The legislation of the NSL in Israel that cancelled the official status of Arabic in 2018 coincided with official initiatives for developing a new multilingual educational policy for Israel's segregated schooling systems. The policy aims mainly to provide different targets for the teaching of different languages in Israel, with a special emphasis on the need to teach Hebrew and Arabic for fostering intercultural dialogue between Arabs and Jews (Tannenbaum & Shohamy, 2018). Considering the political orientation of language policies which are largely driven by the ideologies, attitudes, and beliefs of various stakeholders (Shohamy, 2006), I ask: How do members of the Palestinian-Arab minority perceive the tension between the demotion of Arabic – their mother tongue and the transmitter of their national and cultural identity – and the implementation of a new multilingual educational policy?
To address this question, I draw upon recent theorizations in the fields of language policy and applied linguistics that highlight the centrality of studying the communicative practices of minority language speakers as basic building blocks in the production of democratic societies (e.g., Rampton et al., 2018; Stroud, 2018). Therefore, examining whether a top-down multilingual policy serves transformative agendas entails studying the bottom-up practices and perceptions of marginalized groups, who are often disadvantaged by such policies. Recent research recognizes such a focus on practice and treats language educational policy as processual, dynamic, and in motion. This means that policy never just "is," but rather "does" (McCarty, 2011; Rampton et al., 2018).
On that basis, I investigate whether the legislative change of Arabic from an official language to a language with a "special status" has changed the way Arabic-speaking teachers and students perceive and respond to a top-down multilingual educational policy. I present data from interviews I conducted with teachers and students from twenty high schools in various Arab towns and villages. Data analysis suggests that cancelling the official status of Arabic simultaneously negatively impacts its speakers' sense of belonging, worth, and collectivity but also encourages the emergence of new forms of activism and ingroup solidarity. Analysis indicates that for a multilingual educational policy in Israel to become part of a transformative project towards social justice and cohesion, there is a need to deconstruct the underlying frameworks that reproduce and perpetuate injustices towards Palestinians (e.g., the NSA).
References:
1. McCarty, T. (2011). Introducing ethnography and language policy. In T. McCarty (Ed.), Ethnography and language policy (pp. 1-28). London: Routledge.
3. Rampton, B., *Cooke, M., & Holmes, S. (2018). Promoting linguistic citizenship: Issues, problems, and possibilities. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 233: 1–29.
4. Shohamy, E. (2006). Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. New York: Routledge.
5. Stroud, C.(2018). Linguistic Citizenship. In L. Lim, C. Stroud, & L. Wee (Eds.), The Multilingual Citizen: Towards a politics of language for agency and change (pp. 17–39). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
6. Tannenbaum, M., & Shohamy, E. (2018). Final report – a new multilingual education policy for Israel. Submitted to the chief scientist of the Ministry of Education. Jerusalem. [in Hebrew]
