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Günther Jikeli
Anti-Semitism in youth language: the pejorative use of the terms
for "Jew" in German and French today
The paper analyses
how the words for "Jew" are used as insults and in pejorative
ways in German and French, drawing on in-depth interviews.
The forms, functions and effects of this phenomenon are similar despite
the different languages and different contexts in France and Germany.
The paper shows how the pejorative use of the words for "Jew",
"Jude" in German and "Juif" and "Feuj" in
French, trivializes open anti-Semitism. The pejorative use of the words
for "Jew" leads to negative and therefore anti-Semitic connotations
in the terms for "Jews" which are inseparable of anti-Semitic
perceptions of Jews.
What is more, the pejorative use of the words for "Jew" enhances
the establishment of a norm of verbal anti-Semitism and an anti-Semitic
social order which both prepare the ground for anti-Semitic verbal and
physical violence.
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