s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

A posthumous life for Yiddish? The presence of Yiddish in American comedy 95
1928: “[It is] “difficult to view the future of Yiddish in America optimistically” (Jewish
Tribune).
He further points out that the predicted demise of Yiddish is a “trope”
which “has served … as a discursive frame for addressing the shifting stature
and significance of Yiddish in modern Jewish life” (Shandler 2006: 180). Undoubtedly,
this “death” trope is psychologically related in the popular consciousness
to the mass murder of the majority of Yiddish speakers by the Nazi
regime during World War II.
3. The use of Yiddish in comedy
I now come to the focus of the title of this article, the use of Yiddish in
American television series. Why is the use of the language in such a context
significant? I argue that it is one of the sites where the trope of Yiddish as
a “dying” language is played out, provoking acrimonious debates on the appropriateness
of such linguistic practices. In order to examine this use of Yiddish,
I employ a critical sociolinguistic perspective borrowed from Monica Heller
(2002), which is a framework capable of taking into account power relations
and stakes underlying language use, issues of collective and individual identity,
and the link between representations and social behaviour. Critical sociolinguistics
adds to traditional questions on language use: “Where? Why and how? Who
stands to gain or lose? What are the stakes?”
3.1. When and how?
The use of Yiddish in comic routines (especially insults) has a wellestablished
history, as we may learn from the description of Kenneth Libo
(2007). It is visible especially in the work of the Marx Brothers, Henry Youngman,
Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Totie Fields, Rodney Dangerfield, Fredy Roman
and Woody Allen. Vincent Brook (2003: 4) enumerates a number of television
shows where this language been inherited, such as The Goldbergs (1949–
1956), Rhoda (1974–1979), Seinfeld (1989–1998) and Will and Grace (1998–
2006). It is from the last series that examples will be used in the present article.
This use has been characterized as “isolated Yiddishisms embedded in another
language” Shandler (2006: 129).
3.2. What are the stakes?
In one commentator’s view, Helen Beer (2009), such embedding is detrimental
to the survival of the language, since its very basis is that of a symbolic
cultural identification. As she states (Beer 2009: 15): “There exists the phe-