Bilingual identity and emotional expression: language preferences of Arab teachers in Jewish schools

Language is central to how bilingual professionals negotiate identity, belonging, and emotional life inside institutions built around another group's language. This mixed-methods study examines the language preferences of Arab women teachers working in Jewish schools in Israel, using Allport's, G. W. (1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Addison-Wesley) Social Contact Theory as an interpretive frame. A sequential explanatory design combined a questionnaire completed by 159 teachers with semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers. Findings reveal a consistent, domain-specific pattern rather than one overall preference: Hebrew dominates monitored, institutional tasks such as professional reading and writing, while Arabic dominates affective, private domains such as emotional expression, family communication, and leisure media. This split persists even among teachers who report an overall preference for Hebrew. The study clarifies how language operates simultaneously as professional currency and emotional refuge for minority teachers in majority institutions, and it offers recommendations for language policy, institutional support, and reciprocal intercultural exchange in segregated educational systems.