Abstract
In keeping with a diachronic corpus-assisted discourse approach, this study explores the way Darija, the colloquial Arabic variety in Morocco, has been discursively constructed in online news articles over a ten-year timespan. To this end, a specialized corpus of over one million words was compiled from the news website Hespress. The study integrates the analysis of collocational frequencies and contextual examination of concordances, interrogating the links of the discourses encircling Darija with major sociopolitical events. Notwithstanding the local deep-seated linguistic rivalries and the prevailing standard-language ideology, the findings suggest that Darija during this period adopts a joint discourse of resistance with Amazighiya (Berber) against the Arabophone ideology, arguing for a consolidated constituency of Moroccanness, fundamental to the maintenance and (re)production of the country’s cultural identity. Such findings shed light on language as a site of struggle, in which issues of social and institutional inequities are negotiated between contested ideologies.
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