Moroccan Arabic in TV fiction: promoting de-localised individuals to model speakers
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Jacopo Falchetta
Abstract
This paper aims at clarifying the role that TV fiction plays in the indexical redistribution of Moroccan Arabic (MA) linguistic features, and how this is connected to media’s contribution to the non-institutional standardisation of MA. First of all, it shows how six variables are employed in the composition of dialogues for two original Moroccan series and two Turkish series dubbed in MA. In the Moroccan series, the assignment of different features to different characters results in the enregisterment of a linguistic opposition between two social types, distinguished by their attachment to place of origin and attitude vis-à-vis modernity. In the dubbed series, standardisation is at issue in that the authors of the linguistic choices – be they the translators or the dubbers – usually select one single form to the exclusion of all other variants. If this selection of a MA norm is judged on the background of the enregisterment patterns identified in the dialogues of the Moroccan series, it then appears as though such norm favours a type of individual free from particularistic regional affiliations, and with a propensity for an anti-traditionalist and (western-like) modern lifestyle and way of thinking.
Funding source: AEI/FEDER, UE
Award Identifier / Grant number: FFI2017-87533-P
Acknowledgments
I would like to warmly thank my fellow co-editors Atiqa Hachimi and Montserrat Benítez Fernández for their precious remarks on this paper. I am also grateful to my two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
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Research funding: This article has been made possible in part by aid from the project “Variación diastrática en las variedades habladas del árabe vernáculo de Marruecos (FFI2017-87533-P)” funded by the Agencia Española de Investigación and FEDER (UE).
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- 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
Artikel in diesem Heft
- 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
