Language Conflict in Algeria: From Colonialism to Post-Independence 9781847699657

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Language Conflict in Algeria

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Series Editor: John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Multilingual Matters series publishes books on bilingualism, bilingual education, immersion education, second language learning, language policy, multiculturalism. The editor is particularly interested in ‘macro’ level studies of language policies, language maintenance, language shift, language revival and language planning. Books in the series discuss the relationship between language in a broad sense and larger cultural issues, particularly identity related ones. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

Language Conflict in Algeria From Colonialism to Post-Independence

Mohamed Benrabah

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

In memory of my parents, And for Selina and Mohamed Nouri Amine

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Benrabah, Mohamed. Language Conflict in Algeria: From Colonialism to Post-Independence/Mohamed Benrabah. Multilingual Matters: 154. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Languages in contact—Algeria. 2. Arabic language—Algeria—History. 3. Language policy—Algeria. 4. Language and education—Algeria. 5. Sociolinguistics—Algeria— History. 6. Algeria—Languages—Political aspects. I. Title. P130.52.A4B46 2013 306.44’60965–dc23 2013001853 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-964-0 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2013 Mohamed Benrabah. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd., Salisbury, UK. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Printgroup.

It’s a tough job being Algerian Tahar Djaout* (quoted in Šukys, 2007: 14)

* Tahar Dajout is the first writer-journalist assassinated during the purge of intellectuals in Algeria in the 1990s. His murder in May 1993 attributed to Islamist extremists put an end to a promising writing career.

Contents

Acknowledgements Prologue: Two Cultural Wars in 50 Years 1

ix xi

Circumnavigating a Term: ‘Language Conflict’ and Related Concepts Language Contact and Domination Linguistic Consequences of Colonialism: Ireland, a Case Study Language Planning and Conflict Resistance and Peace Sociolinguistics

6 10 16

2

Frenchification: Annihilating Indigenous Languages Pre-Colonial Period Local Languages and Cultures under Siege ‘Instruct to Conquer’ Language Superiority Rejection of Cultural Subordination The Legacy

21 22 25 31 35 41 47

3

Arabization: At War with Diversity Cautious Implementation Politicizing Language Ever More Radical Measures Oppositional Identities Planned and Unplanned Developments The Anachronism of Arabization: Multiple Voices and Hybridity Conclusion

51 52 57 59 66 72

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1 1

75 86

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4

Geopolitics and Language Rivalry: French versus English Empires and Languages in Competition Language without a Political Past Top-down Intervention: Unsuccessful Penetration of English Maintenance of French, Uncertain Future Recycling Old Colonial Ideologies The Possibility of Alternative Voices Future Prospects Conclusion

87 88 90 93 98 106 114 119 123

5

Writers and Language as a Battlefield: ‘Authenticity’ versus ‘Hybridity’ Colonials Write Back Some Effects of Colonial Bilingualism Hybridity and Long-Term Prospects ‘Silence Will Slowly Become His Empire’ The Triumph of Unanism and ‘Authenticity’ Creativity and Resistance Writing in Troubled Times Conclusion

126 127 131 135 139 142 146 151 155

Epilogue: The Language Question As a ‘Lightning Rod’ Language and Politics Wedded in an Indissoluble Union Cultural Marginalization Breeds Radicalism Language and Identity as Distractors What Can We Do?

157 158 160 163 167

References Index

171 186

Acknowledgements

The author is deeply indebted to Zahir Meksem and to Mohamed ‘Majid’ Mebarki who generously offered the photographs presented in Figures 3.3 and 3.4 respectively.

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Prologue: Two Cultural Wars in 50 Years

The long French attempt to crush anything but French culture in Algeria, culminating in a murderous war that finally brought independence, surely contributed to the extremist tendencies seen there today. Edward H. Thomas (1999: 27) You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn’t understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you’ll understand quite a lot. Amin Maalouf (2003: 66)

The above epigraphs were both written in the closing years of Algeria’s 10-year long civil war called the Black Decade – in 1998 for Maalouf’s and in 1999 for Thomas’. The 1990s violence began when the Algerian government cancelled the December 1991 parliamentary elections won by the religious fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front (F.I.S. in French). The F.I.S.’s response was an armed struggle against the secular state apparatus. From the outset, the religious–secular dichotomy seems to apply to the strife of the 1990s. In reality, the conflict is cultural with language playing not a negligible role. And colonial history is largely responsible for this murderous war. On the subject of extreme violence, Algeria hit the headlines twice over the last 50 years of the 20th century. The first time was during the War of Independence (1954–1962), and the second during the Black Decade. On each occasion, conflict arose between two mutually exclusive cultural groups: first, the colonizer and the colonized; and later, between the dominant Francophones and the Arabizers.

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The cultural misunderstandings between the colonizers and the colonized began when colonialism brought the European and the indigenous Arabo-Berber worlds into violent contact. It resulted from the Franco-centric presumption that French civilization was superior to local cultures. France’s ‘civilizing mission’ implied the domination of its language and culture, and eventually the eradication of indigenous idioms and traditions. Similarly, the colonized Algerians were convinced of the superiority of their own Islamic civilization. This led them to resist all efforts toward colonial assimilation and cultural interpenetration. For over a century and a quarter, the two irreconcilable communities could not be made to agree, and the War of Liberation erupted on 1 November 1954 (All Saints’ Day) and ended in July 1962. The atrocities committed during this struggle have been described by historian Alistair Horne as ‘undeniably and horribly savage’ (Horne, 1987: 12). These atrocities stemmed from France’s mode of colonization. Following their conquest of the three countries of the Maghreb – Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1912 – the French managed these territories differently. While Tunisia and Morocco became Protectorates, Algeria was the most ‘French’ of France’s overseas possessions. The French considered Algeria as a territorial extension of France itself, and they implemented a deliberate policy of European settlement, cultural assimilation and attendant linguistic Frenchification. When the uprising began in 1954, French politicians (from across the spectrum) were caught at a major disadvantage. In fact, beliefs in the supremacy of their language and culture blinded them till the very end. Even when the French doubted the efficiency of their policy of ‘assimilation’ and modified it into a policy of ‘integration’ (‘association’), they never questioned their ‘mission’ or the superiority of their language and culture. In 1958, Charles de Gaulle’s Prime Minister, Michel Debré, declared that every person ‘from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset’ was a Frenchman (Gordon, 1962: 97). One year later, a French scholar claimed that colonized Algerians were crying out for the French language. What is more, many Frenchmen regarded violence in Algeria as ‘terrorism’ rather than as the fight of a subjugated people for liberation. The ‘One and Indivisible French Republic’ could not tolerate political and cultural turmoil within its borders, and France considered the Algerian revolutionaries’ demands as treasonable. The War of Independence was a traumatic experience with long-lasting effects for all communities. In the military field, the French counterrevolutionary strategy aimed at draining the sea to asphyxiate the ‘fish’ and, thus, deprive Algerian fighters of contact with the population which provided them with food and shelter. So ‘regroupment camps’ and ‘pacification zones’ began to appear in 1954, and then spread across the populated areas of the North of Algeria in 1957–1958. By 1960, the French army had relocated

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around two million villagers – representing 24% of the total Muslim population living in Algeria. This conflict brought death to an estimated one million Algerian Muslims, and approximately 800,000 non-Muslims were sent into exile. For example, following the mass exodus of 1962, the Jewish community had completely vanished by the beginning of the 21st century – there were around 130,000 Jews in 1948, roughly half of Arabo-Berber origin and half of Jewish descendants expelled from Spain in 1391 and 1492. Independent Algeria’s almost homogeneous religious culture meant a Muslim state for all. The nationalist leaders of decolonization expressed their social and cultural will without facing any strong opposition from powerful religious minorities. They did it through the policy of linguistic Arabization which followed the French model – that is, they imposed Literary (Classical) Arabic on all society, and this proved as exclusive as the colonial policy it sought to supplant. This method of Arabization turned out to be an Islamization process with tragic consequences. According to several observers, the hasty implementation of an exclusively Arabic monolingual educational system in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, xenophobia, chauvinism and obscurantism. This generated what became known as the Black Decade, with a death toll estimated between 120,000 and 200,000 victims. Displaced populations were estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 million, and the number of people arrested and made to ‘disappear’ by Algerian security forces and their allies rose to more than 7000. Some analysts characterized the strife of the 1990s as ‘cultural civil war’ or linguistic ‘intellectual cleansing’. The victims were generally secular and/or Francophone Algerians. Intellectual cleansing involved the purging from society of ‘impure’ influences, like intellectual and creative thinkers. The most emblematic victim of this purge is Tahar Djaout, the writer-journalist assassinated in May 1993. Soon after the attack on Djaout, a man who had been tortured appeared on Algerian television and was presented as an Islamist terrorist. He professed that Djaout had been murdered for ‘[t]wo reasons: first of all because he was a Communist. Secondly because he had a formidable pen. He knew how to express himself, he had a great deal of influence over Muslims’ (Šukys, 2007: 29). The second reason evoked here echoes one of the slogans used by Algerian Muslim fundamentalists in the 1990s: ‘Those who fight with the pen will perish by the sword.’ The conflict of the 1990s forced into exile thousands of highly skilled and mainly Francophone Algerians. The majority settled in France. According to an OECD report published in 2004, out of one million exiles from the Arab world, Algeria had the highest number of university-qualified expatriates: 214,000 Algerians, 202,000 Egyptians, 110,000 Lebanese and 83,000 Iraqis. In 2004, historian Pierre Vermeren claimed that the French

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authorities, who refused to publish figures, admitted unofficially that between 200,000 and 300,000 Algerian intellectuals and their families had settled in France since the beginning of the 1990s. In his opinion, the real estimates stood around 500,000 (Vermeren, 2004: 320). As of July 2012, Algeria celebrated half a century of independence from French rule. Algerian independence was proclaimed on 5 July 1962, following the defeat of the French who had colonized the country for 132 years. It was mainly the French who introduced a practice unknown to Algerians before France’s conquest of their country: cultural polarization by means of language. The Algerian decolonizing elites reproduced this alienation after 1962 through the politicization of the language question. And the struggles linked to language use persist to this day (the autumn of 2012). Language Conflict in Algeria: From Colonialism to Post-Independence is a book about the use of languages as a proxy for conflict. It is the biography of a historic phenomenon introduced by imperial France into communities unaccustomed to politicizing linguistic issues. The French aggressive occupation was traumatic for Algerians who felt insecure and uncertain regarding their identity. To regain or assert a sense of cultural individuality, Algeria’s elites adopted the policy of Arabization in order to reduce divisions linked to language, and to contribute to the overall development of the country. But instead of reducing linguistic antagonisms within society, the politics of language has become itself a source of serious problems in post-independent Algeria. This book deals with linguistic issues as a way to explain the turbulent seas of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries of Algerian history. As we embark on this journey, we must first introduce the necessary conceptual tools related to the central issue of this book, ‘language conflict’. Subsequently, in Chapters 2−5 and in the Epilogue, the concepts developed in the first chapter are applied to the colonial and post-colonial histories of Algeria.

1 Circumnavigating a Term: ‘Language Conflict’ and Related Concepts

Language conflict can occur anywhere there is language contact, chiefly in multilingual communities Peter Nelde (2002: 330) [C]olonial bilingualism cannot be compared to just any linguistic dualism Albert Memmi (1974: 107) [L]anguage planning activity may itself ultimately be the cause of serious problems as well as conflicts Ernst Hakon Jahr (1993: 1) [S]trategies of resistance [are] a typical reaction to overt political and linguistic oppression Rajend Mesthrie et al. (2000: 333)

Several notions and concepts linked to the idea of ‘language conflict’ are discussed in this chapter. Most of them will serve as reference points later in the book. By way of introducing these terminological terms, examples from around the world have been gathered to illustrate manifestations of language conflict. And emphasis has been placed on issues connected with the linguistic effects of colonialism, and the consequences of decolonization and nation-building.

Language Contact and Domination One thing that all demonstrations of language conflict have in common is that they have originated in contact situations, chiefly in multilingual 1

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communities. A simple definition of language contact can be the use of more than one language in the same place – geographical area or speech community – at the same time. It is interesting to note that not all language contacts produce strife for there are contacts that lack any conflict component. Language conflict arises when people try to carve out a space for their own tongue which expands to other linguistic ‘territories’. The metaphorical expression of ‘language spread’, coined by Robert Cooper, refers to the processes that allow an increase in the number of users and uses of a language (Cooper, 1982: 6). When languages spread to other linguistic ‘spaces’, they produce ‘tension, resentment, and differences of opinion that are characteristic of every competitive social structure’ (Nelde, 1997: 289). Conflicts and the bitter argument over linguistic issues that emerge as a result of linguistic rivalry and competition are often called ‘language wars’. The origin of the metaphorical expression ‘language war’ goes back to the early 20th century. Between 1890 and 1913, a bitter argument took place among the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine. Like the Jews of Eastern Europe and the United States, members of the Yishuv began using Hebrew as a vernacular. Language became thus an essential marker of nationhood, or the mechanisms of we-group-building and the main patterns of national integration. These are forms of inclusion and exclusion in the collective or national identity, and forms of ‘Othering’ to produce the antithesis of ‘We’. In Ottoman Palestine, there was rivalry between Hebrew and two varieties of German considered as ‘enemies’. The first ‘enemy’ was Yiddish, the mother tongue of European Jews. Yiddish offered a plausible alternative as a language of national individuality, and public linguistic fights proved intense. By 1910, the struggle between the two Jewish linguistic forms ended in favour of Hebrew even though strong campaigns against Yiddish continued until 1936. The fight against the second ‘enemy’ was a quick battle and became known as the Language War. The rival was German, widely accepted as the language of advanced science and learning at the beginning of the 20th century. To spread their language and culture in the Middle East, the Germans created in 1901 a network of schools ranging from kindergarten to teachers’ training college known as Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden. They aimed at offsetting the influence of French, another world language supported by the Paris-based Jewish organization Alliance Israëlite Universelle. In 1912, the Hilfsverein began building a technological tertiary institute in Haifa. The board of the institute based in Berlin announced in 1913 that the new institution would use Hebrew as the language of instruction for general subjects and German for science and technology. To justify their choice, the board argued that Hebrew could not handle scientific concepts. The board’s ruling angered pro-Hebrew teachers and students from the Hilfsverein who

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joined strikes and public demonstrations. These actions had a positive effect and the board’s decision was revoked (Spolsky, 2009: 186–188; Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999: 185; 2001: 357–358). Interethnic language conflicts are by far the most common types of linguistic competition. Rivalry between Yiddish and Hebrew mentioned above is an example of this. And the struggle between German and French in the Palestine of the early 20th century shows how nations in pursuit of geopolitical supremacy can produce antagonisms. But tensions can also occur within an individual who masters more than one language, a case described as inter-lingual conflict. The complex problem associated with bilinguals concerns the question of identity crisis. While many bilingual people do not have any problem with identity, others find it a problematic issue, especially in contexts of domination (Nelde, 2002: 329–330; Wei, 2006: 11). Moving back to language spread, its ultimate goal in totalizing forms of dominance is linguistic supremacy to wipe out other languages and cultures. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the usual type of organized language conflict rose from the contact between different linguistic groups with unequal socio-political status. The dominant language group controlled the important institutions in the major social, political and economic spheres. Within this environment, the primary cause of language conflict came from the dominant group’s attempt to exclude members of the dominated community from social elevation in the political and economic sectors. And wars of words were ignited by dominant and dominated groups alike. For example, linguistic rivalry in the history of the United States was initiated by the ruling classes and in colonized societies by colonials. The US never established an official language or a language academy, and since its independence from England, linguistic disputation has recurred regularly with periods of tolerance punctuated by periods of restrictive orientation. Intolerance towards non-Anglophone tongues occurred when an increase in immigration accelerated language diversity. Linguistic pluralism became in this way a salient public issue with the attendant legal protection of English and the restriction of other tongues. Anti-immigrant politics took the form of policies to ‘Anglicize’ and to ‘Americanize’ the immigrant. As a result of this, linguistic polarization and the politics of language became just as visceral as issues of race or religion. In truth, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) feared for their dominant position and the loss of political control over key institutions in the country. At times of uncertainty, WASPs sought ‘wedge issues’ to exploit for partisan purposes. They used the language question as a ‘lightning rod’ for political attacks from their opponents who addressed the actual underlying causes of the conflict, that is, social and political problems (Crawford, 2000: 1; 2001; Dicker, 1996: 47).

