explains the reasons for her use of Turkish with her mother whose Judeo-Spanish was more fluent than her Turkish. This is at a time when Judeo-Spanish was still the norm as home language (i.e.: end of the 1940s, beginning of 1950s): I d o n ' t know, probably because w e were surrounded by Turks, that is, our social circle was like that. (t2:20) and another uses the same reference to the Muslim majority while explaining the structure of the social networks in relation to the language shift: we argue a lot about that, probably this Turkish... m o r e integrated, to adapt more, people started to live in different districts, their interaction with the Turks increased consequently they started to speak Turkish with the Turks, -it seems to me that in the past Jews were together, now, ... not as much, they are scattered (t4:36).

' Italics added for emphasis.

144 J U D E O - S P A N I S H IN T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

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Feeling different / foreign In addition to religion, language or 'speaking differently' (reinforced by a non-Muslim name), are the dimensions along which 'foreignness' is measured by the mainstream society. Subsequently, 'non-Muslim' is easily related to the realm of 'foreignness'. Even amongst the educated and aware, the non-Muslims have at least a semi-foreign tag attached to them. The expression of the boundaries through bizler, us, and sizler, you (plural) is a c o m m o n linguistic strategy used both among the Turkish Muslims and Turkish Jews - who sometimes switch to Judeo-Spanish and use eyos, them (Malinowski, 1982:13). The following cartoon illustrates the extent to which the Turkish Jews are identified with their Jewishness and as a result with Israel, thus distancing them from their Turkish national identity.

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Yuart/Qzen: Irvin MANDEL

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(Irvin Mandel, in §alom, 06/09/95) 1 _ Mr. Yasef, you know we had my wife operated on in New York at your hospital. Then we returned to Istanbul, I thought she looks very depressed, let me take her on a holiday. We got down to your club, it was April and it's rather nice down there. We did the whole journey with your airline. 2 — Yasef, you seem to have made it since I last saw you... hospital, holiday club, airline company... Do you own them all? — Don't be silly! 3 _ To translate what he said: He had his wife operated at the Mount Sinai [hospital], then they went to the Club Mediterranée in Eilat [Israel], and they flew by El Al [Israeli airline], that's all!

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T h e n o n - M u s l i m m e m b e r s have to p r o v e their loyalty to country and nation continuously. It is like a continuous daily test and re-test. T h e T u r k i s h J e w s h a v e to prove it in military service, at a social gathering by disapproving of s o m e of I s r a e l ' s policies, and even at a basketball m a t c h between T u r k e y and Israel. G a l a n t e ' s e f f o r t s to p r o v e t h e loyalty of t h e T u r k i s h J e w s t h r o u g h o u t the history of the O t t o m a n E m p i r e and the T u r k i s h R e p u b l i c to t h e p o i n t of d i s c l a i m i n g Z i o n i s t i d e o l o g y ( G a l a n t e , 1 9 4 7 : 4 9 / 1 8 8 & see section 3.2.6) still c o n t i n u e s today in the daily life of the T u r k i s h J e w s . L e w i s stresses that n e v e r w e r e they [religious m i n o r i t i e s ] able to m i x f r e e l y in M u s l i m s o c i e t y , as t h e y had o n c e d o n e in B a g h d a d a n d Cairo...[they | were excluded so thoroughly that even today, 5 0 0 years a f t e r the c o n q u e s t of C o n s t a n t i n o p l e , neither G r e e k s nor the J e w s in the city h a v e yet mastered the T u r k i s h language.... o n e m a y speak of Christian A r a b s - but a Christian T u r k is an absurdity and a contradiction in terms. E v e n today, a f t e r thirtyf i v e y e a r s of t h e s e c u l a r T urkish r e p u b l i c , a n o n - M u s l i m in T u r k e y m a y be called a T u r k i s h citizen, but n e v e r a T u r k ( L e w i s , 1961:15). In sum, the burden of proof is carried by the religious minority's n o n standard n a m e , language, accent, and so f o r t h . A §alom editorial presented its view o n the on the issue as: A s individuals w h o live on the Turkish land, w h o think and speak in T u r k i s h , w h o m a k e their living in T u r k e y , w h o carry out their duties as citizens our expectation is to be referred to as a " T u r k " w h o s e religious c o n f e s s i o n is J u d a i s m rather than "a T u r k i s h citizen f r o m the J e w i s h m i n o r i t y " . W h y is it that the mainstream society sees the n o n - M u s l i m s as d i f f e r e n t ? T h e first reason [which signals f o r e i g n n e s s ] is at the introduction of the individual w h o s e n a m e sounds f o r e i g n . A n d the first reaction is q u e s t i o n i n g if that i n d i v i d u a l is f o r e i g n or not. ( § a l o m , 26/10/94, p : l ) . In a discussion evening, organised by §alom,

on "Jewish Identity", the

issue of foreignness or semi-foreignness w a s described as: I think the problem is to w h a t d e g r e e are we i n d i g e n o u s or f o r e i g n ? In T u r k e y , the c o n c e p t of ' f o r e i g n n e s s ' s u r f a c e s in d i f f e r e n t contexts. F o r e x a m p l e , o u r n a m e s are very important. T h e m o m e n t we introduce ourselves w e are interrogated on the extent of our indigenousness. W h a t is reflected to us is: " Y o u are i n d i g e n o u s but not as m u c h as us"... M y v i e w is that in T u r k e y s e c u l a r i s m is n o t a p p l i e d b y s o c i e t y . . . ( § a l o m , 22/02/95).

