The Integration of Darija in Media Communication: The case of Outdoor Advertising
Submitted by:
Yamina El Kirat El Allame
Abstract:
Linguistic and cultural diversity is a defining characteristic of the Moroccan linguistic landscape as a wide range of national, official, and foreign languages are used. The use of these languages varies from one domain to another depending on various factors. Darija, one of the two mother tongues in Morocco next to Amazigh, has marked significant strides since the 2000s in various domains. In fact, Mexican and Turkish series have been recently dubbed into Darija instead of Modern Standard Arabic; and new radio stations have started to host talk shows entirely in Darija. In addition to that, Darija is also widely used in TV talk shows, online media, songs, and even advertising, inter alia. Modern Morocco recognizes the emergence of Darija in the context of the media sector, in general and advertising, in particular. Though the language is still officially viewed negatively and is considered a “dialect” with not much value, its use in such an exposed domain, namely advertising, together with Modern standard Arabic, the official language, and French, one of the most prestigious languages in Modern Morocco, can be viewed as a step toward the recognition of the value of this language.
The study aims at revealing one of the new domains where Darija is being used extensively following Landry and Bourhis’(1997) framework which is based on distinguishing between symbolic and informative functions of signs. The study is based on exhaustive fieldwork research relying on triangulation so as to ensure the reliability of the findings. Indeed, the study adopts a research design that combines various research tools including observation, interviews, and billboards’ photographs. The main hypothesis underlying this research assumes that the use of Darija in advertising, besides the two prestigious languages in Morocco, namely Modern Standard Arabic and French is an evidence for the value the language is acquiring. The study addresses and tries to answer the ensuing research questions:
1. To what extent is Darija used in advertising and Billboards, how, why and for what purposes?
2. What are Moroccans’ attitudes towards the use of Darija on billboards and what are the motivating factors for such attitudes?
The answers to all these questions are meant to highlight the status of Darija in the light of the changes the Moroccan linguistic market is undergoing.
Keywords: Darija; Language Attitudes; Advertising; Billborads.
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