Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T21:24:20.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The urban and the urbane: Identities, language ideologies, and Arabic dialects in Morocco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2012

Atiqa Hachimi
Atiqa Hachimi
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, ON M1C 1A4, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The migration of old-urban elites to new-urban areas has been given scant attention in the sociolinguistics of mobility. This article examines language ideologies of differentiation that emerged from the migration of Morocco's bona fide old-urban elite from the city of Fez (the Fessis) to the new metropolis of Casablanca. This understudied sociolinguistic encounter brings into sharp focus two quintessential old-urban and new-urban varieties of Arabic along with their complex indexical system that links linguistic forms to identities, lifestyles, and moralities. Based on ethnography and discourse analysis of interviews with two women of Fessi extraction in Casablanca (a migrant and a local-born), I provide an in-depth account of what sounding Fessi means and accomplishes—and fails to accomplish—for these women, showing in the process the (re)production and change of language ideologies. The article demonstrates how changes in indexicalities relate to ongoing group boundary reconfiguration and to processes of linguistic (non)accommodation. (Arabic, North Africa, language ideologies, indexicality, gender, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics of mobility, historical prestige, social reallocation)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , June 2012 , pp. 321 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbassi, Abdelaziz (1977). A sociolinguistic analysis of multilingualism in Morocco. Austin: University of Texas at Austin dissertation.Google Scholar
Abd-El-Jawad, R. Hassan (1986). The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centers. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61:54–63.Google Scholar
Adam, André (1968). Casablanca: Essai sur la transformation de la société Marocaine au contact avec l'Occident. Tom I & II. Aix-en Provence: Centre de Recherches sur l'Afrique Méditerranéenne.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language and Communication 23:231–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aguadé, Jordi; Cressier, Patrice, & Vicente, Ángeles (eds.) (1998). Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb Occidental: Dialectologie et histoire. Madrid-Zaragoza: Casa de Velazquez-Universidad de Zaragoza.Google Scholar
Al-Wer, Enam (2007). The formation of the dialect of Amman: From chaos to order. In Miller, Catherine, Wer, Enam Al, Caubet, Dominique, & Watson, Janet C. E. (eds.), Arabic in the city: Issues in dialect contact and language variation, 55–71. London: Routledge-Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Amara, Mohammad (2005). Language, migration, and urbanization: The case of Bethlehem. Linguistics 43:883–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter; Hinskens, Frans; & Kerswill, Paul (eds.) (2005). Dialect change: Convergence and divergence in European languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benhaddou, Ali (1997). Maroc: Les élites du royaume. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Benítez-Fernández, Montserrat (2010). La política lingüística contemporánea de Marruecos: De la arabización a la aceptación del multilingüismo. Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo.Google Scholar
Bentahila, Abdelali (1983). Language attitudes among Arabic-French bilinguals in Morocco. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Benzakour, Fouzia (2008). Le francais en terre marocaine: Normes(s), et légitimation. In Bavoux, Claudine, Prudent, Lambert-Félix, & Wharton, Sylvie (eds.), Normes endogènes et plurilinguisme: Aires francophones, aires créoles, 85–98. Lyon: ENS Éditions.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bortoni-Ricardo, Stella M. (1985). The urbanization of rural dialect speakers: A sociolinguistic study in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boukous, Ahmed (1995). Société, langues et cultures au Maroc: Enjeux symboliques. Rabat: Faculté de Rabat.Google Scholar
Boukous, Ahmed (2008). L'avenir du français au Maghreb. In Maurais, Jacques, Dumont, Pierre, Klinkenberg, Jean-Marie, Maurer, Bruno, & Chardenet, Patrick (eds.), L'avenir du Français, 205–10. Paris: AUF & Éditions des Archives Contemporaines.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Britain, David, & Trudgill, Peter (2005). New dialect formation and contact-induced reallocation: Three case studies from the English Fens. International Journal of English Studies 5(1):183–209.Google Scholar
Brown, L. Kenneth (1976). People of Salé: Tradition and change in a Moroccan city, 1883– 1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brunot, Louis (1950). Introduction à l'arabe marocain. (Les langages de L'Orient 1.). Paris: Maisonneuve.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, & Hall, Kira (2008). All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):401–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2004). Out of the battle: The social life of metalanguage. In Jaworski, Adam, Coupland, Nikolas, & Galasiński, Dariusz (eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives, 311–21. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caubet, Dominique (1998). Étude sociolinguistique des traits préhilalien dans un dialecte en voie d'urbanisation à Fès. In Aguadé, Jordi, Cressier, Patrice, & Vicente, Ángeles (eds.), Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb Occidental: Dialectologie et histoire, 165–75. Madrid-Zaragoza: Casa de Velazquez-Universidad de Zaragoza.Google Scholar
Caubet, Dominique (2005). Génération Darija! Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 9:233–44.Google Scholar
CERED (Centre d'Études et de Recherches Démographiques) (2004). Résultats du projet migration interne at aménagement du territoire. Direction de L'Aménagement du Territoire, Rabat-Morocco.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack (2002). Dynamics of dialect convergence. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6:117–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dernouny, Mohamed, & Guy, Léonard (1987). Casablanca: La parole et la trace. Casablanca: Afrique Orient.Google Scholar
de Ruiter, Jan Jaap (2006). Les jeunes marocains et leurs langues. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elbiad, Mohamed (1992). The Arab people and the Arabic sounds of greater Casablanca. In Nelde, Peter H. (ed.), Plurilingua XIII: It's easy to mingle when you're a bilingual, 23–35. (Bilingualism and contact linguistics). Bonn: Dümmler.Google Scholar
