"I Talk It and I Feel It": Language Attitudes of Moroccan University Students

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2014
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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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 of language policy in education to shape language attitudes, and the third addresses the history of the Amazigb movement, concluding with the recognition of Tamazight 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.
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