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DĀRIJA AND CHANGING WRITING PRACTICES IN MOROCCO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2013

Alexander E. Elinson
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Abstract

Social, political, and technological changes have forced changes in the contemporary Moroccan linguistic landscape. In print media, advertising, music, fictional writing, and translation, Moroccan Arabic (dārija) is being written in a variety of ways that point to a shift in perceptions and usage of dārija in daily Moroccan life. In this article, I provide a discussion of recent developments in the use of dārija in writing, and discuss how this evolving situation is articulated by intellectuals, journalists, publishers, fiction writers, and translators.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 715 - 730
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York, and the FAFO Institute for Applied International Studies in Oslo for financial assistance that has helped fund this research. I have presented this work in various stages at the Harvard Moroccan Studies Forum, a Columbia University conference on “Teaching Arab Intellectual Thought and the Changing Role of the Literati,” and the annual meetings of the American Comparative Literature Association in Vancouver (2011) and Toronto (2013) and I thank the participants for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the editors and anonymous readers at IJMES, whose comments were especially helpful in clarifying my thoughts and writing, in particular, Sara Pursley, the Associate Editor of the Journal. I thank the many people with whom I spoke about this work. All of those conversations, whether they have made it into these pages, have been greatly beneficial to my thinking. Special thanks to Catherine Miller of the Centre Jacques Berque in Rabat for taking the time to meet and discuss this project with me, as well as for sharing her own expertise and research. Her encouragement and generous giving of her time have been instrumental in helping me develop my ideas on this topic.

1 In this article, I use the term Standard Arabic for the high register that is used across the Arab world for most written and formal functions, and dārija for the Moroccan spoken register. It is important to note, though, that this is a simplification, as the registers of Arabic cannot be so clearly divided into high and low. A classic study of the multileveled nature of Arabic is Badawi's, al-SaʿidMustawayat al-ʿArabiyya al-Muʿasira fi Misr (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1973)Google Scholar. Badawi does not view Arabic in Egypt as a pure ideal (al-fuṣḥā) with corrupt spoken variants (ʿammiyyāt). Rather, he treats Arabic as a continuum, which he breaks down into five levels, each fulfilling a different linguistic function: fuṣḥā al-turāth (fuṣḥā—or “pure” Arabic—of the heritage), fuṣḥā al-ʿaṣr (fuṣḥā of the contemporary period), ʿāmmiyyat al-muthaqqafīn (the ʿāmmiyya of intellectuals), ʿāmmiyyat al-mutanawwirīn (the ʿāmmiyya of enlightened or educated people), and ʿāmmiyyat al-ummiyyīn (the ʿammiyya of the illiterate). Abderrahim Youssi speaks of three levels of Arabic in Morocco: Literary Arabic is used primarily for writing, Middle Moroccan Arabic is an “educated” spoken register, and dārija is “spoken by over 90 percent of the total population for intimate and informal, everyday life purposes.” Youssi, Abderrahim, “The Moroccan Triglossia: Facts and Implications,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 112 (1995): 29–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Bensmaïa, Réda, Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb (Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Kaye, Jacqueline and Zoubir, Abdelhamid, The Ambiguous Compromise: Language, Literature and National Identity in Algeria and Morocco (New York and London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Boukous, Ahmed, Langage et culture populaires au Maroc (Casablanca: Dar al-Kitab, 1977)Google Scholar; Société, langues et cultures au Maroc (Rabat, Morocco: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres, 1995); L'amazigh dans la politique linguistique et culturelle au Maroc (Rabat, Morocco: Centre Tarek Ibn Ziyyad, 2003). I use the word “Amazigh” to refer to the Berber people and amāzīghiyya as an umbrella term for the three main forms of the language spoken by these populations across Morocco. The word “Berber” has fallen out of use to a large extent in North Africa because of its negative connotations; the Arabic word barbar comes from the Greek bárbaros which means “not-Greek,” and by extension “not civilized” or “barbaric.”

4 On Egypt, see Rosenbaum, Gabriel, “Egyptian Arabic as a Written Language,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 29 (2004): 281–340Google Scholar; Mejdell, Gunvor, “The Use of Colloquial in Modern Egyptian Literature—A Survey,” in Current Issues in the Analysis of Semitic Grammar and Lexicon II (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 195–213Google Scholar; idem, “What Is Happening to Lughatuna l-Gamila? Recent Media Representations and Social Practice in Egypt,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 8 (2008): 108–24; Doss, Madiha, “Cultural Dynamics and Linguistic Practice in Contemporary Egypt,” Cairo Papers in Social Science 27 (2006): 51–68Google Scholar; and Fahmy, Ziad, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Arkadiusz Plonka discusses debates that occurred in Lebanon in the mid- to late-20th century, specifically concerning the linguistic ideology of Lebanese nationalist Saʿid ʿAql (b. 1911), in L'idée de langue libanaise d'après Saʿid ʿAql (Paris: Geuthner, 2004); and “Le nationalisme linguistique au Liban autour de Saʿid ʿAql et l'idée de langue libanaise dans la revue ‘Lebnaan’ en nouvel alphabet,” Arabica 53 (2006): 423–71.

