HERMENEUTICS OF ETHNIC REDISCOVERY: RHETORICAL, SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS OF TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN JEWISH FICTION

This study examined thirty-one randomly selected novels written by American Jews about the Jewish American experience. The period covered was from 1900 to 1979. Each of these novels was analyzed as to how the central character or characters reconciled his/her individual goals and constraints against the systematic goals and constraints of family and society. The central question was how did the major character or characters use discourse to overcome exigencies. The elaborated and restricted codes discussed by Basil Bernstein and the familial control system and cosmology discussed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas formed the basis for the discourse analysis. Conclusions were that there is general trend in American Jewish fiction toward the positional-elaborated structure which suggests a reification of secular cultural Jewish values and beliefs during the latter part of the period studied