"Decontextualization in Defense of Integrating Mother Tongues in Language Planning Policies: A Case Study of Darija in Morocco."
Submitted by:
Bouchra BOUKLATA
Abstract:
For many children, the transition to school seems to pose a lot of challenges (Dunlop & Fabian, 2007). One of these challenges is the type of language that is used in school to display knowledge (Schleppegrell, 2001, 2004). Spoken language and school language are, in fact, two different registers. The latter requires higher language skills and involves a more specialized use of language than informal daily conversations; for most children, language at home differs considerably from the language at school in many respects.
Morocco seems to be special and the linguistic situation appears to be confusing, in the sense that Moroccan Arabic (widely referred to as Darija), one of the mother tongues in Morocco, has a low status while the language of the school, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), enjoys a high status. Even if both varieties in question are Arabic, they actually present a mismatch in many aspects to the extent that illiterate people find it difficult, if not, impossible, to understand a discourse in MSA. Currently, a hot debate about the linguistic issue is taking place in Morocco, and the inclusion of Darija in education has become more controversial than before.
The current study is mainly concerned with the issue of the academicy of Darija, the oral language standing for the mother tongue of 90% of Moroccans, to explore its compatibility to the field of education. Because various researchers have focused on decontextualized language as one of the prominent features of the language of schooling, the study will thoroughly examine the inputs and outputs of the mothers interacting with their 3-year-old Moroccan monolingual children at home in a book-picture telling task. All mother-child interactions were videotaped. The data was transcribed, coded according to the DASH coding scheme and analysed using two software programmes: the CLAN (Computerised Language Analysis) and the SPSS (Statistical Package fo for the Social Sciences). The proposed theoretical framework, based on systemic functional linguistics and usage-based theories and informed by research on the language of school, was adopted for assessing caretaker-child interactions.
The data analysis revealed that the decontextualized language highly occurred in all mothers’ input and children’s output though to varying degrees.
Key Words: Mother tongue (Darija); Decontextualized language; Academic language; Non-immediate talk; Systemacy; Variance.
References
1. Bouklata, Bouchra. 2017. Communicative Features of Academic Language in the Register of Moroccan Monolingual children at home and at school.
2. Cunningham & Stanovish. 1997. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Faculty of Letters & Human Sciences. Mohammed V University in Rabat. Morocco.