ARE PALESTINIANS A SPEECH COMMUNITY?

By A S BISHTAWI

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that languages need at least 100,000 speakers to survive the ages. And although wars, persecution, government policies and economic hardships make preserving a limited language a continuous struggle the majority (if not all) of Palestinians have preserved their Arabic thanks to their relatively large number (almost five millions) backed by another 295 million Arabs. As a matter of fact some Palestinians in the occupied territories (The West Bank and Gaza Strip) speak Hebrew so well and look so identical to some Jews that Israelis sometimes find it hard to distinguish between them and other Israelis and may go to great length in a semblance of casual conversation to find out the true identity of the speaker.

Several definitions proposed by students of sociolinguistics for speech community appear to be 'constrained' by geographical criterion whether such connection is openly stated or embraced by implication. While geographical boundaries for the speech community may be deemed necessary in certain cases, it may appear unjustified in others. This essay seeks to propose how such a geographical determinant would view Palestinians living in Lebanon or any other countries where they may be found in significant numbers, a speech community but not all Palestinians living in all of these countries.

DEFINITIONS
There are a large number of studies on speech communities rationalized by the importance of this subject as the primary unit of analysis for sociolinguists. Some of these include Gumperz (1968, 1972), Blom & Gumperz (1972), Fishman (1966), Hymes (1977), Bauman & Sherzer (1974), Labov (1970), bell (1976) and many others.

The 'Shibboleth' test
As Lebanese communities shifted from one speech code to another, both mono lingually and bilingually, under the influence of language loyalty, religion, and the fast changing social, political and and psychological variables, brought about mainly by the war (1974 -1989)1 there remained a speech code used by Christians and Muslims in certain informal and business domains, refined during decades of relative political and economic stability and came to be regarded by a large number of Lebanese as an embodiment of a compromise before internal and external factors plunged the country into an open conflict. As long as 'normal' circumstances prevailed it was neither necessary, nor indeed possible, except for the more linguistically conscious, to distinguish the ethnic, social and political background between one speaker and another as long as all adhered to using that particular code. But as the war intensified, militias of all sides became aware of the urgency to stop 'infiltrators' from crossing into their new geographical boundaries by finding additional means of identification in the absence of any major distinguishing physical markings.

The linguistic 'weapon' was born out of such need and many others, and certain members of the various militias were now able to examine the peculiarities of the different speech codes among members of other warring factions to detect phonetic and semantic variations which may reveal their true identity. Such skills must have reached a very advanced level judging from the hundreds of young people found shot under bridges, behind walls or in wells close to where 'flying' checkpoints were erected by both major factions as they sought to seek revenge for previous similar acts, or merely to eliminate as many members of their opponents as possible. Clearly some of the victims were identifiable through papers found on them, or physically, to ascertain whether suspects were circumcised or not and therefore Muslims or Christians, but others were singled out as members of rival factions through their code variations.

It is said by many eye witnesses that certain Lebanese Phalange militias used to produce a tomato to people they stop at checkpoints during the civil war and ask them to name it. If the suspects used banadora, they were allowed to continue to their original destination having satisfied their questioners they were Lebanese and sons and daughters of Lebanese, but if some used bandora they would be recognised as Palestinians, and shot on the spot or driven away for interrogation. If there was cause for suspicion that the person or persons concerned do not 'sound' completely Lebanese, other speech tests were used. They would listen carefully for special words like 'issa' (now), or 'khia' (brother), or any stylistic variation known to be part of the repertoire of ways of speaking 2 of Palestinians.

Speech community, or communities?
The 'tomato' test would have applied to may of those Palestinians who lived in camps scattered around Beirut and other major towns, and were sociably and politically restricted to their boundaries, thus limiting any major social and linguistic changes. These, however, do not constitute all Palestinians in Lebanon. A large number of Palestinian Christians were assimilated in the Christian communities of Lebanon to beef-up the number of Christians as the number of Muslims began to increase threatening the very foundation of the power-sharing formula among the various religious communities in accordance with the National Covenant of 1943. The desire to be fully assimilated as well as other motivational factors have contributed in the conscious elimination of the original social and speech Palestinian characteristics and extended to the children. Some Muslim Palestinians, likewise, were integrated in the Lebanese Muslim community because of their wealth, special services or other attributes, and remained so.

For Palestinians outside Lebanon the 'tomato' test would produce different results. Those living in the West Bank will mostly use bandora, and would, therefore, fail the test. In Gaza Strip the pronunciation mostly used is "tamatem", which can easily be traced to the Egyptians who controlled the Strip until 1967, while Palestinian working in the Gulf countries, over 300,000, may use any of three variations depending on where they originally came from and subject to the fundamental constrains of participants, topic and setting.