5 Kaye and Zoubir, The Ambiguous Compromise, 15.

6 Institute for the Study and Research of Arabization, http://www.iera.ac.ma/ (accessed 25 June 2013).

7 Laroui, Abdallah, “Cultural Problems and Social Structure: The Campaign for Arabization in Morocco,” Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 33–46Google Scholar; Grandguillaume, Gilbert, “Pour une anthropologie de l'arabisation au Maghreb,” Peuples Mediterraneens/Mediterranean Peoples 1 (October–December 1977): 95–119Google Scholar; Seckinger, Beverley, “Implementing Morocco's Arabization Policy: Two Problems of Classification,” in With Forked Tongues: What Are National Languages Good For?, ed. Coulmas, Florian (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Karoma Publishers, 1988), 68–90Google Scholar; Ennaji, Moha, Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2005)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 10, “Language Policy, Literacy, and Education”; Montserrat Benítez Fernández, “Approche sur la politique linguistique au Maroc depuis l'indépendence,” Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 10 (2006): 109–20; Charis Boutieri, “In Two Speeds (À Deux Vitesses): Linguistic Pluralism and Educational Anxiety in Contemporary Morocco,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 443–64.

8 UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/morocco_statistics.html (accessed 25 June 2013).

9 On the legal implications of this, see Lamrani, Fatima Zahra, “Arabic Triglossia, Illiteracy and the Problems of Communication in the Moroccan Criminal Courtroom,” in Actes du Colloque International: Language, Languages/La langue, les langues Casablanca 11–12 Juin 2010 (Casablanca: Fondation Zakoura Education, 2010), 239–52Google Scholar.

10 Susan Slyomovics, “100 Days of the 2011 Moroccan Constitution,” Jadaliyya, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2023/100-days-of-the-2011-moroccan-constitution (accessed 25 June 2013); Ahmed Benchemsi, “Morocco's Constitution: A Royal Trickery” http://ahmedbenchemsi.com/hello-world/ (accessed 25 June 2013).

11 General Secretariat of the Government, http://www.sgg.gov.ma/constitution_2011_Ar.pdf (accessed 25 June 2013).

12 Rosen, Tova, “The Muwashshah,” in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. Menocal, María Rosa, Scheindlin, Raymond P., and Sells, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165–89Google Scholar. Colloquial Arabic has long been used in prose writing as well. One example of this is in the letters of the second Alaouite Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismaʿil (d. 1727) to his son in Moulay Ismaʿil b. al-Sharif, Ila Waladi Maʾmun, ed. ʿAbd al-Wahhab Binmansur (Rabat, Morocco: al-Matbaʿa al-Malakiyya, 1979). I thank Ahmed Echcharfi for this reference.

13 Suleiman, Yasir, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Fernández, Montserrat Benítez, “Transcripción al árabe marroquí de mensajes de teléfono móvil,” Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 7 (2003): 153–63Google Scholar; Caubet, Dominique, “Génération Darija,” Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 9 (2005): 223–33Google Scholar; Caubet, “Apparition massive de la darija à l’écrit à partir de 2008–2009: sur le papier ou sur la toile? Quelle graphie? Quelles régularités?,” in De los manuscritos medievales a internet: la presencia del árabe vernáculo en las fuentes escritas, ed. Mohamed Meouak, Pablo Sánchez, and Ángeles Vicente (Zaragoza, Spain: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2012), 377–402; Catherine Miller, “Observations concernant la presence de l'arabe marocain dans la presse marocaine arabophone des années 2009–2010,” in Meouak et al., De los manuscritos medievales a internet, 419–40.

15 Hicham Oulmouddane, “Quand le rire était roi,” Tel Quel 447 (2010), http://www.telquel-online.com/archives/447/mag2_447.shtml (accessed 25 June 2013).

16 Akhbar al-Buq (28 April 1982), 2.

17 Abdelaziz Mouride, “Naissance de la presse en dialecte marocain ou ‘Darija,’” Le Matin, 3 August 2006, http://www.casafree.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5853.

18 E-mail exchange with Prentice, 7 March 2011.

19 Sarah A. H. Morgan, “The Darija Movement in Morocco: A Claim to Political Inclusion” (senior thesis, Barnard College, 2009), 36.

