Defining boundaries and creating commonalities: the case of Jewish Arabic

This exploration of boundaries and communalities in the case of Jewish Arabic involves discussions of how and why Jewish Arabic dialects differ, but also reflections of that on a local level, distinct language forms serve as identity markers and are being used to draw up communal boundaries. All this will be investigated in a wider framework and linked to issues such as language diversity in past and present, with reference to how tolerance of ambiguity can be tied in with ideology, also exploring how a shared future might present itself through reflection of a mutual linguistic heritage.