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Journal of Language Teaching, 2(12), 1-7, 2022
https://doi.org/10.54475/jlt.2022.016
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The evolution of the status and teaching of Amazigh in Morocco:
From marginalization to institutionalization
Abdellah Idhssaine
Higher School of Education and Training (ESEF), Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco
Received: November 8, 2022 / Accepted: December 18, 2022 / Published Online: December 25, 2022
© Pioneer Publications LTD 2022
Abstract
The present paper provides a critical review of the trajectory of the status and teaching of the Amazigh language in
Morocco in an attempt to contextualize its state of the art following the recent changes in the Moroccan language
policy. The assumptions herein discussed are not based on fieldwork, but rather on previous literature, document
analysis, and numerical data reported by the Ministry of Education between the years 2003 and 2010. Such an
approach is expected to pave the path for future fieldwork research by investigating the extent to which some of the
claims herein advanced tend to align with the de-facto reality of the Amazigh language in a variety of priority
domains of public life, governed by the recently validated organic law 26.16, including the Moroccan educational
system.
Keywords Amazigh language; Amazigh-in-Education Policy; IRCAM; Amazigh officialization
1. Introduction
Amazigh is allegedly the indigenous language of
the Maghreb; it is argued to have existed since almost
5000 years ago (Boukous, 1995, p. 18). The language
is spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and parts of
adjoining Sub-Saharan countries. The word Amazigh is
used as an umbrella term to refer to a number of related,
but not all mutually intelligible, dialects of the Hemito-
Semitic family. The official writing system in which the
language is written is known as Tifinagh, an indigenous
script which allegedly was used to write Amazigh
varieties across North Africa. The language policy the
state embraced immediately after Morocco obtained
independence has contributed to marginalization of the
Amazigh language in a variety of intimate (i.e., home)
and priority domains of public life (Idhssaine & El
Kirat, 2019).
Moroccan society is qualified as a multilingual
setting where a number of languages are in contact.
Such intriguing complexity has brought about several
sociolinguistic phenomena, including, but not limited
to, code-switching, bi/multilingualism, language shift,
language endangerment, and language loss. The latter
are all closely related that one phenomenon could lead
to another. The fact that Morocco is a bi/multilingual
country by no means entails that all Moroccans are
fluent bilinguals, an allegation often taken for granted
among foreigners when addressing the big Maghreb
region in general and Morocco in particular. Indeed, it
is common to come across people who do not speak
French at all in Morocco or have a limited command of
the language, a scenario that is observed among the
unprivileged communities with lower socioeconomic
status. The close interplay between bi/multilingualism
and language revitalization does not only concern the
community itself, but also education policies whereby
endangered languages are incorporated into the school
system and other priority domains of public life to
guarantee their maintenance and vitality. In fact, this is
reminiscent of the Moroccan context in which the de
facto promotion of Amazigh was first initiated through
its introduction to primary education alongside MSA.
2. To w a r d s A m a zi g h Legitimization
The 1962 constitution promulgated immediately
after Morocco gained independence was instrumental
in deciding the fate of the Moroccan language policy.
In fact, post-independence Morocco was characterized
by an ideological conflict, which was not favorable to
the Amazigh language in general due to the prevailing
pan-Arabist ideology (Boukous, 2011). Although the
Moroccan nationalists advocated for the unification of
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Morocco in the Arabo-Islamic world, they regarded
Amazigh as a colonial intervention and a real threat to
Arab unity. During pan-Arabism in the 1970s, the
Amazigh issue was regarded as a reactionary attitude
one could simply be arrested for (El Kirat, 2004). Such
marginalization has led to the emergence of a handful
of Amazigh associations to advocate for their linguistic
and cultural rights, including the Association of
l’Université d’été D’Agadir, founded by a new group
of Soussi intellectuals in the capital city of Rabat and
l’Association Nouvelle de Culture et des Arts
Populaires, also known as Tamaynut (El Kirat, 2004).
