Bouzidi, Hassan (1989) Language attitudes and their implications for education: Morocco as a case study. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5371/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] LANGUAGE ATTITUDES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION: MOROCCO AS A CASE STUDY Thesis submitted to the University of GLASGOW by HASSAN BOUZIDI in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. © H. BOUZIDI Glasgow University October, 1989 FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would especially like to express my gratitude to my supervisors Professor John Mattock and Mr. J.M.Y. Simpson for their indefatigable help and assistance throughout the period of my research. Thanks are also due to Miss A.M. McGregor and Professor LB. Thomson for their invaluable support and patience, to Dr. M.K.C. MacMahon for his suggestions and advice, and to Mr J.Stephen, of the Computing Science Department, for his generous help with the preparation of the statistical figures. I am deeply indebted to several institutions: the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education for providing me with a grant and Glasgow University for providing financial help for a number of years; their assistance ensured the continuity of my research. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom provided me with an O.R.S. award. Their support is deeply acknow ledged. Naturally, the present work would not have been completed without a lot of help from friends and colleagues. I am especially grateful to several students in Morocco who volunteered to act as informants and to take part in the interviews and matched-guise experiments, and to all those who offered to help and assist in the distribution and collection of the questionnaires. ABSTRACT The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate Language Attitudes in three representative areas of Morocco. The impact of these attitudes on the in~ividual's socio-psychological make up, especially within the system of education, is examined and emphasis is put upon the relationship between students' and parents' attitudes on the one hand and achievement in second-language learning on the other hand. The working hypothesis is that it helps learners of a second language, who wish to have a good command of the language, to hold a positive attitude towards the other speech community. By adopting a socio-psychological approach, I seek to examine my subjects' affective as well as behavioural dispositions and the impact of the latter on any language planning programme. By so doing I intend to contribute to the search for a most suitable approach to langD;age-related problems in Morocco. To achieve this purpose, a group of workers, students and teachers volunteered to fill out questionnaires on their evaluations of languages and language planning efforts in Morocco. Others volunteered to take part in the matched-guise experiments and interviews concerning their use of language and their desire to learn a second language. The attitude-behaviour relationship was also examined through observation, including participant observation. The subjects were stratified according to age, sex, mother tongue, social status and provenance. The first three substantive sections of the dissertation aim at familiarising the reader with the sociolinguistic situation in Morocco, social psychology as applied to language studies, and the data-eliciting techniques used in the thesis. The subsequent three chapters are concerned with the analysis and discussion of the corpus of data. The results showed significant differences between the attitudes of the groups towards French, SA and the vernacular languages (i.e. MA and MB). The correlation analysis showed a negative relationship between grades and the attitude variables. Only a weak relationship was found between socio-psychological variables and second-language proficiency. Attitudinal and motivational characteristics obtained from the students' parents were included in the study, and a positive correlation between student language proficiency and parental language attitudes and motivation was obtained. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENrS ABSTRACf UST OF TABLES UST OF FIGURES UST OF ABBREVIATIONS TRANSCRIPTIONAL SYMBOLS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 A PROFILE OF THE LANGUAGE SITUATION IN MOROCCO ............................................... 11 1.1 A PROFILE OF GEOGRAPHy ....................................................................... 12 1.2. THE LANGUAGES AND VARIETIES IN USE .................................................... 13 1.2.1. THE ARABIC LANGUAGE ................................................................. 14 1.2.2. MOROCCAN ARABIC/ STANDARD ARABIC: A DIGLOSSIC SITUATION ................................................................... 18 1.2.3. MOROCCAN BERBER ...................................................................... 20 1.2.4. FRENCH ....................................................................................... 23 1.2.5. SPANISH AND ENGLISH ................................................................... 25 1.2.6. THE USE OF THE LANGUAGES AND VARIETIES UNDER STUDY ON THE NATIONAL RADIO NETWORKS .............................................. 26 1.3. LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION ........................................................................ 27 CHAPTER 2 SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGY-ORIENTED RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE .......................................... 34 2.1. A NOTE ON SOCIAL PSyCHOLOGy .................................................................. 35 2.2. CURRENT THEORIES ..................................................................................... 37 2.3. 'ATTITUDE' AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOOY ............................. 38 2.3.1. THE CONCEPT OF "ATTITUDE" ............................................................ 38 2.3.2. THE NATURE OF ATTITUDES: MAJOR DEFINITIONS ............................... 39 2.3.3. OTHER RELATED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS .......................... .41 2.3.4. THE TWO MAJOR APPROACHES .......................................................... 42 2.3.5. THE STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDES ......................................................... 44 2.3.6. THE FORMATION OF ATTITUDES ......................................................... 47 2.3.7. THE FUNCTION OF ATTITUDE ............................................................. 49 2.3.8. ATTITUDE CHANGE .......................................................................... 50 2.4. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE .............................................................. 52 2.4.1. LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ...................................................................... 53 2.4.2. GROUP MEMBERSHIP AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ................................ 54 2.5. LANGUAGE CHOICE ...................................................................................... 62 2.5.1. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE CHOICE .................... 63 2.5.2. LANGUAGE CHOICE AS AN OVERLAPPING SITUATION ............................ 64 2.5.3. THE RELATIVE POTENCY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATIONS ..................................................................................... 65 2.5.4. THE ACCOMMODATION THEORY ......................................................... 67 2.5.5. SOME LIMITATIONS OF THE ACCOMMODATION MODEL. ........................ 71 2.5.6. HYPERCORRECTION AND HyPERSENSITIVITy ....................................... 72 2.6. THE ROLE OF ATTITUDES AND MOTN ATIONIN SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING ...................................................................... 74 2.6.1. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF SECOND-LANGAUAGE LEARNING ................................................................................................... 79 2.7. RELEVENCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ............................................................................... 82 CHAPTER 3 DATA-ELICITING TECHNIQUES .................................................................................... 86 3.1. LANGUAGE ATTITUDE MEASUREMENT ............................................................. 87 3.2. THE MATCHED-GUISE TECHNIQUE ................................................................... 89 3.2.1. THE SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL SCALES ................................................ 91 3.2.2 SCORING THE SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL SCALE .................................... 93 3.3. QUESTIONNAIRES AND INTERVIEWS: 2 DIRECf METHODS ................................ 94 3.3.1. THE QUESTIONNAIRE ........................................................................ 94 3.3.2. INTERVIEWS .................................................................................... 96 3.4. RANKING THE Ss' DEGREE OF BILINGUALISM ................................................... 99 3.5 SOME PRACfICAL PROBLEMS OF ASSESSMENT IN DEVELOPING