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The expression ‘linguistic war’, often used synonymously with linguistic imperialism, has traditionally referred to the international dominance of languages in conjunction with imperial domination. Historically, conquerors in empires and colonies have imposed their own language on subjugated populations to eliminate a diversity of indigenous cultures and tongues. Linguists call this type of language destruction ‘linguicide’ or ‘language death’ – an extreme form of linguicide is ‘linguistic genocide’ committed through military force or educational systems. The result is language substitution: a tongue ceases to be spoken when it is no longer transmitted from one generation to another, and this creates a disruption in intergenerational transmission. Language death happens either because the speakers of the language die out naturally or are made to disappear, or because its speakers gradually adopt another distinct language, leaving no speakers of the original tongue. One way or the other, languages die from loss of speakers. Central to linguistic imperialism as a frame of analysis is the notion of linguicism, that is, ‘ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources [. . .] between groups which are defined on the basis of language’ (Phillipson, 1992: 47). As a concept, linguicism captures the phenomenon of hierarchizing languages and marginalizing speakers of minorized languages, in similar ways to racism and sexism. The establishment of unjust and violent structures in societies in general and colonized communities in particular generates the necessary conditions for linguistic oppression and conflict. In the past, colonial ideologies justified linguistic violence in the name of language and ethnic superiority. So, colonizers forced individuals to acquire the dominant alien language and denied them the right to maintain their native tongue(s) in prestigious functions (e.g. education). What is more, the colonizer’s monolingualism and accent were allocated much higher prestige than the colonized’s linguistic forms, be they his native tongues or his accented or non-accented ways of using the colonial language. Colonialism imposed this unequal relationship between languages wherein dominated speakers and languages were stigmatized as ‘primitive’ subjects using ‘dialects’, mere ‘patois’ and so on, and dominant speakers and their language glorified. This is typical of what Donaldo Macedo and Lilia Bartolomé have called ‘colonial bilingualism’ (Macedo & Lilia Bartolomé, 1999: 38). Albert Memmi, who described the colonial situation in North Africa in the 1950s, defined colonial bilingualism as follows: the colonized’s mother tongue, that which is sustained by his feelings, emotions and dreams, that in which his tenderness and wonder are expressed, thus that which holds the greatest emotional impact, is

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precisely the one which is the least valued. It has no stature in the country or in the concert of peoples. If he wants to obtain a job, make a place for himself, exist in the community and the world, he must first bow to the language of his masters. In the linguistic conflict within the colonized, his mother tongue is that which is crushed. He himself sets about discarding this infirm language, hiding it from the sight of strangers. In short, colonial bilingualism is neither a purely bilingual situation in which an indigenous tongue coexists with a purist’s language (both belonging to the same world of feeling), nor a simple polyglot richness benefiting from an extra but relatively neuter alphabet; it is a linguistic drama. (Memmi, 1974: 107–108) The concept of linguistic imperialism has been extended to describe cases where one language dominates other idioms within a community, especially in decolonized countries (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1994: 2223). In recent years, theorists in Applied Linguistics and Critical Sociolinguistics, and particularly Critical World Englishes working in the global spread of English, have offered astute insights into the field of language competition. In the early 1990s, Robert Phillipson introduced the concepts of linguistic imperialism and linguicism to account for the expansion of English around the world. Phillipson defined (English) linguistic imperialism as a set of practices through which the hegemony of the ex-colonial language ‘is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages’ (Phillipson, 1992: 47). He explored language dominance in the context of the relationships between the Centre and Periphery, a division of the world based on Johan Galtung’s cultural imperialism theory (1971). According to Galtung, the Centre, or the technologically advanced societies of the West, is always dominating the Periphery by keeping less developed communities in subordinate status. When members of the Periphery choose education in the ‘centre’ (ex-colonial) language or promote it in their country, they become themselves internal colonialists and agents of linguicism. In ex-colonized states, members of the power elite set up the necessary conditions for a language to become dominant. To do so, they often reproduce their colonial master’s ideologies acquired during colonization to create and/or maintain a hierarchical relationship between the different languages of their country. They thus recycle old colonial practices to minorize local tongues because of their alleged difficulties in serving beyond the limits of their community, particularly in the complex modern fields of science and technology. By contrast, the dominant language is sanctified as the language of civilization (Portuguese, and Spanish, and French, and English and to a

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lesser extent German in colonial times), the language of modernity and technological progress (English more recently), the language of God and (pan-)national unity (Arabic in much Arabist-fundamentalist discourse). In sum, officialized discourses usually wrapped in nationalistic justification – in the name of national and cultural loyalty – use a linguicist terminology based on stigmatization and minorization to dominate the minds and lives of the speakers of subordinate languages. Dominated speakers internalize these ideologies in a pervasive and deep-rooted manner. Governmental institutions such as the educational system transmit mainstream ideologies and attendant sociolinguistic stereotypes. To Phillipson, language teaching in schools is one of the most powerful linguicist tools: ‘Linguicism occurs [. . .] if priority is given in teacher training, curriculum development, and school timetables to one language’ (Phillipson, 1992: 47). What is more, just as in colonial times, schools function as ‘language killers’.

Linguistic Consequences of Colonialism: Ireland, a Case Study By way of an extended illustration of the problems of linguistic competition and colonialism, I shall consider in this section language conflicts in Anglophone regions, more precisely, in colonial and post-colonial Ireland. In fact, Irish history is more or less similar to that of Algeria and can be instructive to understand the linguistic problems of the latter country. An examination of the politics of language in the British Empire shows two distinct tendencies, depending on whether one considers the first wave of European colonialism or the second. The first wave began in the early 15th century with the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta in northern Morocco, the creation of colonies in India and other Asian countries, and the conquest of the Americas. The second wave started in the 19th century when the annexation of overseas territories through military and economic dominance turned into direct control and lasted until the end of colonialism, after World War II (WWII). The conquest of Ireland by the Tudor Dynasty in the 16th and 17th centuries corresponds to the first wave of European colonization. The British governed their Irish colony through an assimilatory policy applied in permanently incorporated territories (‘direct rule’). Colonizers viewed the maintenance of the Irish language, culture and religion (Catholic Church) as a barrier to cultural and political assimilation (Anglicization). Colonial policies and ideologies used to Anglicize Ireland were a classic. They had the sort of arrogance characteristic of conquering powers: although racially there was

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no difference between the Irish and the English, colonial ethnologists used racial theory to connect the natives of Ireland with non-White races for the purpose of seeing them as savages worth civilizing. As for language and education, in the early 17th century, an English aristocrat wanted his children ‘bred in England and abroad in the world, and not to have their youth infected with the leaven of Ireland’ (Foster, 1989: 14). The English conquerors imposed their mother tongue on subjugated Irishmen to eradicate local languages, customs, thinking and values. By comparison, during the second colonial wave, English linguistic practices showed less assertive assimilatory purposes, especially in education which formed the basis of language policy. Late 18th and early 19thcenturies England reluctantly expanded its overseas territorial possessions because of practical considerations: it sought to expand trade and not territory that could prove difficult and expensive to administer. England prioritized ‘indirect rule’ to encourage local forms of control and institutions as a way of enforcing colonial government policy. In the areas of culture and education, the English respected local customs and traditions, and they encouraged vernacular languages as subjects and instructional media in schools (Bulliet et al., 2009: 615; Ferguson, 2006: 1; Galbraith, 1963: 4, 64; Tsabedze, 1994: 7–10). The two English modes of cultural and linguistic domination produced different reactions from the part of ex-colonized subjects. In the heady early days of independence, the Indian elite’s sense of alienation led to heated debates about the appropriateness of the ex-colonial language in post-British India. Authorities planned the replacement of English by local native tongue(s), namely Hindi. For example, the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, declared that ‘within one generation’ English would no longer be used in his country. Finally, in the 1970s–1980s, most Indians would admit that the ex-colonial language was as much part of the linguistic profile of India as Hindi. They described it as ‘a non-aligned variety of English’ which allowed different communities in and out of India to live together and preserve their own language and culture. With the passage of time, resentment caused by colonialism, which has meaning only for the older generation, died down in the minds of younger generations. This is not the case in Ireland. In 1978, the Irish writer and poet Michael Harnett renounced English in his book titled A Farewell to English. He then published three volumes in Irish Gaelic, the indigenous tongue of Ireland. However, following the critical reception of these books, he changed his mind in 1985 and began publishing in English again. It is remarkable that Harnett declined using English 56 years after England’s rule ended in Ireland. While I am willing to admit that one swallow does not make a summer, I do not altogether exclude individuals’

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reactions and the extremes they will go to because they still bear the scars of past colonial excesses. Harnett’s momentary ‘silence’ comes from at least three linguistic effects produced by English domination: linguicide, the bitterness caused by the pain of language loss, and decolonizing nationalist elites imposing their own form of linguistic dominance. Each of these three consequences is presented briefly in the following sections (Crowley, 2005: 207; Crystal, 2003: 184; McCrum et al., 1992: 22, 330). Ireland represents a vivid example of language death in England’s excolonial possessions. When Eire, which constituted well over four-fifths of ‘the Emerald Isle’, became officially independent in 1937, there were no Irish Gaelic monolingual speakers left. Only 2% of the population spoke it, as Irish–English bilinguals and the remaining 98% were English monolinguals. English had displaced the indigenous tongue to hold the position of majority language. The causes of language displacement in Ireland are due as much to the impact of political domination as to the social and economic changes. In addition to Anglicization, colonizers confiscated lands extensively and depleted Irish resources. Their overuse of agrarian lands resulted in failed crops that set off famines regularly. For example, the Great (potato) Famine of the 1840s caused the death of around a million and a half, and over a million and a half more emigrated to escape it – a depopulation process described by some analysts as a ‘demographic holocaust’. In the end, English colonization proved devastating for Irish people at home and abroad (Foster, 1989: 324; Harris, 1991: 37–38; Joannon, 2006: 263; Melchers & Shaw, 2003: 72). In Ireland, language was a divisive issue in both colonial and post-colonial periods. Under the English rule, Irishmen used language and religion as two conduits of anti-English feeling: Catholicism and the Gaelic tongue were associated with Irish anti-colonial struggle. There was an antipathy among the Irish to speaking English, even when they could. For example, during the first half of the 16th century, Shane O’Neill called ‘The Proud’ refused ‘to writhe his mouth in clattering English’. Similarly, when the anti-English rebel Red Hugh O’Donnell invaded the western province of Connacht in 1595, he ‘spared no male between fifteen and sixty years old who was unable to speak Irish’ (Foster, 1989: 30). Then the national movement for Irish independence developed in the 19th century. Irish nationalists belonged to two wings separated by the weight given to the language issue in their conception of wegroup-building. Political nationalists considered language as a side issue, while cultural nationalists viewed it as a basis for reinforcing the sentiments of oneness and Irish nationality. At the end of the 19th century, radical nationalists, alarmed by the dramatic retreat of the indigenous language, sought to reverse Anglicization. This led to the formation, in July 1893, of The Gaelic League whose activities involved the preservation and revival of Irish as a

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spoken language and its introduction into the educational curriculum at all levels (Crowley, 2005: 102–103, 140; Foster, 1989: 448; Ó Riagáin, 1997: 5). The world of literature also joined in the de-Anglicization movement. It established the ‘Irish literary revival’ to create a literature that would culturally validate a distinct Irish identity. But this move gave rise to an ideologically charged opposition between two conceptions of the language of Irish literature, and attendant attitudes towards bilingualism. The first view, held by members of The Gaelic League, favoured Irish Gaelic as the ‘authentic’ mode of literary expression in Ireland. This ‘narrow nationalism’ implied the equation of Irishness with Catholicism and with Irish literature written exclusively in Gaelic. It favoured Catholic Irishmen and rejected Anglo-Irish Protestants as well as those who chose to write in English. Those who rejected the Irish-only approach represented the second view on the language of Irish literature. William Butler Yeats and James Joyce were two major authors whose definition of Irishness collided with that of Catholic nationalists. For example, Joyce defined ‘the self as openness to the other [. . .], and by extension the group, to alterity’. Joyce’s preoccupation with language and identity abounds in his creative works which offer an insight into the ongoing linguistic confrontation in the Ireland of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g. see A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). In fact, Irishmen who spoke English lived in an uneasy situation during that period. The violent resistance to anything Irish Gaelic can be found in the writings of one nationalist leader, Patrick Henry Pearse. In 1899, Pearse disqualified Yeats as an Irish writer and described him as ‘a mere English poet of the third or fourth rank’. He then called for the poet to be ‘crushed’ (O’Brien, 1998: 214, 109–110). Both Yeats and Joyce could not speak Gaelic for their mother tongue was English. However, they remained Irish, deeply attached to Ireland. Yeats, for example, claimed that by writing about Irish themes in English he gave this language ‘an indefinable Irish quality of rhythm and style’ (Yeats, 1970: 255). He created new cultural forms in a variety of English that attained its autonomy from, among other things, the presence of Celtic elements in it. The creative adaptation of cultural and linguistic innovations to mesh with existing ones is often interpreted as ‘hybridity’ in literature, cultural studies, sociolinguistics and so on. Indeed, hybridity characterized Yeats’ poetic form and a hyphenated identity that combined English and Irish. To authors like Yeats, the new linguistic structures produced by hybrid colonials were both painful and enabling. He valued the ‘musical and full of colour’ poetic forms as an expression of his Anglo-Irish identity. However, he evoked ‘moments when hatred poison[ed] [his] life’. Memories of colonial ‘wars of extermination’ and ‘persecution’ were behind his hatred for England. Nonetheless, as a hyphenated colonial Irishman,

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Yeats also loved England and the English tongue. His internal struggle reflected his conflicting emotions about England and its language (Howes, 2006: 221; Yeats, 1961: 519). The British rule in Ireland ended in 1922 with the signing of the AngloIrish Treaty and the establishment of the Irish Free State (1922–1937) as a Dominion accepting the partition of ‘the Emerald Isle’. The Civil War of 1922– 1923 erupted between the Provisional Government and the Republican forces opposed to the compromises contained in the Treaty. Republicans were finally defeated. The country’s religious homogeneity meant a Catholic state for a Catholic people and it allowed ‘the Catholic nationalist majority to express its social and cultural will un-impeded by significant opposition from powerful minorities’ (Brown, 1981: 18). As a result of this, the Free State embarked upon ambitious Gaelicization policies for the linguistic transformation of Ireland. It has been argued that the State’s radical zeal to Gaelicize the country, typical of many post-colonial societies, was a response to the Republican opposition in the aftermath of the Civil War: the legitimizing cover of language offered nationalist authenticity to the Provisional Government’s actions (Brown, 1981: 47; Foster, 1989: 518). Eire was a post-colonial country beset by manifold problems, but concerned with achieving its independence and distinctiveness. Just as in other emergent decolonized nation-states after WWII, the Irish authorities reproduced the imperial model they had been subjected to in colonial times: the policy of Gaelicization sought its own form of totalizing dominance for Irish Gaelic which failed to displace English in the end. The moral of England’s long subjugation of Ireland is threefold. First, colonial linguistic policies based on assimilation can lead to linguicide, and even to linguistic genocide. Second, the pain of language loss produces an overwhelming and long-lasting bitterness and a sense of defeat. Third, the language that serves as a powerful symbol for the liberation of dominated populations fails to replace the ex-colonial tongue after independence, despite the strong symbolism associated with it as an ancient tongue. The Irish example shows that the implementation of a language policy (Gaelicization) to change linguistic behaviour through the planning of the language of liberation does not necessarily lead to success – nation-building requires sometimes a different idiom as the language of independence. What is more, this type of language intervention can itself be a source of conflict.

