The Druze community, although a very small minority in the world, have a substantial and influential status in the Middle East. The Druze story is an extremely mysterious and fascinating one, especially due to the fact that their religion—the most important characteristic—is held secret not only from non-Druze, but also from non-religious Druze. Thus, having an inner and authentic knowledge about the Druze is a very hard task without studying the foundations of their faith—which is concealed. This, obviously, led to manipulation of facts by certain scholars, politicians and other people of influence to present distorted facts about them in order to fit their views and serve their agendas. Therefore, one should be critical and careful of what he/she reads/hears about the Druze, especially as regards information coming from non-members of the community, or, alternatively, very biased members of the community. One of the hardest missions is to find out about their true origins, since there are numerous contradicting pieces of information, alongside the fact that the Druze have been persecuted in the Middle East and consequently, had to conceal their ethnic and authentic identity throughout history and live in disguise.
The present book is extremely sentimental to me personally, not only due to the fact that I am a member of the community. I have been fortunate enough to gain deep, inner knowledge of the foundations of the faith, while at the same time, growing up in a non-Druze locality with extremely few members of the community residing there at the time. Having studied at a non-Druze school without gaining any formal Druze education had increased my curiosity, thirst for knowledge and eagerness to learn about the faith. I am infinitely indebted to my late mother for all the inner knowledge I had gained about the faith for decades, most of which are unknown to even many insiders. I remember ever since I was a child, although I was never religious, my mother would ask me and my siblings to sit with her while she was praying with the holy books, would share with us invaluable knowledge, and hand each one of us religious books that we were ‘allowed’, as non-religious, to read and get religious insights from. My late mother, who was ʕaqela ‘religiously wise’, had such a great passion for the religion, a passion like no other. Throughout her life, she would re-read her great collection of religious and holy books, constantly pray and frequently go to the religious shrine. She gained insurmountable amount of knowledge about the faith, and she constantly tried to instill whatever knowledge she could in me and my siblings. During the last months of her life, I was glued to her bed at the hospital, where I was astonished to discover that she memorised and recited each and every word of the six main Druze holy books. Although she had suffered from certain memory disorders at the time, I would only hear her ‘read’ the holy books from her memory over and over again. When the undesirable happened and I had lost the closest person to my heart; my mother, I vowed to gift her back for the invaluable knowledge that I acquired from her. At the same time, my late father, whom I lost when I was 16 years old in tragic circumstances, had gifted me with invaluable knowledge related to his passion-politics. Since my mother loved the religion in an inconceivable manner, I knew I had to connect it, somehow, to her passion. Having an innate talent in the study of languages, I decided to connect my linguistic study somehow, to my late parents’ passions, in the form that I am sharing with you in this book.
Having lived among non-Druze, mainly pro-Palestinian Arabs for twenty years, and then among only Druze, mainly pro-Israeli for sixteen years, I had closely observed the sociolinguistics of the Arab population, witnessed their views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and profiled them against that of the Druze. As will be discussed in more detail in the following sections, the Druze people in Israel have their own distinct sector, separate from that of the Arabs. The Druze community has also gone through a process of gaining a distinctive political and national identity, different in many aspects from the Arabs in Israel. Although the sociolinguistics of the Arabs and Druze in Israel is a fascinating one, not enough fieldwork has been done to provide a thorough analysis of it. Therefore, I decided to dedicate my research to it. However, it was obvious to me that I needed to detach myself from the socio-political turmoil going on there, and conduct the study as much of an ‘outsider’ as I possibly could. Thus, the best option for me was to move overseas, disconnect myself from the socio-political situation in Israel, and try to come up with as much objectivity and neutrality as possible. The past six years I have been living in amazing Australia, completely detached from the Middle Eastern theme, and I was able to conduct this study neutrally from a far.
I have encountered numerous challenges throughout this study though, both on the academic as well as the non-academic levels that have inevitably had certain effects on the research processes and outcomes. Since my fieldwork had to be conducted in Israel, I had to go on several trips to collect data for my research. The logistics of the fieldwork, however, turned out to be more complicated than expected due to the following reasons: first, some of the participants who had agreed to take part in the study did not attend and so further attempts had to be made to recruit other participants under time constraints, which were not always successful; hence, I had to go on further trips to conduct more fieldwork, which resulted in certain delays. Second, due to the nature of the journey back and forth from Australia to Israel, which required three flights in each direction each time, I have encountered numerous issues such as several cancellations of my flights without prior notice, contracting viruses at airports and not being able to get medical support in certain countries due to their refusal to issue me entry permits simply due to my passport’s nationality, as well as the long jet lag that I had to suffer from each time, to mention but a few. All this and more, had certain effects on my overall wellbeing, which, in turn had certain implications on the study.
