Defying Language Ideologies: A view from Morocco

Abstract

There aren’t many writers, Arab or otherwise, who ask themselves this unsettling question about the language they write in, and none of them wonders if they’ve chosen the wrong one. A writer knows instinctively what language he’ll write in, the same way he knows the language of his audience. The language of reading and writing goes without saying. For Moroccan writers or let us say, Maghrebian writers, it’s not so straightforward. Every Maghrebian writers has a story to tell about their language or languages – Arabic, French, Tamazight – a story always on the tip of their tongue, that constitutes the background of what they write, so that nothing they say can be understood without it. (Kilito, The Tongue 82)