Veke'ilu haragláyim sh'xa nitka'ot bifním kaze (‘and like your feet get stuck inside like’): Hebrew kaze (‘like’), ke'ilu (‘like’), and the decline of israeli dugri (‘direct’) speech

This study investigates employment of two elements having a lexical source involving comparison (k(e)-, ‘like’) which have greatly proliferated over the last decade or so in Israel, Hebrew Kaze (‘like’, lit.‘like this’) and ke'ilu (‘like’, lit. ‘as if’). Here I focus particularly on kaze and compare it to ke'ilu, which was investigated at length in Maschler (in press b). The data come from audio-recordings of casual conversations of college-educated Israelis with their friends and relatives. A qualitative analysis of talk-in-interaction reveals three functions for kaze: comparative demonstrative, hedge and quotative. A quantitative perspective on the distribution of these functions is presented, and these qualitative and quantitative analyses lead to an examination of the functional itinerary of this word in Hebrew. The recent proliferation of kaze and ke'ilu in Israeli Hebrew discourse is then tied to the change from a culture in which dugri speech (directness, ‘straight talk’) is central (Katriel, 1986) to one in which this speaking style is in decline (Katriel, 1999, forthcoming).