conflict & communication online, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2010
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

Günther Jikeli
Anti-Semitism in youth language: the pejorative use of the terms for "Jew" in German and French today

The paper analyses how the words for "Jew" are used as insults and in pejorative ways in German and French, drawing on in-depth interviews.
The forms, functions and effects of this phenomenon are similar despite the different languages and different contexts in France and Germany. The paper shows how the pejorative use of the words for "Jew", "Jude" in German and "Juif" and "Feuj" in French, trivializes open anti-Semitism. The pejorative use of the words for "Jew" leads to negative and therefore anti-Semitic connotations in the terms for "Jews" which are inseparable of anti-Semitic perceptions of Jews.
What is more, the pejorative use of the words for "Jew" enhances the establishment of a norm of verbal anti-Semitism and an anti-Semitic social order which both prepare the ground for anti-Semitic verbal and physical violence.