Towards Standardizing Moroccan Arabic - Or Not!

Aabi, Mustapha; Aabi, Mina

دفاتر في اللسانيات والتعليمية
Volume 7, Numéro 2, Pages 11-25
2018-11-30

Towards Standardizing Moroccan Arabic - Or Not!

Authors : Aabi Mustapha . Aabi Mina .

Abstract

As a process, standardization works on establishing the conventional forms of a variety in order to be maintained by a speech community in their normative usages such as education, science and media. In the context of Morocco, there have been incessant attempts by the advocates of the standardization of Moroccan Arabic to codify and expand the range of its functions especially in the media and more recently in education by integrating Moroccan Arabic words in the primary school curriculum. Such attempts, however, have generated more controversy than success and Moroccan Arabic standardization is still a far-fetched goal. Thus, the main aim of the present research is to carry out an exploratory study into the constraints and possibilities for the standardization of Moroccan Arabic. We will show through the examination of its context that such a process is bound to raise difficulties if not controversies given the sensitive nature of the issue of languages which tend to be ideologically highly constraining given their sensitive political and religious associations.