People tend to craft a signature that is clearly distinguishable from others’ signatures and thus difficult to forge. This highlights the important meaning associated with signing one's name on a document and, thus, supports the premise of a strong relationship between signatures and identity. We hypothesize that signing one's name in his mother tongue reflects one's identification with his social group. In this research, we examined the relationship between the vitality of language and identity as reflected in what language do Palestinian Arab students of higher education in Israel sign their own handwritten signature. In the reality of Israel, there are strong pressures toward “Hebraization” among Palestinians. This places a further burden on them, as Hebrew is the dominant language in the public sphere of Israel. Do Palestinian Arabs sign in Arabic, their mother tongue and native first language (L1) but still the language of minority for Palestinian Arabs in Israel? In Hebrew, their second language (L2) but the language of the dominant majority on Israel and the language of most official documents if not all? In English, the third language (L3) for those in Israel? Or in a symbolic logographic manner? In the current study we have asked 843 Palestinian multilingual Arab students of higher education in northern, central, and southern Israel to sign their own handwritten signature. Their signatures were classified based on the signature language into Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Symbolic Logographic (difficult to be classified into a specific language). As in Figure 1 about 81% of the signatures were not in Arabic the native first language. The findings were unpredictable and may trigger further investigation of the interplay of multilingualism and majority/minority language interplay.

中文翻译：

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撤回：多语言、手写签名和身份：以色列多语言巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人的案例

人们倾向于制作一个与其他人的签名有明显区别的签名，因此难以伪造。这突出了与在文件上签名相关的重要意义，因此支持签名和身份之间存在密切关系的前提。我们假设用他的母语签署一个人的名字反映了一个人对他的社会群体的认同。在这项研究中，我们研究了语言活力与身份之间的关系，这反映在以色列接受高等教育的巴勒斯坦阿拉伯学生用什么语言签署自己的手写签名上。在以色列的现实中，巴勒斯坦人面临着“希伯来化”的强烈压力。这给他们带来了进一步的负担，因为希伯来语是以色列公共领域的主要语言。巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人是否使用阿拉伯语、他们的母语和母语（L1）签名，但仍然是以色列巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人的少数民族语言？在希伯来语中，他们的第二语言 (L2) 但以色列占主导地位的语言和大多数官方文件的语言（如果不是全部）？英语是以色列人的第三种语言（L3）吗？还是以象征性的语标方式？在目前的研究中，我们要求 843 名在以色列北部、中部和南部接受高等教育的巴勒斯坦多语阿拉伯学生签署他们自己的手写签名。他们的签名根据签名语言分为阿拉伯语、希伯来语、英语和符号符号（难以归类为特定语言）。如图 1 所示，大约 81% 的签名不是母语阿拉伯语。