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In other words, the official state policy is not as secular as democracy would require it, for example the existence of 'Department of Religious Affairs' Diyanet I§leri Ba§kanhgi, in the governmental apparatus is concrete evidence of this state of affairs. Kattan describes a very similar pattern among the Iraqi Jews: In our group we were neither Jew or Muslim. We were Iraqis, concerned about the future of our country and consequently the future of each one of us. Except that the Muslim felt more Iraqi than the others... We were different.... Our identity was tainted. (Kattan, 1991:281). The attribute of 'foreign' is not only a given, it is at the same time internalised by the Turkish Jews and reflects itself in their daily behaviour. For example it surfaced in the case of a folklore evening at a social club (dd:5). The sense of exclusion from the mainstream society was reflected in the group's deficiency in the representation of the Turkish element in their cultural baggage. The show was about Jewish history told with the aid of folk songs and dance. The diaspora was depicted with dances from the diverse settlements around Europe and immigration to Israel was described along the same lines, that is, with various folk songs and dances related to the communities which arrived at different points of time. At the end, all the cultures, including Palestinian culture was represented. But interestingly enough there was not one sample of Turkish folklore unless one includes the last song which was a modern Turkish pop song. When later on, I pointed out the absence of Turkish folklore in thei r repertoire, most participants were surprised and said that they had not excluded it on purpose, it just did not occur to them! When I tried to probe and asked them where in this representation of the Jewish diaspora were the Turkish Jews, some of them fell silent and were pensive and intrigued, whereas others pointed to the Eastern folklore samples, saying that they were very similar to the Turkish version (dd:5). I would argue that this is very indicative of the ambivalence in the Turkish Jewish collective identity. On the one hand they strive to be included in the Turkish national identity as seen in the §alom article above, and on the other the exclusion is so much a part of their lives that they do not even think of their Turkishness when representing themselves in a cultural show as the;/ do to other Jewish cultures. A. Malinowski came across the same internalised marginality in her participant who stresses that "the Jews of her generation [60] when speaking Turkish sounded 'like foreigners'" (Malinowski, A. 1982:15). Moreover, the participants of this study considered themselves 'Orientals' in the sense that they believe their culture to be similar to the Yemenite, Moroccan, Tunisian, Iraqi, etc. cultures as opposed to the 'Western.' Ashkenazi culture.

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'Foreignness' is experienced in different forms in different situations. One of the young participants described his experience as: 8- in military service I had the image of somebody from abroad [a foreigner], they used to ask me 'where do you come from'? I started to look for my identity, my name is different, where did I come from? That is why I felt like learning [Judeo] Spanish, since I am supposed to come from there, got a specific culture, |Judeo] Spanish is spoken at home,... M- in the military service probably they did not ask you 'where do you come from' but 'what are you', right? 8- yes M- what did you answer? 8 - 1 said I was Jewish M- why?... had he asked anybody else? 8- he doesn't ask anybody else"(t2:70) and another one added: the commandant took me in his room, when I said I am Jewish, he said 'what is that', I said Israelite [Yahudi and Musevi both refer to 'Jewish' in its wider sense in Turkish], he replied 'why are you coming to do your military service then, why aren't you doing it in Israel, if you want to do it here you have to be Muslim... (t2:60) In both cases, although the speaker does not make it clear, the burden of proof is carried by the non-standard name. The questions of "Where do you come from?", or "What are you?" is most of the time preceded by the introduction of the name. Behmoaras illustrates this in an article in §alom. She describes the complaints of a young Turkish Jew who has his first experience of alienation because of his Spanish sounding name in a district of Istanbul where Jews are not generally a familiar sight: I have learned that my name would be so heavy to carry in those districts; at the same time [I have learned that] Istanbul does not consist of the triangle of Ni§anta§, Caddebostan, Etiler (Good morning young man!) They have difficulty in pronouncing my name, they try to speak pidgin English with me; and when I answer in Turkish there is the surprise phase, and then the inescapable range of questions... Where are you from?.. Turkish?.. Really?.. Your mother and father too?., etc... etc... (§alom, 06/09/95, p:8).

148 J U D E O - S P A N I S H

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Behmoaras' interruption of the young man's story with the exclamation "Good morning young man!" reveals the commonness of the experience for the Turkish Jews and is an interjection similar to "wake up to the reality!". This agrees with Weiker's description of the Israeli Jews of Turkish origin who said that while living in T u r k e y they s o m e h o w felt left out, different from the mainstream Muslim society (Weiker, 1988:5-6). He picks up their discourse style in referring to the mainstream society as 'Turkish', rather than Turkish Muslim, thus he perpetuates the notion of Islam being inherent to Turkishness. The title of the book by Galante, the fervent Turkish nationalist and activist promoting the integration of the Jewish community into the Turkish Republic, is called The Turks and the Jews (1947). Liberies mentions that the increasing interaction of the "...Turkish and Jewish youth" ends up in mixed marriages which were viewed as posing a threat to the continuity of the Jewish community in the 6 0 ' s (Liberies, 1984:144). In other words, the reference to both groups is so embedded in the discourse of the Turkish Jews that the authors who pick it up from their informants accept it as the norm and reproduce it, thus giving it academic approval. The issue of the Turkish Jewish identity dilemma could be clarified through the sociohistorical background experiences of the Turkish Jews, as a group. The status of the minority populations of the Ottoman Empire was based on the millet system by which they were differentiated mainly ori religious grounds. The mid-nineteenth century reforms of the rights of the religious minorities did not help either. Liberies maintains: ...the realities of the J e w s ' position in Turkish society could not simply be changed by constitutional fiat and they were still considered to be a foreign element by much of the population (Liberies, 1984:131). Following this, with the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the concentration on a uniting secular nationalistic ideology failed to include the religious minorities at the level of the national identity ( K a s t o r y a n o , 1992:254). A. Levy mentions the same issue in his description of the polemics, a r o u n d T u r k i s h citizenship at the p r o m u l g a t i o n of the f i r s t T u r k i s h constitution in 1924. H e explains the arguments given against the religious, minorities in Turkey as "a foreign body within a Muslim nation". T h e fact that other Muslim minorities with different ethnic backgrounds, such as Albanians or Kurds, were not at the centre of the argument (though they are currently) thus implies that "Religion continued to be the only criterion f o r being a Turk" (Lewis, 1961; Levy, A. 1989; Zurcher, 1993; A k ? a m , 1995 Bora, 1995).

