Cs in Agadir Radios
Cs in Agadir Radios
Cs in Agadir Radios
Major: Linguistics
Semester: 6
Title:
Shows
DEDICATION
This study is wholeheartedly dedicated to our beloved parents, who have been our
source of inspiration and gave us strength when we thought of giving up, who continually
provide their moral, spiritual, emotional, and financial support.
To our brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, and classmates who shared their words of
advice and encouragement to finish this study.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to our supervisor MR. Belqassem
Laghfiri. We are highly indebted to him, to his intelligent orientation and his wise
suggestions. We have always believed that he is a great teacher and without him this work
would have not seen light.
We would like also to acknowledge the educational help of other professors we could
not mention by name in our haste to finish this work, who have spent hours from their lives
teaching us.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
1: Introduction........................................................................................................................5
2: Theoretical Part.................................................................................................................6
The status of Moroccan Arabic (similarities and differences) with standard Arabic.....7
Foreign languages, French, Spanish, and English.........................................................8
Amazigh language and the three Amazigh varieties.....................................................8
The Arab-Amazigh community....................................................................................9
A brief grammatical and linguistic overview of the characteristics of Arabic and
Tamazight..................................................................................................................10
Code-Switching studies..................................................................................................13
Code-Switching.......................................................................................................... 13
Borrowing...................................................................................................................15
Difference between code-switching and borrowing...................................................15
Chapter summary..........................................................................................................16
3: Practical Part..................................................................................................................17
Methodology...................................................................................................................17
Participants...................................................................................................................18
Data collection and analysis.........................................................................................18
Chapter summary................................................................................................................28
4: Conclusion.....................................................................................................................29
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5: References......................................................................................................................29
- ABSTRACT:
- KEY WORDS:
1- INTRODUCTION:
The present paper tries to shed light on the field of code-switching, generally in
Morocco describing the Moroccan socio linguistic context and all the languages that
influences the Moroccan conversations, more specifically in the Agadir region which is a
well-known bilingual city, where the two Moroccan official languages (Tamazight and
Arabic) are both spoken and mostly combined in one sentence. We selected one of Agadir
radio channels and focused on one program entitled “Abrid n-tnamourt” which translates to
(Citizenship path), a program that guides and teaches the citizenship values, to extract the data
and give an overview about the code-switching that happen in Agadir radios.
To accomplish the study, we divided our paper into two main parts. First, Theoretical
Part which will encompass a general description of the field through some code-switching
studies and a review of literature on the basis of history of multilingualism in Morocco.
Second, Practical Part which will rely on a recording from the program named “Abrid n-
tnamourt” as stated above, fifty sentences will be collected carefully and divided into the four
types of code switching and then we will compare our findings to some similar theories to
give a closer understanding to the information we collected.
2- THEORETICAL PART:
This chapter provides a background on the theoretical review related to the current
study to be able to better understand the linguistic phenomenon being studied. The chapter
will provide a discussion about the Moroccan sociolinguistic context, divided into five parts;
the Standard Arabic and its relation to Arabic dialects, the Moroccan Arabic and its status in
the light of similarities and differences as with Standard Arabic, the foreign languages, the
Amazigh varieties, and the Amazigh Arabic community describing the characteristics of the
each language with examples. Subsequently, it focuses on Code-switching as a sociolinguistic
phenomenon, with providing definitions about both Code-switching and Borrowing, to show
the differences between the two terms. Finally the chapter will rely on some previous studies
about the phenomenon.
Morocco is known as a bilingual community, many languages and different dialects are
used by Moroccan people, Morocco is a bilingual country which has two different official
languages, Arabic and Tamazight, which are the most languages that used, standard Arabic
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used in administrations, in the schools or in the Masjid and so on.. the Arabic "Darija" used as
the language of the street as well as the Berber language, which is used among Amazigh
people in different areas in Morocco, Moroccan sociolinguistic context contains as well
foreign languages as French, Spanish and English used as a second language, in the next
paragraphs we are going to explain and talk more about sociolinguistic context in Morocco;
Throughout the Arabic community, every country has its own dialect, but they have the
same mother tongue which is standard Arabic, in Morocco the dialect is derived from the
standard Arabic, gradually the dialect becomes different from the origin language, because of
the frequent practice of the language by people, they omitted some words and add others, in
order to make the language of communication easy and suit for their daily lives, the also
change the pronouncement in some situations, The same w ay is adopted by other Arabic
countries such as Egypt or Levantine Arabic, they have the same situation like Morocco in
terms of dialects, all of them derive their dialects from the standard Arabic which is their
mother tongue, but there only one obstruction which faces the Arabic language is the problem
of comprehension of dialects between Arabic people throughout the whole Arabic
community, for instance a person in Syria may have difficulty making a complete
understanding to another dialect of a person living in Morocco, this may be only the barrier
that faces the Arabic language.
