The Story of the Amazigh Language in Morocco: Identity and the Semiotic of Resiliency

• In Event: Collaborative Research on Multilingual Literacies in African Communities

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Situated in Morocco, and based on an ongoing collaborative research between the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture in Morocco and the University of Ottawa, Canada, our aim in this paper is 1) historicize the Institute and its work, 2) show how the Amazigh language is being transformed from an oral language to a written language, and 3) thanks to a new constitution in Morocco, discuss the linguistic challenges in implementing and adapting the now-written language into a medium of instruction in primary schools.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The story we are telling is that of the Amazigh language as it responds to the current Arab Revolution. It is a story of a language that is in the process of social and political revival and aboveall linguistic and identity formation. It is grass-root movement of the Amazigh people (also known as Berbère) that is able to constructively move Jim Cummins theory of “linguistic interdependence” (1979, 2000) and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas “linguistic human rights” (1995) into practice. Beside Cummins and Skutnabb-Kangas, Bourdieu’s notions of “capital,” “field,” and “habitus” are also central.

Data sources, methods, techniques
The research is qualitative in nature. It uses open-ended survey questions, interviews and classroom observations. It also uses secondary sources, historical and document analysis. Primarily, we are dependent on the work that the Royal Institute has done, which includes, among others, pedagogical program and in-class activities, the two elements that will be the center of our presentation.

Results and scholarly significance
The principal conclusion is what we are calling ‘semiotic of resilience.’ This is both an epistemological and a methodological approach where language, culture and identity struggle is both challenging and hopeful. The Amazigh people, we will show, created cultural, political, linguistic and educational movement that has been struggling for identity recognition for over four decades, which is finally happening. We use semiotic here as a gesture to the cultural, especially musical, movement of the Amazigh people. This cultural movement is largely responsible, we conclude, for the success of both the Amazigh people and for transforming the fabric of the Moroccan society by acknowledging the Amazigh language as a national language in the new constitution. In conclusion, we will offer broad similarities between First Nations in Canada and their struggle of/with reviving native languages and the Amazigh people and their achievement with transforming their oral language into a medium of instruction.

Author

• Awad Ibrahim, University of Ottawa