Gaza: The effect of space, violence, and displacement on Palestinian Arabic

In just over six decades the Gaza Strip has been transformed from a thriving seaside community into a territory struggling to cope with the effects of near hermetic economic and military siege. Gaza appears locked in a state of spatial destruction and reconstruction coinciding with cyclic war & state-sponsored violence. Operation Protective Edge, the seven-week Israeli military operation lasting from July 8th to August 26th 2014, can be seen as the most recent manifestation of the ebb and flow of this near continual state of war. Palestinian Arabic exists within this rigidly delineated geo-political space and continues to evolve as a result of the spatial, political, and social changes emanating from this state of violence. This talk will focus on language variation and change in Palestinian Arabic by examining language within the wider spatial and political theatre in which exists in the Gaza context. While the fieldwork that yielded the linguistic data under examination was collected in 2013, the workshop will approach Gaza in light of more recent events. In particular, the discussion will focus on the potential linguistic ramifications of what has become known as the Battle of Shuja'iyya, which took place from July 20-23 2014, in Gaza City's Shuja'iyya neighborhood. Shuja'iyya served as a primary research site for linguistic fieldwork in Gaza and the battle has left sizable tracts of the neighborhood in ruins. This physical destruction has resulted in the internal displacement of large numbers of Shuja'iyya's residents to other areas of the Gaza Strip. Although the physical space may be rebuilt, the degree to which the destruction of Shuja'iyya will live on through speech, memory, and identity is a question that remains open to discussion. This talk will begin to examine the ways in which war and violence have entered Palestinian collective memory and serve as formative events that can be seen to define the life stages of the individuals who have lived them.