2.2 The status of Moroccan Arabic (similarities and differences) with standard Arabic:
As known, Moroccan Arabic or "Darija" is like other Arabic dialects in the other Arabic
countries, in terms of pronunciation, the Moroccans spell their Arabic almost like the standard
Arabic, except some new words which have been created recently, and used just on the street,
also, in terms of context, in spite of the distinctions between the Moroccan Arabic and the
standard Arabic, the context of both the two languages is nearly alike, the speakers when they
talk each other even in standard Arabic or in the Moroccan language, they create the same
context in their speech The differences between the Moroccan Arabic and the Standard Arabic
may be in terms of vocabulary, there is a considerable distinction between the two languages,
a lot of words have been generated recently, and using frequently among Moroccans, while
the origin words have been left, another difference is exist in terms of grammar, in the
standard Arabic, the grammar rules are respected and prestigious, unlike in Moroccan Arabic,
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the grammar rules have no consideration, the phrases are constructed randomly, the thing that
shows that the Moroccan Arabic differs comparatively with the standard Arabic.
Tamazight may be the second mother tongue in Morocco, recently, it has been
constitutionalized, hence, it has become an official language. Given this fact, a number of
studies have been conducted in order to codify and standardize the language (see Boukhris et
al. 2008 for example). Tamazight is a rich language as Arabic, it has many characteristics
which make it holding many centuries until now, while some languages are now extinct, one
of this characteristics is the distinction of accents from region to another among Amazigh
community, Tamazight language now divided into three varieties, start with, Tarifit is
generally spoken in the Rife Mountains. In particular, the major cities where Tarifit is spoken
are Houceima, Nadour and Imzourn. The second variety isTamazight which is widely spoken
in the Atlas Mountains, a vast area that includes cities such as Khenifra and Khemissat. The
third variety is Tashlhit. This language is spoken in the south, more precisely, in the region of
Souss Massa , its major cities being Agadir and Tata, Taroudant and Tiznit. all this three
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varieties are different in accents and dialects, also there is a small different in terms of
pronouncement, which creates a problematic situation in communication between Amazigh
people, a person in El rrif speaking Tarifit would have trouble comprehending another person
speaking Tashlhit living in Souss, this distinction between accents and dialects in tamazight
may lead to lose a lot of its features and qualities, because this distinction may cause a slow or
gradual disappearance or a gradual substitution with Arabic dialect, this is the most trouble
which faces this three varieties and Tamazight in general.
Historically, the Berber known as the first residents of north Africa, then, after the
widespread of the Islam, and its arrival to Morocco by Arabic people, they settle in and merge
with the Amazigh and adapt with their culture as well their language, in other side, the Berber
also adopt the Arabic language as a communicating tool for trading with Arab, piecemeal, the
Arabic become the first language of the whole north Africa, and the Berber people who
speaking their origin language are 32 million, because of the spread of the Arabic language in
Morocco, a lot of Arabic words, terms, codes, expressions and idioms infiltrate into
Tamazight to be frequent among Amazigh speakers, and substitute their counterparts in
Tamazight, Code switching in the Arab- Amazigh community is not complicated comparing
with other languages, according to Amazigh people, Arabic is their second language, and the
language by which they practicing their Islamic ritual, and many activities which making the
code switching easy for them.
Accents:
speaking the same language which is tamazight, but the distinction of the accents is a
boundary that faces the Berbers for communicating and understanding each other.
