Amazigh in Education Policy in Morocco and Amazigh Revitalization: between Linguistic Human Rights and Attitudes

Abstract:

Maintaining national identity in multilingual societies warrants careful selection of language policies. In Morocco, equitable accounting for the presence of mother tongues in the linguistic landscape is a significant and weighty affair (Bensoukas, 2010). The Amazigh-in-education policy, an attempt to implement the Amazigh language into the Moroccan educational system, targets significant Moroccan population and holds promise in revitalizing the Amazigh language through changing its de facto marginalized status. The present paper’s aim is to discuss the issue from the lens of Linguistic Human Rights.

1.     Introduction

The presence of several mother tongues within a given society, commonly known as Multilingualism, has the potential to yield either a rich linguistic environment or a significantly dramatic one (Buckner, 2006). In the contemporary milieu of multilingual polities, wherein Morocco finds itself, the description that best encapsulates the linguistic situation is, at the very least, paradoxical (Ennaji, 2005). Multiple mother tongues with their respective varieties are spoken, whereas, few are neither officialized nor documented. Irrespective of their statuses, languages in Morocco have the potential to be officialized and may also face the risk of endangerment, while others remain non-officialized but serve as the lingua franca. Encountering the former scenario in Morocco is due to the absence of congruity between the state’s choice of language policies and people’s beliefs and practices, people’s attitudes (Errihani, 2006). A history of improvised language policies, primarily arising from a convergence of external and internal political forces, along with a negative attitude towards the language among children, parents, teachers, administrators, and policy-makers’ lead one of the indigenous languages of Morocco to language endangerment (Errihani, 2008), I herein allude to Moroccan Amazigh.

2.     The Multilingual Situation in Morocco and Amazigh Endangerment

Morocco, has encountered throughout its history longitudinal language contact phenomena primarily between classical Arabic and Amazigh, and later on among regional languages and European languages (Bensoukas, 2010).  Above all the determinants involved in the construction of the Moroccan communal network, an assortment of de facto political and socio-economic phenomena namely Islamization, colonization, and migration (Boukouss, 1995), in addition to de jure language policies implemented by the Moroccan government, has invited curiosity about the language attitudes that this multilingual society may hold. 

The linguistic scene in Morocco and in the city of Casablanca, for example, represents an intensive language contact phenomenon in which the Lingua Franca is Moroccan Arabic (Ennaji, 2023). However, Amazigh, with its different varieties, in addition to other foreign languages are used in intimate settings and different domains of public life. With respect to the Amazigh language, the Census of Population and Housing (2014) elicited that 10.03% of Casablancan inhabitants revealed their linguistic ability to speak the Tashelhit variety, whereas only 0.90% of the same population expressed their possession of the necessary skills to speak the Tamazight variety of Amazigh. The least spoken variety of Amazigh in Casablanca according to the same source is Tarifitwith a percentage of 0.23%. From a Linguistic Human Rights perspective, the fact that speakers of the Amazigh language in the city of Casablanca represent a respective percentage of 12% of the whole population by virtue of the Amazigh language linguistic diversity necessitates a moderate political, constitutional and social change in the status of the language. This change might facilitate the social integration of the Amazigh communities in Non-Amazigh areas such as Casablanca. During the last two decades, the Moroccan government has embraced many policies with the purpose of incorporating the Amazigh language and culture into the Moroccan linguistic, political, and social scene, an act that ultimately aims at recognizing the ethnolinguistic particularity of the Amazigh communities in Amazigh as well as non-Amazigh areas of Morocco.

3.     Attitudes towards the Amazigh in Education Policy

The Amazigh language is one of the indigenous languages of Morocco that has changed in matter of a short time from a language that is associated with folklore, illiteracy, ruralism and stigma to an official language. This shift was due to unique political and institutional acts of change in the status of the language (Errihani, 2006). Societally, the language has been facing much stigmatization and marginalization even among people of the language, Imazighen. These representations were constructed by and mediated through dominant social groups and dominant channels of communication (El Kirat, 2009). With such attitudes, language was facing serious endangerment threats only a language policy directly targeting the whole Moroccan community could have worked as means to face. Officially, introducing an educational program, that reminds all members of the community, Arab and Amazigh, that the language is a mutual legacy, through teaching it as a mandatory school subject, could save this threatened language (Errihani, 2006).  

