Abstract
This paper explores metalinguistic representations of Moroccan Arabic, through speakers’ discourses – taken from various spontaneous recordings and interviews with Moroccan Arabic speakers, of various ages, social backgrounds, and, for the most part, living in Meknes – and humoristic images and memes mocking local accents to be found on social media. By comparing language practices and metalinguistic representations with internet memes related to language stereotypes, our objective is to highlight indexicality, iconization and rhematization, in the circulation of metalinguistic representations, especially their reproduction through copy and imitation, which is the main attribute of memes that interests us. Markers, values, meanings associated with variation constantly change and shift through speakers’ practices and discourses, interacting with language ideologies, representations and stereotypes. With that in mind, we examine metalinguistic discourses and sociolinguistic variables in parallel to each other in order to study old and new representations along with social categories such as young/old, virile/effeminate, as well as regional stereotypes.
Funding source: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigación and European Fund for Regional Development
Award Identifier / Grant number: FFI2017-87533-P
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Justin McGuinness for his translation of this article and all quotes from French to English. We also would like to thank Chantal Tetreault for her helpful reading and remarks. Finally, we are thankful to the two anonymous reviewers’ improving comments.
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Research funding: This article particularly benefitted from the project led by Montserrat Benítez Fernández: “Variación diastrática en las variedades habladas del árabe vernáculo de Marruecos (FFI2017-87533-P)”, which was financed by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigación and European Fund for Regional Development.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contextualizing the rise of vernacular Arabic in globalized North Africa
- La diglossie traversée: La littérature en tunisien et le tunisien dans la littérature
- ‘We don’t speak the same language:’ language choice and identity on a Tunisian internet forum
- Le ḥassāniyya et la variation diglossique à travers WhatsApp: la Mauritanie à l’heure du Covid-19
- “In the Middle East, it’s cool to ‘Sing Moroccan’”: ideologies of slang and contested meanings of Arabic popular music on social media
- From stigmatization to predilection: folk metalinguistic discourse on social media on the northwestern Moroccan Arabic variety
- Sociolinguistic representations of variation in Moroccan spoken Arabic: discourses, practices and internet memes
- The Jebli speech between the media and the city: exploring linguistic stereotypes on a rural accent in Northern Morocco
- Moroccan Arabic in TV fiction: promoting de-localised individuals to model speakers
- Multiple attitudes and shifting language ideologies: a case of language shift among Libyan Tuaregs
- Language attitudes in Northwestern Tunisia and their implication for speech patterns
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contextualizing the rise of vernacular Arabic in globalized North Africa
- La diglossie traversée: La littérature en tunisien et le tunisien dans la littérature
- ‘We don’t speak the same language:’ language choice and identity on a Tunisian internet forum
- Le ḥassāniyya et la variation diglossique à travers WhatsApp: la Mauritanie à l’heure du Covid-19
- “In the Middle East, it’s cool to ‘Sing Moroccan’”: ideologies of slang and contested meanings of Arabic popular music on social media
- From stigmatization to predilection: folk metalinguistic discourse on social media on the northwestern Moroccan Arabic variety
- Sociolinguistic representations of variation in Moroccan spoken Arabic: discourses, practices and internet memes
- The Jebli speech between the media and the city: exploring linguistic stereotypes on a rural accent in Northern Morocco
- Moroccan Arabic in TV fiction: promoting de-localised individuals to model speakers
- Multiple attitudes and shifting language ideologies: a case of language shift among Libyan Tuaregs
- Language attitudes in Northwestern Tunisia and their implication for speech patterns