2.5.1 A brief grammatical and linguistic overview of the characteristics of Arabic and
Tamazight:
Tamazight and Arabic languages are prevalently similar in many aspects, Arabic and
Tamazight languages have been mixed and used together in a wide range of sociolinguistic
contexts due to the historical and religious factors, which pushed Amazigh and Arabic people
to live together in the same community and share many things. Thus, during the switching
between Arabic-Amazigh bilingual speech may affect some structure which undergoing to
discuss here:
- Word-order system:
Arabic:
S V O
V S O
Tamazight:
S V O
V S O
Similarly, Arabic and Tamazight are alike in term of the position of noun modifiers, they both
have a noun- adjective order, the nominal modifier normally follows the noun as illustrated
below:
Arabic:
V S O
Tamazight:
V S O
Arabic and Tamazight have in common another characteristic in word order system which can
be noticed in nominal possessive constructions, in both of these languages, the possessor
comes immediately after the possessed, and is either juxtaposed as a pronominal possessor
( suffix ) or appears as a nominal possessor as explained below:
Arabic:
Miftah-uk
(Your key)
N possessed - N possessor
Miftah al-bab
Tamazight:
N possessed - P possessed
Tasarut-nk
(Your key)
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N possessed - N possessor
Tasarot n tagort
- Sentence structure:
In the sentence structure system, Arabic and Tamazight have the same structure, for instance,
in Arabic there are two basic sentence types, they are usually referred to as a nominal and
verbal sentence ( Al Muhtaseb and Mellish 1997)
Tamazight language as well has the same structure; both nominal and verbal sentence can be
used in the sentence structure as illustrated in previous examples. These two languages have
also another feature in common, which is the occurrence of nominal sentence without a verb,
the examples below explained that:
Arabic:
Al-tilm id mujtahid
Tamazight:
- Definiteness:
Tamazight has almost the same structure for noticing definiteness as in Arabic, for example,
in both languages an indefinite noun is unmarked, whereas a definite noun is marked in
Arabic by the prefix (al-) and in Tamazight by the determiner ( yat-) as shown in next
examples:
Arabic:
Deter-N N
(Al-bab) (bab)
Tamazight:
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Deter-N N
In terms of Dual and plural system, we find out the difference between Arabic and Tamazight
in this system, as known, Arabic language has a specific representation for objects, extra to
singular and plural number, Arabic has a third category, Dual number, by contrast, in
Tamazight which has only singular and plural number categories as explained in the
examples:
Singular:
Kitab
A book
Adlis
Dual
Kitaban/ kitabayn
Two books
Sin idllisn
Plural:
Kutub
Books
Idllisn
3. Code-Switching studies:
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“Despite individual differences, all bilinguals share the ability to act in their native language,
in their second language, and to switch back and forth between the two languages they know
"(Van Hell, 1998).
>Code-Switching:
In many situations, a speaker may shift from one code to another, intentionally or
unintentionally. This shift may be from one language to another, from one dialect to another,
or from one style to another for many different reasons. A bilingual teacher in class may
switch his or her language in order to elaborate a certain point they are explaining.
Sociolinguists refer to this shift as ‘code-switching’. Joan Swann and Indra Sinka explain that
‘definitions of codes-witching vary’ (Swann & Sinka, 2007).which is defiantly true, the
definition of code-switching varies from one linguist to another, and thus several definitions
by various sociolinguists will be mentioned.
There are several definitions for code-switching. Gumperz (1982 b) defined code-
switching as “the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech
belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems” (p. 59) .The emphasis is on
the two grammatical systems of one language, although most people refer to code-switching
as the mixed use of languages. Milroy and Muysken (1995) stated that code-switching is “the
alternative use by bilinguals of two or more languages in the same conversation” (p.7).
Macswan (1999) also claimed that “code switching is a speech style in which fluent bilinguals
move in and out of two (or conceivably more) languages”. With different notions of
definition, code-switching has been studied in different ways, thus cultivating different
interpretations or understanding toward this language phenomenon.
Tag switches: Tag switches commonly include the insertion of a tag or a short expression in
one language into a sentence in another language not currently in use during a conversation,
for example:
Intrasentential switches: These types of switches take place within clause boundaries inside a
sentence or sometimes even with the word boundaries, for example:
Intersentential switches this type of code-switching takes place at sentence boundaries, where
the speaker says a sentence fully in one language or another for example:
Hia ekhtarat al-makan, to park the car [she chose the place, to park the car]
ghikli Skrnt’kh yan da’am la mathil lah [as They established unparalleled support]
>borrowing:
Borrowing (also known as lexical borrowing) broad definition is the process by which a word
from one language is adapted for use in another. The word that is borrowed is called a
borrowing, a borrowed word, or a loanword.