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T u r k i s h citizenship w a s a m b i g u o u s / a m b i v a l e n t in the s a m e sense that Tri g a n o (1994:181) reports on the French Jewish identity model. H e descri bes this latter m o d e l as based on ' r e l i g i o u s c o m m u n i t y ' c o l l e c t i v e l y , a n d as ' F r e n c h ' individually. T h a t is, citizenship in these c o n d i t i o n s did n o t push religion to the b a c k g r o u n d as e x p e c t e d ; on the c o n t r a r y t h e s e d i f f e r e n c e s b e c a m e the centre point around which d i f f e r e n c e s between groups were m a d e (see also K a s t o r y a n o , 1992). Citizenship, in each c a s e (French and T u r k i s h ) , m e a n t the c o m p l e t e loyalty of the individual to the state w i t h n o t h i n g in between which could w e a k e n the bond (Trigano, 1994). Religion was second to nationality and in t h e private realm. In a similar pattern, w h e n asked (by m e , another T u r k i s h J e w ) w h a t they think they are, w i t h o u t giving any c u e s to particular social categories, m o s t a n s w e r e d 'Jewish' and o n s e c o n d t h o u g h t s , 'Turkish'. T h i s d o e s not reflect their strict a d h e r e n c e to the religious law and rituals, but rather the s p e c i f i c social c a t e g o r y a s s i g n e d to t h e m by t h e d o m i n a n t g r o u p and internalised by t h e m as the m a j o r d i f f e r e n t f e a t u r e . T h e T u r k i s h J e w s k n o w that the point of reference is the Turkish nationality, but they also k n o w w h a t is implicit to in-group identity in T u r k e y , that is, specification of religion. It should be pointed o u t , h o w e v e r , that this a t t i t u d e by the m a j o r i t y is not conspiratorial or p r e m e d i t a t e d , it is m o r e in line with E d w a r d ' s suggestion w h o directs our attention to the f a c t that " d o m i n a n c e and a f f l u e n c e lead m o r e often to ignorance and neglect than to outright hostility" ( E d w a r d s , 1985:50). T h e f a c t that the religious m i n o r i t i e s ' p r e s e n c e is not very visible in t h e national curriculum results in a f o r m of k n o w l e d g e which is based on hearsay or limited to personal experience. This, added to the residential pattern of t h e m i n o r i t i e s in m a i n l y u r b a n a r e a s , restricts i n t e r a c t i o n b e t w e e n the t w o c o m m u n i t i e s , and unless o n e lives in o n e of t h o s e areas (or t a k e s special interest in the issue), not m u c h i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t the r e l i g i o u s m i n o r i t i e s circulates within m a i n s t r e a m society which can only catch a g l i m p s e of t h e m through the well k n o w n stereotyping. T h e f o l l o w i n g cartoon is a g o o d illustration o n the quality ( T a n n e n , 1981; Vassberg, 1994) of the majority's k n o w l e d g e of the religious minorities (see Bora, 1995:36).

150

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(Irvin Mandel, in §alom,

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17/01/96)

1 — ... and there was, may he rest in peace, Mr. Niko, did you know him, he was. one of yours... — no, he wasn't one of us really 2 — ... but you know the Onnik and Miran brothers, they are one of yours?! 3 — no, they are not one of ours either! — For heavens sake Mr. Simon, since you [plural) are not one of us either, whc are you from for heavens sake? T h e first n a m e m e n t i o n e d , Niko, is a very c o m m o n G r e e k n a m e , the f o l l o w i n g two, Onnik and Miran are equally c o m m o n A r m e n i a n n a m e s . T h e artist is m a k i n g his point p r e s e n t i n g t h e v a r i o u s d i v i s i o n s a m o n g n o n M u s l i m s and the u n a w a r e n e s s of the M u s l i m majority w h o generalises them s i m p l y as ' n o n - M u s l i m s ' . T h e stress is o n 'us', M u s l i m s , and 'y° u '> n o n M u s l i m s . B u t also note the physical stereotyping of the other f r o m the Jewish point of view: the M u s l i m s are illustrated with moustaches in both cartoons (see the previous cartoon in p. 144). In her book of interviews with s o m e T u r k i s h M u s l i m intellectuals a b o u t their o p i n i o n of the T u r k i s h J e w s , B e h m o a r a s q u o t e s o n e of her interviewees on the subject of dislike of J e w s in T u r k e y , saying: "It is i m p o s s i b l e for T u r k s w h o live c l o s e to J e w s t o f e e l enmity t o w a r d s them. T h e person w h o calls t h e m 'Dishonest, dirty J e w ' is a person w h o h a s immigrated to Istanbul or a n o t h e r large city f r o m her/his p l a c e of birth. S/he has never met a J e w previously" ( B e h m o a r a s , 1993:62).

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The interviewee's claim to know better than negatively stereotyping the Jews does not stop him from referring to the two groups as 'Turks' and 'Jews'. The blurred nationality and religion difference, in this case, is not due to the lack of knowledge of the minority but the underlying meaning of 'Turk' which includes 'Muslim'. Furthermore, his claim is no doubt, one side of the truth, and truth is multifaceted. It is true that interaction between the two groups results in better knowledge of each other, but nevertheless, it sometimes helps only to reproduce and reinforce the old established stereotypes (Tannen, 1981). The difference here is in the quality and not the quantity of interaction (Cohen, 1985; Vassberg, 1994). A simple business interaction, even if it happens every day, is not i n f o r m a t i v e about the c o m m u n i t i e s , only about the individuals. At the same time, it is relatively easy to identify the individual with her/his respective community as soon as one distinctive feature, such as the specific language, accent or intonation, is picked up, and consequently to apply the whole stereotype image. This participant explained to me the reasons for which she felt uncomfortable when Judeo-Spanish was used in public as: c-now, while shopping, in a shop, if two of us speak JudeoSpanish between ourselves, f r o m their looks we feel that they think we are hagglers. (t2:384 In this case the respondent refuses to be f r a m e d by the 'haggler' stereotype implied by the specific group language, and the only means to soften the impact of this stereotype image is the suppression of Judeo-Spanish usage in public. As described previously, in 'The History of the Language', the Turkish Jewish linguistic repertoire shifted f r o m J u d e o - S p a n i s h to French and subsequently to Turkish due to the need for Jews to make themselves invisible mainly among the mainstream society. One interpretation of this move can be that it was in fact their resistance to a 'marginal identity' introduced by the linguistic markers. In other words, the Turkish Jews refuse the marginality bestowed on them by shifting towards the national language, thus partly reducing the visible identity markers. In a way, Judeo-Spanish became the ethnic marker for the out-group while within the group it functioned "as an indicator of class and social status" (Eastman, 1984:265).