The aim of the Amazigh Cultural Movement (ACM)
was not only the recognition of the Amazigh language
and culture as integral components of the Moroccan
national identity, but also its historical legitimacy and
cultural autonomy.
The ACM had to wait until the 1990s to become
effectively active thanks to the inauguration of the
“Agadir Charter” in August 1991, a declaration which
sought to legitimize the movement as a legal organism
advocating for the democratization of linguistic and
cultural rights in Morocco. In this regard, Ouazzi (2000)
states that the ACM has managed to relatively influence
the authorities to take positive stands towards Amazigh;
yet, the Arabist ideology (i.e., Arab nationalism) was
still predominant in the Moroccan linguistic market
where the Amazigh language and culture remained
considerably marginalized. Therefore, the Amazigh
community had to assimilate to the prevailing ideology
as a token of embracing Islam and showing their
nationalism. The beginning of the 90s was a turning
point in the history of the ACM as their demands
became more political and started to gain interest in the
Moroccan media. This was initially manifested in the
historical speech delivered by King Hassan II on
August 20th, 1994, in which he publicly legitimized the
movement.
I talked, my dear People, about dialects. Why? I
estimate that the dialects are components of our
authenticity. Arrived with the Koran, Arabic has not
suppressed our dialects. (Translation by Lehtinen, 1996,
p. 18)
The king’s speech was an immediate reaction to a
group of Amazigh activists from the association Tilleli
that were all arrested in Errachidia, a city in southern
Morocco, for allegedly trying to disturb public order
through raising banners and slogans in Tifinagh during
the celebration of the International Labor Day on 1st
May. The King himself highlighted the importance of
integrating national dialects into primary education,
arguing that their teaching could potentially enhance
the country’s immunity to the cultural and linguistic
invasion of the colonial heritage. Of interest here is that
the same argument used by the nationalists and the state
to legitimize the denial of an official status to Amazigh
or at least its recognition as an element of the Moroccan
national identity has also been adopted to advocate the
1
Marley (2004) provides an English translation of article 110, which
reads as follows “Morocco will now be adopting a clear, coherent and
constant language policy within education. This policy has three major
teaching of national dialects. Analyzing the King’s
speech, Lehtinen (1996) observed that the choice of the
term “dialects” to refer to a full-fledged language could
be interpreted as a political mechanism to divide the
ACM through pinpointing to the regional varieties of
the language. By and large, despite being a political
necessity, one could argue that the speech has fairly
contributed to changing the officials’ attitudes towards
the Amazigh issue, paving the path for subsequent
measures I shall discuss in the next subsections.
The speech delivered by the late King Hassan II
on August 20th, 1994, was substantially instrumental in
legitimizing the ACM agenda where the recognition
and teaching of the Amazigh language were central.
The politicization of the Amazigh issue as well as its
incorporation into the media landscape have brought
about a relative change in the authorities’ attitudes
towards Amazigh, an act which first manifested in the
promulgation of article 110
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included in the National
Educational Charter. The latter seeks, inter alia, to
accommodate the Amazigh language and culture as a
integral reflex of Morocco's pluralism and nation-state
building alongside Modern Standard Arabic. The
charter is governed by the principle of complementary
distribution of languages where Modern Standard
Arabic is perceived as the language of national and
religious identity, whereas Amazigh is regarded as the
vehicle of regional identity. Foreign languages were
instead considered as a medium to open on the world.
The integration of Amazigh into the educational charter
seems to be, at the surface, a crucial step in the
recognition of the Amazigh language and identity.
However, a careful analysis of the premises of the
articles 115-116 of the charter reveals a great deal of
ambiguity “not only in the appellation and status of
Amazigh, but also in its function” (Ennaji, 2005, p. 67).