20 It is interesting to note that, despite the assertions of the Nishan staff that their publication represented a radical linguistic shift into dārija language writing and publishing, and despite the vocal opposition to such an endeavor, according to a statistical survey of the magazine's content, linguist Jan Hoogland of the Dutch Institute in Rabat estimates that no more than 10 percent of Nishan was in dārija (interview with Hoogland, 19 June 2012). The line that divides dārija and Standard Arabic is not at all fixed or clear, and it seems that the mere suggestion of writing in dārija, even in a limited way, is enough to elicit a strong reaction.

21 Mohammed Khyate, “L'hebdomadaire ‘Nichane’ interdit,” Aujourd'hui le Maroc, 22 December 2006, http://www.aujourdhui.ma/aufildesjours-details51153.html; Richard Hamilton, “Morocco Case Turns Spotlight on Free Speech,” BBC News, 15 January 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6265425.stm; “Moroccan court convicts Nichane journalists, shutters publication,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 16 January 2007, http://cpj.org/2007/01/moroccan-court-convicts-nichane-journalists-shutte.php

22 al-Sayyid, ʿUmar, Kalam al-Ghiwan (Casablanca: Matbaʿat al-Najah al-Jadida, 2010)Google Scholar.

23 Fisher, Max, “Morocco's Largest Arabic Newsweekly to Fold under State Pressure,” The Atlantic, 1 October 2010Google Scholar, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/10/moroccos-largest-arabic-newsweekly-to-fold-under-state-pressure/63921/.

24 Miller, “Observations concernant la presence de l'arabe marocain.”

25 Kilito, Abdelfettah, “Loin du proche, proche du lointain,” in Comment peut-on être Marocain?, ed. Cheddadi, Abdesselam (Temara, Morocco: Maison des Arts, des Sciences et des Lettres, 2009)Google Scholar, 129–40.

26 Ibid., 136.

27 Two such examples are Muhammad Barrada (Mohamed Berrada), Luʿbat al-Nisyan (The Game of Forgetting) and al-Dawʾ al-Harib (Fleeting Light); and Yusuf Fadil (Youssef Fadel), Hashish (Hashish) and Mitru Muhal (A Meter Tall? Unlikely). Both of these authors utilize linguistic diversity to great effect. For Barrada, “[t]he wide array of dialects and languages of different regions, classes, and ethnicities becomes an outward sign of the inability to find a common language to address critical issues and real concerns” (Magda Al-Nowaihi, “Committed Postmodernity: Mohamed Berrada's The Game of Forgetting,” Critique 15 [Fall 1999]: 15). As Roger Allen points out, Barrada “has made use of a form of what might be termed ‘literary dârijah’ to illustrate and accentuate the games that he frequently plays with narrative, narrators, and narration” (Allen, Roger, “Rewriting Literary History: The Case of Moroccan Fiction in Arabic,” The Journal of North African Studies 16 [2011]: 317CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Fadil, also a well-known playwright and television and movie scriptwriter, tends to exploit the differences between Standard Arabic and dārija in order to express and confront important social and political struggles such as unequal gender relations, economic insecurity and inequality, and government corruption, as well as to further heighten the sense of realism of the literary text.

28 Aguadé, Jordi, “Writing Dialect in Morocco,” Estudios de Dialectolgía Norteafricana y Andalusí 10 (2006): 253–74Google Scholar; Jan Hoogland, “Towards a Standardized Orthography of Moroccan Arabic Based on Best Practices and Common Ground among a Selection of Authors,” in Proceedings of the Vth International Congress on Moroccan Arabic, ed. Paula Santillán Grimm and Francisco Moscoso García (forthcoming).

29 For a detailed study of the book's orthography, as well as a translation into Spanish, see Jordi Aguadé, “Darle al pico: Un ‘bestiario’ de Youssouf Amine Elalamy en Árabe Marroquí,” Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 9 (2005): 245–65.

30 Amin al-ʿAlami, Yusuf, Tqarqib n-nab (Tangier: Khbar Bladna, 2006), 18Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., 58.

32 Ibid., 122.

33 Interview with al-ʿAlami, 10 July 2011.

34 For more on Theatre Nomad, see Zakia Abdennebi and Tom Pfeiffer, “Morocco Theater School Wages Battle for Youth,” The Daily Star, 13 July 2010, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Arts/Jul/13/Morocco-theater-school-wages-battle-for-youth.ashx#axzz20tX8ALLO.

35 “2M Mag” episode, first aired on Sunday, 22 April 2012.

36 ʿAlami, Murad, r-Rahil Demʿa Mesafera (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2012), 5Google Scholar.

37 ʿAlami, Murad, Lughat al-Maghrib al-Hayya al-Maghribiyya wa-l-Amazighiyya (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2011), 30Google Scholar.

38 ʿAlami, r-Rahil, 21.

