"L’identité et la Francophonie: Examining the Interplay of Language Attitudes and Identity Construction in Moroccan Students"

Abstract

Today, the continuing presence of French as the language of higher education and economic opportunity in Morocco illustrates the widespread influence that France still exercises over her former protectorate. French has also been shown to play a crucial role in extra-professional sites. This complexity of linguistic usage predicts a multifaceted understanding of French by its users in Morocco; how then can we characterize younger speakers’ attitudes towards the French language, and their own sense of self? Through sociolinguistic, qualitative analysis of conversational data collected in the spring of 2015, I show how the personal identities of Moroccan students intersect with their command of and nostalgia for French, yielding positive and negative alignments with the language. By examining the different values assigned overtly to French by its speakers, we can expand our understanding of how this interaction may influence linguistic and social hierarchies in this region.