Language Planning and Conflict The expression language planning was coined in the late 1950s when decolonized nations sought to correct their language ‘problems’. It refers to

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conscious intervention to change the future of language and its use in a community. Language planning or language management involves both the choice of one or more language forms among alternatives and some kind of organized body, such as government authorities, to take charge of such a planning change. It requires the achievement of linguistic, political and social goals by means of a body of ideas, laws and regulations called language policy – both aspects of language intervention are known as language policy and language planning (LPLP). Language management consists of organized interventions by politicians, linguists and others in language use and form. And it involves three major dimensions: ‘status planning’ refers to most of the legal process of making a language national and/or official; ‘corpus planning’ seeks to fix or modify the internal linguistic structure of the institutionalized language and/or provide it with a graphic representation; ‘acquisition planning’ ensures that the planned language is spread and promoted by being taught and learned in the educational system. This neat but oversimplified division does not account for the fact that it is nearly impossible, in practice, to separate these various interdependent activities (Ferguson, 2006: 1; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 3, 28, 49; Spolsky, 2009: 4–6). All three dimensions of language management can generate language conflict. Corpus planning can cause strife when planners privilege one particular pronunciation, word or writing system over others. Extirpating Latin and Greek words from English in the 13th century and later on is an example of this (Lewis, 1999: 2). In acquisition planning, the choice of an educational medium of instruction does produce linguistic struggles. The Hilfsverein decision to use German instead of Hebrew in early 20th century Palestine illustrates this kind of linguistic conflict. As for status planning, conflicts can arise between speakers of languages or forms of the same language following the selection of one or more official or national languages and their acquisition for social position. For example, after decolonization, most African nations determined a language policy based on one of the following three models: to confer official status on a widely accepted local language because of its prestige; to keep the colonial language/s; to maintain the colonial language(s) along with the local language(s) (Spolsky, 2004: 133–142). Each one of these models has its own problems because they are hardly innovative and they often end up imitating the European model of linguistic Unitarianism superposed onto multilingual sceneries. Before turning to the conflicts generated by LPLP itself, some comments on the history of another conflict-ridden country are in order. For more than one century and a half, Greece was plagued by wars of words which accompanied the gradual demise of diglossia. The term diglossia refers to communities with two distinct linguistic forms of the same

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language which coexist in a complementary relationship. The H (‘high’) form has greater prestige than the L (‘low’) form. The H variety, being typically ancient or classical, is assigned social functions associated with formal contexts and ‘high’ culture. Speakers use the L form in day-to-day experiences and interactions. In diglossic societies, children acquire naturally the vernacular as their mother tongue and they need to learn the H form as a school language. The linguistic distance between the two varieties is so important that children learn a different language which presents linguistic and educational problems. As to diglossia and its relation to politics, the H variety tends to attract more support from the political Right (conservatives), and the L one from the Left (liberals). To return to Greece during the fight for emancipation from Ottoman domination in the early 19th century, Greek nationalists were divided into two opposing camps. One side supported the archaising and classical Ancient Greek (Attic Greek) as the language of the State and education, and the opposite camp defended the vernacular used by the demos (lay people) called Demotic. Finally, archaists and vernacularists opted for a compromise, a ‘middle way’ option known as Katharevousa. Following independence in 1834, Katharevousa became the official written language of the new State. Until the restoration of democracy in 1974 and the institutionalization of Demotic as the single standard language, linguistic matters had often inflamed conflicts, ending in bloody protests at times. As for the internal structure of today’s Greek, it shows a lot of linguistic influence from Katharevousa but its form and grammar are based on its own internal rules close to the spoken language (Clairis, 1983: 354–355; Trudgill, 1983: 115; Tseronis, 2002: 3–9). Among the major researchers in language contact, Joshua Fishman grants language conflict greater importance in connection with LPLP, particularly in the post-independence era (Fishman, 1972: 14). Conflicts generated by LPLP often arise from two main sources: the intellectual and political formation of those who promote a language policy, and the interests of these ‘planners’. The Irish example shows that, during colonization, the nationalist motive was the force behind anti-colonial struggles, and that it was intellectuals who became activists in the liberation movement. Thinkers play a major role in ‘imagining’ the ‘nation’, the most powerful source of group identity in the 19th and 20th centuries (Anderson, 1991: 6). Moreover, nationalist mobilization requires the notion of ‘national identity’ as a source of symbols and legitimacy. Among the central components of this identity there is culture, religion and language. Language represents ‘an outward sign of a group’s peculiar identity and a significant means of ensuring its continuation’ (Kedourie, 1961: 71). Although there is no continuation because nations are imaged entities, language favours the rise of myths that are extended

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back into history. The nationalist myth makes the nation ‘a natural entity, with a deep-rooted authenticity that is being rediscovered’ (Joseph, 2004: 115). So intellectuals set off in the quest of the ‘authenticity’ of long ago and purity in language (‘linguistic purism’) to encode the discourses, practices and media products which individuals use to construct national identities. Finally, language also helps nationalists and their supporters forget that the nation is an invention, an imagined community. Most nationalist movements came under the influence of one of the two ideologies linked to modernist values that rose in 19th century Europe, in France and Germany in particular. The French used the ‘constructivist’ framework and the Germans the ‘primordialist’ one. Constructivists focus on national identity as a learned process acquired through a common language which reinforces civil ties. French as a single language served to spread the message of freedom, equality and fraternity for everyone within the same nation-state. The primordialist view insists on the almost mystical innate connection between the nature of a language and the spirit of the people (‘genius’) who use it (volk). It implies that all individuals who share a common language have the same culture and should thus be united within one State. However, despite the differences between the two nationalist ideologies, both primordialist and constructivist conceptions impose a single language and linguistic homogenization (monolingual habitus) on the citizens who live within the same State (Caviedes, 2003: 251). What is remarkable is the powerful impact both models had on the rest of the world. And both models are based on a monolithic linguistic culture or ideology. For example, France’s centralized language policy in the post-1789 period and the nation-state theories based on unilingualism developed after the French Revolution have since influenced many countries, especially after the dismantling of colonial empires in the mid-20th century. Leaders in decolonized polities sought to achieve a state of ‘modernity’ which spread from Europe across the world. Demands of nationalism after decolonization required linguistic intervention to fulfil two roles that correspond roughly to the dichotomy of ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationism’ (Fishman, 1968). Leaders use nationalism to reinforce political independence through socio-cultural integration and the need of ‘authenticity’ and purity in language. The nationist intent is twofold. First, it seeks horizontal (geographic) integration which aggregates diverse populations with different language varieties and facilitates communication within the country (efficient administration and rule). Second, it advocates vertical (social–political) integration to eliminate all intermediaries between the citizen and the centralized State: it serves as an instrument of participation and access. In other words, nationism has a unifying and equalizing function. And its pretention is to use language planning as a ‘modernizing’ process

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capable of solving ‘language problems’ as well as ‘communication problems’ allegedly related to multilingualism associated with the premodern age. According to the nationist view, a single uniform language and ‘high culture’ supported by a fairly monolithic educational system promote nation-building and modernization (modernity). Finally, in most decolonized nations this became a new form of linguistic imperialism and linguicism that came as a package of measures to help with their ‘modernization’. Language ‘planners’ usually come from the social elites with positions of political, social and economic power. Their dominant status allows them control language planning activities for their own advantage. To them, the general goal of language management is to reduce linguistic conflict and to contribute to the overall development of the country. Planners openly state their objectives in unselfish terms: they claim to be the force behind nationalism and modernity. However, motives for deliberate intervention in language are ‘commonly stated in altruistic terms but often not based on altruistic intents’ (Kaplan, 1990: 4). Instead of serving as a tool of participation and access, the implemented language may sometimes lead to expropriation and deprivation. In fact, language planning alters existing relationships between different groups within the nation-sate. It can reinforce inequalities by disallowing social groups from accessing social and political structures. Both majority and minority linguistic groups suffer from expropriation, even though the deprivation of minorities is by far the most widespread phenomenon. Colonized populations are an example of expropriated majorities. Language expropriation can, however, be sustained long after the end of colonialism through the maintenance of colonial bilingualism often wrapped in a new dominant language. In several parts of the world, leaders use LPLP with different strategies to create unequal socio-political structures and/or maintain the status quo. As a result, they give rise to language-linked conflicts. Three sources of conflict are privileged here (Weinstein, 1983: 121). First, elites impose (new) barriers which block individuals’ aspirations and deny them language skills necessary for social mobility. One powerful strategy used by the leadership is ‘elite closure’. In this case, rulers in particular countries impose a centralized educational system with dual objectives: one school caters for the elite’s offspring to maximize their linguistic skills and another for the common man whose children study in ghetto-like institutions (Myers-Scotton, 1993: 149). Elite closure comes into two different shapes: a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ form. The former type exists in most nations, including most Western societies, where members of the community have access to the elite language through extensive formal education. As for strong elite closure, the dominant language may not belong to the repertoire of many people in the

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country, and the acquisition of this language through schooling is available to the few. Apartheid in South Africa represented the classic example of this strong form of elite closure: English and Afrikaans as dominant languages were offered later in schooling once most Black children had left (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 199–200). Second, leaders manipulate language to deflect attention from real issues that could challenge their powerful positions. To obscure deeply rooted social and economic problems, leaders use language issues to inflame ‘from above’ the conflict arisen ‘from below’, giving language much more importance than it may have had at the outset of the conflict (Nelde, 2002: 329). The linguistic struggles in the United States mentioned above is an example of this. Third, planners impose unilingualism forcibly to enforce conformity to the institutionalized language. This implies that legitimizing one’s tongue legitimizes one’s position of power. Language imposition is often done in the name of national and cultural loyalty. And just as in colonial days, rulers employ linguicist terminology and denigration necessary to this end. In sum, instead of reducing strife LPLP may itself give rise to conflicts. When those who undergo the process are ignored, LPLP can bring about, inadvertently or consciously, deprivations to culture and identity. This holds true for most LPLP experiences in decolonized nation-states which seek their own form of totalizing dominance through the institutionalization of one language in sceneries marked by multilingualism. Tensions thus rise between the central government and linguistic groups in the periphery (interethnic linguistic conflicts). Dominated ethno-linguistic groups fear the ‘threat factor’ and mobilize to preserve their cultural and linguistic tradition perceived as being under siege. It is leaders who generate this type of strife which can be related to at least three aspects: the policies adopted by decolonizing elites are grounded on their reaction to generations-long oppression by the hegemonic imperial authorities; leaders’ centralist attitudes and ideology are inspired by the European Unitarianism of the central State; and these policies reflect elites’ own interests as a dominant group seeking to maintain their position of power. What is more, most traditional participants in LPLP have been concerned with ‘top-down’ LPLP situations. This involves ‘people with power and authority who make language related decisions for groups, often with little or no consultation with the ultimate language learners and users’ (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 196). By contrast, ‘bottom-up’ linguistic interventions show direct community (individual) participation and draws directly on existing community practices and attitudes. In ‘bottom-up’ planning the majority of the population is empowered, but in ‘top-down’ interventions the majority is powerless. As a result of this, undemocratic structures which exclude the majority can give rise to

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unplanned developments to interact with change or pervert LPLP activities (Baldauf, 1993–1994: 82).

Resistance and Peace Sociolinguistics ‘Top-down’ linguistic management often generates outcomes different from those desired by planners. The major unplanned development is resistance to oppressive linguistic policies. Language hegemony and attacks on minorized languages can produce ideological minority views that allow dominated groups to elevate their tongue as a we-group-building mechanism. This gives rise to ‘oppositional’ identities. To construct their identity, individuals ‘choose among (and sometimes resist) the identities offered to them, and at times construct new identities when the circumstances in which they find themselves do not offer a desirable choice’ (Bayley & Schecter, 2003: 6). In the literature on identity and resistance, some scholars argue that resistance to imposed identities, at least among the youth, comes in two forms: open challenge and opposition, and strategic practices of accommodation in linguistic use. Others hold the view that, in multilingual societies, resistance can come from favourable attitudes to linguistic pluralism and to the maintenance of minorized languages. Furthermore, identity is not a unitary phenomenon, and people have ‘multiple identities’. This implies that individuals have a ‘repertoire’ of identities based on their identity shifts according to context (who is their interlocutor?) and the many perceptions of others (Gibbons & Ramirez, 2004: 195–196, 198; Joseph, 2004: 8–9; Talbot et al., 2003: 6; White, 2002: 17). Earlier in this chapter, mention was made of the insights into the field of language competition offered by theorists in Critical World Englishes. In fact, the movement initiated by the paradigm of linguistic imperialism met with serious criticisms. Opposition came mainly from the ‘resistance perspective’, and from the frame of reference based on linguistic ‘appropriation’ and ‘hybridity’. Applied to the global spread of English, the first notion refers to how individuals in post-colonial contexts may find ways to negotiate, alter and oppose political structures, and reconstruct their languages, cultures and identities to their advantage. The intention is not to reject English, but to reconstitute it in more inclusive, ethical, and democratic terms, and so bring about the creative resolutions to their linguistic conflicts sought [. . .] in the periphery. (Canagarajah, 1999: 2 – italics in the original)

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The above-defined perspective implies the processes of linguistic mediation, interaction and fusion involved in code-switching, the constant movement back and forth across languages in social life. So it denies the power of dominant languages (English presently) to eradicate other languages and cultures. Instead, the amazing resilience of languages makes them adapt to mixing and intermingling (‘linguistic hybridity’). The basic premises of this conceptual approach refute ‘authenticity’ and ‘assimilation’, two modernist notions reminiscent of the colonial and postcolonial (nationalist) past. These are no longer relevant to the postmodern age (postmodernity) characterized by multilingualism and large-scale migrations, ‘mestiza identities’ and ‘the mulatto of style’ (Graddol, 2006: 18–22; Joseph, 2006: 360–361; Pennycook, 2003: 15). In the spheres of language and culture, the advent of globalization and new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has offered young people in particular the possibility to integrate the local and the global in hybrid forms, as part of what Roland Robertson has called ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1995: 30). According to postmodern theorists, the spoken and written forms of new generations living in a globalized world with the proliferation of communications technology express flexibility and adaptability. The youth pick and mix linguistic forms available to them in their immediate environment or via new technology and the virtual world (internet). Their ‘glocalized’ linguistic behaviour, which is an aspect of social behaviour, shows that today’s youth do not have one single and solid ‘Me’ (identity), but multiple ‘Mes’ (identities) that they adopt in a flexible manner depending on circumstances. Thus, youngsters intermingle ‘fragments, bits and pieces from here and there, [and] the acceptance of different, as well as simultaneous identities and selves is fundamental’ (Lindgren et al., 2005: 58). In the 1990s and 2000s, the universe of Critical World Englishes enriched its analytical apparatus with new branches of linguistics and sociolinguistics known as Peace Linguistics and Peace Sociolinguistics, respectively. In 2007, sociolinguist Patricia Friedrich coined the latter expression as a continuation of the former which had itself emerged as a response to the growing concern about peace and communication. In setting up her framework, Friedrich put emphasis more on peace and harmony than on linguistic war and attendant overheated debates on language dominance. She argued that instead of spending much energy fighting English which objectively dominates as a world lingua franca, one should examine its real potential for peace. To Friedrich, alternatives to ‘English-is-evil’ discourses are peacefostering programmes with at least two strategies: ‘linguistic education’ and ‘linguistic activism’. These strategies could promote linguistic pluralism to achieve linguistic peace (Friedrich, 2007: 73–74). Linguistic peace education should be developed from an early age and should aim at fostering positive

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attitudes toward linguistic diversity and appropriation (ecology and additive bilingualism/multilingualism). It implies interaction between linguistic forms (languages or varieties of the same language) and their users based on equality. As to linguistic peace activism, Friedrich provides a number of realms for action, particularly ‘public statements’ made by experts such as researchers and teachers who are enlightened in matters related to Peace Sociolinguistics (Friedrich, 2007: 79–80). In fact, empirical evidence from Nigeria, for example, confirms the importance of sociolinguistic enlightenment in changing elites’ attitudes towards local and non-prestigious languages (Adegbite, 2003: 188–192). To Friedrich, the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights should provide major guidelines for linguistic peace education and activism. ‘Of particular interest’, she writes, ‘are articles 3 and 4 of the declaration because they speak of individual choice and its relation to language learning, using and networking’ (Friedrich, 2007: 78). There is also article 13–2 – ‘Everyone has the right to be polyglot and to know and use the language most conducive to his/her personal development or social mobility’ (UNESCO, 1996) – which is an important tool for action in multilingual societies with elite closure. Related to the above are two other important concepts. The first one concerns the notion of ‘multilinguality’ as a way of achieving a just linguistic world order marked by equity and democracy. In opposition to ‘modernist’ theorists who viewed linguistic pluralism as an ‘obstacle’ to nation-building, the sociolinguist Rama Kant Agnihotri has argued convincingly that multilingualism facilitates inter-group communication and mutual comprehension. In his opinion, sociolinguistics needs ‘multilinguality’ as an alternative view of ‘language’ to celebrate variability as constitutive of human existence. Agnihotri claims that the idea of multilinguality ‘would not only help fight highly dangerous sociolinguistic stereotypes but will also promote divergent thinking, higher levels of linguistic and scholastic achievement, cognitive flexibility and most of all social tolerance’ (Agnihotri, 2009: 268). The promotion of more democratic and participatory societies requires linguistic activism to fight against sociolinguistic stereotypes shared by language ‘professionals’ such as policy makers, academia, parents, educationists, teacher trainers and teachers. Agnihotri has examined some of these stereotypes, beginning with the dichotomy of ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ used to stigmatize linguistic forms as inferior and to elevate others to sacred status. He salutes one empowering ‘law’ of modern linguistics, the ‘equality of grammar’ principle which reads: ‘All languages and all varieties of a particular language have grammars that enable their speakers to express any proposition that the human mind can produce. All varieties of language are absolutely equal as instruments of communication and thought’ (O’Grady et al., 1997: 6).

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The other stereotype examined by Agnihotri relates to the myth of ‘perfect’ correspondence between speech and writing to justify the superiority of ‘language’ over ‘dialect’. Agnihotri has used empirical evidence to make three points: first, the invention of a script for a language is an easy enterprise; second, all languages can be easily written in one writing system, and that one language can be written equally easily in all scripts available in the world; third, correspondence between speech and writing tends to break down in the long run because of the changing nature of speech (Agnihotri, 2009: 271–273). In sum, multilinguality allows individuals to discard myths about language and appreciate fully the linguistic diversity surrounding them. The second concept related to Peace Sociolinguistics is ‘deethnicization’. In 1977, Joshua Fishman introduced this notion in connection with the global spread of English. The term means removing cultural and historical baggage off English as belonging to or reflecting values from its British and American imperialist fountainheads (Fishman, 1977: 118–119). Deethnicization is probably the main reason why the English language has been maintained in Britain’s ex-colonies, and why it has spread globally despite its imperial provenance. In comparison, French has been less successful as an ex-colonial language in the post-colonial era. There are at least two major causes for such post-colonial developments: the type of colonialism used by the two imperialist powers, and mother tongue speakers’ attitudes to the ways others appropriate their language. A comparison of the British (‘indirect’) and French (‘direct’) modes of subjugating their ex-colonies will be presented in Chapter 4. As to attitudes towards others as potential speakers and owners of the excolonial tongue, it is quite clear that English is an ‘open’ language and French a ‘closed’ (‘exclusive’) one – if no language is by itself ‘exclusive’, its native users can exert hegemonic control. According to Jean Laponce, ‘[t]he openness or exclusiveness of a language will vary according to the attitude taken toward ethnicity’ (Laponce, 1987: 28). Since neither the Americans nor the British could claim to be the exclusive owners of English, the national origin of this language has been blurred – today, its future lies in the hands of its non-native users who outnumber the natives in the proportion 3:1 (Crystal, 2003: 59–71, 140–141). Unlike English, the equation of the French language to its national origin and culture (Metropolitan France) is still very much alive. In fact, what qualifies French as a ‘closed’ language is its native subjects’ tendency to refuse different French (ex-colonial) varieties as legitimate and autonomous linguistic forms. Its speakers do not approve of its being spoken in any but its most ‘correct’ form, that is, the one which they themselves use and/or they perceive as being the ‘best’. As a result of this, non-native speakers are refused the ‘appropriation’ of the ex-colonial language, and they are encouraged to

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assimilate into French (Gallic authenticity). In this regard, there is some kind of correspondence between French possessive attitudes and the concept of colonial bilingualism – assimilationism negates language appropriation and additive bilingualism/multilingualism. In contrast, most native speakers of English are renowned for their acceptance of non-native varieties as legitimate systems of communication. The fostering of this tolerance represents one strategy advocated for Peace Sociolinguistics. In conclusion, I would like to say that scholars who study language competition would not agree completely with some of the terminological choices made here. And I would not blame them because the field of language contact and conflicts is rich and complex thanks to the multidisciplinary approaches that irrigate it. I made it clear right from the outset that I was going to privilege concepts that could act like a searchlight to illuminate the past and present linguistic rivalry in Algeria. So, most concepts related to language domination and resistance reviewed here will be helpful in all the chapters of this book, beginning with the next one which deals with French colonialism and its effects on linguistic issues in Algeria.

2 Frenchification: Annihilating Indigenous Languages

The population of many cities, especially those on the coast, was ethnically diverse and predominantly non-Algerian in origin. Turks dominated the political life of Algiers [. . .]. Descendants of Andalusian refugees, whom the French called Maures (Moors) and whose culture and dialect clearly distinguished them from the populations of the countryside, constituted a large majority of the population of Algiers and other cities. [. . .] Continuing inputs of Christian converts or ‘renegades’ from around southern Europe adapted over time to Moorish culture, but in so doing they enriched Moorish culture, contributing to its widespread reputation for cosmopolitanism. John Ruedy (1992: 22) France made little effort to convert the Muslims of Algeria to Christianity, but she did try to replace their language by her own, and she did so hastily and without bestowing real citizenship in exchange. Amin Maalouf (2003: 133) Ironically, it was the separateness encouraged by the settler ideology that allowed for the development of a cohesive social base from which to agitate against colonial rule and eventually demand independence. Patricia Lorcin (1995: 212) Algeria had no royal family or previous ruler to rally around during the colonial occupation. A unifying element was found in the religion and language that denied Algerians a place in French Algeria, namely Islam and Arabic. Naima Mouhleb (2005: 87) Nowhere else in Africa has the language issue been so central in the fight against colonialism [as in Algeria]. Paulin Djité (1992: 16)

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Chapter 2 discusses the conquest and subjugation of Algeria by the French. As a colonizing power, France imposed, with violence, cultural policies on the majority of recalcitrant populations. The conquest of the country involved brutal military methods as well as ‘soft’ approaches to win hearts and minds. The French targeted Islam and the Arabic language to belittle and divide their colonial subjects. These two constituent elements of Algeria’s traditional cultural identity proved to be instrumental in uniting Algerians in their struggle for survival. They also helped them fight back and eventually call for political independence as a national community. And it was through France’s colonial attempts to transform their customs and life as colonials that Algerians learned ‘modern’ ways of dealing with language issues and their political management. This proved to be a major milestone in the politicization of the language question. Before their encounter with French colonialism, they had little experience with intense linguistic struggles and the use of language as a proxy for conflict.

Pre-Colonial Period In antiquity, the natives of the region, the Berbers, dominated Northern Africa and the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Egyptian borders. These White Mediterranean inhabitants called themselves Imazighen which is the plural for Amazigh (masculine) and Tamazight (feminine). The geography and the climate of North Africa determined the way of life of its people and influenced their history. With only a few centres of civilization located along the coast – all of foreign origin – Algeria was a vast rural area peopled by agriculturalists and nomads. Geographical isolation reinforced the tribal structure and cultural divisiveness. In general, Berbers were unsuccessful as rulers of their own lands and, consequently, several foreign groups dominated the region. But they resisted the various conquerors and remained a people who were difficult to rule. At times, when they submitted to civilizations from without, the Berbers of the interior kept to themselves and remained monolingual. In urban zones, bilingualism and multilingualism became the norm. Several invaders shaped more or less the socio-cultural history of Algeria, and its sociolinguistic profile. Berbers came under the yoke of the Phoenicians who imposed their Carthaginian rule for about seven centuries, the Romans for about six centuries, the Vandals and the Romanized Byzantines for about a century each, respectively, the Islamo-Arabo-Berbers for about four centuries, the Turks for about three centuries, and the French for more than a

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century and a quarter – Spaniards occupied enclaves along the Mediterranean coast intermittently between 1505 and 1792. One of the consequences of this long history of intermingling of peoples is language contact and its byproduct, multilingualism – Berber-Punic, Berber-Punic-Latin, Berber-Arabic, Berber-Arabic-Spanish-Turkish, Berber-Arabic-French and so on. It is instructive to describe the linguistic situation in Algeria under Turkish control, just before the French conquest in July 1830. When the Ottoman rule began in 1529, Turkish leaders preferred the lucrative practice of sea piracy instead of developing the country and attendant artistic or literary creativity. To control populations, Ottoman rulers encouraged divisions between numerous tribes. In 1830, out of a total of 516 tribes, there were 206 under Turkish rule, 200 independent and 86 semi-independent tribal chiefs. And this division was reinforced at the linguistic level. For three centuries, Turks turned Algeria into a pirate state open to multiple cultural models, and a ‘mosaic’ of ethnic groups and languages. If Literary (Classical) Arabic remained the common liturgical language, Berber varieties represented a strong symbol of tribal and collective identity used for a defiant opposition towards the central Ottoman authority. The sociolinguistic structure in cities and towns was as complex and varied as the population: multilingualism prevailed and involved approximately 15 languages. Turks used the official language, Osmanli Turkish. Dialectal or colloquial Arabic remained important: not only was it spoken by the old townspeople and Andalusian immigrants (Moors) who had left Spain after its Reconquista, but also it was the only tongue understood by tribesmen in the surrounding country where Berber dominated. When interacting with the local populations, Turks used spoken Arabic which even functioned as a written language in popular poetry and official correspondence. Another non-Algerian group comprised enslaved (southern) Europeans who also reinforced Algeria’s ‘mosaic’ with their languages. There was the medieval Mediterranean pidgin (sabir), the Lingua Franca, which contained a simplified grammar and words coming from Arabic, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Provençal and Portuguese. Thanks to the Lingua Franca, the North African varieties of Arabic adopted many Greek and Romance words pertaining to navigation, naval artillery and fishing (de Haëdo, 1998: 125–126; Meouak, 2004: 304, 313–318). One ethnic group that best illustrates the hybrid nature of Algeria’s urban centres in the 16th century is the Jewish community which will completely vanish at the end of the 20th century as a direct or indirect result of French colonialism. Diego de Haëdo, a Spanish Christian enslaved in the Regency of Algiers between 1578 and 1581, described the Jewish linguistic practices in the Regency: in schools, Jewish children learned to read and write in Hebrew, sometimes in Arabic, and they also wrote Hebrew in Arabic

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script. Before the French occupation in 1830, most Algerian Jews spoke dialectal Arabic, sometimes called yahudi. Many Jews had two names, one Hebrew, used in the Jewish community and at home, the other Arabic, used when interacting with Muslims. In rural areas, Jews were sometimes totally assimilated and spoke the language of their neighbours exclusively. Those who were literate wrote Arabic in Hebrew script as a way to reflect ethnic or religious identity in the use of orthography. The large number of Hebrew and Aramaic grammatical and lexical elements and the use of the Hebrew-Aramaic alphabet rather than the Arabic one justify the use of the term ‘Judeo-Arabic’ as an ethnolect (Laskier, 1994: 15–16; Myhill, 2004: 118–122). When the French took over in July 1830, most Turks, estimated to be around 15,000, returned to Turkey, and this is how the native (religious, military) ruling classes in Algeria were dismantled. Within a relatively short period of time, 132 years, the French occupation made a profound impact on Algeria’s culture and linguistic profile. The influence was so deep that Algerian society was never the same again. In 1830, the total population was estimated at three million and was mainly rural – the urban population was estimated at 5−6%, while it was 10% for Morocco and 12% for Tunisia. At the time, the Berber-speaking community represented over 50% of Algeria’s population, and literacy in Arabic was estimated at 40−50% (Gordon, 1978: 151; Nouschi, 1986: 197; Valensi, 1969: 20). Between 1830 and 1962, colonial France adopted a methodical policy of deracination and deculturization. But, first, Algerians had to suffer colonial violence and the French army’s brutal methods of ‘pacification’ which lasted almost half a century. The fierce Algerian resistance was met with scorched-earth reprisals, the destruction of cemeteries, the conversion of mosques into barracks, the seizure of buildings without compensation to their owners, the asphyxiation of men, women and children in caves and so on (Horne, 1987: 30; Ruedy, 1992: 50). Around 1845, the native population had diminished by one million. A testimony to this genocide is the following excerpt from a letter sent to a friend by a French army officer on 15 March 1843: This is how [. . .] we must conduct war against Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their women and children, load them onto naval vessels, send them to the Marquesas Islands or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs. (de Montagnac, 1885: 299) Brutal retaliation was accompanied by land expropriation for punitive measures. Through seizure, forced purchase or the division of tribal land held

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in common, the conquering army sequestered properties to create a public domain and colonial settlements. The despoiling of land resulted in the destruction of the age-old tribal system and a completely fragmented Algerian society. The vast majority of landless peasants migrated to the outskirts of long-established urban centres, or in towns and cities created for the European settlers. These colons or pieds noirs, as they came to be called, settled in the urban strip that lines the Mediterranean Sea in the fertile north. In actual fact, the colonial implantation in Algeria remained on the whole a coastal phenomenon. The vast majority of Europeans settled in the western part of the country, between Algiers and the Moroccan border. In 1954, there were 832,826 settlers in this region and only 202,761 in the eastern part of Algeria (Constantine area and Kabylia). Thus, Algerian migrants who did not leave the country came to live close to French-speaking regions and to be in contact with the French language which would become the major tool to subjugate linguistically and culturally colonized populations (Halvorsen, 1978: 338; Pervillé, 2011: 10; Sirles, 1999: 119–120).

Local Languages and Cultures under Siege Nineteenth century Europe was the centre of the world and its power gave its elites self-confidence in the superiority of European civilization and cultures. Ideas of cultural pluralism were simply alien to them. French elites expressed their feeling of cultural superiority with remarkable aplomb and pride. They believed, and some still believe today, that their civilization was one of the highest, if not the highest, human form of cultural expression. Such indoctrination prevented them from contemplating the possibility of having alternative and equally valuable cultural forms in the world. Being the civilized nation par excellence, the French were not shy of spreading their values to other parts of the planet to illuminate humanity. As a revolutionary nation, France believed its republican tradition to be potentially universal: its values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were held to be generally valid. Frenchmen regarded their culture as an instrument of empire and colonial expansion with a clear cultural mission: to bring civilization, with violence if necessary, to ‘inferior’ and ‘less civilized’ peoples. Faith in the superiority of their civilization served as a legitimizing cover to dismantling many colonized societies’ systems of education, law, property, religion and language (Gordon, 1962: 11; Pitts, 2005: 14–21). The French used the cultural ‘backwardness’ of Algerians to rationalize their ‘civilizing mission’ in Algeria. For several colonial spokesmen, the French ‘mission’ in this country required assimilation or Frenchification, as

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a policy of complete cultural transformation to create a ‘new man’. From the beginning to the end of France’s colonial venture in Algeria, the assimilationist approach to culture and education remained constant and invariable. For example, in 1887, a leading spokesman of colonialism unhesitatingly stated that ‘the way to dominate a people is to assimilate it, to seize the youth in its infancy [. . .] North Africa will only belong to us definitively if we conciliate the Arabs and, to a certain extent, Frenchify them’ (Gordon, 1962: 11). When, by the turn of the 20th century, the French were forced by realities to compromise with their assimilationist liberal fantasy, they adapted it into a policy of ‘association’ as a way to integrate cultural diversity. In truth, colonial policies remained assimilationist till the very end of France’s presence in 1962. The year the French celebrated the centenary of Algeria’s conquest, an old colonial hand claimed: ‘Our final goal [. . .] is the foundation of a France Overseas where our language and civilization will be established with closer and closer collaboration between the natives and the French, in one word by their Frenchification’ (Bernard, 1930: 534). It could not be otherwise because the occupiers’ zeal and dedication to transform native pre-existing cultural and linguistic patterns was something approaching a Crusade. In most of their colonial possessions, the French turned out to be inflexible towards anything that proved to be a determined opponent to France’s ‘civilizing mission’. In Algeria serious opposition came from Islam as a religion and culture with a rich heritage, and from its linguistic vector, Literary (Classical) Arabic, the language of the Koran, the holy book of Muslims. So, colonial ideologues rationalized French dominance in their writings and discourses to win minds. They therefore packaged the cultural transformation of Algerians as a generous and progressive policy to ‘liberate’ them from ‘backwardness’. They used a number of ideologies to conquer and subjugate both the country and its population. Three such ideological views were significant: ‘divide and rule’, ‘instruct to conquer’, and ‘language superiority’. Each of these three ideologies will be considered here. The cultural superiority of Europeans derived from racialist ideas widespread in 19th century Europe. Racial theorists conceptualized hierarchies that classified national communities and groups in order to justify the underdeveloped state of non-European peoples on the grounds that certain ‘deficiencies’ were deeply rooted in their civilization. In Algeria, colonial ideologues designed categories based on racial discrimination to ‘pacify’ and control Algerians. This required racial groups and how to name them. The original populations of Algeria, composed in their majority of Arabic- and Berberspeaking Jews and Muslims, were identified as ‘natives’ or indigènes. The word indigènes referred to the colonials’ inferior sociological, legal, political and cultural status: they were neither ‘Algerian’ nor ‘French’. The Arabic-speaking

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Muslim community would be the major target of colonial inferiorization. For example, the denomination of this category current in the pre-colonial era changed completely in the aftermath of the invasion. For centuries, the French had called the inhabitants of North Africa Barbaresques and Mauresques to refer to their Berber and Moorish origin. From 1830, Arabic-speaking Muslims were called ‘Arabs’. The term Arab became the colonial ethno-type of the indigènes and in colonial representations this pejorative word connoted the ‘pathological fear’ of Islam which goes back to the Crusades in the 11th and 13th centuries (Lorcin, 1995: 13, 119; Vermeren, 2004: 47). French rulers relied on existing social structures to create categories and images. Against the negative stereotype of the Arab, colonialists promoted the positive image of the Berber, particularly the Kabyle who lived in Kabylia, the mountainous areas east of the capital Algiers. To begin with, they invented ‘Kabylia’, a term that had never been used by Arabic- and Berber-speaking populations prior to the French invasion. As to the lexical item ‘Kabyle’, it is a distortion of the Arabic word qbail, ‘bail or qba’il which had two meanings. The first one refers to the plural of qbela and means ‘tribes that live among sedentary populations’. The second meaning derives from the Arabic verb qbel to signify ‘to accept’ – following the Arab conquest in the 7th century, invaders used this word for local populations that ‘accepted’ the Koranic message. In the early writings of the 1830s, colonialists confused the terms ‘Kabyle’ and ‘Arab’ because of the widespread use of the former all over the country. Populations used it and still use it to designate inhabitants of hills and mountains who were beyond the control of towns and valleys (Roberts, 1981: 28). Colonial administrators and academics invented the ‘Berber/Kabyle myth’ – better known as ‘Kabyle myth’ – with a pseudoscientific apparatus and the active participation of ethnological and anthropological societies. They claimed that the Algerian people comprised two separate races, Berbers and Arabs. To promote positive and negative identities among Muslims, colonialists developed a set of stereotypes and metaphors based on a number of elements that supposedly expressed ‘civilization’. Berbers/Kabyles were opposed to Arabs, and the ‘Kabyle myth’ implied that the former were susceptible to assimilation into French culture and the latter were not. Two types of stereotyping embodied in the ‘Kabyle myth’ would prove longlasting and divisive for Algerians before and after independence. Both stereotypes relate to Islam. The old Middle-Ages’ fear of the Islamic faith and the negative attitudes towards it were adapted to 19th century theories of nationalism and racism. Following Algeria’s conquest, several leading prophets of French imperialism condemned Islam as the cause of Arab ‘decadence’, and praised the Kabyles’ religious heterodoxy as a way of scoring off their

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arch-enemy Islam. The opposition of the ‘bad’ Arab, a ‘religious fanatic’, to the ‘good’ Kabyle, a ‘bad’ Muslim, because of his religious heterodoxy, highlighted the built-in incapacity of the former to promote nationalism and a modern collective conscience and identity. Furthermore, the fable of the Kabyle being a ‘bad’ Muslim was used as an instrument to combat this religion from within. And language also served to divide Muslim natives and to spread the ‘Kabyle myth’ (Gordon, 1962: 9; Lorcin, 1995: 26, 33–34, 212, 244–250). To further encourage divisions between the Muslim indigènes, colonizers magnified linguistic differences. They claimed that Kabyles had a common language which reinforced their potential for imagining a nation. Nineteenth century ideas on the role of language as a determinant of racial origin influenced linguists and philologists who worked for the French army in Algeria. This is how some linguist-officers stated that Kabyles were Aryans, and that they spoke an Indo-European language. The linguistic studies published in 1848 by Captain Antoine Carette would have the most influence on the development of the ‘Kabyle myth’. In his description of the linguistic differences between Arabs and Berbers, Carette said that each community had its own ‘genius’ or volk. In his opinion, Algeria’s inhabitants represented two volk separated by their sense of belonging. As nomads, Arabs did not prioritize any attachment to a particular territory while sedentary Berbers did. The latter could thus become a nation like France and they drew their own ‘genius’ (volk) from their language (Carette, 1848: 60–61, 69–70). In 1853, another army officer stated that linguistically the Kabyle community represented a separate nation (Daumas, 1853: 152). Both army officers adopted the national romantic (primordialist) vision which holds that those who speak the same language have a common culture and should be united within one state. The ‘Kabyle myth’ was, in fact, part and parcel of France’s ‘Berber policy’ designed to ‘pacify’ Kabylia, a region where the last major uprisings took place in 1871. This insurrection came as a big blow to the ‘Kabyle myth’, and from then on all Ismaelites were considered hopeless for Frenchification: they remained ‘Arabs’ or indigènes. In addition to the partial elimination of the native religious and military nobility, colonial ideologues also used a subtle form of ‘dividing and ruling’ to set up ‘a privileged and assimilated élite over against the primitive masses and thus depriving the latter of their natural leaders’ (Gordon, 1962: 10). This will affect Algerians’ choice of focal points for nationalist mobilization during the first quarter of the 20th century. Finally, the colonial occupiers targeted the Jewish community as a member of the indigènes group. In 1870, the French government granted, by the Crémieux decree, full French citizenship to all Algerian Jews. A rift was, thus, created

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between the two native communities because the Jews tended to identify themselves with the pieds noirs. The settler community comprised European colons from France, Corsica, Italy, Malta, Spain and so on, and they were always in the shadow of the military forces. Their number increased substantially: it rose from 37,374 in 1841 to around one million in the early 1960s. In the aftermath of the 1871 uprisings in Kabylia, the European civilian settlers supplanted metropolitan and military influence in much of the administration in Algeria. This major ideological shift was accompanied by administrative control falling into the hands of civilian officials of pied noir origin. Civilian administrators imposed harsh measures to punish and control all Muslims: in addition to further tribal land expropriation, they imposed in 1881 a native code (code de l’indigénat) which limited the rights of the Muslim majority. They also implemented racist theories. The colons amalgamated Kabyles and Arabs in the same inferior race even though the ‘Kabyle myth’ persisted. Real power fell in the hands of the ‘new white race’ of ‘Latino-Algerians’ or ‘Neo-Algerians’, a new identity that allowed settlers from around southern Europe to differentiate themselves from the indigènes, physically similar to them but culturally different. They were the ‘conquering race’, the heirs of Ancient Rome and the Christian Church which they viewed as superior to the ‘bellicose’ Islam. The Arab was the ‘usurper’, they said, for Algeria had been part of the Roman Empire for about six centuries before the Arab invasion, to which the wealth of Roman vestiges testifies (Abitbol, 1999: 152, 160, 429; Lorcin, 1995: 176–177, 194–195, 199–204; Roberts, 1980: 118). In June 1889, the French government granted French nationality to colons but not to Muslims. Rich or poor, these new Frenchmen had the wealth and power, and felt ‘more French than the French’ (Manière de Voir, 2006: 59). The aggressively self-confident pieds noirs condemned the indigènes and were intent on remaining in control as a privileged minority. They were to remain as inflexible as ever for they feared that any concessions to the ‘natives’ could only lead to the eventual disruption of the social structures they dominated. Described as ‘congenitally minor’, the bulk of the settler community was ‘biologically opposed to reform’, and a pied noir could not ‘understand that there are other rights than his in an Arab land’ (Gordon, 1962: 23–24). Their rejectionist attitudes were reflected in the very way they identified themselves vis-à-vis the Other between the last quarter of the 19th century and the final years of the colonial era. When the French conquered Algeria in July 1830, they used the term ‘Algerian’ to refer to an inhabitant of Algiers. In October 1839, the Minister of War officially adopted the name ‘Algeria’ for what they had called ‘French Possessions in North Africa’ or ‘Former Regency of Algiers’. From the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the

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1950s, the term ‘Algerian’, in its modern sense, singled out all European settlers born in Algeria. And between the conquest of this country and the 1944 and 1947 edicts, Muslims were called indigènes (Lorcin, 1995: 13; Merdaci, 2010: 9). In the meantime, colonizers intensified their cultural aggression soon after the European civilians took over the administration. The control of the ‘natives’ required the establishment of a registry office. The law, promulgated in March 1882, imposed a completely alien system of patronymics designed for the ‘Muslim indigènes of Algeria’. Prior to this administrative imposition, local populations identified themselves by adding to their first name, those of their previous male ancestors beginning with the father’s first name. All these first names were connected by a Berber or Arabic particle which means ‘son of’. A Berber-speaking inhabitant of North Africa used to identify himself as Ali ou Omar n’Amar (‘Ali son of Omar son of Amar’), and an Arabic-speaking one Ramdane ben Kaddour ben Yazid (‘Ramdane son of Kaddour son of Yazid’). The colonizers’ choice of a single surname for all members of the same family disturbed traditional ways of identifying community members. And it was brutal as well since the occupiers sought to assimilate the ‘natives’ through the imposition of a registry office. On the back of this, the French made all men living in the same village choose a surname with the same letter of the alphabet as a way to locate ‘delinquent’ indigènes. So, populations were deprived of their traditional naming systems usually linked to their extended family, tribe, region of origin and so on. (It is worth noting here that many age-old place names were Frenchified: Bou Ismail became known as Castiglione, Ghazaouet as Nemours, Skikda as Philipville, Larba Nath Iratten as Fort National and so on.) Consciously or unconsciously, colonial administrators deformed names and, to show contempt for individuals, they even used offensive and obscene surnames signifying taboo words like Zebbi (‘my penis’) and Farkh (‘bastard’), or certain animals like Djadja (‘hen’) and Begra (‘cow’). All these Gallicized names transcribed in ‘hybrid’ Latinized forms represented a departure from previous Algerian naming systems (Ruedy, 1992: 257; Yermèche, 2004: 489–490, 497; 2005: 61–64, 79–80). It is little wonder that, during the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a flowering of racist expressions to name the indigènes and Ismaelites who became the negative image of the Other. Racialist in its mentality, the settler community enriched its repertoire with pejorative slurs such as bicot, melon, raton and bougnoul. The European settlers and the natives were in effect not warmly disposed toward each other. Muslims used the expression ‘Frenchman for one Franc twenty five’ to disparage pieds noirs who were granted French citizenship following the June 1889 law – to apply for French

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nationality, immigrants had to buy a stamped form for one Franc and twenty-five cents (Fekkar-Lambiotte, 2007: 52; Lorcin, 1995: 195).

‘Instruct to Conquer’ From the beginning of Algeria’s occupation, education and language were closely connected for colonialists: schools served as the instruments for linguistic dominance. Their educational system helped first to legitimize the alleged superiority of France’s brand of imperialism over other European imperialist ventures. David Gordon cites a French saying which describes the priorities of three colonial powers: ‘When the Portuguese colonized, they built churches; when the British colonized, they built trading stations; when the French colonize, they build schools’ (Gordon, 1962: 7). Throughout Algeria’s subjugation, rulers openly stated France’s educational mission, sometimes showing their hostility towards the traditional values of colonials. Long before the military ‘pacification’ was complete – lasting from 1830 to 1871 – there was talk of French schools. For example, a military officer and Governor General of Algeria between 1832 and 1833 described the mission of the colonial school thus: ‘The remarkable feat would be to gradually replace Arabic by French . . . which can only spread among the natives, especially if the new generation will come in numbers to be educated in our schools.’ In October 1852, a French academic viewed education as a way to combat Algeria’s cultural traditions: ‘education gives us an excellent tool to weaken the influence of both marabouts [“holy men”] and tolba [“students of the Koran”], vendors of amulets, charlatans constantly opposed to French trends’ (Turin, 1983: 40–41, 11). In 1897, the Minister of Public Education outlined his Department’s activities in Algeria: [The] conquest will be by the School: this should ensure the predominance of our language over the various local idioms, inculcate in the Muslims our own idea of what France is and of its role in the world, and replace ignorance and fanatical prejudices by the simple but precise notions of European science. (Colonna, 1975: 40) And in 1917, a theorist of colonial education described the role of French schools as follows: To transform the primitive peoples in our colonies, to render them as devoted as possible to our cause and useful to our commerce . . . the safest method is to take the native in childhood, bring him into assiduous

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contact with us and subject him to our intellectual and moral habits for many years in succession, in a word to open schools for him where his mind can be shaped at our will. (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 12–13) What these colonial occupiers ignored was that Algerians had their own idea about education and civilization. Colonizers completely overlooked the local educational practices. In 1834, a French general paid tribute to the Algerians’ level of education when he said ‘nearly all the Arabs can read and write; in each village there are two schools’ (Horne, 1987: 29). Unlike education in France, Algerians had a somewhat traditional ‘rudimentary’ and ‘archaic’ system. Undoubtedly, religion and education were inseparable in the curriculum, and any thinking required Islam as its focal point. Furthermore, the schooling system was completely autonomous with regard to the central authorities and depended on mosques or the headquarters of religious brotherhoods. By contrast, the French introduced a completely different organization of the educational sphere. They implemented a highly uniform, centralized and hierarchical system of education. Decisions made by the Paris-based Government and the Ministry of Education were directly passed on to and implemented by inspectors, headmasters and classroom teachers. The same educational laws were, therefore, put into effect throughout the overseas possessions which were under the direct jurisdiction of Paris. Moreover, unlike the Algerian traditional system, French education became laicized with the expropriation of clerical properties by French Revolutionaries in 1789. After 1870, the colonial authorities established a programme of educational democratization in France and Algeria. To generalize education and make it obligatory, the French Government issued two decrees, one in February 1883 and the other in October 1892. But the pied noir administrators refused these decrees and denied literacy to Algerian Muslims as they were firmly convinced of its politically empowering potential. At the time, a Governor General said: ‘the hostility of the indigène can be measured by the level of his education’ (Ageron, 1968: 339). In the end, colonial administrators blocked the systematicization of education in Algeria, especially after 1898 when the colons obtained effective budgetary control in the colony (Gordon, 1978: 152). However, long before European settlers opposed these reforms, Algerian Muslims had deserted French schools. Colonial brutality and cultural aggression pushed Algerian Muslims into passive cultural ‘resistance-refusal’ which lasted almost five decades. Parents viewed with suspicion the secular education offered by colonizers. They were distrustful of its religious agenda and considered the offer as an evangelistic effort to drive their offspring away from Islam. Algerians preferred

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their children to remain illiterate rather than sending them to ‘the school of the devil’ (Hadjeres, 1960: 27). To attract native children, colonialists tried three types of teaching institutions and all were rejected. First, they established schools similar to those in metropolitan France. Then, they reestablished the old traditional school with Arabic teaching but under the control of the French army. Finally, they created ‘Arab-French’ schools where the Arabic and French languages were used while respecting the religious character of traditional education. The few who did attend these institutions were considered ‘renegades’. The situation worsened during the last quarter of the 19th century. While the traditional educational system was collapsing, the number of Algerian students in French secondary schools was diminishing: 216 students in 1877 and 69 in 1892. At the primary level, the situation improved slowly but not significantly in comparison with the total number of children of primary-school age: there were 3200 native students in 23 schools in 1883 and 25,300 in 228 schools in 1901. Cultural ‘resistance-refusal’ persisted and Muslim elders trained in traditional Koranic schools strongly rejected the French decrees to systematize education. A study on 79 Muslim elders showed that the quasi majority refused French schools and called for the colonial authorities to ‘appoint Arabic teachers in the schools for Arabs to teach the Arabic language and the Koran’ (Ageron, 1968: 928). In 1908, a traditional Muslim elder stated: ‘They intend to abolish the teaching of the Koran in our schools to alienate us from our religion. They try to teach our children French to turn them into renegades [. . .] Can I rally to this people who plan to suppress the teaching of the Koran?’ (Djeghloul, 1986: 64) Negative attitudes towards colonial education and the French language started to change after World War I (WWI). In 1910, metropolitan officials imposed conscription on Muslim natives. During WWI, 173,000 Algerians served in the French army and some 25,000 died for France. Another 119,000 were mobilized in France to replace French workers who had been conscripted. Both Algerian conscripts and expatriate workers quickly realized the importance of modern education for social advancement. By 1920– 1922, Algerians’ cultural resistance turned into an acceptance of colonial schools, which quickly changed into a demand for more French education. However, this evolution did not meet with an ambitious educational plan because of the refusal of the colons who preferred racial demarcation and a schooling system of separate development. Until 1949, European children and those of a small elite of Muslim collaborators followed what was referred to as an ‘A’ teaching programme. All these schoolchildren had French nationality and could access higher education institutions in France or at Algiers University, the only university established in Algeria and run

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in close collaboration with metropolitan universities. It is worth noting that, in the aftermath of Algeria’s conquest, colonizers created a ‘School for the Chiefs’ Sons’ and they later generalized it throughout their empire. Between 1839 and 1847, 11 Algerian Muslim ‘Chiefs’ Sons’ studied in Paris. Programme ‘B’, or the ‘Programme for indigènes’, concerned three-quarters of native children. This track consisted of one or two years during which children were familiarized with the colonial language and French disciplines. In programme ‘B’, teachers adapted their teaching methods. The preparatory period was usually smooth when teachers were Muslim: they limited the excesses of Frenchification and requirements for linguistic ‘authenticity’ in French. It represented a ‘strong’ form of elite closure, an apartheid-like programme that aimed at training second-class citizens who could not progress beyond low-level vocational training (Colonna, 1975: 26; Hadjeres, 1960: 28, 36–37; Nobutaka, 2005: 151). In both tracks ‘A’ and ‘B’, which merged by decree in March 1949, young Muslims had to undergo the same indoctrination imposed upon children of European descent. For example, the French-language author Assia Djebbar said: ‘In my childhood in colonial Algeria – they called me a “French Muslim” – I learned “our ancestors, the Gauls”’ (Djebbar, 2008: 28). The most notable description of Algerian youths’ adventure in colonial schools was published by Sadek Hadjeres in January 1960. Hadjeres recalls how he and his companions were confused by the teaching of history which completely ignored their ancestors. ‘In short’, he wrote, ‘from 1800 to the present time, history can be summed up as follows: barbarism and fanaticism on our side, heroism and humanism on the side of the newcomers and their system’ (Hadjeres, 1960: 38). In secondary school, he could study Arabic for he had to choose one ‘foreign’ language out of the following alternatives: ‘English, German, Spanish, Italian or . . . Arabic!’ (Hadjeres, 1960: 40). Contrary to other foreign languages, Arabic was poorly taught, and students and teachers took it lightly. After the 1871 uprisings in Kabylia, colonizers combined the ideologies of ‘Divide and rule’ and ‘Instruct to conquer’, even though the creation of the ‘School for the Chiefs’ Sons’ mentioned above illustrates this combination of ideologies used at the beginning of colonization. At the end of the 19th century, they established French schools to attract rural Kabyles. For example, 89% of rural teacher-trainees were of Kabyle origin. Around the same period, the French encouraged Kabyle migrant workers away from the Arabic-speaking interior to factories in metropolitan France. These developments and the politicization of the language issue would have dramatic results on the linguistic situation: in the inter-war years, the majority of Kabyle males no longer acquired Arabic as a second language but French (Colonna, 1975: 106; Roberts, 1981: 189).

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Finally, in spite of positive attitudes towards French schools, progress in the education of young Muslims was slow. Compared with schooling figures for European children, the number of Arabic- and Berber-speaking pupils remained very low. The vast majority of young Algerians were getting no education. For example, in 1954, one out of four European children and one out of 50 Muslim students joined secondary school. At Algiers University, there were only 386 Algerian students (including 31 female students) during 1950–1951 and 589 (including 51 female students) during 1954–1955. Outside Algeria, 553 studied at the universities of metropolitan France in 1950 and 1270 at the three traditional Islamic universities of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, al-Zaituna in Tunis and al-Azhar in Cairo (Bennoune, 2000: 164, 170; Colonna, 1975: 33, 50; Hadjeres, 1960: 40).

Language Superiority The Frenchification of the Algerian colony required the spread of French in this territory. Just as the French considered their culture to be inarguably superior to other cultures, they unhesitatingly boasted about the superiority of their language. This was, of course, an expression of 19th century European ethnocentrism which justified the superiority of some Western languages because their speakers had better languages than others. More importantly, glorifying French and stigmatizing other languages had been a long tradition before Algeria’s conquest in 1830. Compared to other nations in Europe, France has a richer history of celebrating its language, and it has developed a more elaborate ideology of linguistic superiority to turn French into an almost sacred language. To the French, their language is the main vector of ‘French civilization’, and its prestige was reinforced through France’s territorial expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries. The superiority of France was, thus, connected with the superiority of its language. In consequence, French was alleged to be the vehicle of civilization par excellence, a ‘universal’ language, and an ideal world type. It acquired this status because, following the 1789 Revolution, the authorities united different linguistic communities in one nation through a single language. France’s republican tradition is potentially universal for its values can be implemented elsewhere. The myth of French superiority also comes from its alleged beauty, purity, intrinsic logic and its association with high culture and the values of humanism that it carries. This idea developed over more than 300 years: in the 16th century it was the ‘best French’ spoken by the ‘best’ people, and in the 17th and 18th centuries the ‘best French’ meant the ‘language of reason and clarity’ (Lodge,

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1993: 165–187). Furthermore, in 1783, Antoine Rivarol sanctified the superiority of French through several inaccurate maxims widely known in France, and the denigration of other languages, particularly Italian and English. All these beliefs constitute the core of France’s ideology of linguistic superiority, its linguistic culture (monolingual habitus) which serves to indoctrinate French native speakers almost from birth. This indoctrination also accompanies the expansion of French abroad. The French tend to favour elite bilingualism and to spread their language selectively: they prefer that elites learn it in order to ensure that a few acquire it perfectly and reproduce the same attitudes to the French language and culture as those held by France’s intelligentsia. The aim is to make French non-native speakers adopt an almost blind loyalty to prize what they have acquired as ardent Francophiles. Those indoctrinated by the ideology of French superiority cannot set any high value on other languages (Ager, 1999: 23, 194; Rivarol, 1991: 73; Schiffman, 1996: 22; Wardhaugh, 1987: 141–142). The French linguistic culture described above represents the foundations of France’s language policy both within and outside its borders. The sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet has written that France’s language policy contains tendencies typical of Fascist states and can be characterized by four factors: a xenophobic purism at the level of the national language; an anti-dialectal centralism directed against regional languages; a nationalist centralism directed against national minorities; and a linguistic colonialism or expansionism beyond the frontiers of the country (Calvet, 1998: 187). The first factor corresponds to ‘linguicism’, and the last three to ‘linguistic imperialism’. In colonies, French conquerors imposed their own language on subjugated peoples with the aim of eradicating their languages, customs, thinking and values. They also stigmatized and marginalized socially, economically and politically the speakers of dominated languages. In fact, colonial bilingualism defined perfectly French Algeria, and the other North African countries, Tunisia and Morocco. At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, colonialist rivalry between France and other European nations over the North African territories incited the French government to impose a Protectorate regime in Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1912. This Protectorate status did not prevent France from adopting French as the official language for administration and education. As in Algeria, it ignored the local traditional systems of education in Morocco, in particular, where it implemented a new educational system based on that of Metropolitan France. By contrast, Tunisia benefited from the relatively enlightened French administrators who managed the country at the beginning of the Protectorate. These colonizers refused to repeat the mistakes made in Algeria and maintained the traditional schools in parallel

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with colonial institutions (Bentahila, 1983: 6, 8; Daoud, 2007: 261; Gordon, 1978: 161). The French also used the ‘divide and rule’ ideology in Morocco where the Berber community is larger than the Algerian one – in Tunisia, it is negligible. They multiplied the types of schools with a dual objective. First, unlike Tunisia where new and traditional schools were complementary, colonial schools in French Morocco banned cultural mixing to maintain the Protectorate’s traditional society and thus ensure France’s domination through the creation of a collaborationist elite. As a result, the competition between French and traditional schools generated conflicting world views among the natives of Morocco. Second, there was a conscious effort on the part of the French to de-Islamize Moroccan Berbers as a repeat of the ‘Kabyle myth’. After 1923, colonizers set up French-Berber schools which excluded both Islamic education from their curricula and the teaching of Arabic. The ‘cleansing’ of the Berbers of any Arabo-Islamic heritage reached its climax with the Dahir (Berber Decree) issued by the French Resident General in Morocco in May 1930. This Decree guaranteed traditional pre-Islamic Berber communal procedures which exempted Berberophones from the Sharica or Islamic law (Bentahila, 1983: 8–10; Errihani, 2008: 23–27, 81–83; Gordon, 1978: 170–171; Segalla, 2009: 37–41, 229). As to Algeria, French colonialists realized the impossibility of assimilating the native population at the turn of the 20th century. So they re-named their cultural policy ‘association’, even though they maintained Frenchification until the end of colonization. But the ideology of language superiority was so powerful that they never doubted the domination of French in Algeria: from the early to the final years of French occupation, colonialists never questioned the legitimacy of their linguistic hegemony. The claims made by the Governor General in the early 1830s and by the Minister of Public Education in 1897 and mentioned earlier in this chapter are clear expressions of linguistic imperialism and linguicist ideology. Both clearly stated that French supremacy (linguistic imperialism), linguicide and linguicism were embedded in their colonial vision of education. The discourse of French linguistic supremacy was still in operation in the late 1950s, when Algeria’s independence was imminent. In 1959, a French scholar wrote: ‘The Frenchification of Algeria, already well ahead in Kabylia and the Tell regions, appears to be the most important linguistic phenomenon for the future of this country. It corresponds to the real needs of the populations’ (Calvet, 1974: 124). What is more, the supremacy of French was even part of the deal to end France’s colonial presence in Algeria. During the last round of peace talks held in early 1962 between the French and the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria (GPRA in French) formed in September 1958, Algerian negotiators agreed to France’s terms to sacrifice the Arabic

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language for French. The latter was to remain dominant in the future state – this was of course unacceptable to radical nationalists who would take their revenge on this concession when rising to power in the late 1960s (Harbi, 1993: 287, 419–420). In the meantime, the expansionist phase of French imperialism meant slamming the door on indigenous traditions of learning and languages. With the exception of a small number of soldiers who acquired Arabic and Berber to subjugate and control the natives, European settlers were not interested in learning these languages. And when theorists of colonialism tolerated the maintenance of Arabic in schools, they admitted its maintenance for a transitional period only, before the complete triumph of French monolingualism. For example, in 1887, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, a leading spokesman of colonialism, called for the maintenance of ‘Arab-French’ schools: ‘[f]or a few years at least and until our Africa is more Frenchified, it is desirable that many inhabitants of Algeria, French and indigènes alike, should be bilingual and use the two languages, French and Arabic’ (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887: 254–255). Less than 50 years later, this utilitarian-grounded tolerance was forgotten by European settlers, even by Arabic-speaking orientalists. In the euphoria of the centenary of Algeria’s conquest by France, some of the writings of William Marçais, a noted dialectologist-Arabicist born of a pied noir mother but raised in France, capture the mood of the inter-war years perfectly. Marçais strongly believed in the long-lasting domination of France in Algeria (Messaoudi, 2012: 282, 284). In his article published in 1931, Marçais used linguicist ideology and discourse to predict the future death of all indigenous languages, Berber, dialectal and Literary Arabic. He first brushed aside Berber because he claimed that it had no writing system. Then, he strongly justified the future disappearance of colloquial Arabic as a consequence of its extensive borrowings from French (Marçais, 1931: 22, 26). As a matter of fact, the number of French lexical items assimilated into Algerian Arabic has been estimated at 140 out of every 1665 words (Sivan 1979: 30). Lastly, Marçais disqualified Literary Arabic on the grounds that it was a dominated language, not unified linguistically because of diglossia, and unfit for modernity: When one of the languages is that of the masters, when it gives access to a great modern civilization, when it is clear, when its oral and written expressions are closer one to the other, whereas the other [language] is that of the dominated, and when it is ambiguous, the battle is unequal; the former, inevitably, must prevail over the latter. (Marçais, 1931: 39) In Marçais’ writings, there was a Whorfian faith that the French language would better instruct Algerian Muslims in the way of modernity

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(Messaoudi, 2012: 284). And to corroborate his predictions of the future death of Arabic, Marçais cited correspondence and letters written in French and passed between Algerian Muslims. He also referred to the linguistic landscape of the city of Tlemcen, renowned as a traditional centre of learning in the west of Algeria: ‘In the populous streets of Tlemcen, an important centre of Islamic culture in the 14th century, one would look in vain for a single sign in Arabic in shop-windows’ (Marçais, 1931: 22). Incidentally, Marçais opened his article with a response to a group of researchers who had carried out a pedagogical survey and then used their survey results to encourage North African Europeans to learn Arabic. There is clearly some exaggeration here. Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco have today a European population of around one million, which has a life of its own. Those who ensure its material and moral needs, be it in industry, commerce, the liberal professions, or public services, have in actual fact no need for the knowledge of Arabic. Without knowing any Arabic, a Dean at the Faculty of Algiers, an engineer in the Tunisian railways, a shorthand typist in Rabat, a hat maker in Bône, a pork-butcher in Oujda, a fashion tradeswoman in Casablanca can do good work and good business. (Marçais, 1931: 20) At the end of the 1920s, Marçais was instrumental in the receding of Arabic teaching at secondary-school level in Algeria. He used his powerful position as professor in Collège de France to write a report that disqualified the teaching of Arabic on the grounds that programmes did not have to adapt to the ‘incurable diglossia’ of the Arabic language (Messaoudi, 2012: 285). Marçais’ certainties and discourse encouraged separation between communities to reinforce apartheid-style racial and linguistic demarcation. What is more, it dissuaded European settlers from learning Arabic. For example, in 2004, Algerian-born Jean Daniel, a major French journalist-writer, confirmed the colonial policy of discouraging pieds noirs from acquiring Arabic: ‘My Arab friends spoke French. I have not learned Arabic and I regret it. And they advised us against doing it’ (Daniel, 2004: 172). Competency in Arabic did not fare better among Europeans at the lower end of the social ladder. During his visit to Oran in 1961, David Gordon recalls his conversation with a typical Oranese pied noir: ‘A colon taxi driver, who spoke Spanish as well as French, but not a word of Arabic, blamed the revolution on the fact that the Arabs had never been “really civilized”’ (Gordon, 1962: 27). In 2001, singer Enrico Macias, a pied noir of Jewish descent, recalled his childhood: ‘At home, my parents and grand-parents spoke Arabic. And they suddenly switched to French in the presence of children’ (Macias, 2001: 90). Macias’ parents were

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certainly concerned with their child’s future, one moulded by the colonial school where French monolingualism represented the ideal of what a Frenchman should be, and where any other language but French was stigmatized. The pieds noirs refused to learn Arabic because it was the language of the indigènes who belonged to the lowest ranks in the social hierarchy. In the European settlers’ popular culture, the Arab was everybody’s fool. In November–December 1955, Kabyle novelist Mouloud Feraoun wrote in his private diary ( Journal 1955–1962): ‘What is a native for the European? He is a man with ludicrous manners, peculiar customs, and with an impossible language’ (Feraoun, 1998: 48). Born in 1931, writer Betoule Fekkar-Lambiotte describes her school days when she was a 15-year-old girl born of an Algerian Muslim father and a French mother: ‘I was destined to be bilingual, even though, when playing and speaking Arabic in the schoolyard, I was often slapped by my teachers who dictated that “at the French school, speak French”!’ (Fekkar-Lambiotte, 2007: 60–61). In actual fact, Europeans stigmatized native tongues and regarded them as ‘poor’, ‘vulgar’, ‘not fit for civilization’, ‘degenerate linguistic forms’ and ‘without grammatical rules’ (Morsly, 1990: 81). And French spoken with an accent (‘français Arabe’) was even more vilified: in French-ruled Algeria the pidgin French (sabir) spoken by the illiterate majority of the natives in their dealings with the Europeans (who did not deign to learn Arabic) was the favourite butt of pieds noirs humorists and chansonniers. (Sivan, 1979: 27) Interestingly, following the defeat of French colonizers in the Maghreb, the inferiorization of ‘français Arabe’ in the Algerian colony persisted in the low status ascribed to the Arab-accented French used by North African migrants in France (Bourhis, 1982: 39). Finally, the European community in French Algeria used all three ideologies to subjugate the indigènes and define itself in relation to non-Europeans in a rejectionist mode. The irony is that the pyramid-shaped separation created by the colons to hold power as a dominant group helped the inferiorized base develop its social cohesion to combat colonialism and eventually demand independence. What is equally ironic is that the two elements of Muslim traditional culture – Islam and its linguistic vector, Literary Arabic – belittled by the pieds noirs were used by colonized populations to reject the European settlers’ dominance and cultural modes. What began as passive resistance would later lead to openly declared opposition and confrontation. When the Muslim natives reached a new form of social organization,

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previously unknown to them, they were ripe for nationalism. The deep socio-economic impact of French colonialism served as a ‘modernising’ factor in ‘awakening’ the Muslim Algerians’ sense of national belonging. And in their nationalist movement, they used language and religion as two conduits of anti-French feeling: Islam and the Arabic tongue were associated with the Algerian struggle for independence. Language and religion understandably served as foci for the crystallization of national consciousness because there was no genuine monarchy, nor aristocratic leadership capable of mobilizing Algerians. The French invasion and occupation dramatically reduced the native religious and military elite and prevented the rise of natural leaders for the rallying of national forces and aspirations (Mouhleb, 2005: 87; Ruedy, 1992: 43). In Tunisia and Morocco, by contrast, colonials mobilized around their traditional rulers in their nationalist struggle. When France imposed a Protectorate in Tunisia in 1881, the Bey of Tunis, who had ruled this polity as an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, reigned as head of State but did not rule. The beylical office ended in 1957, one year after independence and the establishment of the first Tunisian republic. Similarly, the imposition of the Protectorate in Morocco in 1912 meant that the Sultan reigned but did not rule. In their fight against French colonialism Tunisians and Moroccans rallied around the Bey and the Sultan, respectively. Algerians did not have such a ruler, and the mobilization around language and religion was unavoidable (Abun-Nasr, 1971: 278–279, 353–354; Grandguillaume, 2012: 405).

Rejection of Cultural Subordination The historic All Saints’ Day of 1954 and the start of the Algerian War led by the National Liberation Front (FLN in French) represented the final stage in the development of Algerian nationalism. The latter came out into the open in the late 1920s. The national movement grew out of three separate strands each associated with a particular leader and defined as either reformist or independence-oriented. If all these parties merged in 1954 into a conglomeration to liberate the country, all those who created the FLN came from the independence-oriented party, with Reformists having almost no role in this endeavour. In this section, emphasis will be placed on the independence-oriented nationalist group and one Reformist ideology, the two nationalist brands that would influence language policy and planning in post-independent Algeria. The discussion begins with the presentation of the two major Reformist parties, their conception of the ‘Algerian nation’, and respective programmes in relation to the issue of language and identity.

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The Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA in French) was founded in April 1946 by a group of liberals, the central figure being Ferhat Abbas (1899–1985). He epitomized the westernized middle class and his social milieu oriented him towards bourgeois France. The UDMA demanded, like the pieds noirs, an equal access to political and economic posts. Abbas equated Franco-Algerian equality and assimilation with metropolitan France because he did not believe in a separate Algerian identity (see Chapter 5). However, Abbas remained secular and attached to his Islamic faith and the Arabic language. He stated his demand for the study of Arabic in a 1936 editorial: This language [Arabic] is to the Muslim religion what the Church is to the Catholic religion. It could not live without it. The belief of an illiterate Muslim is a web of indigestible superstitions. For us the Mosque is nothing. The reading of the Sacred Book is everything. It stands as the cement of our faith. Is it then necessary to declare our commitment to the teaching of the Arabic language, the basis of our belief? (Collot & Henry, 1978: 66) In July 1939, Abbas created the Algerian Popular Union with its programme calling for, among other things, the ‘teaching of the Arabic language’. In the Manifesto of the Algerian People, which emerged in 1943, he made a number of demands, among which the following pertain to language and education: ‘free and compulsory instruction for the children of both sexes’, ‘the recognition of Arabic as an official language in the same capacity as the French language’ (Stora & Daoud, 1995: 92, 121). In May 1931, Sheikh Abdelhamid Ben Badis (1889–1940) founded a religious movement, as embodied by the Association of the Ulemas – ‘Ulema’ meaning ‘Muslim elder’. Ben Badis was the descendant of a rich family, and he became a scholar at the religious al-Zaituna University in Tunisia. He believed in Islamic reformism (Islah) emanating from the Middle East. In his opinion, the regeneration of Algeria required a return to the first principles of Islam. He accused the traditional Algerian rural brand of Islam, represented by the marabouts (holy men), as a corruption of the Muslim faith which served colonialism. The Ulema’s programme was both religious and cultural. It considered education as a means of achieving Islah, and the Association set up a network of free schools across the country to provide education in Arabic. These learning institutions valued the revival of Islamic cultural identity, Pan-Arab ideals, and the teaching of Arabic. With the exception of introductory courses in calculus, geography and the French language (for children not registered in colonial schools), the Association neglected the

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teaching of scientific disciplines but allowed pupils and students to acquire written and oral competence in Literary Arabic. Ben Badis’ famous creed was: ‘Islam is my religion, Arabic is my language, Algeria is my fatherland.’ Historian Monique Gadant wrote ‘the Ulemas were a national movement which produced makers of ideology, but in politics, they were always, no pun intended, reformists’ (Gadant, 1988: 28). For example, Article 3 of the rules and regulations of the Association banned any debating of political issues. If Ben Badis opposed the assimilation called for by Ferhat Abbas (see Chapter 5), he nevertheless advocated the integration of the ‘Algerian Muslim community within the great French family’ (Stora, 1991: 75). The Ulemas mistook their own social position (religious, urban, bourgeois) for that of the entire country: they had a Jacobean definition of Algerian identity assimilated with towns and cities. What is more, they equated Arabization with Islamization for, to them, religion held the greatest influence over ideas: ‘The revival of Arabic is both put in competition with French and used as a barrier erected against “foreign influences”’ (Harbi, 1984: 117–118). The Ulemas undervalued the people’s culture, the peasants’ traditional rural Islamic faith and, consequently, their modes of expression that they fought violently at times. The Arabic expressions they used to refer to the common man show their contempt: Salafat al’amma (despicable masses), Al-ra’iyya (imitators), Al-sùqa (people of the marketplace), Al-ça’âlik (people of the street). On the back of this, the Ulemas had suspect attitudes towards Berber-speaking populations’ faith and languages. In the 1930s, after reading the writings of a single Francophile Berberophone intellectual, Tewfik El Madani, a Ulema leader who will become the first Minister of Religious Affairs after independence, had alarmist declarations about an alleged campaign of de-islamization in Kabylia. He unjustly discredited the entire Kabyle community. Furthermore, in 1948, the Ulemas demanded that the colonial authorities close down the Kabyle radio station. They also wrote in the organ of their party that the Kabyles would only really become Algerian when they ‘ceased to whisper their jargon (the Kabyle language) which grates on our ears’ (Ouerdane, 2003: 80). The religio-conservatives’ rejection of languages other than Literary Arabic proceeds from the deep influence of Pan-Islamic and Pan-Arab ideologies. Their ideas came from Arab linguistic nationalism born in the Middle East with which they had close ties. In fact, they remained docile followers of Middle Eastern political and cultural leaders and their directives (Ageron, 1969: 88; Bessis, 1978: 473, 475). The principal founding father of Arab linguistic nationalism was Sati Al-Husri (1880–1963). Educated in the West, Al-Husri’s ideas can be described as ‘acculturationist’, an imitative adaptation of Western culture. He promoted Literary Arabic as the most important index among the various affiliative

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bonds which exist in the Arabic-speaking world. He openly declared his preference for the national romantic vision which holds that those who speak the same language have a common culture and should be united within one nation. His uncompromising pronouncement, borrowed from the Prophetic tradition, states: ‘Every Arabic-speaking people is an Arab people. Every individual belonging to one of these Arabic-speaking peoples is an Arab’ (Tibi, 1981: 163). Al-Husri thus turned linguistic identity into an ethnic one. At the same time he fought the local idioms, such as the varieties of Arabic, considered to have a divisive role in Arab life. In April 1947, the founding Congress of the Arab Resurrection Party Ba’th set up a Constitution which extended Al-Husri’s concept of an Arab ‘nation’ – a Pan-Arab community as ‘one nation from the Atlantic to the Gulf’ (Article 7). Article 10 equated Arab nationalism with the Arabic language. The Ba’th leadership also took up Al-Husri’s belief on the divisiveness of ethno-regional, or even national, linguistic sentiments. They believed that non-Arabic-speaking communities in North Africa (Berbers) and in the Middle East (Christians and Kurds) would be automatically merged into the ‘Arab nation’. The curt tone of Articles 11 and 15 in the Ba’th Constitution described as illegal any ‘schismatic’ ethno-regional community which rejected the Pan-Arab nationalist ideal. Al-Husri’s equating ethnicity with linguistic identity would have far-reaching effects on peoples’ representations in the Maghreb in general and in Algeria in particular (Carré, 1996: 57–58; Sharabi, 1966: 96; Vermeren, 2004: 20). In 1994, Maghreban scholar Abdallah Bounfour described Ba’th ideology as expansionist. He also considered Pan-Arab pronouncements on cultural unity and the rejection of multilingualism as a return to the basics of ArabIslamic imperial ideology which idealized the primacy of the ‘Unique [God] against multiplicity’ (Bounfour, 1994: 8). In fact, Pan-Arab linguistic culture is not only imperialist but founded on undemocratic principles. For example, Ba’th partisans simply adopted Al-Husri’s rejection of civil liberties, a thought inspired by totalitarian doctrines. The extent of his disposition towards totalitarianism is indicated in the following intransigent declaration: ‘I say continuously and without hesitation: “Patriotism and nationalism above and before all else, even above and before freedom”’. As Director General of Education in both Iraq and Syria, Al Husri introduced, in 1923 and 1944, respectively, educational policies that were focused inward. To achieve ‘cultural independence’, he eliminated the study of foreign languages in primary schools. And he knowingly subjected history to the demands of his pan-Arab ideology by employing a judiciously selected history syllabus while at the same time acknowledging that such practices characterized modern dictatorships (Cleveland, 1971: 63, 79, 131, 147, 170).

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Moving back to the Algerian brands of nationalism, namely the independence-oriented and revolutionary movement, it was embodied by the Étoile Nord-Africaine. The Étoile emerged in France in 1926 and was presided over by Messali Hadj (1898–1974), the son of a shoe-maker. After his conscription into the French army during WWI, Messali settled as a migrant worker in the slums surrounding Paris. He then joined the French Communist Party which would support the founding of the Étoile. His ideals were a mix of populist socialism coupled with nationalist and religious doctrines based on traditional rural Islamic dogma. The Étoile rejected assimilation and association (integration), and demanded Algeria’s self-determination. Messali believed that ‘The Muslim Algerian people have a glorious historical past, a religion and a language totally different from those of France’ (Stora, 1991: 85). In 1927, the Étoile’s political platform called, among other things, for ‘access to education at all levels; the creation of schools in Arabic’. Item 8 of its political programme adopted in May 1933 advocated ‘Compulsory education in the Arabic language. Access to education at all levels. The creation of schools in Arabic. All official documents must be published simultaneously in Arabic and French’ (Collot & Henry, 1978: 39, 52). The French authorities dissolved the Étoile in 1929 and Messali spent several spells in prison or exile. As an expatriate, he lived six months in Switzerland (1935–1936) where he met Emir Chekib Arslan, a Pan-Arabist from the Lebanese aristocracy. Messali’s association with Arslan strengthened his adherence to Pan-Arabism and Arab-Islamic ideology. And that was how he came to share the Ulema’s Jacobean definition of Algerian identity. Thanks to Messali, migrant Algerian nationalists living in France and the Levant amalgamated the two brands of nationalism, French Jacobinism and Pan-Arabism. In 1937, Messali recreated his political organization as Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA) with roughly the same programme. Demands related to language and education included: the creation of a faculty of Arabic language and literature at Algiers University, similar to the ones in Morocco and Tunisia; the development of Muslim universities for Muslim professors to teach Arabic language and literature; the teaching of Arabic should be made compulsory at all levels. After another ban, Messali founded, in 1946, a successor to the PPA called the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD). It was from the ranks of PPA/MTLD that the radicals of the FLN emerged to launch the war and free the country from colonial rule (Collot & Henry, 1978: 136; Meynier, 2002: 57–58; Vermeren, 2004: 92). In the meantime and prior to 1954, PPA/MTLD members were divided on the cultural and linguistic identity of the future ‘Algerian nation’. There were, on the one hand, nationalists headed by Messali who supported an

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‘Arab-Islamic Algeria’ founded on the ideology known as Arabo-Islamism. To these activists, the birth of Algeria coincides with the Arab conquest in the 7th century, and the spread of Islam. On the other hand, there were secular Marxist nationalists – most of them of Kabyle origin – who rejected such a national conception as simplistic, racist and imperialist. They called for more secularism and for an ‘Algerian Algeria’. They believed that, in addition to the Arabic and Islamic constituent parts, Algerianness should also include Berber, Turkish and, why not – although not openly declared – French elements. The first conception of Algeria favoured Literary (Classical) Arabic over all other idioms, while the latter defended equality between Algeria’s languages and cultures. The conflict between the two factions led to the ‘Berberist crisis’ of April 1949, and the birth of the political concepts of ‘Berberism’ and ‘Berberist’. The Berberist movement grew out of the triumph of colonial capitalism in Algeria in general and Kabylia in particular, and the ensuing migration of Kabyle workers to France and to urban centres in Algeria. (The introduction of the capitalist system in French Algeria, and the detribalization of the country’s generations-long tribal structure proved dehumanizing tools for the local populations.) Both groups of Kabyle migrants coalesced traditional village and tribal allegiances into a wider regional loyalty. As to Messali, he decided against linguistic-cultural pluralism and in favour of centralized Jacobinism and Unitarianism. In effect, he overestimated Algeria’s linguistic-cultural homogeneity and ignored the reality. If the 1949 crisis ended in favour of Messali’s partisans, it had far-reaching consequences for pre- and post-independence Algeria. The ‘Berberist crisis’ caused wounds that would not heal (Harbi, 1980: 33; 1993: 59–64; Meynier, 2002: 94; Ouerdane, 2003: 85). Finally, despite their differences all three major nationalist strands shared a common denominator: the language demand stood out as an important element in all parties’ programmes and manifestos. A focus on Arabic and Islam to unify Algerians was simply unavoidable for at least three main reasons. First, as mentioned in the preceding section, colonials had no ruling elite (royals, aristocrats) to rally around and resist colonialists who knowingly deprived them of any leadership. The second reason is related to the above. Literary (Classical) Arabic aroused the type of strong symbolism associated with ancient languages to liberate dominated populations. And the link between this language and Islam reinforced its symbolic value. It is probably this aspect which prevented the grassroots of the PPA/MTLD party in Kabylia from supporting the Kabyle mutineers during the ‘Berberist crisis’. Interestingly enough, the Berber Decree (Dahir) of 1930 introduced by France in French Morocco for divisive objectives unexpectedly strengthened Moroccans’ nationalism and mobilized them to drive the French out. Third,

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France’s imposition of assimilationism turned the Koranic idiom into a ‘martyr’ language. In the 1930s, a colonial piece of legislation enhanced this ‘martyr’ status: in August 1935, Literary Arabic was decreed a ‘foreign language’ by the French State Council. Following the open insurrection of May 1945 in the northeast of the country, around the city of Setif, and the ensuing bloody massacre (Setif uprising), the colonial authorities tried to make up for the gross denial of justice of the 1935 decree. Article 57 of the Statute voted in 1947 read: ‘The teaching of Arabic will be provided at all levels in Algeria.’ By 1954, this disposition was still not implemented because the Unions of French Teachers opposed it for they feared for the ‘weakening of French culture’. In fact, out of a total of 27,000 teachers, those of European descent represented 97%. It was not until July 1961 that France admitted the mistake in the 1935 decree: Charles de Gaulle signed a decree to cancel it and impose the teaching of Arabic in the primary cycle (Benrabah, 1999: 58–59; Errihani, 2008: 26–27, 81–83; Mahé, 2001: 432; Meynier, 2002: 96). It is worth noting here that, during the war of liberation, a tragic episode prepared the future for linguistic cleansing in independent Algeria. In 1958 and 1959, combatant FLN leaders, often of rural origin and illiterate, carried out a murderous purge of some 3000 young French-language students and intellectuals who had joined the Revolution (Assous, 1985: 105; Harbi, 1984: 91; Horne, 1987: 110, 323). What is more, the struggle for power among individuals and clans intensified within the FLN when there was not a shade of doubt concerning the country’s independence. In May and early June 1962, the fractured FLN met at Tripoli, in Libya. With the support of Colonel Houari Boumediene, Chief of the General Staff of the military forces stationed in Morocco and Tunisia, Ahmed Ben Bella, recently released from his six years’ captivity during the liberation struggle and soon-to-be the first Head of State, repudiated the leadership that had successfully ended the War of Independence. This meeting in Libya and the societal project established at that time (the Tripoli Programme) turned out to be the first military Coup d’Etat to take place before the existence of independent Algeria was proclaimed (Horne, 1987: 385–387, 477–478; Ruedy, 1992: 190–194).

