République Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire

Ministère de l’Education Supérieure et de la Recherche Scientifique

Université d’Oran Faculté des Lettres, Langues et Arts

Département des Langues Anglo-Saxonnes

Section d’ANGLAIS

Thèse de Doctorat d’Etat présentée par Mr Zoubir DENDANE (Université de Tlemcen)

Sous la supervision de Prof. Farouk BOUHADIBA (Université d’Oran)
Intitulée :

Sociolinguistic Variation and Attitudes towards Language Behaviour

in an Algerian Context: The Case of Tlemcen Arabic

Membres du Jury: Président: Prof. Ali BOUAMRANE (Université d’Oran)

Rapporteur: Prof. Farouk BOUHADIBA (Université d’Oran)
Examinateur: Prof. Zoulikha BENSAFI (Univ. Nancy 2 – France)
Examinateur: Prof. Farida ABDERRAHIM (Univ. de Constantine)
Examinateur: Dr. Smail BENMOUSSAT (Université de Tlemcen)

Thèse de Doctorat d’Etat soutenue à Oran, le 07 Avril 2007 de 9h 30 à 13h.

Mention obtenue : Très honorable avec les Félicitations du Jury.

Photo: Dr Z. Dendane (à gauche) avec l’encadreur Professeur F. Bouhadiba

Sociolinguistic Variation and Attitudes towards Language Behaviour
in an Algerian Context: The Case of Tlemcen Arabic

Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................... i
Contents......................................................................................................................................ii
Abbreviations………..................................................................................................................v
Phonetic Symbols.......................................................................................................................vi
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................vii

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................1

1.1. The Chomskyan Perspective in Linguistic Theory........................................................5

1.2. Linguistic Variation: A Crucial Element in Linguistic Theory.....................................8
1.3. Different Approaches in Sociolinguistics…................................................................13
1.4. Tlemcen Speech Community, a Locus of Language Dynamics? ……………….......16

2. Some Basic Sociolinguistic Concepts.............................................................................. 22

2.1. Introduction: Language, Dialect and Variety..............................................................22

2.2. The Speech Community...............................................................................................27
2.3. Language and Small-scale Social Groups...................................................................40
2.3.1. Social Networks................................................................................................40
2.3.2. Communities of Practice...................................................................................46
2.4. Communicative Competence.......................................................................................48
2.5. The Linguistic Repertoire............................................................................................51
2.6. The Linguistic Variable...............................................................................................56
2.7. Attitudes to Linguistic Variants...................................................................................63

3. The Language Situation in Algeria ….............................................................................68

3.1. Introduction..................................................................................................................68
3.1.1 The MSA / AA Relationship................................................................................69
3.1.2. The Arabic / French Relationship.......................................................................75
3.2. The Historical Background..........................................................................................76
3.3. The impact of the French Occupation on the Algerian Society...................................81
3.4. French after Independence...........................................................................................84
3.5. Arabisation …..............................................................................................................88
3.6. Today’s Algerian Linguistic Profile............................................................................96
3.6.1. Diglossia ….......................................................................................................98
 3.6.2. Diglossia and Bilingualism.............................................................................107
3.6.3. Code Choice....................................................................................................113
3.6.3.1. The Competence/Performance Approach...........................................115
3.6.3.2. The ‘Domain’ Approach.....................................................................118
3.6.3.3. The ‘Markedness’ Model....................................................................123
3.6.3.4. Speech Accommodation.....................................................................126
3.6.3.5. Social Networks and Code Choice......................................................130
3.6.4. The Dynamics of Language Contact...............................................................132
3.6.4.1. Borrowings..........................................................................................133
3.6.4.2. Code-switching and Code-mixing......................................................140
4. Sociolinguistic Variation in Tlemcen Speech Community……………………...…...154

4.1. Introduction................................................................................................................154
4.2. The Speech Community of Tlemcen........................................................................ 157
4.2.1. High Variety vs. Low Variety.........................................................................160
4.2.2. Urban Variety vs. Rural Variety.....................................................................173
4.3. Tlemcen Arabic Features.......................................................................................... 175
4.3.1. The Glottal Stop............................................................................................. 175
4.3.2. Morphological Items as Sociolinguistic Variables….................................... 181
4.3.3. Lexical Aspects of Tlemcen Arabic............................................................... 182
4.4. Language Variation in Tlemcen …...........................................................................184
4.4.1. Introductory.................................................................................................... 184
4.4.2. Language Comprehension and Preferences: MSA vs. French........................185
4.4.4.1. University Students................................................................................186
4.4.2.2. Middle and Secondary School Pupils....................................................201
4.5. Sociolinguistic Variation in Tlemcen Speech. ………...…………………...............217
4.5.1. The Glottal Stop as a Sociolinguistic Stereotype............................................218
4.5.1.1. Gender and Age.................................................................................... 220
4.5.1.2. The Variable (?) and Gender.................................................................
220
4.5.1.3. The Variable (?) and
Age.......................................................................226
4.5.1.4. The Variable (?) and Social Network................................................... 234
4.5.1.5. TA Speech and Domains of Language Use….......................................238
4.5.2. TA Speech: a Locus of Change in Progress? ...................................................243

5. Attitudes Towards Language Behaviour ….................................................................249

5.1. Introduction............................................................................................................... 249

5.2. Sociolinguistics and Social-psychology of Language...............................................253
5.2.1. The Concept of
‘Attitude’............................................................................................................258
5.2.2. Lambert’s Matched-Guise Technique.............................................................259
5.2.3. Standard-with-Dialect Communities vs. Diglossic Situations.......................261
5.3. Attitudinal Aspects in the Speech Community of Tlemcen…………..……............267
5.3.1. Reactions to Language Varieties.....................................................................268
5.3.1.1. Evaluative Reactions to the Speaker’s Variety...................................271
5.3.1.2. Attitudinal Reactions to Personality Traits.........................................282
5.3.1.3. Views on Speaker’s Job Suitability................................................... 285
5.3.2. Language Attitudes and Linguistic Change....................................................290
 General Conclusion …....................................................................................................292

Appendices....................................................................................................................... 298

Sociolinguistic Variation and Attitudes towards Language Behaviour

in an Algerian Context: The Case of Tlemcen Arabic

The purpose in the present research work is to consider, in the light of recent studies in
sociolinguistics, the complexities of sociolinguistic variation and attitudes towards language
behaviour in an Algerian speech community characterized at the same time by various
interesting linguistic phenomena, namely:

- a) dialectal variation, which is a ‘natural’ reality that can be observed virtually in all
speech communities, particularly in big towns and urban centres as a result of contacts of
people with different language backgrounds;

- b) in parallel with this, diglossia, that linguistic phenomenon characterizing the Arab
world (with CA or MSA as the High variety and AA as the Low variety), is becoming
increasingly interesting as a result of the process of arabisation launched in Algeria as part of
the language policy decided upon soon after independence;

- c) for historical reasons that are known to everybody, Arabic/French bilingualism is

another practice of considerable frequency in Algeria (the phenomenon affected Morocco and
Tunisia, too, but to a lesser extent because of a much shorter period of French occupation).

In addition to the fact that the Algerians consciously or unconsciously switch – or at least
are constantly exposed to switching – from Algerian Arabic to French, or from Berber to
French in a few areas, often mixing the languages in their conversations, there is clear
evidence that in Tlemcen – the case in point in this study – people, mostly among younger
native male speakers, continually switch from the local variety to what has been characterized
as a rural form of Arabic. One interesting province in this work concerns, as we shall see, the
reasons and motives for such fluctuating behaviour on the part of native speakers in Tlemcen.
On another level, the use of the H variety, MSA – seen as the modern form of Classical
Arabic – is attested in formal contexts such as education, some administration sectors, in
religious sermons as well as in the written and spoken mass-media. However, the use of
French, as a functional language, persists in many domains, in much of the written media
(there are at least as many daily newspapers in French as in Arabic) and in those areas related
to sciences, industry and economy, though, there has been, in fact, some attempts at using
Standard Arabic in these fields as part of the process of arabisation. But the most important
thing to be mentioned about French is its dynamicity reflected in its common use in everyday
settings, both formal and informal, side by side with Algerian Arabic – or mixed with it –
while MSA is practically never used in informal contexts apart from a few borrowing forms
that have slipped into Colloquial Arabic.
 Methodology
By means of different methods for data collection and elicitation techniques, such as
interviews, questionnaires and recordings, the present study attempts to describe the
systematic co-variance of language behaviour and social parameters:
- we have tried to examine, on a macro-level, the alternation and mixing of the codes used
by the speakers and the motives for their choice of one variety or another from the available
speech repertoire which includes, in addition to the two colloquial Arabic varieties used in
Tlemcen,
a) Modern Standard Arabic, the vehicle used in education, in the media, and for
religious purposes;

b) French, the language left as a real legacy by the long-term French linguistic
presence in Algeria.

Then, the purpose of a large part of our work has been to shed light on the reasons why,
consciously or unconsciously, the native speakers of Tlemcen behave the way they do in
different settings, particularly in relation to social variables such as age, gender, social
network and educational level. An important issue that has to be raised in relation to the
native speakers’ behaviour is whether such consistent variation carries so strong an influence
as to lead to linguistic changes in the variety of Tlemcen.
Apart from considering language variation from a sociolinguistic viewpoint, and with a
view to broaden the scope of enquiry for a better understanding of the linguistic situation in
Tlemcen, our research work attempts to look at the community from a social-psychological
standpoint. It is hoped that this perspective will allow for a more comprehensive description
of the sociolinguistic profile of the speech community. Based on other techniques of data
collection, this second part of our research focuses on how social judgement is affected by a
speaker’s pronunciation, that is, on the analysis of the listener’s attitudes towards language
use, and the influence that these attitudes may have on the speakers themselves.
In the light of interdisciplinary considerations on language at work, and given the
complexity of the sociolinguistic situation in Algeria in general, and in Tlemcen in particular,
we feel that it has been more productive to adopt an eclectic approach for a broader analysis
of the various linguistic phenomena at play.

Tlemcen Speech Community, a Locus of Language Dynamics?

As it is evident from the title of this research work, our main purpose is to examine
sociolinguistic variation in the speech community of Tlemcen by trying to combine various
sociolinguistic approaches and looking at the language practices from the two broad
aforementioned perspectives, namely:

a) analysis of native speakers’ linguistic variation in different settings and in relation to

non-linguistic factors;

b) observation of listeners’ attitudes toward language behaviour to discover the extent to

which these are responsible for the speakers’ linguistic variation.

In other words, our problematic could be put forward in the form of the following two
condensed sets of research questions:
 1. In what contexts does linguistic variation occur among native speakers in the
community of Tlemcen? What are the reasons that make some speakers more
inclined to vary their speech than others? Will increasingly persistent use of non-
native speech in certain settings result in language shift and loss of identity? Or
will Tlemcen speech features be maintained in spite of the large-scale variation
attested? Also, what makes most Algerians code-switch to French or at least
constantly mix Arabic with French?
2. How do people react to some linguistic features that characterize Tlemcen
speech, and thus to users of these characteristics? To what extent is sociolinguistic
variation in the community mediated by language attitudes? On another level,
what attitudes do people display as far as the use of French is concerned?

After drawing a brief background picture of the linguistic situation in Algeria, our
research work is then intended, in the first place, to describe sociolinguistic variation in the
urban setting of Tlemcen. The study of this Algerian Arabic speech community builds upon
an earlier tentative work (Dendane 1993) that requires a more extensive set of data and a more
substantiated analysis of people’s language behaviour for a better understanding of today’s
linguistic situation in Algeria as a whole, but more particularly in Tlemcen for its language
idiosyncratic features and the resulting variation.

Within the framework of the quantitative paradigm and the Labovian methodology, but
also using other types of descriptive approaches and qualitative explanations, we intend to
consider the native speaker’s behaviour in everyday interaction, laying emphasis upon the
reasons for people’s regular switching from Tlemcen vernacular forms to a type of rural
Arabic, a variety that has consistently spread in the community for the last decades.

The data base comes from naturally-occurring linguistic events observed in various social
settings on the site, and speech samples are obtained by means of different elicitation
techniques such as interviews, questionnaires, and tape recorded conversations. The data
identified as worthy of study will be analysed, treated quantitatively, and then interpreted in
qualitative ways, i.e. how and why people use given ‘ways of speaking’ in various settings.

In the introductory chapter, we have tried to briefly bring up the importance of studying
language in its social context in opposition with the ‘structural’ school of linguistics and the
generativists’ analysis of language structure which do not refer to social parameters. Their
asocial enterprise will by no means come up with a global linguistic theory, not only because
the notion of language itself is social in nature and speech is a social behaviour, but also for
the reason that speech has a social function, both as a means of communication and as a way
of identifying social groups; and hence, social explanations of linguistic behaviour are
crucially fundamental for a better understanding of language structure and language use.

In the second chapter, we have reviewed some basic notions used in sociolinguistic
investigation, particularly those key-concepts thought to be relevant to our work: speech
community, social networks, linguistic repertoire, linguistic variable and language attitudes,
trying to see in what way(s) they may apply to our present study.

In the third chapter, we have illustrated a representation of the Algerian language

background against which today's linguistic situation has emerged, with particular reference
to the speech community of Tlemcen and the most specific linguistic features of TA speech.
 The fourth chapter, which consists of empirical work based on speech observation,
questionnaires and interviews, attempts

- to consider the density of French borrowings and loan expressions in Algerian

Arabic as a whole, and in Tlemcen Arabic in particular, as well as the degree of their
maintenance or replacement by forms from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or
Classical Arabic (CA);
- to examine the degree of bilingualism and the extent to which speakers code-
switch between (and/or code-mix) AA and French as well as the contexts and/or
motivation for such behaviour;

- to observe the contexts in which, and the reasons why, an increasing number of
speakers switch, particularly on the lexical level, from AA to MSA.

- to analyse speech variation among Tlemcen native speakers as a result of the

relationship between linguistic variables and social factors (the setting in particular,
gender and age), especially in mixed conversation (urban / rural);

Chapter five focuses on listeners’ attitudes towards some linguistic features that are typical
of Tlemcen Arabic, and on how these attitudes mediate linguistic variation as a whole. It also
examines their evaluative reaction to French as opposed to AA, on the one hand, and to MSA,
on the other. The data is obtained by having recourse to elicitation techniques used in the
social psychology of language, the semantic differential scales (Osgood et al. 1957), and
particularly the match-guised technique (Lambert 1967). The purpose of studying listeners’
attitudes to speech variation is to find out the extent to which these may influence the
speaker’s behaviour in language maintenance or language shift, and to check if, as Trudgill
(1974:23) states “Attitudes to language clearly play an important role in preserving or
removing dialect differences”.

Indeed, one of the most exciting issues related to the actual linguistic situation concerns
the natives’ and non-natives’ negative attitudes towards the characteristics of Tlemcen speech:
whether the linguistic variation resulting from the attitudes attested in the community will
lead to dialect shift, and eventually to the vanishing of TA linguistic features, particularly the
glottal stop, is a central question that comes to the mind of anybody who sets out to observe
today’s linguistic situation in Tlemcen.

One major aim in this dissertation has been to shed some light on today’s sociolinguistic
state of an Algerian urban speech community which has become extremely complex owing to
the multidimensional configuration of speech embodied in the dynamic interweaving, with
various social and psychological factors, of two genetically unrelated language systems,
Arabic and French, and at least two Arabic varieties. Being aware of the hard task to be
accomplished for a comprehensive description and analysis of the linguistic situation with all
its facets, we hope our account about Tlemcen speech community will make some
contribution to the understanding of the ‘social aspect’ of language in a setting characterized
by various language contact phenomena.

Without pretending to have covered the various aspects of the sociolinguistic patterns of
variation attested in Tlemcen, we hope we have been able to throw some light on the
linguistic intricacies and the fluctuating language behaviour resulting, on the one hand, from
the influence of a number of social variables in the context of the co-existence of two types of
Arabic: Tlemcen Arabic with some of its specific features, particularly the realisation of
CA /q/ as a glottal stop; and a rural form of Arabic in which this phoneme is realized as [g] in
most lexical items (while some have maintained the original uvular plosive [q], as in [qb@l]
‘before’). On the other hand, just like in the rest of the country, the two high-status languages
play a central role in the community of Tlemcen as a whole, and their effects are visible in
people’s speech behaviour, though to varying degrees:

1. Modern Standard Arabic, the national and official language of the state, is in principle
used as the medium of instruction, in religion, in the media and other formal settings,
but its impact is somewhat reflected in some people’s speech, at least in the form of
borrowings and some switching, as a result of the process of arabisation and long-term
exposition to the language, particularly the news on TV, religious programmes, etc.;

2. French, a legacy of colonialism, can be considered as strongly established in the

community as it has led to heavy borrowing, societal bilingualism and code-switching;
its pervasiveness is also obvious in many domains such as the written media, books,
TV and radio programmes, etc...

After drawing an overall picture of the linguistic situation in Algeria which is

characterized at the same time at least by a two-fold relation to Algerian Arabic illustrated, as
noted above, in bilingualism on the one hand, with borrowings and code-switching as related
phenomena, and diglossia on the other, we have tried to check, in this tentative investigation
the extent to which current sociolinguistic approaches may apply in an Algerian urban
context.

By means of a few empirical methods and data elicitation techniques based primarily on
Labov’s quantitative methodology, but also on other approaches such as the observation of
naturally-occurring speech interactions, we have been able to reveal some productive results
on speech behaviour in the community, exemplified particularly in linguistic variation on the
part of young native male speakers as opposed to older people who switch much less to rural
forms, and to women who are, on the whole, more conservative by sticking to TA vernacular
features whatever the constraints of the setting or the addressee.

While the Labovian paradigm has proved quite useful in revealing a few sociolinguistic
patterns in Tlemcen speech community, in particular those regular patterns of variable (?), for
instance, in relation to the two social categories, age and gender, we have not been able to
elicit any social stratification of [?]-use, as is the case with post-vocalic r, for example, in
Labov’s work on the speech of New York City (1966). We believe one important reason for
such inapplicability, which is a challenge for some fundamental sociolinguistic notions, lies in
the different social organisation of an Arabic-speaking community with no clear-cut
boundaries in socio-economic groupings, and, in any case, with no obvious reflection in the
use of variable (?); that is, the social status of native speakers cannot be considered a
differential factor responsible for more or less use of the glottal stop. Besides, because of the
diglossic character of the community, style differentiation is not reflected along a standard-
vernacular continuum as in the case of standard-with-dialect western communities. The use of
the opposition (?):[?]~[g], for instance, is not to be analysed in terms of formality of the
setting, as it remains in the prestige-less sphere of the low varieties at play. It is in the realm
of MSA use as opposed to TA or RA that we may consider style differentiation, though on
different grounds.
 Indeed, in contrast with Standard English, for example, which is the native variety of
many in British higher social classes and which lower-status speakers overtly admire as the
model language, MSA is not acquired as a mother tongue by any portion of the community,
though it is held in higher regard, perhaps. Rather, for its association with religion first and
pan-Arab identity, but also with education and the written form in general, the High variety
functions as a unifying force and is thus regarded as the ‘property’ of everybody, though
nobody uses it in everyday speech interaction. Nevertheless, evidence from our data show that
style shifting along the High/Low Arabic continuum can be attested among an increasing
number of speakers, particularly those having reached a satisfactory level of instruction in
MSA, in some topic discussions, interviews and even semi-formal settings.

