In this talk, I explore the social meanings of two rising pitch contours used in Modern Hebrew, particularly by young speakers. The rising contour has been associated with uncertainty, tentativeness, politeness and - perhaps more generally, as Ozerov (2013) suggests - “proposing the unit for the consideration of an addressee"; this contour carries similar meanings in English (Podesva 2011 and references therein). The *HLH% contour, according to Lefkowitz (2004), is used primarily by Jewish Israelis of Middle Eastern/North African origin (Mizrahi).
I report an experiment in which 28 short recordings of native Hebrew speakers were subjected to the judgements of 88 listeners, also native speakers of Hebrew. During the recording, speakers were requested to memorize and produce a single declarative sentence (the same for all speakers) in the most natural way possible. In the experiment, listeners were requested to write everything that comes to mind about each voice.
Preliminary Results show that (i) of the 28 recorded speakers, the two groups which used the rising and *HLH% contours most consistently were young Ashkenazi speakers and young Mizrahi speakers, respectively. Older speakers tended to use a falling contour, regardless of ethnic identity; however, some older Mizrahi speakers also used the *HLH% contour, hinting to its original indexical relation with Mizrahi identity. (ii) Voices using the *HLH% contour were labeled as confident, “authentic Israeli" and/or aggressive more often than voices using the rising contour.
I propose that the social meanings of each contour are constructed upon their relation with two social groups, which index local and non-local identities: Mizrahi and American. *HLH% can be used to project authenticity and assertiveness, which also seem to be associated with other features of Mizrahi speech. The rising contour is associated with young American English-style politeness/tentativeness, in addition to its (similar) local meaning; Its opposition to *HLH% in some contexts allows listeners to interpret it as a choice of a more cosmopolitan identity.
References
Lefkowitz, D. (2004). Words and stones: The politics of language and identity in Israel (Vol. 26). Oxford University Press on Demand.
Ozerov, P. (2013). Intonation: Israeli Hebrew. In: Encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics. Khan, G., Bolozky, S., Fassberg, S. E., Rendsburg, G., Rubin, A. D., Schwarzwald, O., & Zewi, T. (Eds.).
Podesva, R. J. (2011). Salience and the social meaning of declarative contours: Three case studies of gay professionals. Journal of English Linguistics, 39(3), 233-264.