Internal divisions The analysis of the data shows that further internal categories salient for the Turkish Jewish group membership study are: religious/traditionalist, secular, and ethnic. The religious/traditionalist as opposed to the

secular

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CONTEXT

Turkish Jew is changing its popular meaning. That is, until a few years ago the first group invariably would be considered as uneducated, or backward. At the present day 'religious/traditionalist' does not always carry the same stigma. An informed guess to explain the change would be that current rabbis are much more in tune with current problems, more approachable, and have a higher level of secular education in addition to their religious education. Added to that, and

in o p p o s i t i o n

to the n e g a t i v e

obscurantist

image

the

religious/traditionalists carried, especially f r o m the nineteenth century onwards, the image of the religious universities in the US or in Israel is one of modernity and rationality (supporting the current positive image of the religious/traditionalist). The ethnic differences between Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Arab, Georgian or Kurdish J e w s appear to be diminishing amongst the Turkish Jews. In contrast to Mizrahi's or Harris' findings concerning Sephardic identity in the United States, the Turkish Jews' fear of assimilation to mainstream society and their small numbers urge them to overlook internal ethnic differences and unite under the element of Jewishness which is common to all. Nevertheless, it would be naive to say that no distinction is made between J e w i s h ethnicities. Old values are carried on, and some (particularly the generation of those over 50) still evaluate other Jews on the criteria of East and West, backward and modern, etc. That is, the Sephardim are said to be positioned in the middle: to the West of them are the Ashkenazim, and to the East of them the other Eastern Jews. In the case of the Turkish Jews, in particular, those who immigrated to Istanbul from the Eastern parts of Turkey are generally considered as 'Orientals' as in Ta§rali, Anatolian, for the mainstream society. Their discourse still carries the ethnocentric Western values. T h e following examples are both from participants over the age of f i f t y , active in the community, aware of the suppressed Sephardic culture, and considered to be liberal in their views. The first example illustrates the Sephardic position in comparison to the Ashkenazim and the second, in comparison to the othe:" Eastern Jews: b- there is a Sephardic culture, in the songs, in the proverbs, [in the proverbs - repeat in Turkish], T h e Sephardic culture is not in the religion, the religion is international, but it can be in the way of speaking, it can be in the way of thinking too [mentality] . A Sephardic person might be different f r o m an Ashkenazi person because of their constitution [mentality), they might think differently, but they have a particular culture. (t2:17)

THE T U R K I S H J E W S ' P E R C E P T I O N OF J U D E O - S P A N I S H T h e participant is trying to m a k e the point that a l t h o u g h

153 the

Sephardim might be considered of a different mentality to the Ashkenazis, they still have a culture. The emphasis is on different 'mentalities' and 'culture'. In his e f f o r t to convince me that the Sephardim had their own particular culture he compared it to the only authoritative norm available: Ashkenazi culture. A s for the perception of the Eastern Jews by the Turkish Jews who consider themselves as Sephardic, it carries the same Eurocentric values: of course the Arab Jews are like that, in Israel mostly the Arab Jews are like that, the religious ones are like that. (t4:103) T h e context of the conversation was the birth rate of the Jews and assimilation. W h e n the participant's w i f e showed her concern about the assimilation figures in the United States I had pointed out that the Orthodox Jews' high birth rate might be a counterbalance to these assimilation statistics and hinder the threat. The husband picked up the cue and presented the example of the A r a b Jews in Israel as the perfect illustration of the high birth rate among the religious sector. His tone of voice implied that 'high birth rate' was directly related to lack of education and therefore backwardness as opposed to modernism. In the process the Ashkenazi orthodox sector which is large and considerably powerful in Israel was dismissed without a second thought. In other words, the participant associated 'religious' and the underlying meaning 'backward', with A r a b Jews in Israel in particular, rather than either clustering both Eastern and Western religious groups together, or mentioning the very visible Ashkenazi Hassidic community in this value judgement. It should be emphasised that in later conversations, when asked directly if they thought that the Sephardim were less educated, civilised, etc., both participants denied the adjectives vehemently, saying both cultures, Sephardic and Ashkenazic, had their own values. The point I am trying to make is that although participants were convinced that there could not be a hierarchy of cultures, when confronted directly, they nevertheless used the ethnocentric discourse which reflects the internalized and embedded hierarchy. The process is described by Kastoryano: By closing in on itself, the group creates a classification and an internal hierarchy which, in their own turn, assure its cohesion... E c o n o m i c success, the level of education, the languages spoken and even the accents, the degree of integration within Turkish society, and the network of social relations with the world outside all lead to a social classification (Kastoryano, 1992:263).

154

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CONTEXT

In sum, interaction with the M u s l i m m a j o r i t y highlights the c o m m o n Jewish identity, h o w e v e r interaction with other J e w s e m p h a s i z e s the internal distinctions. In o t h e r w o r d s , ' d i f f e r e n c e ' is not absolute but contextual and negotiable; 'difference' is evaluated according to the individual's positioning.

Languages included in the Turkish Jewish linguistic repertoire and their role in the construction of their identity T h e data f r o m the q u e s t i o n n a i r e s s h o w s that t h e T u r k i s h J e w i s h l i n g u i s t i c m a p is h i g h l y m u l t i l i n g u a l

( s e e A p p e n d i x 4 ) a n d that

this

characteristic increases with age. A m o n g several l a n g u a g e s s p o k e n by the r e s p o n d e n t s T u r k i s h w a s indicated as s p o k e n by all. J u d e o - S p a n i s h w a s claimed by all a b o v e the a g e of 41, and in decreasing proportion b e l o w that age. French w a s spoken by all a b o v e the a g e of 60, and again in d e c r e a s i n g p r o p o r t i o n below that a g e with the e x c e p t i o n of the very f e w 16 y e a r old r e s p o n d e n t s (4 in total) w h o s h o w e d an a v e r a g e of 5 0 % . E n g l i s h is m o s t salient in the age group between 2 6 - 4 0 at the rate of 100%, and in declining proportion at both ends, whereas H e b r e w is indicated as increasing with the age group, fluctuating between 3 7 . 5 % at 17-25 and 6 6 . 6 % at 60+. T h e acquisition of these languages w a s not h a p h a z a r d . E m a n c i p a t i o n d u r i n g the twentieth century, in the f o r m of full citizenship u n d e r the Turkish R e p u b l i c , p r e s e n t e d the T u r k i s h J e w s with a l e g i t i m a t e national identity w i t h o u t a direct threat to their religious identity. T h e logical m o v e w a s to a d o p t the Turkish national language, based on the a s s u m p t i o n of integration and social m o b i l i t y directly r e l a t e d to t h e i d e o l o g y of a u n i f i e d nation c e m e n t e d by a c o m m o n language. This m o v e w a s not a d i f f i c u l t one s i n c e with t h e aid of the A l l i a n c e ' s Eurocentric d i s c o u r s e the general belief hac: already been established that Judeo-Spanish was the language of the uneducatec Eastern Jew. T h e m o v e f r o m Judeo-Spanish to French had already started well b e f o r e t h e i n t e r v e n t i o n of t h e n e w T u r k i s h R e p u b l i c ' s social

