Languages and language situations in Morocco; bilingualism and code-switching.

In this book, I attempt to show how colonial and postcolonial political forces have endeavoured to reconstruct the national identity of Morocco, on the basis of cultural representations and ideological constructions closely related to nationalist and ethnolinguistic trends. I discuss how the issue of language is at the centre of the current cultural and political debates in Morocco. The present book is an investigation of the ramifications of multilingualism for language choice patterns and attitudes among Moroccans. More importantly, the book assesses the roles played by linguistic and cultural factors in the development and evolution of Moroccan society. It also focuses on the impact of multilingualism on cultural authenticity and national identity. Having been involved in research on language and culture for many years, I am particularly interested in linguistic and cultural assimilation or alienation, and under what conditions it takes place, especially today that more and more Moroccans speak French and are influenced by Western social behaviour more than ever before. In the process, I provide the reader with an updated description of the different facets of language use, language maintenance and shift, and language attitudes, focusing on the linguistic situation whose analysis is often blurred by emotional reactions, ideological discourses, political biases, simplistic assessments, and ethnolinguistic identities.

What happens – sociologically, linguistically, educationally, politically – when more than one language is in regular use in a community? How do speakers handle these languages simultaneously, and what influence does this language contact have on the languages involved? Although most people in the world use more than one language in everyday life, the approach to the study of language has usually been that monolingualism is the norm. The recent interest in bilingualism and language contact has led to a number of new approaches, based on research in communities in many different parts of the world. This book draws together this diverse research, looking at examples from many different situations, to present the topic in any easily accessible form. Language contact is looked at from four distinct perspectives. The authors consider bilingual societies; bilingual speakers; language use in the bilingual community; finally language itself (do languages change when in contact with each other? Can they borrow rules of grammar, or just words? How can new languages emerge from language contact?). The result is a clear, concise synthesis offering a much-needed overview of this lively area of language study.

Al-‘Arabiyya Volume 53 features five articles and six book reviews. Three of the articles contribute in many meaningful ways to Arabic sociolinguistics, one to Arabic second language learning and teaching pedagogy, and one to Arabic dialectology. The book review section contains six reviews of books whose content and scope range from teaching the Arabic language, to literature, to translations of literary works, to oral history. These book reviews are Dris Soulaimani’s first welcome contribution as book review editor.

This book forms an invaluable reference work for all teachers of second languages and researchers in the field of L2 acquisition. It discusses the contribution that modern research into L2 acquisition makes to the curriculum development process. It also provides the reader with arguments for and against the various approaches to teaching.

This book posits a universal syntactic constraint (FPC) for code switching, using as its basis a study of different types of code-switching between French, Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic in a language contact situation. After presenting the theoretical background and linguistic context under study, the author closely examines examples of syntactic constraints in the language of functional bilinguals switching between French and forms of Arabic, proposing that this hypothesis can also be applied in other comparable language contact and translanguaging contexts worldwide. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of French, Arabic, theoretical linguistics, syntax and bilingualism.

"This book argues for the need to empower African indigenous languages for greater functions in national life. It makes an important and useful contribution to the understanding of the sociolinguistic and sociopolitical dimensions of language attitudes in the sub-Saharan African language context." "Overall, the book will interest all sociolinguists, language in education researchers and scholars, language policy makers in multilingual situations, and even politicians. Also, anyone interested in the complex African language context will find the book very informative, even stirring, while those involved with language issues in multilingual situations all over the world will find Language Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa interesting, stimulating, and valuable."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved