Marcadores de prestigio lingüístico en el contexto de diglosia entre el ladino y el hebreo actuales en Israel: una aproximación desde la sociolingüística cualitativa

Abstract

This study investigates the linguistic attitudes shown by Ladino speakers toward this language and in relation to Hebrew in the diglossia context of Israel, as well as those markers of linguistic prestige that, in each of these languages, may be correlated with the level of favorability present in certain linguistic attitudes. To this end, several bilingual informants were selected from a small sample of Ladino speakers to undergo an assessment of their linguistic attitudes using the matched guise technique as a sociolinguistic analysis procedure. Once the speakers unconsciously revealed their favorability toward Ladino and Hebrew by associating an unseen speaker of each language with particular levels of communicative quality, sympathy, and intelligence, they were asked about the motives or reasons that, from their perspective, lie behind their evaluation, partially incorporating the perspective of the ethnography of communication. The study found two markers of linguistic prestige: one linguistic and one extralinguistic. The notion of ethnicity impact on the linguistic attitudes displayed by the informants toward Ladino is also discussed, and the concept of ethnolect is analytically introduced.