LANGUAGE IN THE HANDS OF A SETTLER-COLONIAL STATE: ARABIC AS AN L2 IN ISRAEL-PALESTINE IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES

Abstract

Although there is considerable literature on Arabic in Israel both as an L1 and an L2 in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from cultural, educational, and linguistics perspectives, many of these studies do not explicitly connect their findings to the larger settler-colonial context. Considering how the Israeli settler-colonial context affects learning Arabic as a L2, this paper aims to deepen understandings of how ideological narratives that seek to not only eliminate Palestinian national claims but reframe them as foreign to the land emerge in educational settings. Language curricula does not exist in a vacuum, and the treatment of Arabic as a foreign language is part of state-sponsored efforts to not only eliminate Palestinians as natives, but also replace them with Israeli Jews as natives and Hebrew as the clear L1. I plan to argue this by applying second language acquisition theory to an analysis of students’ successful acquisition of Arabic in Jewish secular schools and private bilingual schools. I will undertake this through a critical analysis of studies on language curricula study and sociocultural political considerations in order to trace the connection between language learning and larger socio-cultural dynamics, particularly those related to the treatment of Arabic in Israel.