But, different linguists such as Angermeyer (2010) define borrowing as: “Borrowing consists
of the introduction of single words or short, frozen, idiomatic phrases from one language into
the other. The items in question are incorporated into the grammatical systems of the
borrowing language. They are treated as part of its lexicon, take on its morphological
characteristics and enter into its syntactic structures”
There has been much research in the field of code switching with the past fifty years;
however, the majority of authors have focused on code switching behaviors for speakers of
European languages. There is a pronounced lack of research in the field of code switching
between language families, for example the Afro-asiatic languages Arabic and Tamazight
which indicates the lack of a theoretical foundation for discussing code switching behaviors of
Tamazight-Arabic bilinguals.
Nonetheless, there are several studies on Code-switching studies between Arabic and
English, one of those is a study of Alhazmi (2016) which focused on the linguistic aspects of
Code-switching among Arabic-English bilingual speakers in Australia, it was determined
through this study that Code-switching between Arabic and English is possible and often
seems to be acceptable despite the typological differences between them at various levels, in
the collected elements Nouns with noun phrases and interjections represented the largest
number of switches it was also revealed that the equivalence and free morpheme models
appear to be overwhelmingly invalid as constraints on producing codswitching in this corpus.
Lanza (1997) also conducted a study pertaining to the use of code switching by English-
Arabic bilinguals, and found out that the parents of young Arabs paid more attention to
teaching them fluency in English for the sake of social and academic success. Hence, the
fluency in English was higher for them than in Arabic, their mother tongue. Upon careful
analysis of the conversations where the students had been involved in code switching, it was
found that some of them had switched languages in order to emphasize certain opinions or
points, or to exclude other speakers from the conversation (Lanza, 1997).
3- PRACTICAL PART:
- Given that Tamazight and Arabic languages have some letters that do not exist in the
English language, here are some keys to understand:
- q q ق
- kh ẖ خ
- gh ġ غ
- h ḥ ح
- ʿa ʿa ع
- z ẓ ظ
- d ḏ ذ
1. Methodology:
1.1 Objectives:
1.3 Participants:
Study subject or participants most of the time require a standardization of procedures and
random selection to remove the potential influence of external variables and ensure
generalizability of results but in contrast subject selection in this particular case is purposeful;
participants are selected in the base of who can best inform the research questions and
enhance understanding of the phenomenon under study. Hence, one of the most important
tasks in this study is to identify appropriate participants.
The main resource of this research is a 30 minutes Radio show by the name of “Atig N
Tnamourt” which translates to (Citizenship Values), a radio show that is broadcasted in
Tamazight radio channel “Agadir Regional Radio”
The host Hadda Al-‘awij a well know Moroccan Amazigh radio personality and her guest
Ibrahim Sarrih a teacher and the head of the civic club in a high school in the region of Agadir
are the two main subjects of this study. About 50 examples of CS are collected from the 30
minutes discussion.
Due to the lack of resources, the code-switching data were collected from one data
resource, which is a recording of a conversation between the host of the program and her
guest in one of Agadir radio channels.
Conversation analysis (CA) is used to examine the actual interaction among the
participants. According to Schegloff (1987), CA is an analytical method that enables the
researcher to examine the characteristics of recorded talk in interactions empirically. Thus, it
helps identify patterns of CS according to syntactic categories. The Partition criteria of data
have been used with 50 examples of Arabic and Tamazight from the recording to illustrate the
P a g e | 19
patterns of CS with regard to form. Grammatical features (gloss) are provided for
classification purposes, as well as translation into English followed in parentheses. For the
sake of identifying language dominance, Myers-Scotton’s approach (1993) is employed in
which poists that ther is a Matrix language (ML) which is the dominant language and an
Embedded language (EM) which is the inserted morphosyntactic elements to the ML.
The conversation generated numerous examples of switching at the discourse level where tags
in one language are inserted into an utterance in another. The tags involved in Amazigh-
English CS patterns can be single words or short phrasal or sentential constructions. There are
frequent instances of Amazigh-English extra-sentential switching as in the following:
- Single word
For inter-sentential switching, the recording included numerous examples in which switches
can be made between the two main clauses or between a main clause and a subordinate clause
as in the following:
15. Nadi qiam al-mowatana nadi mohim; ariffal yat tabrat iinlmadn.
- Interrogatives:
- In conditional clauses:
19. Oradarnḥ ili imal ifolkin, iḥor n-rba ḥ al-qolob-nsn ḥob al-watan.
(We will not have a good future, if we do not raise patriotism in their hearts.)
- Adverbial clauses:
- Embedded relatives:
- Switching can occur in case of coordinated clauses where the switched coordinating
conjunction can be in different language from the two clauses as in example (23):
In the case of intra-sentential there are several examples from the recording as the following:
- VP and PP:
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(A good future.)
