DIGLOSSIA, MEDIAL ARABIC, AND LANGUAGE POLICY IN MOROCCO

The purpose of this study is to describe and investigate the emergence of a medial, standard form of Arabic in a diglossic language environment. Diglossia, as described by Ferguson (1959), referred to the existence of a High and a Low form of the same language; these two forms being in complementary distribution. One of the three cases described by Ferguson dealt with the case of Arabic diglossia. Ferguson outlined a number of situations where Standard Arabic and Colloquial Arabic are used in different linguistic situations, and with no possible overlapping. This study shows that there are not two forms of Arabic, but three: Standard Written Arabic, Medial Arabic, and Colloquial Arabic. Standard Arabic is used in written formal situations, Medial Arabic is the language variety used in spoken formal and semi-formal situations, Colloquial Arabic is the spoken informal variety. The major linguistic features of Medial Arabic are presented and analysed in this study showing that there indeed exists a third variety, which is distinct from the High and Low forms described by Ferguson and most linguists who studied the question of Arabic diglossia.;The data used for this analysis consist of recordings of television and radio programs which show the major role played by the media in the process of Arabic standardization in Morocco. The other major factors in the slow emergence of Medial Arabic are those of language policy, in general, and Arabization and Education, in particular, which have contributed in uncovering the difficulties behind language standardization in a multilingual-diglossic language environment.