The symbolic power of Fus a and Darija in Morocco

This paper discusses the status of Fu a (i.e. Modern Standard Arabic) and Darija (i.e. colloquial Arabic) in Morocco. The major argument it advances is that these two varieties are only vaguely defined in terms of their linguistic features. Their boundaries are also fuzzy, a fact which leads to different perceptions of them as well as to different construals of utterances as instances of either one or the other variety. In order to test this hypothesis, a set of five sentences were constructed in such a way that they combine standard and colloquial features. These were read by a single voice and recorded on the WhatsApp application and presented to a sample of 155 native speakers belonging to different genders, age groups and with different education levels. The results indicate that there are indeed significant differences between these groups in the way they classify the prompts, but the most interesting difference was found between participants with a higher education level and those with a primary school level or no education at all. These findings indicate that perceptions of the two varieties are partly determined by the social variables investigated. They also suggest that the two varieties are ideological constructs in the sense that different social groups develop their own view of what Fu a or Darija is either by way of defending their position in the social fabric if they are privileged, or by alienation if they are underprivileged.