Ennaji, Moha (2005). Multinligualism, cultural identity, and education in Morocco. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles (1959). Diglossia. Word 15:325–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaudio, Antillo (1982). Fès: Joyau de la civilisation Islamique. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Grandguillaume, Gilbert (1983). Arabisation et politique linguistique au Maghreb. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1992). Contextualization and understanding. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context, 229–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar (1997). The sociolinguistic market in Cairo: Gender, class and education. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Hachimi, Atiqa (2007). Becoming Casablancan: Fessis in Casablanca as a case study. In Miller, Catherine, Al-Wer, Enam, Caubet, Dominique, & Watson, Janet C. E. (eds.), Arabic in the city: Issues in language variation and change, 97–122. London: Routledge-Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Hachimi, Atiqa (2011). Réinterprétation sociale d'un vieux parler citadin maghrébin à Casablanca. Langage et Société 138:21–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey (2002). Jewish and Muslim dialects of Moroccan Arabic. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Hebdige, Dick (1984). Subculture: The meaning of style. New York: Methuen.Google Scholar
Hillili, Abdelaziz (1979). Phonologie et morphologie de l'ancien fassi (parler arabe marocain). Paris: University Paris III MA thesis.Google Scholar
Holes, Clive D. (1986). The social motivation for phonological convergence in three Arabic dialects. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61:33–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holes, Clive D. (1995). Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 58:270–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibrahim, Muhammad H. (1986). Standard and prestige language: A problem in Arabic sociolinguistics. Anthropological Linguistics 28:115–26.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. (2001). Style as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In Eckert, Penelope & Rickford, John R. (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., & Gal, Susan (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, Paul V. (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Jabeur, Mohamed (1987). A sociolinguistic study in Tunisia: Radès. Reading: University of Reading dissertation.Google Scholar
Jabeur, Mohamed (1996). Women, social change and linguistic variation in the urban dialect of Tunis. In Holes, Clive (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of l'Association International pour la Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA), 85–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara (2004). Place, globalization, and linguistic variation. In Fought, Carmen (ed.), Sociolinguistic variation: Critical reflections, 65–83. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara; Andrus, Jennifer; & Danielson, Andrew (2006). Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese.’ Journal of English Linguistics 34(2):77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kampffmeyer, Georg (1912). Marokkanisch arabische gerprache in dialect von Casablanca. Berlin: Druck Und Verlag Von Georg Reimer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul (1994). Dialect convergence: Rural speech in urban Norway. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19:273–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert B., & Tabouret-Keller, Andrée (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Le Tourneau, Roger (1965). La vie quotidienne à Fès. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Massignon, Louis (1924). Éléments arabes et foyers d'arabisation: Leur role dans le monde arabe musulman actuel. Revue du monde Musulman 57:1–157.Google Scholar
Miller, Catherine (2005). Between accommodation and resistance: Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo. Linguistics 43(5):903–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley (2002). Introduction: Mobility, contact and language change – Working with contemporary speech communities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(1):3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley (2004). Language ideologies and linguistic change. In Fought, Carmen (ed.), Sociolinguistic variation: Critical reflections, 161–77. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moumine, El Amine M. (1990). Sociolinguistic variation in Casablanca Moroccan Arabic. Rabat: University Mohammed V dissertation.Google Scholar
Ossman, Susan (1994). Picturing Casablanca: Portraits of power in a modern city. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Jonathan (ed.) (2005). Introduction. Linguistics 43(5):871–81. (Special Issue: Language, migration and the city: Corpus-based approaches.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. (1993). The uses of folk linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(2):181–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadiqi, Fatima (2003). Women, gender and language in Morocco. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (1993). Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In Lucy, John A. (ed.), Reflexive language, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23:193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trabelsi, Chadia (1991). De quelques aspects du langage des femmes de Tunis. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 87:87–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walters, Keith (1989). Social change and linguistic variation in Korba, a small Tunisian town. Austin: University of Texas at Austin dissertation.Google Scholar
Walters, Keith (2003). Fergie's prescience: The changing nature of diglossia in Tunisia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 163:77–109.Google Scholar
Walters, Keith (2006). Communal dialects. In Versteegh, Kees, Eid, Mushira, Elgibali, Alaa, Woidich, Manfred, & Zaborski, Andrzej (eds.), Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, vol 1, 442–48. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Wassink, Alicia B., & Dyer, Judy (2004). Language ideology and the transmission of phonological change: Changing indexicality in two situations of language contact. Journal of English Linguistics 32(1):3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. (1998). Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In Schieffelin, Bambi, Woolard, Kathryn, & Kroskrity, Paul (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory, 3–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. (2008). Why dat now? Linguistic-anthropological contributions to the explanation of sociolinguistic icons and change. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):432–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar