ABSTRACT

This chapter presents an overview of contemporary prescriptive language ideologies and attitudes towards Modern Hebrew. Its first part outlines the basic tension in Hebrew language ideologies, which rely on two divergent notions of a legitimized linguistic standard, both of which still echo the social history of Hebrew as the outcome of a successful revitalization project. The second part of the chapter demonstrates how this tension plays out in several important arenas of prescriptive discourse, and further examines how prescriptive activity in Israel relates to some key social contexts: Israeli nationalism, ethnicity, and gender-inclusiveness.