The Pitch of Jewish Voices in America

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Though Uriel Weinreich remarked in 1956 that “intonation is one of the most elusive objects of linguistic research,” recent theoretical and technical advances have meant that sociolinguists have begun to attend to this subject in new and provocative ways, especially in empirical studies of the so-called "gay voice" and African American English. This turn in sociolinguistics suggests that the time is right to reopen the question of a “Jewish voice”: the persistence of intonation patterns recognizable as Jewish in American popular culture into the 21st century suggests that a stereotype of a Jewish voice may be a valuable subject of inquiry for both linguists and cultural historians. A few foundational studies of Jews’ prosody, pitch, and intonation--by Weinreich and Zelda Kahan Newman, for example--have argued for the resonance of traditional rabbinic and Yiddish intonation patterns in modern Jews’ speech; more recently, Sarah Benor’s work has identified crucial intonation patterns in the speech of Orthodox Jews in the U.S. Further research has the potential to shed light on the speech of the broader American Jewish population as well as on widely held perceptions about Jews’ speech in the United States in the 20th- and 21st-centuries.

This panel brings together sociolinguists and cultural historians who have been exploring such questions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to share their work, to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, and to inspire further research in this area. In general, questions the panelists’ papers will raise include: What patterns can be found in the production and perception of intonation in Jews’ speech? What historical, sociological, or cultural insights can be derived from these patterns? What language has been used historically to describe Jews’ intonations, and how can terminology and concepts drawn from linguistics help to refine or correct those descriptions? Finally, to what uses, aesthetic and political, has putatively “Jewish pitch” been put in modern and contemporary American culture?

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary, Theoretical, and New Approaches

Chair

• Alec Eliezer Burko, Jewish Theological Seminary

Individual Presentations

• Yiddish-Influenced List Intonation in the Jewish English Repertoire - Rachel Steindel Burdin, The Ohio State University

• Hello, Jews Calling?: Telephone Comedy and the Jewish Voice - Joshua Lambert, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Respondent

• Sarah Bunin Benor, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion