Competence and ideology in performance: Language games, identity and Israeli bureaucracy in personal narrative

Abstract

This paper treats the performance of a personal narrative about an encounter with Israeli bureaucracy. The narrator told his story to friends in a mixture of languages: Arabic, Hebrew, French and Yiddish. The analysis examines the functions of code switching as a main discourse strategy creating a coherent story with personal and social implications. Grounding the event in its double context, as occurred and as told, within the larger historical‐political‐cultural framework of Israeli society, allows for better understanding of the narrative and of creative use of language in performance. The surface level of the text thus mirrors the political structures and cultural hegemonies in Israel of the early 1950s and the late 1980s.