Amazigh-Arabic Code Switching in Amazigh Radio Discourse: Frequency and Structure

Abstract

Language contact has been one of the most interest-arousing disciplines for linguists, especially sociolinguists. The study of language contact explores mainly the nature and the outcome of the contact between languages or varieties in a bi- /multilingual setting. When speakers of different languages interact, they may use different varieties back and forth to convey and communicate their messages. This reciprocal interchange between two languages or varieties is called code-switching (CS hereafter). The present study attempts to document the nature of code switching between Amazigh and Arabic in the Amazigh radio discourse. The data of the study consists of three radio talk-shows that were aired in two different Amazigh radio broadcasts, so the source language is supposed to be Amazigh. The Amazigh variety involved in the talk-shows is Tashelhit as all the participants come from the Souss region where this variety is used. Therefore, we investigated the intervention of Arabic into the Amazigh discourse through CS. An integrated approach with both qualitative (structural analysis) and quantitative (frequency distribution) methods of analysis was adopted for the purpose of this paper. The results of the study reveal that the rate of Amazigh-Arabic CS is very high. It takes place at different discourse boundaries and involves various syntactic categories. It seems to be a natural linguistic behavior among Amazigh bilinguals. Besides, the analysis demonstrates that both Arabic and Amazigh interchange the role of matrix language (ML) and embedded language (EL) in the light of Myers-Scotton Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (1993).