Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education

 

First Advisor

Dr. Theresa Catalano

Date of this Version

Fall 12-20-2017

Document Type

Article

Citation

Rfissa, Y. (2017, December 31). Linguistic Landscape and Language Ideology: A Multimodal Analysis of Government Websites in Morocco.

Comments

Copyright © 2017 Yassine Rfissa

Abstract

Moroccan society has long been a multicultural society. It is characterized by linguistic complexity due to the variety of languages spoken in the region and the power relationship among languages used in politics, education, science, government...etc. The constitution names both Arabic and Tamazight languages as the co-official languages of the country, whereas French is still seen as a dominant language in the public sectors such as higher education, banking, commerce, science, industry, policy, and government affairs. In this paper, I examine the multifaceted use of language and the language choice in the virtual public sphere in Morocco and how this functions to express power relations and ideology. Through the study of 31 government official websites discourse, I will examine how language choice, the use of particular linguistic features, and the deletion of others are used to express an ideological and political orientation that arguably contradicts the Moroccan constitution’s guidelines regarding the multilingualism of the country.

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