“Habiibs” in Australia: Language, Identity and Masculinity

Abstract

Tackling the phenomenon of using Arabic words by second-generation Lebanese-Australians when conversing in English, and reading it culturally and sociologically, constitutes the primary aim of this article. In so doing, this paper concentrates on a number of spoken Arabic words with particular emphasis on the word “habiib”, and shows the relationship between these linguistic constructs and the boundary construction of the embattled identity of these youths. Furthermore, the probing into “habiib” and to a lesser degree, into other Arabic terms, reveals the power relations that traverse the linguistic world of the male and female youths examined by this article. In other words, this article shows the extent to which hybrid linguistic constructs constitute, and are constituted by, unequal gender and ethnic relations. They are also shown to be strategic acts of resistance against the broader community, which tends to keep the users of these words at the margin of society.

Keywords:

• Habiib
• “Lebspeak”
• Identity
• Second-generation Lebanese-Australians
• Ethnicised masculinity
• Aestheticisation of youth identity

Notes

1. Linguists have dubbed this phenomenon an “ethno-lect” and it is called “Lebspeak” among its users according to journalist, Deborah Cameron (5). Michael Clyne defines ethnolects as “varieties of a language that mark speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety” (Clyne 86).

2. For a similar approach in the study of identities in multilingual countries, see Pavlenko and Blackledge.

3. The latest census shows that in 2001 there were 71,310 Lebanon-born persons in Australia. In 1996, the second-generation of Lebanon-born origin (defined as persons born in Australia who had one or both parents born in Lebanon) numbered 82,582. It is expected that at the time this article was written the number of second-generation persons of Lebanon-born origin had sharply increased. It is also established by the findings of 1996 and 2001 censuses that the state of New South Wales had the largest number of first- and second-generation Lebanese migrants, and more particularly, the Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Bankstown and Parramatta had the highest number of first- and second-generation of Lebanese migrants. According to the 1996 census, Bankstown LGA had the highest number of first-generation (9,294) followed by Canterbury (9,063) and Parramatta (5,936). The 2001 census also shows that 90.6 per cent of the Lebanon- born people in Australia had Arabic as their main language spoken at home (McDonald).

4. All names used in this article are pseudo-names.

5. The author encountered two restaurants, one in Bankstown and one in Lakemba, using the term habiib to name their businesses, and two cars were observed in the area having the same word inscribed on their number plates.

6. More recently, the image of a habiib as a member of a gang has been appropriated by the Australian art industry. This was done by a TV show series called “Fat Pizza” which, later on, was turned into a comic film on the wider screen. In this show/film, there is a Lebanese character called “Habiib”. Habiib is depicted as “a drug dealer, car thief and a gang member who is currently on work-release from jail”. He also delivers pizzas for Bobo, the chef and owner of Fat Pizza. Habiib has a long lasting relationship with Toula, “his overweight, Greek, donut-munching girlfriend”. Habiib's best friend is also Lebanese. His nickname is Rocky the Lebanese Rambo, who acts as “the muscle for [Habiib's] hustle”. He is big, strong and ready to call the cousins for any brawl, anytime. Although this show/film parodies Habiib as a stereotype for the Lebanese youth, it fails to capture in the first place its polysemous character.

7. Bakhtin correctly observes that when “sacred languages [read Australian English] are spoken by the accents of vulgar folk [read ethnic] language, they are seen in a new light, their artificiality is highlighted” (41–83). Lebspeak can be described as a “novelisation” of Australian English in the Bakhtinian sense of the word. Bakhtin describes the features of novelised genres as follows: “They become more free and flexible, their language renews itself by incorporating extra-literary heteroglossia [i.e. that which insures the primacy of context over text] and the “novelistic layers of literary language, they become dialogised, permeated with laughter, irony, humor, elements of self-parody and finally-this is the most important thing- the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a certain semantic open-endedness, a living contact with unfinished, still-evolving contemporary reality (the open ended present) (6–7). One can readily describe Lebspeak as being a “dialogised” language, i.e. “relativised, de-previliged and aware of competing definitions of the same things”. Lebspeak is “permeated with laughter, irony, humor”, and “elements of self-parody”. As such, it is creative because it has “a living contact with” evolving reality.

8. Interestingly enough a study on “wogspeak” in Melbourne showed similar linguistic features manifested by the speech of second-generation migrants from Greek, Italian and Turkish background (Warren).

9. A good example of how the state is appropriating the voice of the youth of Arabic-speaking background would be to look at the various state initiatives in New South Wales (NSW) proclaiming to address the problems of these youth in the wake of the “gang rape” in 2000 and the recent Cronulla riots in December 2005.

10. In his discussion of Bourdieu's writings on language, Hanks says: “Behind the unity of most standard languages lie power relations, unifying administrations, economy and state formation, or governance […] Dictionaries, grammars, and their authors are part of the same process, as is the inculcation of standard in the educational system […] The entire process is a kind of symbolic domination in which nonstandard varieties are suppressed, and those who speak them are excluded or inculcated” (75).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Tabar

Dr Paul Tabar is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Migrant Studies at the Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon as well as Associate Researcher with the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney