"I Talk It and I Feel It"
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"I Talk It and I Feel It": Language Attitudes of Moroccan University Students Carolyn Anderson Linguistics Thesis Swarthmore College Thesis Advisor: Aaron Dinkin May 2013 2 Abstract The diversity of languages in Morocco provides an interesting case study for many sociolinguistic issues. Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Tarnazigbt, French, English, and Spanish are all spoken by significant portions of the Moroccan population. The linguistic history of Morocco weaves together language coexistence, struggles for linguistic dominance, shifts in language policy in education, language endangerment and revitalization, and the use of language to define national identity. This work explores these themes through surveys on language attitudes and use completed by Moroccan students at Mohammed V University in Rabat in the spring of 2012. The first three chapters of this work explain the historical background of sociolinguistics issues in Morocco in order to provide the context. The first chapter lays out the current linguistic situation in Morocco. In the second chapter, we examine the use oflanguage policy in education to shape language attitudes, and the third addresses the history of the Amazigb movement, concluding with the recognition ofTamazight as an official language in the 2011 constitution. In the remaining chapters of this work, we discuss the results of our fieldwork at Mohammed V University in Rabat in the spring of 2012. We compare students' responses to questions about their use and perception of Spanish, English, Moroccan Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, French, and Tamazight by gender, region, social class, and major. We use these results to illustrate current patterns of thought that educated, urban youth use to reason about language, to draw conclusions about the efficacy of the Amazigb movement, and to make predictions about the future linguistic situation in Morocco. We end by describing a new language ideology, shaped by the values of universal human rights, that is influencing language values and decisions in Morocco. 3 Acknowledgements This paper would not have been possible without the hard work of those who helped me with my fieldwork. I would like to thank Khalid Ansar, Lahoucine Amouzay, Abdellah Bouzandag, and Meryam Demnati at the Institut Royal de Ia Culture Amazighe, who shared their time and expertise generously; Kawtar Elalaoui, who translated the questionnaire into Arabic, edited the French version, and helped gather participants; Said Bennis, who allowed me to observe his French class at Mohammed V University; and the many students at Mohammed V University who went above and beyond my expectations by not only participating in my research but eagerly enlisting their friends and classmates as well. In addition, I would like to thank the many people at Swarthmore College who helped me complete this project: Ted Fernald, who guided me through the Institutional Review Board process; Brahim El Guebli, who translated many of the Arabic language responses and provided insight into the Tarnazight movement; K. David Harrison, whose perspective on endangered languages was valuable; and, last but certainly not least, my thesis advisor, Aaron Dinkin, whose patience and sage advice were invaluable. Any remaining errors are wholly my own. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Overview of Sociolinguistics in Morocco 2.1. Multiglossia 2.2. Codeswitching 2.3. Language Descriptions 3. Language Policy in Education 3.1. Pre-colonization 3.2. Colonization 3.3. Post-colonization 3.4. Overview of Current System 3. 5. Evaluation 4. Tamazight 4.1. Ancient History 4.2. Colonial Period 4.3. Post-colonial Period 4.4. The Amazighe Cultural Movement 4.5. Current Situation 5. Methods 6. Attitudes 6.1. Language Competencies 6.2. Perceptions of Language Speakers 6.3. Importance of Languages 5 6.4. Growing Langnages 6.5. Langnage of the Future 7. Domains ofLangnage Use 7.1. Langnage and Technology 7.2. Formal Domains 7.3. Informal Domains 8. Issues 8.1. Multilingnalism 8.2. National Langnage Debate 8.3. Science Langnages 9. Tamazight 10. French 11. Spanish 12. Modern Standard Arabic 13. Moroccan Arabic 14. English 15. Conclusion 16. References 17. Appendix: Questionnaire 6 1 Introduction What do the languages we use reveal about us? They may show our education level, our gender, or the region in which we were raised. They may hint at our social class, or even our profession. Perhaps they expose how we are hoping to portray ourselves, what we want out of a conversation, what we think of our listeners, as we use a formal register, or an informal one, as we use a dialect to include some listeners and exclude others, or as we speak a language that we have mastered and others have not. Or perhaps our language choices reveal more about the society in which we live: what languages are mandated in what settings, which groups prefer certain languages, and what languages are looked on favorably by our fellow citizens. Consciously or unconsciously, we make decisions about language every day: to use this register over that one, this dialect with some listeners and not others, this language here and not there. At a larger level, of course, other agencies are making language decisions as well, as govermnents declare official languages, schools select languages to teach in and languages to teach about, and language planning institutions shape and standardize languages themselves. In Morocco, the process of making language choices, both at an individual and at a national level, is complex and influenced by many factors. Issues of religion, national identity, and culture weigh in, as do pragmatic appeals to utility, to trade, and to politics. What languages mean, and thus, what they convey, is constantly shifting, as languages rise and fall in prestige, as new languages are introduced, and as the values upon which languages are judged change. Morocco has a long history of multilingualism, from its time as a center of trade in Roman times, to the successive waves of immigration from Egypt, from Spain, from the Sahara, and the influx of European languages during the colonial era. Yet the history of language coexistence in Morocco is also a history of language competition and struggle, as language is used to create 7 national identities, to overcome colonization, and to assert the differences between cultures within and without the country. In this work, we examine the factors that go into making language decisions in the complex linguistic setting of Morocco, both at the individual and the national level. We begin by setting out a history of language use and policy in Morocco, first by describing the major languages themselves, and then by narrating the national policy decisions that have created this situation. We give a history of language policy in education and of the Tamazight movement to provide context for our discussion, before turning to the results of our own fieldwork at Mohammed V University in Rabat. In our research, we first examine individual language use in order to learn about the language decisions that our participants are making in daily life. We look at the perceptions of speakers of different languages, at the prestige of various languages, and at which languages students use in which situations. From looking at individual language usage and the societal role of language, we turn to how students think about languages in specific contexts, as we examine students' opinions about several current linguistic issues, like the role of language in education, and the recognition of official languages. Finally, we seek to understand the values and beliefs upon which students base their language decisions, in order to illustrate why students believe what they believe about language, and how these beliefs are shaped. It is our belief that without understanding the underlying values upon which language decisions are being made, it is impossible to really understand why people use language the way they do. While the ideological motives of officials in charge of language policy, like government actors and language policy institutions, are important and have been examined in the context of Morocco, the beliefs that motivate individual speakers in their reasoning about language are also 8 fascinating. It is for this reason that our study incorporates qualitative as well as quantitative data, and why, particularly in the last few chapters, we quote at length from our respondents. Their own words about language, we found, are at times even more informative about their beliefs and feelings about language than their use of language is. It is in speakers' descriptions of their feelings about language that we will really learn about why they speak the way they do, for the way they reason about language is fundamentally shaped by the way they see the world in which they speak. Society, national policy, and the background of the speaker all influence language usage and attitudes, but this is because these forces shape the speaker's values and beliefs about language. In turn, the values of the society and of the shapers oflanguage policy control language decisions as well. Ultimately, then, in order to make predictions about how language attitudes and usage in Morocco may change in the future, we must first try to understand how the values that lie at the root oflanguage choices are evolving. If we can understand the values that underlie the language ideologies in Morocco, we can also understand not only how they influence individual language decisions, but how they influence language decisions at a societal and national level as well. 9 2 Language in Morocco The linguistic situation in Morocco is complex and diverse. Multilingualism is common in much of the country and is the norm in urban areas and among upper class Moroccans, while rural populations with less access to education remain largely monolingual. The languages spoken in homes are Moroccan Arabic and the Arnazighe1 languages, while the languages used for business, education, and other formal purposes are Modern Standard Arabic, French, and Spanish.