Language Policy and Power Dynamics in Post-Independence Morocco
A Critical Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36950/lpia-01-01-2025-4Keywords:
language policy, educational policies, Modern Standard Arabic, Amazigh, Foreign LanguagesAbstract
Morocco is a multilingual society where national, official, and foreign languages coexist and are used daily. Their functions and domains of use reveal their status and the processes by which they are classified into dominant and dominated languages. Most of the former studies on language policy in Morocco have mainly focused on policy formulation and decisions as an apolitical endeavor. The present study, however, aims to investigate the crucial role language policy plays in structuring power and inequality in the country. It argues that language policy is a political act with educational, linguistic, social, and economic ramifications. The national language policy formulated after Morocco's 1956 independence adopted the European model of 'one language, one nation' without considering the country's specific realities. The present paper involves a critical review of the literature and the legal documents, including the Moroccan New Constitution, and an extensive inquiry into the institutional reform efforts and directions in an attempt to answer the research questions related to (i) the status of mother tongues, official languages, and foreign languages in Morocco, more than six decades after its independence; (ii) the state of the Arabization process, the officialization of Amazigh, its teaching, and standardization; and (iii) what governs Moroccan language policy, and what the educational policies in Morocco reveal about the State’s language policy.
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