Diglossia, folk-linguistics, and language anxiety: The 2018 language ideological debate in Morocco

In this chapter we discuss the recent Moroccan language ideological debate about the use of some dialectal/colloquial words (dārija) in the national school curriculum. The Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research in Morocco issued a statement on its Facebook page on 4 September 2018 to settle a controversy about the inclusion of these words in the new educational curriculum, triggering, in the process, a host of comments in response. The Ministry rationalized the use of dārija words on pedagogical grounds.

This chapter has two key objectives: first, to situate the language ideological debate in hand within its social context with a focus on the role of language in education and identity construction. Second, in doing so we invoke folk conceptualizations of the Arabic language situation to understand the structure of this debate. We argue that this debate is permeated with an understanding of Arabic that is very much in line with Ferguson’s diglossia framework, first articulated in 1959 and revised in 1991. We further contend that discourses of language anxiety are part of the socio-communicative repertoire of Arabic speakers, and that this anxiety, acquired through socialization, is an integral part of the nexus of language ideology and folk-linguistics.

The main source of data for the analysis is the official statement published by the Ministry of National Education on its Facebook page and the corpus of metalinguistic comments it triggered. As discursive acts/events, these time-limited materials were analyzed to specify the main issues they raise which, in turn, guided the selection of the examples referenced in this study for illustrative purposes.