Revista Española de Lingüística (Dec 2023)
From mixed arabic to “Educated Written Dāriǧa”: Diglossic variation in Moroccan written production
Abstract
Following developments in destandardisation of linguistic norms in non-standard Arabic writing practices (Mejdell 2017), the present study aims to analyse formal intermediate registers emerging in Moroccan written productions. Using colloquial Arabic (ʿĀmmiyya) in writing is increasing, also in Morocco (Kebede & Hinds 2016; Caubet 2017a-b, 2018; Miller 2017), where Dāriǧa (Moroccan Arabic) combined with Fuṣḥā (Standard Arabic), both in oral and written interactions (Mixed Arabic) is also emerging in more or less formal productions. Recently, Moroccan publications, such as Elmedlaoui’s (2019) monograph al-ʿArabiyyatu ad-Dāriǧatu (a comprehensive description of Dāriǧa in Dāriǧa, and in Arabic script), corroborate the interest on “middle/educated” Arabic (intermediate registers of Moroccan Arabic, mixing Fuṣḥā and Dāriǧa in formal, but ordinary, interactions among educated speakers). Based on syntactic descriptions in Elmedlaoui (2019), the present study aims at analysing the stylistic variation of (middle/educated) Dāriǧa in a corpus of 346 articles and its corresponding 2176 comments of Goud (a Moroccan online newspaper expressing in Moroccan Arabic). Quantitative and qualitative approaches in analysing declarative sentences and genitive constructions, allow to observe contrasting trends. As opposed to the syntactic (and artificial) regularities described in al-ʿArabiyyatu ad-Dāriǧatu, Goud’s written production shows syntactic and stylistic heterogeneous features of middle/educated (written) Dāriǧa.