In contrast, switching to French occurs much more frequently in the speech of a much
greater number of speakers and in many more domains than in the case of MSA. In fact, many
Algerians, particularly those who had their instruction before arabisation was implemented,
feel more comfortable with French than with MSA when they discuss ‘high-level’ matters, in
both formal and casual settings. We have also come across people who control the two
standard languages to a large extent, and thus easily switch from MSA to French and vice-
versa in more or less careful speech circumstances.

On a another level of investigation, the analysis of the data we have collected in the
community has allowed us to confirm, to a certain extent, our hypothesis that, in contrast to
women’s conservative character, native male TA speakers are ‘required’, as it were, to
accommodate to rural speech in constrained situations and mixed settings. Such pervasive
code-switching behaviour could be regarded as illustrating a high degree of bi-dialectal
communicative competence, but at the same time it seems to reflect lack of loyalty towards
the native tongue and weak in-group solidarity. In this regard, we have put forward the
assumption that the TA speakers’ fluctuating language behaviour does reflect a
communication strategy that takes account of the addressee and setting, but it also results
from what Labov calls ‘linguistic insecurity’, a feeling caused by negative stereotypes
associated with Tlemcen speech a whole and, in particular, by the strong stigmatisation of the
glottal stop for its association with femininity.

The following graph shows how young TA male speakers avoid using TA speech
characteristics – the glottal stop [?] in particular which is replaced by [g] – while females
maintain the native features.
 100 Males
Females
80

% 60

40

20

0
Age : -6 6..10 11..15 16..19 20..29 30..39 40..49 50..59 60+

In the last part of our research work, and in an attempt to verify our findings as to the
effects of the negative social meaning attached to TA features, we have looked at people’s
evaluation of speech from a social-psychological perspective. In particular, Lambert’s
matched-guise technique has proved fruitful in eliciting people’s rather unconscious language
attitudes. Indeed, the point to emphasize here is that, in spite of the covert positive attitudes
displayed towards TA speech particularly on dimensions such as pleasantness and job
suitability, native male speakers continue to be ashamed of using it in constrained settings;
and rural speech users go on making overt negative comments on it. These latter also stick to
rural speech in spite of the negative reactions they seem to display towards it. Such behaviour
is understandable if we consider the innate phenomenon of language loyalty. But why isn’t
this applicable to native male TA speakers? Why do they tend to conceal their identity by
continually switching away from TA at the risk of being responsible for its loss? The dialect
shift would have long occurred, indeed, were it not counterbalanced by TA female speakers
who regularly revitalize its use.

As an example of the discrepancy between how people actually behave linguistically and
how they react to users of one variety or the other, the following graph interestingly shows
similar results as to the evaluation of Tlemcen Arabic and Rural Arabic on the dimension of
status.
 Status in % TA speech RA speech
100
80.28 78.48

80

60

40
19.71 21.51

20

0
TA Judges RA Judges

Both TA judges and RA judges rate the guise of TA speech as much higher in status than
that of RA speech. And thus, the issue that raises itself is: if TA speakers evaluate their
variety as high in status and more pleasant, why do they tend to avoid it and continually
switch to the rural variety which they consider as less statusful and less pleasant? In contrast,
why do rural speakers rate their own speech as lower in status but keep using it and almost
never attempt to adopt Tlemcen speech features?