- Switching can occur frequently in case of coordinated words where the switched
coordinating conjunction is in a different language from the two words (example
below):
------
In the case of Intra-Word CS, there are several occurrences demonstrating switches within
word boundaries, typical examples of such cases are:
- The possessive clitic pronoun “nẖ“ is added as a suffix to the word to the Arabic
noun “Al-‘aaql“:
43. Al-moyolatns.
(His deisres.)
- The Tamazight past tense marker “ma“ is added as a prefix to the Arabic word “Al-
waqt”:
- The Amazigh plural maker “in” is added as a suffix to the Arabic noun “al-
oustadat₺:
There are also cases of switching between verb and subject\or object pronouns in which such
pronouns are cliticised to Tamazight verbs, such examples are:
P a g e | 25
- The Arabic subject first person pronoun “a” is added as a prefix to the Tamazight
word “iḥiyl”:
- The Amazigh past verb marker “i” is affixed to the Arabic verb “ʿaabbara”:
- The third person plural marker in Tamazight, “n”, is added as a suffix to the Arabic
verb “sharaka”:
- The progressive marker in Tamazight “ar” is added as a prefix to the Arabic verb
“kawwana”:
- The first person plural marker in Tamazight “an” is used with the Arabic verb
“ʿaalaja”:
In the previous 50 sentences and phrases the data yielded around 95 switches between
Tamazight and Arabic, divided into 4 code-switching categories (extra sentential, inter
sentential, intra sentential and intra word switching), the switching occurred in two directions
either from Tamazight to Arabic or Arabic to Tamazight. Given that the Radio channel is
Amazigh and it is the radio’s main language, the use of Arabic language is huge. According to
the MLF (Matrix Language Frame), during the switch, the participating languages stay in an
asymmetrical relationship to each other. One of the languages, the matrix language (ML), is
dominant and supplies the morph syntactic frame of the bilingual clause or sentence. The
other language has an auxiliary function and supplies content morphemes which are
embedded into the ML. This language is called embedded language (EL) (Myers-Scotton
P a g e | 26
1993b: 35), in some cases Tamazight plays the dominant role as the matrix language (ML) as
well as the Arabic when it is identified as the ML. The figure below shows the rate of
language dominance in the 50 sentences:
54%
60%
46%
50%
Tamazight is ML (Arabic is EL)
Arabic Iis ML (Tamazight is EL)
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Language Dominance
The chart shows that the rate of the two languages is very convergent; the number of
Arabic EL switched utterances is almost more than Tamazight EL utterances. So Tamazight is
playing the role of the dominant language as the number of Tamazight ML utterances
represents 54%, while the number of Arabic ML utterances makes up about 46% of the 50
sentences.
With regard to the whole conversation, there are several examples of Amazigh-Arabic
code- switching. The recording is about 33 minutes long but the host started talking to her
guest at the second minute. The Figure (2) represents a 60 seconds sample of code switching
from the recording (from 2:00 to 3:00):
TAMAZIGHT
ARABIC
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
As shown in the chart there are 14 switches in 60 seconds, the use of the two languages
is very convergent with a little priority to the Amazigh language. The host and her guest
started talking with Amazigh salutations and greetings, and then they moved talking about
their main issue (Citizenship) with Arabic, after, they started discussing it with Amazigh
language and inserted Arabic elements.
The conversation was not only limited on Arabic and Tamazight languages but also on
other languages; the Moroccan Arabic (Darija) which is completely different from the
standard Arabic as in the following:
To sum up, Code-switching occurs in two directions either from Arabic to Tamazight or
from Tamazight to Arabic, Tamazight almost plays the role of the dominant language ML
with a 54% from the previous 50 Arabic-Amazigh CS.
2. Chapter summary:
This chapter tries to give an overview about code switching among Amazigh-Arabic
bilinguals in the region of Agadir generally. The study approved that code-switching is
possible between Tamazight and Arabic It was observed that there are possibilities for
switching at various syntactic and discourse boundaries where the four categories of CS are
allowed: tag-switching, inter- sentential switching, intra-sentential switching, and intra-word
switching. It was also found that the use of the two languages is very convergent and seems to
be normal despite of the identity of the radio show.
4- CONCLUSION:
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The findings of this research revealed that Arabic and Tamazight speakers could easily
switch between the two languages, language choice seems to be determined by the social
domain: Tamazight being the language of greetings and discussions, and Arabic being the
language of titles and names.
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