Equally important is that the function assigned to
the Amazigh language in the charter of education
encourages Moroccan schools to practice a kind of
“opening” on Amazigh, a term deemed problematic as
it implies that the latter is not part of the Moroccan
identity. Berdouzi (2000) also analyzed the premises of
the charter to conclude that it does not make any
explicit reference to Arabization, nor does it allude to
the establishment of an Arabic Language Academy to
oversee the modernization of the language (p. 21). A
new declaration was subsequently issued by King
Mohammed VI on July 30th, 2001, in which the latter
ultimately recognized the Amazigh language(s) and
culture as integral constituents of the Moroccan identity
that should be preserved and promoted as a national
heritage of all Moroccans. In fact, the king’s initiative
was rather a safety measure than a linguistic one; it was
the result of the increasing pressure from the ACM and
the Black Spring erupted in Algeria, which brought
about clashes between protestors and security forces in
Tizi Ouzou insofar as thousands injured and over 120
thrusts: the reinforcement and improvement of Arabic teaching,
diversification of languages for teaching science and technology and an
openness to Tamazight” (p. 31).
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died.
The king also opened up about his Amazigh
origins on the part of his mother, thereby contributing
to the legitimacy of all the demands included in the
Amazigh Manifesto. According to Maddy-We it zm an &
Zisenwine (2007), the Amazigh Manifesto does not
differ from the Agadir Charter in terms of demands,
except that “it addresses Moroccan’s recent history in
an unabashedly, revisionist, and explicit tone [and] it
fairly hammered away at the denial of Morocco’s
‘Amazighes’, and the arrogation by professional
politicians and most members of Morocco’s elite, since
1956, of monopolistic right to ‘patriotism’ and political
action” (p. 107). This was shortly followed by the Ajdir
Dahir on October 17th, 2001, a decree which marked
the beginning of a new era for Amazigh through the
creation of the Royal Institute of the Amazigh Culture
(IRCAM) to allegedly safeguard, promote, and
strengthen the place of the Amazigh culture in the
educational system, society, and media landscape
(Boukous, 2011; El Kirat, 2004). However, Boussagui
(2020) asserts that the creation of IRCAM seems to
have “produced a row within the ACM, and many
activists saw IRCAM as a domestication of the ACM
and the integration of IRCAM was viewed as a betrayal
to the Amazigh cause” (p. 85).
Some activists have often considered IRCAM as
another mechanism adopted by the deep state (i.e.,
Makhzen) to control the Amazigh issue and weaken the
ACM that has often advocated for the linguistic and
cultural rights of the Amazigh community. The
multiple tasks assigned to IRCAM are clearly listed in
the Ajdir Dahir and include the following points: (i) to
safeguard, maintain, protect and diffuse the Amazigh
culture; (ii) to promote and improve research on the
Amazigh culture; (iii) to promote the Amazigh artistic
culture; (iv) to study the written form of Amazigh to
facilitate its teaching (i.e., production of didactic
materials); (v) to actively contribute to the elaboration
of training programs; (vi) to help research and training
at the university level; (vii) to promote the integration
of Amazigh in communication; (viii) to cooperate with
national and foreign centers. In pursuance of these
goals, IRCAM cooperates with a variety of ministerial
departments to successfully execute public policies
regarding Amazigh language teaching. Boukous (2011)
also states that IRCAM regularly provides “counsel to
the king on issues pertinent to the promotion of
Amazigh in all its expressions” (p. 62) (see also Royal
Decree n° 1 - 01 - 299, 2001).
Of the alleged achievements fulfilled by IRCAM
are, inter alia, the ongoing standardization process of
the Amazigh language and the choice of the Tifinagh
script as its official writing system, an initiative the
king has single-handedly taken due to the increasingly
ideological and political debate the issue has brought
about. However, substantial criticism was leveled
against such decision from those in favor of the Arabic
script, arguing that the use of Tifinagh hinders the
promotion of Amazigh and, most importantly, its
spread among Moroccans. A third camp advocated for
the adoption of the Latin script as the official writing
system for the language, given its popularity and
visibility at the international level. The proponents of
the Arabic script argue that the latter would indeed
reinforce Moroccans’ Islamic identity, and that the use
of the Latin script would “endanger their attachment to
their religion and alienate them from their Muslim
community” (Boussagui, 2020, p. 37). Boukous (2004)
argues that the codification of Amazigh was allegedly
conducted within a framework wherein a number of
regional variations were treated as synonymies, of
which speakers could choose between the normalized
form or the other competing forms. Yet, the aim to turn
the Amazigh language into a full-fledged one that
satisfies the needs speakers encounter in everyday life
has been challenging to pursue and demands time (Ibid.