39 Ibid., 22.

40 Laâbi, Abdellatif, La Poesía Marroquí: de la independencia a nuestros días, antología (Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas, Spain: Ediciones Idea, 2006), 363Google Scholar.

41 I thank Abdellah Baali for introducing me to Misnawi's work, and to Misnawi himself. A second novel in dārija, entitled ʿUkkaz r-Rih (The Wind's Crutch), was published in January 2013. Due to its recent publication, I was unable to include a dicussion of it here.

42 ʿIraqi Sinasur, Zakiyya, “al-Amthal al-ʿAmmiyya: Khususiyyatha al-Lughawiyya wa-Wazaʾifha,” in al-Amthal al-ʿAmmiyya fi al-Maghrib: Tadwinha wa-Tawzifha al-ʿIlmi wa-l-Bidaghujiy (Rabat, Morocco: Manshurat Akadimiyya al-Mamlaka al-Maghribiyya, 2001), 422Google Scholar.

43 Idris Misnawi, Amghar, Taʿirwurut: Teʿawid (Riwaya) (n.p.: Toub Press, 2010), 10Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 5.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., 6.

47 Ibid.

48 Taʿirwurut has caught the attention of a number of Amazighi writers, and there has been discussion of adapting the novel for the stage and the screen. There have also been discussions about translating the novel into amāzīghiyya (e-mail exchange with Misnawi, 29 August 2012).

49 ʿRekraki, Aziz, Nisa l-Hubb l-Azreq (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2005)Google Scholar; z-Zaʿima (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2006); Mulat n-Nuba (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2006); Heyehat l-Basha (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2007); l-Fushush l-ʿAryan (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2008); ʿAyb sh-Shahba (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Rabat Net, 2009).

50 Catherine Miller, “Du passeur individual au ‘mouvement linguistique,’” in Actes de la 2èmerencontre d'anthropologie linguistique, “Des passeurs au quotidian,” Tunis, Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain, 24–25 Janvier 2012, ed. Myriam Achour (Tunis: IRMC-Kertala, forthcoming).

51 ʿAlami, Murad, Hhikayat aalamiya be ellougha elmeghribiya [in Latin characters] (Rabat, Morocco: Éditions & Impressions Bouregreg, 2009)Google Scholar; Hikayat ʿAlemiya be l-Maghribiyya d-Darija (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2010); Mehebbat l-Hikma Kenz (Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2010); Mertiyat Duwino (The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke) (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2010); Nukat ʿAlemiya be l-Maghribiyya (Rabat, Morocco: Dar Abi Raqraq li-l-Tibaʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2012).

52 Murad ʿAlami, Lughat al-Maghrib al-Hayya, 13.

53 Ibid., 14.

54 Jacquemond, Richard, “Translation Policies in the Arab World: Representations, Discourses and Realities,” The Translator 15 (2009): 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 United Nations Arab Human Development Report: Building a Knowledge Society (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2003).

56 Jacquemond, “Translation Policies,” 19. Mermier, Franck, Le livre et la ville: Beyrouth et l’édition arabe (Arles, France: Actes Sud Sindbad, 2005)Google Scholar.

57 Yusi, ʿAbd al-Rahim, L-Amir s-Saghir (Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) (Casablanca: Éditions Aïni Bennaï, 2009)Google Scholar; L-Amir s-Saghir (Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) (Salé, Morocco: Kalimate, 2011); Qesidat l-Behhar sh-Shayib (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (Rabat, Morocco: Rabat Net Maroc, 2012).

58 Sami Lakmahri, “Polémique: Que faire de l'arabisation? Avec Abderrahim Youssi et Abdelkader Fassi Fihri,” Zamane, June 2012, 41. See Youssi, Abderrahim, Grammaire et lexique de l'arabe marocain moderne (Casablanca: Wallada, 1992Google Scholar).

59 Interview with Youssi, 15 June 2012.

60 Yusi, l-Amir s-Saghir (2009), preface.

61 Yusi, Qesidat l-Behhar sh-Shayib, 3.

62 Yusi, l-Amir s-Saghir (2011), 9.

63 Ibid., 7.

64 The translation is still unpublished but available at numerous websites. See http://www.balat.fr/Traduction-en-arabe-dialectal-du.html (accessed 25 June 2013).

65 Moustapha Safouan published a translation of Le discours in the 1970s, and it was published in Morocco in modern French and Standard Arabic in 2001 by Tarik Éditions.

66 E-mail exchange with Barrada, 6 August 2011.

67 Safouan, Moustapha, Why Are the Arabs Not Free?—The Politics of Writing, trans. Colin MacCabe (New York: Wiley–Blackwell, 2007)Google Scholar.

68 Miller, “Du passeur individual,” 7.