Hebrew Linguistics: Between the Spiritual and the Sociocultural Cover Image

Hebrew Linguistics: Between the Spiritual and the Sociocultural
Hebrew Linguistics: Between the Spiritual and the Sociocultural

Author(s): Lucia Horea
Subject(s): Philosophy, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Jewish Thought and Philosophy
Published by: Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai
Keywords: Hebrew; cultural linguistics; Jewish sociocultural view; Kabbalah;Talmud

Summary/Abstract: In the Hebrew language, notions such as the issue of temporality and a well-established sociocultural view have been conceptualised and internalised in a distinctive manner, making full use of the language’s particularities. A cultural frame of reference with regards to Hebrew has not been the main focus of the linguistic community in several decades, with most recent studies typically centring instead on a psychological or morphological viewpoint, if not on the traditional topic of Biblical Hebrew itself. Consequently, this approach to Hebrew’s linguistic individuality will address existing research in the field of cultural linguistics, as well as the expansive repositories of Rabbinic wisdom (the exegetical commentaries of the Talmud and the Jewish esoteric theosophy of the Kabbalah and Gematria). The approach to the Jewish occult is made necessary by its direct connection with the spiritual, which provided this language’s cryogenic state of existence for nearly two millennia of Jewish diaspora.

  • Issue Year: 2/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 173-188
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English