A Linguistic Analysis of Jewish Children's Stories in English on the Web: From Language to Identity

Like other world's cultures, Judaism is going through important social changes, including those caused by the advent of the new technological devices, like the World Wide Web, a means that helps contribute to the enhancement of Jewish learning through the expression and transmission of Jewish identity. The analysis of Jewish stories in English on the Web, ideally targeted at young readers of Eastern Ashkenazi heritage, provides a case of how the Internet represents more and more a valuable †˜tool' for the dissemination and storage of information linked to Jewish culture and identity. The present research study highlights the importance of the verbal and non-verbal medium in this specific type of digital-based texts. More specifically, it analyses the different linguistic- and visual image-related phenomena occurring in a Corpus made up of fifty-five online Jewish children's stories in English, focusing on how †˜distinctly Jewish' verbal and non-verbal resources are strategically deployed within this goal-oriented type of communication in order to help construct, express and transmit Judaism and, in particular, Eastern Ashkenazi Jewish identity.