In addition, recruiting participants in the Golan Heights, which moved from Syrian to Israeli control following the Six-Day War in 1967, has been challenging in itself. Since the Druze community in the Golan Heights lives under constant uncertainty regarding its future and the fear or hope that the Golan Heights would be returned to Syrian rule one day, the process of recruiting participants there has been more complicated than with participants in other regions. Furthermore, some of the participants who were willing to participate were, in fact, relatively reluctant to be fully open to express their true opinions and stances. Above all, it has been nearly impossible to recruit any first and second-generation participants with Israeli citizenship in the Golan Heights. This was mainly due to their fears of either being exposed or criticised by the community, despite the fact that they have been notified that all measures will be taken to assure the confidentiality and anonymity of the participants, as well as the protection of their privacy. Nonetheless, I have very much enjoyed the extremely ‘bumpy’ ride knowing that I have achieved what I desired and quenched my thirst for more knowledge in the field.
The present book focuses mainly on the phenomenon of codeswitching among the Israeli Arab and Druze communities. Research into codeswitching, generally defined as alternating between two (or more) different languages in the same conversation, has been flourishing over the last few decades. Yet, especially in the field of social, political and collective identity, much is still open for investigation. Although codeswitching research has benefited from the development of models and theories, there is a certain gap in the scholarly literature when it comes to a model that further illustrates the link between codeswitching and sociopolitical identity. Moreover, research into Palestinian Arabic1 and the dominance of Israeli Hebrew2 in Israel and its effect on the Arab and Druze sectors and their language is still in its infancy. Consequently, the present book has developed a new model of codeswitching and sociopolitical identity, while examining the various aspects of codeswitching behaviour among the Israeli Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze sectors. The findings show clear different codeswitching behaviours across the different sectors, and that such variance has a link to sociopolitical identity, which subsequently has brought about the introduction of the new model.
The present book consists of five chapters. The first chapter presents a thorough background information about codeswitching; Arabic, Hebrew and the Israeli ‘Nation-State Law’; the Druze faith; the Arabs and Druze in Israel; and the link between language, codeswitching and identity. In the second chapter, I have examined the language of the Druze community in Israel as going through the process of convergence and a composite Matrix Language formation, resulting in a mixed or split language, based on Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Turnover Hypothesis (2002). Longitudinal data of Palestinian Arabic/Israeli Hebrew codeswitching from the Israeli Druze community, collected in 2000 and 2017, indicate that there is a composite Matrix Language formation resulting in a mixed language. The third chapter presents the new mixed language and its special features upon application of Auer (1999) and Myers-Scotton’s (2003) theoretical models pertaining to mixed languages arising out of codeswitching. The fourth chapter examines the relationship between codeswitching and sociopolitical identity, while testing the various aspects of codeswitching among the Israeli Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze sectors. Drawing insights from intersubjective contact linguistics and indexicality, the chapter attempts to offer a model that would facilitate the analyses of codeswitching as an index and construct of sociopolitical identity. Finally, the fifth chapter examines and compares language and identity among the Druze of the Golan Heights, who were moved from Syrian to Israeli control following the Six-Day War in 1967, and the Israeli Druze. In light of the notion of the interrelatedness of language, social-political situations and identity; this chapter examines the relationship between codeswitching, mixed varieties of language, sociopolitical situations related to the case study and identity, reporting on a comparative study of the Druze in the Golan Heights and the Israeli Druze. After the application of various theories and concepts from intersubjective contact linguistics, the chapter shows how ‘sandwiched’ communities create new quasi-national identities and language varieties.
It is my hope that the nature of the research and analyses suggested herein will be of use for others interested in investigating the field, and ultimately also contribute to the understanding of how dominant languages influence minorities and how sociopolitical identity influences and is influenced by language behaviour, and how, specifically, the dominance of Israeli Hebrew influences speakers of Palestinian Arabic to varying degrees, depending on sociopolitical affiliations. Additionally, the present study aims to provide an insight into bilingual minorities’ linguistic reaction to and processing of state-centered policies of distinction, inclusion and exclusion, especially in a conflict setting.
Eve Afifa Kheir
Adelaide, Australia
September 2022