policies

Contrary to Ger§on's evaluation of foreign languages policies at the outset of the T u r k i s h R e p u b l i c , w h e r e she c l a i m s " l e a r n i n g a f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e was regarded w a r i l y " (Ger§on, 1986:19), French was still regarded as the p e r f e c t r e f l e c t i o n of W e s t e r n i s a t i o n , m o d e r n i s a t i o n a n d high culture. In f a c t , the F r e n c h L y c é e Galatasaray provided most of the high g o v e r n m e n t employees until very recently (Lewis, 1961:120). T h u s , it is important to underline that the a d o p t i o n of T u r k i s h did not i n c l u d e the dismissal of F r e n c h f r o m the T u r k i s h J e w i s h linguistic repertoire but o n l y the d e m i s e of the a l r e a d y i m p a i r e d J u d e o - S p a n i s h . At t h e s a m e t i m e , F r e n c h ( t o g e t h e r w i t h o t h e r foreign languages, such as English, G e r m a n and Italian) w a s an a p p r o v e d anc: encouraged vehicle f o r better education and social mobility in the mainstream as well as the minority societies.

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Foreign languages were taught on three different levels: In state schools, as a second language; in foreign schools, and in some state schools called Anadolu Liseleri, as the main language of education; and at certain universities as second language or as the language of education (Demircan, 1988:116). The apparent surface contradiction which Ger§on seems to have picked up is the general dislike f o r minority languages in the Turkish Republic and the status of international foreign languages. The national language ideology was targeted on the first language of Turkish citizens and not m a j o r foreign languages as a second language. Turkish was to be the common vernacular for all of the Turkish citizens. In line with the 'one nation one language' theory, it was to be the cement to bind in 'minor' differences. On the other hand, the need to establish international e c o n o m i c relations without the intermediary of interpreters who as a general rule came from the religious minorities, had to be remedied by encouraging the acquisition of a second international language in education. As a consequence, the longestablished foreign schools, despite their number sharply decreasing after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, continued to impart their languages together with their cultural values. The following paragraph, f r o m Ovadia's article on the difficulties and cultural alienation one encounters growing up in a multilingual social and education setting where bilingualism is not in a diglossic state, is an eloquent illustration of this point: The dominance of Judeo-Spanish lasted all of four hundred years. Then following the capitulations, Jewish schools teaching in French were launched as part of the European rush to set up schools in their own languages on Ottoman territory. M y mother's generation attended primary school in French. Result: an old lady, 'inherited' |the relationship] from my mother, whom I called the other day, blurted out a poem in French. She had written it in a bout of ennui, expressed, of course within set patterns learned at school. B o t h f o r m and c o n t e n t were translations. There was no sign of her family's own desires and sensibilities. O n e would think she grew up in 19th century F r a n c e . T h e artificial l a n g u a g e she learned at the local H a y d a r p a s a French school had infiltrated into everything, including her thoughts and feelings. It is like the language I used in my teenage diary; the feelings of a child in grown up shoes, c o n s p i c u o u s like an o v e r s i z e d g a r m e n t , a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s language (Ovadia, 1990:17). W h i l e d i s c u s s i n g the d i f f e r e n t ' m e n t a l i t i e s ' , c o m p a r e d to the mainstream society's, in the sense of way of thinking or way of life of the Turkish Jews, the following participant underlined the influence of the foreign schools in the formation of the specific Turkish Jewish ' m e n t a l i t y ' and described the difference with the current foreign education in the words:

156 J U D E O - S P A N I S H I N T H E T U R K I S H S O C I A L

CONTEXT

j- yes, yes it is true, but don't forget that we were educated in a very special French school, the other French schools are not the same, that is, 95% of Dame de Sion's teachers are Turkish, and they transmit their ways of thinking, the French [teachers] used to give us their way of thinking by driving it into us m-it is not only giving the language... j-it doesn't, nowadays it only gives the language. When Ziva went |to teach at the Dame de Sion], she taught them [ the children] mathematics and that's it. Can I make myself clear? That is, in our case, those assemblies every morning, day in day out they drilled it in, whenever you asked the smallest question the answer you received... talking, it was very different style, that is we were educated in a very special school. (t4:125) Therefore, it is not simply the target language which suffered but the speakers themselves ended up being confused about their cultural values. 1 would dispute Ger§on's evaluation of French as a "neutral language that has nothing to do with the Jewish community" (Ger§on, 1986:73). Her results showed that mixing French and Turkish was regarded negatively by her participants. Thus, I presume that by 'neutral' she means that French is not considered to be specifically Jewish as one could consider Judeo-Spanish. French also is used by most educated minorities and Turkish Muslims of a certain age. Although this is true, what is debatable is the extent to which French language and culture infiltrated the Turkish Jewish linguistic repertoire and the community's world views. In other words, as the old lady in Ovadia's example and the above participant's point on the world views received from French teachers, the Turkish Jews followed the French example not only at the level of the educated elite like the other communities, but through this elite they followed it en masse. The elite borrowed the French language and culture from their French teachers, and the masses borrowed them from the elite's speech as a sign of modernity or social status. Some of the French loans are so well established in Judeo-Spanish that the speaker uses them unaware of their French origin. Sephiha coined the name of this form of Judeo-Spanish as 'Judeo-Fragnol' from 'Judeo-Fran§ais-Espagnol' (Sephiha, 1973:44). Thus, borrowings from French are not always obvious to the speakers or the audience (e.g. they are unmarked) and cannot be evaluated independently. Furthermore, French might in principle have been a 'neutral language 1 , but the circumstances of its acquisition in fact meant that it could not be neutral, but only ideologically loaded (Graff, 1994).

