Representations of women in Moroccan Arabic and Berber proverbs
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Moha Ennaji
Abstract
The ideas and practices of gender are shaped and transmitted through language as the spoken word/s and the written word/s, and through gestures and the body. Language, in its various modes and registers, helps to disseminate ideas and practices of gender. Language is vehicle, knowledge, and power. It shapes images and representations of women through stereotypes, namely through proverbs, tales, adages, advertising, etc. Proverbs in particular have been tools of affirmation and resistance, of continuity and conversation, of rupture and innovation in the complex grid of gender and culture.
Focus here is on the images of women in Moroccan Arabic and Berber proverbs and on orality (the heard and spoken language). The latter plumbs memories of feeling and events in which language itself is implicated, both in first producing and in later unlocking; proverbs are thus considered as cultural products and language use as an integral part of social ritual.
Proverbs can operate negatively for women; however, as women move into literacy and other forms of “emancipation,” we must keep sight of the crucial functions of orality and the ways Moroccan culture perpetuates gender discrimination and relations through oral modes such as proverbs. The latter remind us of the roles women have played, and still play, as guardians of orality. Proverbs do not simply reflect the social reality of women, but help construct it.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Gender, sex, and language in Valencia: attitudes toward sex-related language among Spanish and Catalan speakers
- Situating senior women in the literacy landscape of North Africa
- Continuité, rupture et construction identitaires : analyse de discours d'immigrés maghrébins en France
- Between the languages of silence and the woman's word: gender and language in the work of Assia Djebar
- Morocco's languages and gender: evidence from the field
- Emergence et développement de la différenciation de genre entre 7 et 18 ans : perception de stimuli en arabe marocain en milieu scolaire à Ksar el Kébir
- Language and gender in Moroccan urban areas
- Representations of women in Moroccan Arabic and Berber proverbs
- Constructing gender identity in two languages
- Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco, by Moha Ennaji
- Retrospective insight: reflections on the specialist's role in developing an Arapaho language assessment protocol
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Gender, sex, and language in Valencia: attitudes toward sex-related language among Spanish and Catalan speakers
- Situating senior women in the literacy landscape of North Africa
- Continuité, rupture et construction identitaires : analyse de discours d'immigrés maghrébins en France
- Between the languages of silence and the woman's word: gender and language in the work of Assia Djebar
- Morocco's languages and gender: evidence from the field
- Emergence et développement de la différenciation de genre entre 7 et 18 ans : perception de stimuli en arabe marocain en milieu scolaire à Ksar el Kébir
- Language and gender in Moroccan urban areas
- Representations of women in Moroccan Arabic and Berber proverbs
- Constructing gender identity in two languages
- Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco, by Moha Ennaji
- Retrospective insight: reflections on the specialist's role in developing an Arapaho language assessment protocol
