Jew/Jewish

[Lynne Murphy]

A long time ago, we had a discussion about whether people tend to avoid
calling people 'Jews' and instead prefer 'Jewish' (and whether this might
be a non-Jewish approach to the words).

I'm now doing some work on (non-metaphorical) meanings of 'Jew(ish)'--i.e.
who counts as a Jew to English speakers from within and without Jewish
communities, whether 'Jewish' can be used to refer to people who aren't
'Jews', etc.  If anyone knows of any discussions of this in print/electrons
(not necessarily by linguists), could you let me know?  I'm also interested
to know any non-derogatory and self-referential synonyms for 'Jew(ish)'
that are currently used.

Thanks,
Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320