2004).
The standardization of the Amazigh language
should be done on objective and scientific grounds in
an attempt to maintain the particularities of regional
varieties. The state of the art of the standardized norm
does not seem to epitomize the sum of all the local
varieties, and thus running the risks of bringing about
internal conflicts among members of the Amazigh
communities. This is indeed evident in the fact that the
variety projected by IRCAM is still not intelligible to a
large number of Amazighs that one could simply
question the manner in which the standardization is
being done, and whether it is ideologically biased. It
also hinders the teaching of the Amazigh language,
especially among semi-speakers who still do not feel
included. Other achievements pursued by IRCAM and
the ACM are the relative incorporation of Amazigh into
the school system and media landscape through con-
ventions signed with the respective ministries.
3. Evolution of the Amazigh-in-
Education Policy
Shortly after the creation of IRCAM, Amazigh
was incorporated into primary education in September
2003 as a pivotal step in the promotion of the language.
The regression of the Amazigh-in-education policy,
however, tends to reinforce the allegation that the
policy was driven by political necessity rather than
linguistic or cultural concerns. The language was first
introduced in 300 schools taught by approximately
1000 teachers who received pedagogical training in
Amazigh teaching (Errihani, 2006). Equally important
here is the script in which Amazigh should be taught, a
debate which ultimately led to the proposal of three
candidates, namely the Tifinagh alphabet, the Arabic
alphabet, and the Latin alphabet. A political solution
was ultimately offered whereby Tifinagh was adopted
as the official writing system by virtue of being the
indigenous North African script used in numerous
inscriptions across the big Maghreb (see also Chabot,
1940; Marcy, 1936). The politicization of the Tifinagh
alphabet could potentially be justified by the fact that
the majority of the Amazigh community had no say in
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the choice of the script, which in turn amounts to the
top-down approach adopted by the State to handle the
Amazigh issue. Moreover, despite being a political
necessity, the majority of the ACM tend to believe that
the driving factor behind the use of Tifinagh resides in
the symbolic value it represents for the Amazigh com-
munity, who consider it as an identity marker through
which they retain their cultural legitimacy and avoid
assimilating to the Arabist ideology that favors the
Arabic script. The third camp, however, that proposed
the adoption of the Latin script as an alternative to the
Arabic and Amazigh alphabets was accused of being
neocolonialists.
Prior to its integration into the Moroccan school
system, the Amazigh language has been undergoing a
standardization process, one which Boukous (2011)
defines as “the intervention on a language to make of it
a “standard” based on a linguistic norm defined in
advance” (p. 150). He also argues that planning the
corpus of Amazigh through its standardization and
codification has several benefits. First, it allows for
better communication within the community; second, it
seems to facilitate the unity of the community; third, it
strengthens the feelings of identity, and finally it
facilitates the integration of the language into both
school and university education. Sadiqi (2011) claims
that the teaching of Amazigh was motivated by the need
to allegedly safeguard the language as a token of
Morocco’s ancestral identity, of which the Amazigh
language stands as the mother tongue for a substantial
number of Moroccans (p. 5). The call for the adoption
of Amazigh as a medium of instruction as part of the
Amazigh revitalization process was also among the de-
mands of the ACM. The latter has often advocated for
this proposal due to its efficacy for the eradication of
illiteracy among both the youth and adults, a claim
corroborated by experts from UNESCO (1953)
2
who
recommend that “the use of the mother tongue should
be extended to as late a stage in education as possible.
