The impact of the ideology of modernity on language attitudes in Morocco

Abstract

This paper investigates how the ideology of modernity affects Moroccan youths' attitudes towards local and foreign languages. Covert attitudes data from a Matched Guise Test show the alignment of French, as compared with Moroccan Arabic (MA) and Standard Arabic (SA), with the status-bearing traits of modernity and open-mindedness. Additionally, overt data from a language attitudes questionnaire show that the higher their social class, the more likely respondents are to hold favourable attitudes towards French and the increasing use of English and move away from the local codes of MA, SA, and Berber. The impact of the ideology of modernity on Moroccan youth shows that the valorisation of Western languages, a product of the French colonial era, maintains a linguistically and socially asymmetrical position between speakers of local codes and those of foreign languages. Members of the Moroccan elite play the role of ‘ideology brokers’ (Jaffe 1999), whose linguistic practices, language attitudes, and ascription to the ideology of modernity serve to reinforce a system of privileges, class structure, and lines of power on the basis of linguistic segregation.