The Alliance's French curriculum focused specifically on "a mission civilisatrice designed to spread the French language and culture" (Rodrigue, 1990:75). Local languages were dismissed as 'jargons', not fit to express elevated thoughts (ibid:87). In a way the Alliance's colonialist ideology was identical with that being exported to the rest of the French empire.

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T h e fact that the Eurocentric discourse w a s internalised by the intellectuals from the broader Muslim society as well as by Jewish society had a double impact on the construction of the Turkish Jewish identity. Emulation of the Western values became an imperative endorsed both by the nationalist discourse through Turkish, and the elitist discourse through French. The resulting paternalistic discourse is illustrated in the speech of one of the leading Turkish J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y representatives, w h o was trying to emphasise the importance of adopting Turkish as a vernacular for the Jewish community in 1929: T h e duty which falls to intellectuals and individuals like us who understand the needs of the times is: to show the right direction to the people who are behind and wait for guidance, to e x p l a i n their national d u t y , to r e i n f o r c e their s e n s e of responsibility towards the country, to underline the advantages in seeing the country's advancement/development and happiness, to explain to the people and those who do not understand it the imperative of learning Turkish and using it in all operations, and not only to make our coreligionists a c k n o w l e d g e this and convince them of it, but also to help them to see the important role of this necessary c o m p o n e n t in the interaction between Turkish and Jewish elements (in Galante, 1947:159). Supported by national education policies after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and by some f o r m s of sociopolitical pressures, Turkish became the everyday communicative tool for the Turkish Jewish community competing with and lately overtaking French as a prestige and modernity marker (Bornes-Varol, 1982:523). Even so, at least in the transition period, the variety of Turkish the Turkish Jews used was considered to be a non-standard Turkish. This was because of the nature of the community with a highly dense social network perpetuating some of the paralinguistic styles. Although it is argued by some of the community members that the quality of Turkish spoken today, especially by the younger generation, improved highly compared to the transition period, which approximately stretches until the 1 9 6 0 ' s , I shall later on argue that the T u r k i s h J e w s are still partly distinguished from the mainstream society in their different way of speaking in inter- and intra-group communications. T h e idea that one can think better in one language than another is popular among the Turkish Jews. The evolutionary model of the language is invariably applied to the cognitive competence of the individual. That is, the quality of thinking is directly related to the language in use; if the language has developed an authoritative literature, a large lexicon, it is believed that it will improve the quality of thinking too.

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CONTEXT

now English is a richer language, |it is a language which] gives one more ability of thinking, that is, it is a language which gives more possibility[ies)| in thinking, there are more words, it is nicer, it is more flexible, you can think better that's all. (t2:60) Folk linguistics dictates that the language in use is instrumental to the cognitive process of the user. Starting from the nineteenth century, French as the 'language of culture' was the first language to challenge Judeo-Spanish'3 status on the grounds that "the Judeo-Spanish sentence was 'lame', the language 'miserable' and 'mean'" (AAIU, France XVII, F. 28, Navon, annual report, Balat, 1897-1898, cited in Rodrigue, 1990:85). Hebrew was not in a better position since it "led [the speakers] to like chicanery [ q u i b b l i n g ] ' ( A A I U , Turquie VIII. H., L o u p o , 14 February 1886, cited in R o d r i g u e , 1990:81), and Turkish stood no chance because of its lack of civilisation. Today, the same line of thought is latently present in the Turkish context in general. The difference is in that French has been replaced by English. In the present day the Turkish Jewish linguistic repertoire, in parallel to the mainstream repertoire, adds English to this array of languages as reflecting modernity in the f o r m of Americanism, intellectual development and globalisation, in the sense of lifting the linguistic barriers, at least between professionals and intellectuals. It is important not to lose sight of the role of Hebrew while describing the languages present in the Turkish Jewish linguistic repertoire. Although H e b r e w is not used as a day-to-day c o m m u n i c a t i v e tool a m o n g s t the community, it has a double symbolic meaning: it is the sacred language of prayers which provided continuity among the diversity of Jewish experience; for millennia, and at the same time, from the early nineteenth century to the: present day, the language is endorsed by the Zionist ideology and symbolises the independent Jewish State, Israel. The religious aspect of Hebrew compels every male child (and currently most girls) achieving the age of thirteen to acquire a minimum skill of reading in the language for the prayers. In addition some acquire it attending a Jewish school (taught as a second language, a few hours a week), by private tuition, or studying/living in Israel for a certain period. A n estimation from the data f r o m the questionnaires shows that c o m p a r e d to Judeo-Spanish, French and English, out of 6 8 respondents, competence in Hebrew falls to less than 50% at all age groups except the 66.6% at the age group 60+ (see Appendix 4). In a more in depth analysis: only nine of those evaluated themselves as good or very good speakers of Hebrew (13%), and eighteen as below average speakers (26%). A s a result, despite its highly symbolic value, Hebrew is not a daily language in the Turkish Jewish linguistic context.

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In s u m , although all the d i f f e r e n t languages have their d i f f e r e n t practical uses, it is the different symbolic meanings attached to each one of them which has motivated and reinforced the shift f r o m Judeo-Spanish to Turkish as the national vernacular with the residual display of a marginal Turkish Jewish identity.