In particular, pupils should begin their schooling
through the medium of the mother tongue” (p. 3).
Unlike Algeria where the learning of Amazigh is
optional, the Amazigh-in-education policy in Morocco
mandates that all Moroccans must learn the language,
irrespective of their ethnic or linguistic background.
The politics behind such a decision could be ascribed
to the fact that the Amazigh language and culture are a
common heritage of all Moroccans to cherish as an
integral constituent of their national identity. Errihani
(2006) postulates that designing effective educational
programs to teach Amazigh to Moroccan pupils could
contribute to fostering its maintenance, provided that a
certain degree of congruity between language policies
and people’s beliefs and practices is established (pp.
143-144). In this connection, Fishman (1991) argues
that language revitalization depends on the extent to
which the community uses the threatened variety, as
well as the nature of their beliefs and perceptions about
it (p. 368). The implementation process of the
Amazigh-in-education policy is also governed by the
collaboration between IRCAM and the Ministry of
Education. In 2005, 140 teachers and inspectors in
around 32 centers were trained to teach Amazigh. Two
years later, the number increased to 2000 then dropped
to 75 by 2018, as a result of the hectic demand to teach
the language, i.e., 807 in 2003 and 1140 in 2008 (Sadiqi,
2011, pp. 9-10). The actual rate at which the ministry
of education has introduced Amazigh to the school
system revealed few shortcomings that resulted in
failure to generalize the experience in all cycles by the
2009-2010 academic year.
Amazigh was recently incorporated into a few
Moroccan universities with which IRCAM established
partnerships (i.e., Agadir, Fes, Oujda, and Casablanca
lately) so as to create departments specialized in the
Amazigh language and culture. In fact, the Ministry of
Education and IRCAM have maintained an optimistic
tone with regard to the successful implementation of
the Amazigh-in-education policy; yet, some members
within IRCAM itself are concerned about the ongoing
regression of Amazigh in the school system, a reality
the Ministry of Education is not very explicit about (see
Ahmed Aassid, personal communication, May 16th,
2016, as cited in Boussagui, 2020, p. 116; El Kirat &
Boussagui, 2018, p.118). The tables below (table (1);
(2)) exhibit the Ministry of Education’s projections to
make Amazigh part of every school curriculum by the
2009-2010 academic year. The data also demonstrate
the Ministry’s failure to gradually generalize the
Amazigh teaching experience for the 1st and 2nd
grades by the same academic year.
Ta b le 1 . Pe r c e nt a g e o f p ri m a r y s c h oo l s e xp e c t e d t o i nc l u d e A m a zi g h i n t h e i r p r og r a m by 2 00 9 -2010
Level
2003–
2004–
2005–
2006–
2007–
2008–
2009–
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
1st grade
5
20
40
60
80
100
100
2nd grade
5
20
40
60
80
100
3rd grade
5
20
40
60
80
4th grade
5
20
40
60
5th grade
5
20
40
6th grade
50
20
Source: IRCAM, 2003 – 2004. (N.B.: 5% represents roughly 330 schools)
2
For details regarding the arguments provided by UNESCO experts in
favor of mother tongue teaching, see Boukous (2000, 2001).
