Final Remarks

This chapter concludes the study with two sections. The first section discusses the employment of place as an iconic element in the nine Hebrew novels of the study, looking at the mutual relationship between the geographical location of the narrative setting and the use of Arabic in the novels. The second section constitutes a general summary of the book with its main results.

Exophonic Writing, Stylistics and the Study of Iraqi Jewish Fiction

This chapter is divided into two main sections. The first section constitutes the theoretical part of the study. In this section, the possibilities and the motivations of using stylistics as a theoretical framework to approach literary texts written by bilingual authors are discussed. It encompasses a review of the literature regarding the different methods with which to approach such literary texts, as well as an interpretation of the possibilities of linking style as a choice to the analysis of literary texts written in the non-mother tongue or second language (L2) of bilingual authors. This first section ends with a representation of the suggested model for approaching exophonic texts. The second section of Chapter 2 analyses the style of Arabic used in the nine Hebrew novels in light of the suggested model discussed in section 1. In this second section, the data collected from the nine Hebrew novels are analysed as one corpus without any consideration of the diachronic aspect.

The Use of Arabic Between Authors and Novels

This chapter analyses the diachronic development of Arabic use. The novels are categorised into three main corpora to trace Arabic use from early to late Hebrew novels. In this chapter, the style of each of the three authors is also analysed independently. This means that the style of each of the three authors is investigated according to the model developed in Chapter 2, and other linguistic and literary features of each author associated with Arabic/Hebrew are also discussed.

Arabic and Hebrew in One Text: Early Potential, Current Perspective

This chapter is an introduction to the phenomenon of Arabic and Hebrew in one text from a historical perspective. The chapter includes a general introduction to the Judaeo-Arabic paradigm, as it represents the typical form of Arabic and Hebrew in one text, and information about the linguistic features of the Iraqi Judaeo-Arabic. In addition, it discusses the process of adopting Hebrew by Iraqi Jewish authors in Israel during the early years after their immigration. It ends with a summary of each of the nine selected Hebrew novels discussed in the study.

Introduction

About thirty years after his immigration from Iraq to Israel, Sami Michael, a well-known Israeli author, said in an interview: ‘Today I think only in Hebrew and write only in Hebrew. Many times the pen stops, the brain searches for the word, but the word appears only in Arabic or English’ (...