 It was put forward by the king of Morocco, Hassan II, on a televised speech back on the 20^th of August, 1994, that learning the Amazigh language is the responsibility of all Moroccans (Ennaji, 2023, p.68). Whereas acquiring the Amazigh language at home is not given to all Moroccans, achieving the earlier goal necessitates the introduction of the Amazigh language as part of the school curriculum. On October 17^th, 2001, the next king, Mohammed VI, announced the creation of the Royal Institute of The Amazigh Language and Culture, IRCAM aiming as supporting the instruction of Amazigh at primary schools (Ennaji 2014, as cited in Ennaji, 2023, p.69). The Amazigh-in-primary-education,the policy lunched in September 2003, and whose implementation process is still taking place in 2024, havelegitimized Amazigh for the first time in the kingdom’s history in the official educational sphere. Since then, the Moroccan public schools enjoyed the teaching of the Amazigh language as a mandatory school subject. Thanks to the policy the use of the languagetransferredfrom private domains to public ones. However, spectacular thecausative elements ofthe official recognition of Amazighas a mandatory school subject might be (Sadiqi, 2011).

It’s known for a fact that, many stake holders give a naissance to certain language policies in order to avoid the potential evil of activists’ uprising; the Amazigh-in-education policy might not be an exception. With luck of clear vision, it is assumed that most top-down language policies regarding the language of a minority or non-dominant group, have no Linguistic human right background or motives, one of the factors explaining their failure, globally, in marking any change in the social status of these languages. Members of non-dominant language groups, those who do not have much access to a strong linguistic culture, laymen with pragmatic attitudes towards their linguistic identity, or young generations with no ethno-linguistic awareness, are less luckily impacted by superficial language policies (Schiffman, 1996, as cited inSchiffman and Ricento, 2006), and therefore less engaged in preserving their languages. Morocco, a post-colonial Muslim state that has adopted Arabization to upstage cultural colonization, has on the other hand marginalized, for almost half a century, a large community of Imazighen, to the extent that these people themselves started associating their language with no pragmatic added value (El Kirat, 2009). This attitude is manifested in a large community of Amazigh people refusing to transmit the Amazigh language to their off-springs which lead the language to threat of endangerment (El Kirat, 2004). Years later, it is assumed that political factors mainly emerging outside Morocco pressured Moroccan stake holders to take a step in giving the Amazigh language an official status and an educational manifestation disguised as the Amazigh-in-education policy (Errihani, 2008). 

4.     Conclusion

The sociolinguistic study of language attitudes in multilingual societies has the potential to indicate the extent to which an intended language policy holds promise in changing the low status of marginalized languages. In the case of Morocco, the identity of the people is complex due to variations in geography, culture, and language, which results in significant linguistic drama. However, it requires little deliberation to acknowledge that more legitimacy is rightfully attributed to the Amazigh language and culture, which has recently been officially recognized.

References:

Buckner, E. (2006). Language drama in Morocco: Another perspective on the problems and prospects of teaching Tamazight. The Journal of North African Studies, 11(4), 421-433.

Bensoukas, K. (2010). Language policy and mother tongues in Morocco: A linguistic human rights perspective. In Y. El Kirat (Ed), Globalization and mother tongues in Africa: Between exclusion, threat of loss or death and revival and maintenance measures (pp.135–152). Rabat.

El Kirat, Y. (2004). The lexical and morphological structure of the Beni Iznassen Amazigh Language in a Context of Language Loss [Doctoral dissertation, University Mohammed V, Rabat, Morocco].

El Kirat, Y. (2009). Issues in the representation of Amazigh language and identity in North Africa. Revue Langues et Littératures, 19, 179–196.

Ennaji, M. (2005). Multilingualism, cultural identity, and education in Morocco. Springer Science & Business Media.

ENNAJI, M. (2023). THE REVITALIZATION OF BERBER (AMAZIGH) LANGUAGE IN NORTH AFRICA. Democracy, Culture, and Social Change in North Africa, 61.

Errihani, M. (2006). Language policy in Morocco: Problems and prospects of teaching Tamazight. The Journal of North African Studies, 11(2), 143–154.

Errihani, M. (2008). Language attitudes and language use in Morocco: Effects of attitudes on ‘Berber language policy’. The Journal of North African Studies, 13(4), 411-428.

Sadiqi, F. (2011). The teaching of Amazigh (Berber) in Morocco. Handbook of language and ethnic identity: The success-failure continuum in language and ethnic identity efforts, 33-44.

Schiffman, H., &Ricento, T. (2006). Language policy and linguistic culture. An introduction to language policy: Theory and method, 111, 125.

Author: Kawtar Essabiri is a second-year student of MA program in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching, at the Faculty of Education, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco. She got her BA degree from the Higher School of Education and Training, ChouaibDoukkali University, Eljadida, Morocco. She is conducting her MA monograph in Sociolinguistics, more precisely discussing issues of Language Policy in Morocco, Language Attitudes, and Language Revitalization.