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Ta b le 2 . Nu m b e r o f s c h o o ls t e a ch i n g A m a z i gh
according to region
Region
Number of
schools
Percentage
Ouad Dahab
9
43
Layoun
20
32
Guelmima
65
17
Sous Massa
1954
56
Gharb
26
3
Chaouia
32
3
Marrakech
306
10
Oriental
422
30
Casablanca
143
28
Rabat
327
42
Doukkala
25
2
Tadla Azilal
434
41
Meknes
1150
67
Fes
138
17
Taza
358
20
Tangier
22
1
Total
5,431
26
Source: IRCAM, 2010
Tab le 1 hi ghli ghts t he pr oject ed fi gures o f th e
implementation of the Amazigh-in-education policy
between 2003 and 2010. It seems that the academic
year 2009-2010 was the period during which the
Amazigh language was expected to become a subject
of every first-grade student. Over a decade thereafter,
one could see that the teaching of Amazigh is rather
deteriorating due to, inter alia, the limited number of
schools where the language is being taught. On the
other hand, table (2) illustrates the extent to which
Amazigh is actually taught in different regions across
the kingdom, which in total does not exceed 26% out
of all elementary schools across Morocco. One could
observe the discrepancy between these numbers and the
alleged projections of the Ministry of Education
concerning the generalization of Amazigh in every
school curriculum by 2010. The Ministry’s statistics
further attest that only 15% of all elementary school
students in Morocco study Amazigh, and only 4% of
teachers teach the language (Boukous, 2011). The
regression in the Amazigh teaching experience is also
evident in the significant decline of the number of
students who study Amazigh as a subject in school. The
table below indicates the decrease in the number of
students according to their respective grades during the
2008-2009 academic year.
Ta b le 3 . Nu m b e r o f s t u d e nt s w ho s t u dy Am a z i g h
according to level, 2008-2009
Level
Number of students
1st grade
186,983
2nd grade
139,433
3rd grade
92,226
4th grade
55,822
5th grade
31,708
6th grade
15,008
Total
521,180
Source: Ministry of Education, 2010
The above data corroborates the failure of the
projections of the Ministry of Education. In fact, out of
the 3,518,753 students enrolled in primary school
education, around 527,025 officially learn Amazigh
(14.97%), a premise which yet again reveals the de
facto status of the language in school curricula where it
is still marginalized (see also Boussagui, 2020).
Schiffman (1996) argues that discrepancies between
what is stated in official documents, and the manner in
which policies are implemented remains a common
attribution of language policies (Errihani, 2006, p. 144).
The top-down approach the state adopted to actually
implement the Amazigh-in-education policy has
resulted in a number of shortcomings that hinder the
projections assumed by the Ministry of Education. Of
the major impediments confronting the teaching of
Amazigh is the ongoing lack of qualified teachers;
those who were first recruited to teach the language
received only a two-week training in a script totally
new to them. The decision to generalize the Amazigh
teaching experience has in turn pushed the Ministry of
Education to start recruiting non-Amazigh teachers,
who neither spoke the Amazigh language nor received
a pedagogical training on how to effectively teach it
(Errihani, 2006, p.152). Another challenge facing the
Amazigh-in-education policy concerns the beliefs and
perceptions of Moroccans, who allegedly had no say in
the implementation process. According to Lewis
(1981), policies which do not take into account the
community’s attitudes towards their language are less
likely to succeed. That noted, he writes:
No policy will succeed which does not do one of
three things: conform to the expressed attitudes of those
involved; persuade those who express negative
attitudes about the rightness of the policy; or seek to
remove the causes of the disagreement. (Lewis, 1981,
p. 262).
4. The Officialization of the Amazigh
Language
The intense uprisings that the MENA region has
recently undergone could not have gone unnoticed
without ramifications on the Moroccan political arena
where few popular protests raised slogans against the
corruption underlying the Moroccan socio-economic
system. The increasing tension expressed by the 20
February movement led to a new constitutional reform
in 2011, a few weeks after the initial protests, whereby
the head of State promised to reinforce the patterns of
democratization among Moroccans both at the macro
(i.e., institutional) and micro (i.e., socioeconomic)
levels. The efforts of the Amazigh militants and groups
that participated in the protests did not go unnoticed
either. In fact, 2011 was an unprecedented year for the
ACM as Amazigh was finally recognized as the second
6
official language of Morocco alongside MSA. Such
status is clearly governed by provisions of article five
in the 2011 constitution where Modern Standard Arabic
and Amazigh are listed as the official languages of the
State:
L'arabe demeure la langue officielle de l'État.
L'Etat oeuvre à la protection et au développement de la
langue arabe, ainsi qu'à la promotion de son utilisation.