But while it is difficult in many cases to identify a Palestinians on phonetic, semantic and grammatical variation, there are known cases where they have been identified by Patan taxi drivers working in the Gulf after a brief communicative event even with the Patans limited knowledge of Arabic. In Syria, Iraq, Jordan and other Arab countries, social integration, political pressures, and educational systems have combined to produce many young Palestinians unfamiliar not just with the stylistic variations of 'Palestinian Arabic' but also with the social norms and cultural values that usually determine the selection of a particular speech code in a particular domain.
In the case of Lebanon the bulk of over 400,000 Palestinians remained socially and geographically restricted to the camps to a large extent. Such restriction, also prevalent in Jordan, Syria and Egypt, limited the scope for improving the quality of life for most inhabitants, but it helped in other ways in preserving strong family and social bonds and promoting solidarity among its members and maintaining the ability to express them.

Thus, when Abu Ali went back to the mosque after the Friday prayers and asked whether anybody has seen the "sakko", used mainly by people from Nazareth and its surrounding villages for "jacket" he had left behind, they looked at each other questioningly wondering what the word means. But when he explained and they pressed him for more details and he suddenly threw his hands in the air in despair and cried "Aah"! they were able to determine from the way the sound was uttered that it could not have been caused by the loss of a jacket but rather for something far more serious, they interpreted the sound correctly because Abu Ali had lost one of his sons a few days before. Moreover, when Abu Walid was threatened by a grocer he accused of over-pricing, he expressed his defiance by proclaiming that he could put all Lebanese in his "khorani". Should the grocer have known that the word for the people of At-Tire means "bottom" there would have been a big fight, but in the absence of such knowledge the contextual slot was filled by "pocket" the word most commonly used at such an event.

If Abu Walid offered a fellow Palestinian visitor a glass of tea he expects him to say "Allah ysalim diatak" (God protect your hands) or any similar acceptable social utterances. When the visitor finishes his tea he is expected to say "daymeh" (may you always be able to be generous), and Abu Walid is expected to say "sahtain" (twice to your health). because if her were to say "saha", common to all Lebanese, the visitor's interpretation would be that he was not fully welcome.

On a wider context, these same people must reflect the social and linguistic knowledge shared by most members of their speech community; must choose the appropriate words when comforting a man who lost his son, and use different words to a woman who lost a husband; answer if they were asked, and stop talking if an older man or a socially higher person decides to intervene; know the difference between addressing an imam (The Preacher at Mosques), and addressing a cousin, and joins, when it is appropriate in singing a song the words of which have acquired shades of meaning slightly different to the meaning interpreted by other communities.

Bauman & Sherzer define the speech community "in terms of the shared or mutually complementary knowledge and ability (competence of its members for the production and interpretation of socially appropriate speech). Such a community is an organization of diversity, insofar as this knowledge and ability (i.e. access to and command of resources for speaking) are differentially distributed among its members; the production and interpretation of speech are thus variable and complementary, rather than homogeneous and constant through the community."3 Clearly such definition would apply to to the Palestinians in Burj Al Barajneh camp in Beirut or to others in the camps in Sidon although a question may be called as to whether the Palestinians in Lebanon constitute just one speech community or several.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINANT
The situation of Lebanon applies to a lesser or larger extent to other Palestinians in other Arab countries especially where considerable numbers have been restricted for social or political reasons. Words expressing kinship such as "yama, yaba, khia, shaqfeh, nitfeh, khaita" and many others constitute an important part of the repertoire of most Palestinians and would be recognised thus by other Arabs, or sometimes by a Patan taxi driver. A Syrian Palestinian would use "khaita" (sister) to express closeness,

while he would use "okhti" if he is addressing a Syrian woman. But whether he is in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan or Iraq, a Palestinian has among his repertoire several socially appropriate linguistic variations to use in certain social events. He may tell a bereaved mother "al awad bi salamatek", or "yeslam rasek", or "Allah yerhamo", or he may not say anything at all, but he would not say it with a smile, nor take his groceries with him, or shout it from a window. Also if you say an unshaven man you would not say "had I known I could have lent you may razor," but "khair!" (May it be good news) recognising he may be grieving over a close relative. Happier occasions would also "instruct" people to use socially appropriate speech. Of course there will be variations between one Palestinian speech community and another because "no very sharp distinction can be drawn between the dialect of one region and that of another neighbouring region. However narrowly we define the speech community, by geographical and social criteria, we shall always find a certain degree of systematic variation in the speech of its members."4

If these dialectical variations are to be permissible within the speech community, would it not follow that speech communities identified in countries x, y and z would make speech communities x, y and z one collective speech community on a larger or "super" scale? Not so according to Gumperz who declares the speech community as "any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences of language usage. Most groups of any permanence, be they small bands bounded by face to face contact, modern nations divisible into smaller subregions, or even occupational associations or neighborhood gangs, may be treated as speech communities, provided they show linguistic peculiarities that warrant special study."5 This definition was later expanded so that "members of a 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 that rules governing basic communication strategies be shared."6

A crucial phrase in Gumperz's definition is that the human aggregate be "characterised by regular and frequent interaction," and, therefore, implying a geographical dimension. The boundaries separating communities of Palestinians are of physical and not linguistic nature, and therefore the regular and frequent interaction is not maintained. Even in cases where they may have they money to travel and meet relatives living in other countries, they may not have passports. Security measures are especially tight and further restrict the movement inside the same country at times, while interaction with the people of West Bank and Gaza is impossible because of the Israeli occupation.