The Turkish Jewish identity kit in relation to Judeo-Spanish: "JudeoSpanish is nothing for us, we start our history from Israel, JudeoSpanish is a language of exile" Most of the participants agreed on the 'cultural' character of JudeoSpanish. But 'cultural' meant different things to different participants. Some explained it as a 'way of life' which reflects itself in the material culture or folk culture such as music, songs, cuisine etc., and the objective markers such as language, in their case, Judeo-Spanish, their specific accent or the way they speak. Others introduced the idea of different f o r m s of interpretations of the Judaic tradition according to the specific culture or ethnicity, pointing out immediately that the difference was in form and not in content. That is, the difference was only in the way different groups performed the traditions or rituals, for example the different liturgical music or different traditional cuisine. But on the whole everyone of them applied the same judaic laws. Most of the participants whom I interviewed interpreted 'culture' as 'high culture' or 'elite culture'. According to this interpretation the Sephardim did not have anything to show at least in the last couple of centuries. The Sephardim had lost their cultural vitality and had sunk into the obscurantist, backward way of life until the intervention of the Alliance. In Giles & Johnson's terms, their 'perceived vitality' appeared to be low (Giles & J o h n s o n , 1987). Based on these facts the participants argued that the Sephardim did not produce anything universally accepted as authoritative literary or scientific work. The Sephardim on the whole, did not pay much attention to education for culture, education was rather a bridge for economic advancement. In these circumstances, the participants concluded, it was not a great surprise that the current Turkish Jews were not interested in JudeoSpanish or anything to d o with their past, in short they were apathetic. Interestingly enough, it was always the community which w a s apathetic, uninterested in 'culture', etc. but never the speaker her/himself individually. In this sense, the c o m m u n i t y was objectified as a separate entity f r o m the participant. Although the participant belonged to that community s/he was different. In other words, the individual negotiated the boundaries of her/his identity, distancing her/himself f r o m the apparent negative sections, at the same time, positioning her/himself on the positive sections of the collective identity kit.

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IN T H E T U R K I S H

SOCIAL

CONTEXT

At this stage I s o m e t i m e s ventured to challenge the participants with the a r g u m e n t that starting with the A l l i a n c e , and s u b s e q u e n t l y through the national l a n g u a g e policies s u p p o r t e d by the J e w i s h intellectual elite, the Turkish Jews were indoctrinated that the language they spoke or the apparently n o n - e x i s t e n t culture w e r e u n w o r t h y of a n y attention and t h e r e f o r e , it w a s natural f o r them not to be motivated to rescue those s a m e e l e m e n t s of their culture. Invariably the response f r o m the participants w a s in the f o r m of an a p o l o g i a f o r the state of the S e p h a r d i c c u l t u r e as a f a c t . S o m e of t h e p a r t i c i p a n t s a d d e d that it should be p o s s i b l e to m a k e t h e T u r k i s h J e w s understand that "one language was not necessarily the alternative of the other". In other words, the present day Turkish J e w s should be able to speak standard Turkish but at the s a m e time should continue to use J u d e o - S p a n i s h in private if n e c e s s a r y . T h e p a r t i c i p a n t s ' p r e s c r i p t i v e a t t i t u d e d o e s n o t take i n t o consideration the well established opinion that "today those w h o speak J u d e o S p a n i s h are either old f a s h i o n e d or b a c k w a r d " , "biigiin J u d e o - E s p a n y o l konu§anlar ya d e m o d e , ya geri" (t2.72). M y contention in this case is that the objectification and the negative representation of the Judeo-Spanish speaker is based on the Eurocentric d i s c o u r s e the A l l i a n c e introduced with the F r e n c h curriculum and on the Turkish national discourse since the nineteenth century, T h e latter in itself was modelled on French and English Eurocentric discourse, since the aim was to emulate the Western democracies and w a y of life in order to h a v e an e c o n o m i c a l l y a d v a n c e d and civilised society ( a c c o r d i n g to the Western norms of civilisation). A s a result, the Turkish Jewish identity carries the d o u b l e internal negative e l e m e n t of marginality, first in c o m p a r i s o n to the b r o a d e r M u s l i m society and s e c o n d , in c o m p a r i s o n t o t h e

'European'

Ashkenazi Jews. This agrees with A n g e l ' s description of his childhood in the States: I r e m e m b e r the a r g u m e n t s w e used to h a v e as children. T h e A s h k e n a z i m w o u l d c h a l l e n g e us: " W h a t h a v e the S e p h a r d i m done since 1492? W h o m have you p r o d u c e d ? In all honesty, can your culture c o m p a r e in any w a y with V i l n a or L o d z or s o m e other place?" A n d I had no a n s w e r s , f o r I did n o t k n o w there were answers. Unfortunately, f e w of our elders in the Sephardic c o m m u n i t y k n e w e n o u g h of their o w n history to enlighten the y o u n g e r generation. A n d so, I and my entire generation w e r e raised without a history (Angel, 1971:65). T h e narrative seem to be well internalised by the T u r k i s h J e w s and the same questions were directed to m e when I inquired about the Sephardic culture and the language by the Turkish J e w s themselves. T h e tonality of voice w h e n the questions were put to m e seemed to include the answers.

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show us an example, who wrote what?. (dd2:) Another one denied even the existence of such a concept for the Sephardim: M- when Jewish [Judeo-Spanish| disappears the Sephardic culture/... R - 1 do not believe that there is such a thing as the Sephardic culture, we did not leave anything unfortunately.... (t2:57) They both knew that there was no objective proof of Sephardic 'culture', the aim was to show me that these were the historical facts one could not deny. T h e Sephardic religious f u n d a m e n t a l i s t was 'backward' or 'obscurantist' as opposed to the Ashkenazi religious fundamentalist who was 'orthodox'; the Sephardic were 'indifferent' to the Judaic religion, when in the same circumstances, the Ashkenazi were 'liberals'. That these 'objective historical facts' were the result of the Western representation of the Orient and that it did not give the Western European Ashkenazi culture the right to be a role model in every sense was of no consequence. The fact was that the Sephardic language and culture was in a sad state and one could only collect what was left of the language and culture to avoid complete disappearance. The purpose is to keep an archive for academic research or display in order to prove its existence in the past. From this perspective Judeo-Spanish was an 'heirloom' which, according to some, at one end of the spectrum, should be catalogued for the generations to come for information, and for others, at the other end, it should be transmitted to the next generations in the practical sense, that is, using it in their daily lives, an issue to be discussed in the following chapter.

