Reimagining linguistic landscape : online discourses of Israeli human rights organizations

Language Policy and Linguistic Landscape methodologies, which have become popular in the field of sociolinguistics over the past few decades, examine the symbolic usage of language in public multilingual space as it relates to existing social structures and hierarchies. While a number of scholars have applied LL to the physical cityscape in towns and cities across Israel, this research seeks to broaden the scope of LL in two key ways. It first pushes the conception of public space to include virtual space, examining the “netscape” as opposed to a physical location. It also expands the notion of language to include broader understandings of discourse as a form of language in and of itself. Accordingly, this research assesses the online symbolism and language use of Israeli human rights organizations to gain further insight to not only the linguistic market of Israel, but that of human rights discourse as well. Through analysis of logos and mission statements of several Israeli advocating for Palestinian human rights, this paper investigates the ways in which these organizations navigate the challenges of translating Palestinian human rights violations into the global human rights discourse palatable to the Israeli public. The relationships represented through conflict between Arabic and Hebrew play out differently in the physical space than they do in the top-down representations of Israeli human rights organizations, but these language choices are yet made within the contexts of the human rights discourse surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. The nature of the conflict inherently suggests the use of Hebrew and Arabic, but the discourse itself requires the use of English as a means for accessing global resources. This research notes the intensified impact of globalization due to the English required for involvement in the human rights discourse and explores the ways in which this confluence of languages and language relations serves to both perform and constitute a unique human rights discourse space for left-leaning Israeli organizations.