Bauman and Shertzer's illustration of the Gumperz's expanded definition is that of a New Yorker who is "Usually a participating member of the New York speech community as well as the United States speech community."7 The intention of this example is plainly clear, but taken literary it would appear doubly problematic because it does not only involve geographical constraint (the collective borders of the USA), but the national one (American) as well because Palestinians are stateless. Hymes recognizes the problematic nature of trying to determine the boundaries of the speech community but only from a strict ethnographic viewpoint. "If the strict ethnographic approach requires us to extend the concept of communication to the boundaries granted it by participants of culture," he wrote, "it also makes it necessary to restrict it to those boundaries."8 Clearly this approach is beyond the limits of this essay, but it does, if strictly applied, raise more questions than it claims to answer because the existing boundaries of Palestinian communities are not the boundaries claimed by the participants.
But does that mean Palestinian communities can pass as individual speech communities and fail as a collective one?

Is "regular and frequent interaction" necessary?
It may be pointed out that the "regular and frequent interaction" Gumperz specified does not necessarily have to be physical interaction. The spread of communication made it able for ideas to cross borders of the most repressive regimes, as the case in Eastern Europe or China. But again, this would not apply to Palestinians because they are not in command of such communicatory media, and it has been stated that the problem of mobility for most Palestinians is not only financial but also that of travel documents and visas. If this is the case then the question that should be addressed now is why did Palestinian communities were able to preserve the characteristics of speech communities despite the fact that no "regular and frequent interaction" was maintained?

The nomadic residual of the Arab psychology has helped in limiting the importance of geographical boundaries within the Arab world if only because communities inhabiting inter-Arab borders, mostly artificial anyway, are usually speech communities. To compensate for the artificiality of borders, Arab collective consciousness may have compensated for the artificiality and the transitory nature of the borders by means of increased adherence to the distinctive social and linguistic attributes.9 While such adherence for Arabs at large is important politically and culturally, it is of survival quality for Palestinians, as it was vital, say, for Armenians and Jews. Emphasis on distinctiveness is not congruent with superiority. In fact many cases show it may be the result of persecution and inferiority. This may be the case for Palestinians.

But unlike Armenians and Jews, the Palestinians live mostly in countries were Arabic and its dialects are the main codes. There have been cases were using Palestinian Arabic stylistic variations were cause for ridicule, or even murder as the "tomato" test shows, but such dialects were mostly tolerated especially where Palestinians do not constitute a major economic or security risk.

In addition to the nomadic residual, the need for identity, solidarity and closeness, made many Palestinians aware of the differences that may be created by boundaries, and were able to create additional compensatory means. This is may be why the first question a Palestinian would ask another is where he came from, probably to look up in a special "disasporic" dictionary words and utterances that may enhance their acquaintance.

We have seen how the political conflict in Lebanon led to linguistic division of its communities. If the present code-shifting continues unchecked, and there are many indications it well, it will generate enough momentum to push the political strife into new dangerous grounds which will put the future of the country at risk. Without ignoring the importance of political, economic and social factors in the eruption of the civil war it seems possible the "linguistic compromise" embodied in the acceptability of one "national" code, i.e. Beiruti dialect, would still have provided a vital linguistic ingredient for the survival of unified Lebanon.

Bibliography

Giglioli, Pier Paolo (ed.) (1972). Language and Social Context. Penguin.
Lyons, John (ed.) (1970). New Horizons in Linguistics (1). Penguin.
Lyons, John, Coates, Richard, Deuchar, Margaret, Gazdar, Gerald (eds.) (1970). New Horizons in Linguistics (2). Penguin.
Pride, J. B. & Holmes, Janet (eds.) (1972). Sociolinguistics. Penguin.
Bell, Roger Socilinguistics; goals, approaches and problems 1976
 

2 Hymes, and etc 4, 278

41, 19

5 (4,279)

6 4, 278

7 see 4, 278

8 2, 28

9 Labov lends importance to the unconscious social judgments about languages and concludes that "social attitude towards language are extremely uniform throughout a speech community." Such emphasis leads him to suggest the a plausible definition of a speech community would be "a group of speakers who share a set of social attitudes towards language."

2, 293 words

POSTGRADUATE DIPLOMA/MA IN LINGUISTICS
Polytechnic of Central London,
Faculty of Languages.
SOCIOLINGUISTICS