De même, l'amazighe constitue une langue officielle de
l'État, en tant que patrimoine commun à tous les
Marocains sans exception. Une loi organique définit le
processus de mise en oeuvre du caractère officiel de
cette langue, ainsi que les modalités de son intégration
dans l'enseignement et aux domaines prioritaires de la
vie publique, et ce afin de lui permettre de remplir à
terme sa fonction de langue officielle.
Arabic remains the official language of the State.
The State works for the protection and for the
development of the Arabic language, as well as the
promotion of its use. Likewise, 54 Amazigh constitutes
an official language of the State, being common
patrimony of all Moroccans without exception. An
organic law defines the process of implementation of
the official character of this language, and the
modalities of its integration into the school system and
the priority domains of public life, so that it may be
permitted in time to fulfill its function as an official lan-
guage (Moroccan Const. art. 5, 2011, Trans. By
Wil lia ms S H ein ).
One of the eminent attributions of article five is
the call for the promulgation of an organic law, which
is expected to define the overall procedural protocol to
implement the official character of the Amazigh
language as well as the modalities of its integration into
the education system and the priority domains of public
life. The recently validated organic law would grant
Amazigh the institutional mechanisms necessary to
fulfill its role as an official language alongside MSA.
However, a substantial portion of the ACM are
concerned about the manner in which the organic law
will be implemented, and whether it will do justice to
the Amazigh language. Such skepticism stems from the
fact that the law regulating the implementation of the
official character of the Amazigh language was
promulgated in the last days of the legislative period of
the ruling party (i.e., PJD) back in 2016, thereby
corroborating the procrastination policy the State has
always adopted towards the Amazigh language. The
law was harshly criticized by IRCAM and several
Amazigh NGOs due to the ambiguities underlying its
provisions (Personal Communication, Ahmed Assid,
2019).
Another important measure the State has recently
undertaken is the validation of the other organic law
regulating the National Council for Languages and
Moroccan Culture on February 12, 2020, an act that has
raised concerns about the future of IRCAM. In fact, a
closer look at article 51 of the organic law reveals that
IRCAM will be entirely restructured; the law also
refers to the creation of three institutional bodies,
namely a section in charge of the Hassani and other
Moroccan cultural expressions; a section for the
Preservation of the Moroccan Heritage, and a section
responsible for the development, translation, and use of
foreign languages. The actual officialization of the
Amazigh language opens substantial prospects for its
revitalization and integration into the priority domains
of public life. In fact, the legal character the language
enjoys has led to a change in social representations and
attitudes towards the Amazigh language, identity, and
culture. While this argument may to some extent be
valid, fieldwork data yet reveals that Moroccans’
attitudes towards Amazigh range from unfavorable to
indifferent, especially among participants belonging to
the non-Amazigh community (Idhssaine, 2020).
The present paper sought to critically discuss the
state of the art of the Amazigh language by bringing to
the fore the recent changes the Moroccan language
policy has undergone, namely the creation of IRCAM,
the integration of Amazigh into the educational system,
and most importantly its recognition as the second
official language alongside Modern Standard Arabic.
Official data have been presented and discussed to
highlight the trajectory of the Amazigh-in-Education
policy and its significance in the revitalization process
of endangered Amazigh varieties. One may conclude
that the Amazigh teaching experience remains
considerably limited in the educational system, which
could primarily be attributed to the lack of trained
teachers of Amazigh, and the procrastination of the
state to implement the recently validated organic law
26.16.
Abdellah Idhssaine is Assistant Professor (PESA) of
English Studies and Linguistics at the Higher School of
Education and Training (ESEF), Chouaib Doukkali
University, El Jadida. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics
under a double-degree program from Mohammed V
University in Morocco and Bayreuth University in
Germany. His research interests include Language-in-
Education Policies, Endangered Languages, Language
Shift and Attitudes, Language Revitalization Programs,
and Syntax.
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