Ethnicity and nationhood The first group above did not believe that it was possible to revive the language which was so corrupted and did not have any authoritative literature. The best one could do was to try and file everything in archives. Subdivisions in this group were on the basis of the belief that Judeo-Spanish was not the locally unifying agent anymore, and that Judeo-Spanish should not even aspire to unify a relatively small group since it is dangerously divisive. My opinion is that this sort of differentiation is a luxury for Judaism,... I think that Hebrew must have a priority for Judaism. (t2:50)

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CONTEXT

The Zionist discourse, including the concept of peoplehood and nationhood were often used in this form of argument. T h e Jewish people or nation did not need the local languages of 'exile' anymore; they had Hebrew as the religious sacred language, and now the same language w a s the national language of the only Jewish state, Israel. Thus, Hebrew, the Jewish language par excellence, is the unifying agent. Furthermore, Judeo-Spanish represented the language of exile which should not be reproduced: ma- there wouldn't be a language called Judeo-Spanish, if the Jews had not been expelled from there..." (t2:51) ym- Judeo-Spanish is nothing for us, we start our history from Israel, Judeo-Spanish is a language of exile. (t2:1) It is a language which was imposed on Jews but which had no Jewish character: I wished that it was Hebrew rather than Judeo-Spanish,... if we look at history, Judeo-Spanish is a language which came about in a situation beyond their control, in a piece of land where they were in contact with other nations, a compulsory language, during its lifetime it produced several books, poems, literary and scientific w o r k s , but it is not Jewish... (t2.47) ...that is, it is not nice that the J e w s use Judeo-Spanish. W e were expelled from there. Are we supposed to keep alive their language too?. (t4.45) For these participants, and many others, the important component of their identity kit is the all-encompassing Judaism. In this sense the concept of religion was incorporated in the 'culture', 'way of life', 'peoplehood', 'nationhood', etc. Matza explains this link of language, traditionalism and religiousness focusing on the economic class and education of the Levantine Jews. She concludes that they were mainly divided in t w o categories: the cosmopolitans and the traditionalists. The cosmopolitans were educated at foreign schools, sometimes in Europe, open to new ideas, and although some were devout Jews, most had a more relaxed attitude towards religion. The traditionalists, on the other hand, were f r o m a poorer section, lived in dense social networks, isolated from the mainstream society, attended mostly religious schools, and as a consequence continued the usage of Judeo-Spanish as a vernacular (Matza, 1990). According to Galante, the confusion betweer, religion and language was at the extreme at the end of the nineteenth century when the obscurantist religious sector of the Jewish community could not differentiate between 'language' and 'religion', and considered the shift from Judeo-Spanish to Turkish as a step towards the loss of the Judaic religion

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(Galante, 1947:153). My personal observations in Israel, in the early 7 0 ' s , amongst Turkish immigrants from the 1948 aliah proved that the confusion still continued several decades after Galante's observations. In other words, on several occasions, when I came across some of these immigrants and talked to them they would not accept or believe that I was Jewish simply because of my incompetence in Judeo-Spanish and the quality of my Turkish, which they considered 'proper' Muslim Turkish. The confusion still continues today. H o w e v e r this is not a question of education level or religious obscurantism any more. It is rather the confusion of the meaning of Judaism as a religion, tradition, culture, way of life, and its reflection in the m e d i u m of c o m m u n i c a t i o n (cf also A. M a l i n o w s k i , 1982:13). The following example is taken f r o m an interview with a highly educated m e m b e r of the Jewish c o m m u n i t y . W h e n I inquired if J u d e o Spanish's erosion would affect the local Sephardic culture he replied: i- of course it is doomed, because it is almost disappearing anyway, that is, those who live in Istanbul, I believe that some of the Jewish traditions live with the language; who applies the kashrut today? Believe me, that is, I believe that kashrut and Jewish traditions continue in the homes where Judeo-Spanish is used as the daily language... m- how do you link it to culture?... that is do you perceive religion as culture? i- our religion, culture, language is a whole parcel, in any case culture is brought by religion, and the way of expressing it is through language, in this way all complement the religion, f o r e x a m p l e N . A . w o u l d h a v e t h i s c o n v e r s a t i o n in [JudeoJSpanish, he speaks Jewish at home, follows the religion, our age group, he is not a graduate or he h a s n ' t finished the lycee,... and he is more attached to the traditions... those who are not like this seem to me as exceptions, ... personally I think that those w h o speak [Judeo|Spanish at h o m e are those who apply the traditions, that's my belief but that doesn't mean that those who speak Turkish do not apply them. (t2.63) H e straightaway associated Sephardic culture to Jewish rituals and traditions since locally they are equivalent c o n c e p t s unless mentioned otherwise. Following that he associates the language to the strength of belief and religious/traditional practices. The fact that there are other ethnic Jews in Istanbul who do not speak Judeo-Spanish and are at the same time devout does not seem to occur to the participant at the beginning of the conversation. Right at the end he seems to realise the limitations of his interpretation of the religious/traditionalist Turkish Jew, and adds the monolingual Turkishspeaking Jews, that is non-Judeo-Spanish speakers. In other words, the stereotype is the Judeo-Spanish speaker who is at the same time religious/ traditionalist; the non-Judeo-Spanish speaking devout Turkish Jew came as a second thought and is almost an exception to the rule.

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From this participant's point of view, Judeo-Spanish is associated with religion and tradition and their practice. In Fishman's terms they are the "cultural implementations" which, are the part of the identity components which are the least resistant to change

"when the original language-in-

ethnoculture linkage is substantially weakened" (Fishman, 1991:35). T h e additional information the participant includes on the speaker's educational background implies that higher education is conducive to integration and modernity. This is similar to Renard's claim concerning language loyalty and the social background of the speech community: One f i n d s this situation [speakers who continue to use Judeo-Spanish] in old centres in the Middle East where socially and culturally u n d e r - d e v e l o p e d c o m m u n i t i e s still survive (Renard, 1971:721). Mizrahi comes to the same conclusion in her study of the American Sephardim: Greater Alignment and Adherence to Sephardic principals and practices would be expected in those who are m o r e recent arrivals, who have less formal education, who use language(s) other than English at home, and who are not divorced (Mizrahi, 1993:41). In other words, the stronger Sephardic identity and implementation of rituals/traditions are expected f r o m those who are new to the dominant culture, those with a low level of education, those who continue using another language (in all probability their ethnolanguage) other than the d o m i n a n t language at home, and those who would fall in the traditionalist/conservative: category. It is my opinion that the participant's view which is in accordance with Mizrahi's findings and Fishman's theory on ethnocultural identity and language loyalty is difficult to apply to the case of the Turkish Jews. The picture is too complex to fit in a tight correlation such as 'language shift