A study on the sociolinguistic profile of students instructed in three different languages in marocco: standard modern arabic, french and dariya
Abstract
Objectives: to determine whether a situation of diglossia exists in Morocco by evaluating the sociolinguistic profile (domain of use and language attitudes) and oral comprehension in Modern Standard Arabic, French and Darija. Method: A descriptive transversal study was conducted in which 27 nine-year old pupils from the third grade of a private Moroccan Primary School took part. An ad hoc questionnaire was used as a measure to evaluate domain of use, language attitudes and oral comprehension in the three languages. Results: French is the most valued and widely-used language in educational settings. Attitudes towards Modern Standard Arabic are very positive and it is present in many domains of use. Darija is the language used in family conversations and language attitudes towards it are negative. Conclusion: There exists a language imbalance between Modern Standard Arabic, French and Darija which depends on the settings of use and the different attitudes towards the languages. There is a difference of status resulting in the predominant use of one language over another in certain activities and situations.
Downloads
The works published in this magazine are subject to the following terms:
1. The Publications Service of the University of Murcia (the publisher) preserves the economic rights (copyright) of the published works, and favors and allows the reuse of same under the license of use indicated in point 2.
2. The papers are published in the electronic edition of the magazine under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 3.0 Spain license (legal text). Papers may be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly exhibited if the following requirements are met: i) The authorship and the original source of its publication (magazine, editorial and URL of the work) must be cited; ii) The works cannot be used for commercial purposes; iii) The existence and specifications of this user license must be explicitly mentioned.
3. Self-archiving conditions. Authors can electronically disseminate pre-print versions (version before being evaluated) and / or post-print versions (version evaluated and accepted for publication). This makes possible its circulation and diffusion earlier and with it a possible increase in its citation and reach among the academic community. RoMEO color: green.