The Legacy How and why the post-independence linguistic and educational policies evolved in Algeria will be pursued in the next chapter. In concluding this section, several points can be made on the linguistic consequences of colonialism and the radical changes that Algeria underwent during the French

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occupation (1830–1962). The language conflicts of the colonial era deeply affected the future rulers of independent Algeria. By the time of independence, Algeria was completely transformed economically, socially, culturally and demo-linguistically. Two sectors characterized Algeria’s economy in 1962. The ‘modern’ sector in agriculture and the mining industry was completely integrated within the French economy and geared almost exclusively towards the needs of the colonist minority. Only 2.5 million Algerians occupied junior posts. The ‘traditional’ sector consisted of the poorest lands owned by 6.5 million poor peasants. Europeans had 30 times more land than Algerians and they owned more than 2.5 million acres in the fertile coastal plain. And the colonists’ incomes were 48 times higher than those of the indigènes (Goumeziane, 1994: 52; Stora, 2001: 26–29). As to demographics, there were, in 1962, 10 million Algerians, a quarter of whom lived in towns. In the educational sector, France’s colonial policy which had been stated in generous and progressive terms was not based on altruistic intents. The illiteracy rate in Algeria stood at about 90%. According to one estimate, around 300,000 people, or 5.5% of the total population, could read Literary Arabic. Colonialism almost erased this language through the exclusive use of French in education, administration and public life. As to competency in French, 6 million people spoke it and one million could read it. Similarly, when Morocco and Tunisia got their independence in March 1956, very few Moroccans and Tunisians had profited from the colonial schooling system. In 1964, the number of those who could read French was 700,000 out of a total population of 4.5 million in Tunisia, and 800,000 out of 13 million in Morocco. Those able to read Literary Arabic amounted to 1 million in Morocco and 700,000 in Tunisia. Those who spoke French were 4 million in Morocco and 2 million in Tunisia. In the mid-1960s, of the three States of North Africa, Tunisia had the largest number of balanced (Arabic–French) bilinguals and Algeria the least (Bentahila, 1983: 8; Gordon, 1978: 150–151). The situation of the Berber-speaking communities in Algeria worsened tragically as a result of colonial rule. Berberophones amounted to 18.6% in 1966 – the only time in the history of independent Algeria when the question of language was included in a population census (Chaker, 1998: 13). When the French conquered the country in 1830, Berber tribes were present almost all over Algeria and there was a linguistic continuum between all the different Berber regions. Through land expropriation and the deracination of peasants, conquerors emptied entire areas of Berber-speaking populations. In the 19th century, some western and eastern areas of Algeria were deserted by Berberophones and these zones were later repopulated by Arabophones. So, colonial violence had a dramatic impact on the Berber language. And the paradox of French colonialism is that it allowed the majority of Algerians to

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be Arabized. But the price was high, as this Arabizing process resulted from linguistic genocide. When France was finally defeated in 1962, the colonial experience was so traumatic for Algerian society that it felt insecure and threatened, afraid that it had lost its bearings, its beliefs and its certainties. As a keen observer, David Gordon claimed in 1966: ‘Algeria’s alienation has been [. . .] great and, on the level of her elite, she has moved [. . .] far into the culture of the colonial power and into the culture of the modern West’ (Gordon, 1966: 160–161). In 2004, journalist-writer Jean Daniel recalled a private conversation he had in 1960 with two leading figures of the FLN on the future policies of independent Algeria – one of them, Mohamed Benyahia, would hold various ministerial posts after 1962. [T]hey told me that, during a century and a half of French colonialism, the pendulum had swung so far away towards one side, the Christian side, denying Muslim identity, Arabism, and Islam, that the revenge would be long, violent, and would exclude any future for non-Muslims. And that they would not prevent this Arab-Islamic revolution from taking place for they believed it to be just and useful. (Daniel, 2004: 186–187) Indeed, Algeria’s leadership felt insecure and uncertain regarding Algerian identity. The majority of the country’s new ruling class had a French colonial education. Those who knew Arabic well were not in the mainstream of revolutionary leadership: a study on the formation of the Algerian revolutionary elite found that out of 69 leaders only 5 had an Arabic educational background, and the rest (64) were trained in French (Mansouri, 1991: 60). Postindependence rulers had ambivalent attitudes towards the French because of their proximity to French language and culture. There was dissatisfaction with and attraction to the colonial language: French was both the carrier of modern universal values and the instrument of brutal colonialism that had to be condemned. The success that the French had in acculturating elites in their colonies is conveyed in these ambiguous feelings. In his book on French legacies in North Africa, David Gordon wrote in 1961: ‘The image of the Algerian rebel yearning for peace so that he might revisit Paris is not completely frivolous’ (Gordon, 1962: 5). It is not frivolous at all: in 2001, the recollections of Algerian nationalist and historian Mohammed Harbi confirmed Gordon’s assumption. In the following excerpt, Harbi described an incident as a clandestine FLN militant on a secret mission to smuggle weapons from Belgium to France in 1956. He was accompanied by his fellow countryman Messaoud Guedroudj, and Roger Ramackers, a Belgian FLN sympathizer and anti-colonialist.

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One day in the summer of 1956, while smuggling arms to France, [. . .] [w]e stopped at Reims for dinner. With a jolly face, Guedroudj, who had regained his self-confidence, exclaimed: ‘Ah! It is nice to be home!’ Ramackers ironically wondered: ‘What? We have taken all these risks to drive you home? We thought it was the enemy’s territory!’ (Harbi, 2001: 183 – italics in the original) The ambivalence of Algerian nationalists toward the problem of cultural decolonization would affect language policy and planning after independence. They would implement zealously linguistic Arabization, and make language assume more importance than it might normally have. These leaders would also reproduce the ideology and discourse they had to endure during colonialism. The ideology of language supremacy and linguicism used to justify linguistic inequalities during colonization was involuntarily preparing the future: the new leadership would privilege language dominance, linguicist discourse and separate language educational policies for social class demarcation. But colonial ideology would be especially visible in the roles allocated to the mother tongues (dialectal Arabic and Berber), Literary Arabic and French in the future independent state. Dialectal Arabic and Berber would be minorized and stigmatized, Literary Arabic confined to the devotional sphere and traditional values, and French to more ‘prestigious’ functions. Elites’ unapologetic support of the ex-colonial language, and their loyalty to it would be reflected in the future educational structure that embedded the superiority of French over all other languages, even Literary Arabic. ‘This’, writes Robert Phillipson, ‘is a legacy of linguicism in which the colonized people have internalized the language and many of the attitudes of their masters, in particular their attitude to the dominant language and the dominated languages’ (Phillipson, 1992: 128). The linguistic culture that was going to be at the core of Algeria’s language policy drew its ideas and plans from French language ideology for (Frenchified) leaders trained in French schools and universities, and from Pan-Arab linguistic ideology for many (Middle Easternized) nationalists who lived in exile in the Middle East until 1962. Pan-Arabic and French linguistic cultures share a number of features that typically encourage totalizing and exclusive language policies, the surest way to spark off linguistic conflicts. Among those features four can be mentioned here: total identification of the ‘nation’ with one single language; linguistic purism; expansionism and a ‘war’ against dialects and local languages; centrist language policies. Our attention should now turn to the manner in which language struggles erupted in post-independence Algeria and the reasons why these conflicts occurred.

3 Arabization: At War with Diversity

[F]rom the beginning most Algerians believed Arabization to be inherently tied to Islamization and, inferentially, francophony to be tied to securalization. John Ruedy (1992: 205) Algerians have generally regarded the central state itself as suspect, realizing quickly after independence that the party elite had merely stepped into the positions of power left vacant by colonial officials. Paul A. Silverstein (2002: 651) The severity of Algeria’s internal discord makes leaders in that country more prone to try radical measures. Edward H. Thomas (1999: 38) [I]n the case of Algeria, [...] the upper classes tend to extend their class distinction to the issue of language. In other words, having French-educated backgrounds, these classes use the French language in the educational system as a means of enhancing their dominant positions. Abdelhamid Mansouri (1991: 122) In Algeria, the official Arab-Islamic formulation of national identity has arguably been, in some respects, the most obviously artificial and imposed of all Arab nationalist rhetorics. James McDougall (2011: 251) Guilt-ridden Algerians wonder about the legitimacy of [Algeria’s multilingual] legacy. They ask themselves: Is it a feature of a thriving society or of an alienated one? Should they continue to use all their languages? Might they lose themselves, or rather, find themselves, in so doing? Djamila Saadi-Mokrane (2002: 57) Powerful groups endeavor to enforce conformity to their language, and resistance culminates in struggle and war. Brian Weinstein (1983: 121)

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This chapter describes how and why linguistic and educational policies evolved in independent Algeria. It shows how the use of military force to seize power in the mid-1960s exacerbated linguistic conflicts, with language monopolising the political scene more and more. It is argued in this chapter that the major cause of language conflict in the post-independence era stems from the antagonism created by two forces with opposed agendas: Algeria’s language planners directed linguistic Arabization from above and forcibly implemented it; juxtaposed to this top-down intervention, the plural linguistic situation has continued to challenge from below the State-sponsored project imposed by a leadership regarded as suspect by Algerians.

Cautious Implementation The hegemony of the National Liberation Front (FLN) party during the war of liberation and the dilution of pre-war political pluralism left real political power in the hands of the military who have, since then, discredited civilian politics. Ahmed Ben Bella became the first president of Algeria after he had rallied the military forces led by Colonel Houari Boumediene. In April 1962, the president-to-be Ben Bella resoundingly declared: ‘we are Arabs, Arabs, Arabs’. This declaration was symbolic of the ideological direction taken by the country: Arabo-Islamism as officialized ideology would act like a searchlight to illuminate the national identity of Algerians. It was very sharp of sociologist Charles Gallagher to point out in June 1964 that it was ‘in Algeria where the best test seems likely to come, it looks inevitable that the conflicting pull toward secularism and the counterreaction stimulated among those who resist it will someday lead to a showdown’ (Gallagher, 1968: 146). Gallagher observed the Algerian scene at a moment when intense debates were being held on language, culture and identity. He reached the following conclusion: ‘[the] search for the proper tongue is perhaps the true [Algerian] dilemma, the problem which distills the essence of all other problems facing [Algeria]’ (Gallagher, 1968: 129–130). In their ‘search for the proper tongue’, Algerian intellectuals could not avoid raising the old questions of ‘Who are we? Who is the Other? Who do we want to be?’ The debate on Algerian identity took into account the two pillars of Algerian nationalism, Islam and Literary (Classical) Arabic. For the former, there were two worldviews each associated with one ideological trend. On the one hand, there were Marxist and other ‘leftist’ thinkers who rejected any nostalgic ‘return to the Middle Ages’ and insisted upon the need for creative effort. They encouraged the Islamic rationalistic heritage and

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past tolerance and the necessary contact with other cultural views and traditions. On the other hand, there were the religio-conservatives (Ulemas) who believed in ‘fundamentals’ represented by ‘values’ (al-qiyam in Arabic) as defended by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. Members of the newly founded organization called Al-Qiyam met in January 1964. They denounced left-wing elites as ‘unbelievers’ and ‘enemies of Islam’, criticized the teaching of French and the use of foreign programmes over the media. The president of Al-Qiyam, a university professor, declared that ‘the Koran contains absolute truth [and that] women are inferior to men’ (Déjeux, 1965: 6; Gordon, 1966: 201–202). The language question concerned mainly two aspects: the status of French, and the policy of Arabization. The debate over French involved those who defended its maintenance as ‘the spoils of war’ and those who rejected it because it held ‘too many bitter memories’ for them. The Arabization issue related to agenda, language choice, and the way to implement it. For the agenda, debaters discussed how fast Arabization should be implemented: rapid and systematic for the religio-conservatives, gradual with a long period of Arabic–French bilingualism for their opponents. Language choice implied choosing between Literary Arabic, and dialectal (Algerian) Arabic and Berber. As to the type of Arabization, there were those who wanted to imitate countries of the Arab Middle East, including Egypt and Libya, which implemented a mainly linguistic process known as ‘Arabicization’. Planners replaced the colonial language by Arabic in most public domains of use: it became the working language in administration, milieu, media and the medium of instruction in all cycles of the educational system. They also enriched the language by incorporating into it newly borrowed or derived/revived words. The other ideological trend was represented by the Ulemas. These did not only demand the replacement of French by Arabic in all walks of life (Arabicization) but its use as an instrument of linguistic and cultural assimilation for national unity and the affirmation of an identity that is exclusively Arab and Muslim. The latter process, called ‘Arabization’, is both cultural and linguistic and has a much wider application with profound implications for modern Algeria. Opponents of the religio-conservatives coined the term ‘Arabization-Islamization’ to define this type of language planning (Déjeux, 1965: 6). In independent Algeria, language competition takes different routes: status, corpus and acquisition planning. Under Ben Bella’s leadership, contests linked to linguistic issues affected mainly status and acquisition planning activities. The first Constitution adopted in September 1963 declared Algeria a socialist State, and established Islam and Arabic as the official religion and language, respectively. However, under the provisions of Article 73, French

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could be used provisionally along with Arabic. In August 1963, parliamentarians voted in favour of ‘the use of Arabic in all administrations at the same level as French’ (Gallagher, 1968: 130). It was introduced as a working language in the Parliament in 1964 and, in June of this year, the first volume of the Official Journal was published in Arabic. As for the milieu, the government decreed, as early as January 1963, the de-baptization of French-named towns and cities to re-appropriate the Algerian milieu, legitimize people’s power over their national territory and re-conquer Algeria’s cultural values. Place names with names of military, political, literary and artistic celebrities of the colonial era were replaced by their pre-colonial Arabic or Berber names if they had one, or by heroes of the Revolution or by other renowned Algerians. When Ben Bella made his triple assertion in April 1962, he defined national identity as ‘fundamentally’ Arab. The first Constitution of 1963 confirmed this and sanctified the Arabo-Islamic formulation of national identity. At the level of status planning, Algeria’s leadership imposed monolingualism in Literary Arabic at the expense of the country’s pluralism and the real mother tongues, dialectal Arabic and Berber. The elites’ refusal to institutionalize the latter languages is best illustrated in their reaction to a sociolinguistic survey. In 1963/1964, the Algerian government hired a team of American sociolinguists from the University of California, Berkeley, to draw up the sociolinguistic profile of the country. As a conclusion to their work, the researchers recommended the institutionalization of Algerian Arabic and Berber as inter-regional languages because they were the most widely used and most consensual. Then the authorities signed a contract with these sociolinguists under the terms of which the conclusions of their survey should never be made public (Elimam, 1997: 158). The government rejected this proposition because of officialized Arabo-Islamism which cannot tolerate any other language but Literary Arabic. This happened despite the fact that the Ulemas as a political movement did not join in Ben Bella’s government. There was, however, one Ulema with Ben Bella, Tewfik El Madani, the Minister of Religious Affairs whose views on Arabization were typically representative of the Ulemas’ ideology. In his discourse, he clearly stated that the language of Arabization could only be the Koranic idiom; that Arabization was motivated by the Islamic faith which remained the most fundamental component of Algerian identity, and that Arabization must be accompanied by the Islamization of society. As a political force, the Ulemas did not stop calling for more Arabic and more Islam, and their pressure made Ben Bella declare: ‘Arabization is not Islamization’ (Grandguillaume, 1983: 184; Holt, 1994: 38). The educational sector would become fertile ground for linguistic wars throughout Algeria’s modern history. Despite his revolutionary slogans, Ben

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Bella was tentative and less sure of the wisdom of Arabizing ‘at all cost’ to sacrifice the French language. In fact, he did not resort to radical measures because of his leftist advisors, and for fear of alienating Charles de Gaulle, the country’s biggest benefactor at the time. There was the intention – at least in rhetoric – to favour the national language in schools. For example, in October 1962, Ben Bella declared that Arabic was to be introduced in the schooling system. Confronted with the religio-conservatives who demanded the systematic Arabization of education, the first Education Minister warned that Arabization would only be implemented gradually. It would be better, he said, to wait 20 years for a solid solution than to opt immediately for an Arabization that might collapse in a couple of years. Indeed, expert foreign observers agreed with the minister that overhasty Arabization would lead to undesirable results. During the Third Conference of Arab Teachers held in Algiers in August 1963, other Arab States sanctioned Algeria’s cautious implementation of its policy as a wise move (Altoma, 1971: 699; Gordon, 1966: 200). Ben Bella’s government inherited a network of schools which rapidly proved inadequate for at least two important reasons. First, out of 27,000 educators about 25,000 had left the country by 1962. Second, student enrolment in primary schools rose from 14% to over 36% as a result of the tremendous ‘hope’ generated by independence. So, the authorities decided to meet with the population’s yearning for more education. But the departure of colonial teachers brought schools to a halt and their replacement by Algerian nationals was a daunting task. There was a lack of well-trained teachers and of literate populations to draw educators from. Further, the increase in the number of Arabic-language teachers generated the problem of under-qualification: 57% lacked appropriate training. During 1962 and 1963, the government hired 10,988 monitors ‘whose intellectual horizons [were] at times only slightly less limited than their pupils’ (Gallagher, 1968: 138). Similarly, the independence of Morocco and Tunisia also led to the generalization of education. The Moroccan government ended the divide and rule practice of the colonial era by reducing the multiplicity of types of State schools. But like Algeria, the lack of teachers, facilities and funds led to serious problems (Bentahila, 1983: 11). The difficulties were compounded by the hasty Arabization of the schooling system immediately after independence in 1956, and the lowering of standards. In April 1964, King Hassan II publically defended his country’s bilingualism and a moderate policy of Arabization. He also warned against the dangers of isolating Morocco by implementing any precipitous monolingualism. By contrast, the Tunisian leadership, the least traumatized of the three North African ruling classes, did not have any particular complex about reconciling the best of the French and the Arabic heritages (Gordon, 1978: 159, 164, 161).

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Moving back to Algeria’s educational sector under Ben Bella, the first grade in the primary cycle was fully Arabized in September 1964. Parents reacted in a lukewarm fashion, for educational standards seriously declined: they delayed registering their children until the second year where French remained dominant. Resistance to Arabization came also from liberal and secular intellectual quarters. For example, the Fifth Congress of Algerian Students, held in August 1963, voiced their dissatisfaction with Arabization and advocated the teaching of Berber because it had a ‘national dimension’ (Murphy, 1977: 7; Saad, 1992: 61). Moreover, to Arabize the first year in elementary schools, the government recruited in 1964 around 1000 Egyptians as Arabic-language instructors. To James McDougall, it was the beginning of a ‘self-imposed peripheralization relative to the [Middle East]’ (McDougall, 2011: 251). The leardership’s linguistic insecurity vis-à-vis the Levant is best illustrated by this anecdote: when the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser told Algerian officials that he did not have enough educators to meet their demands, Ben Bella’s envoy insisted that he should send him teachers ‘even if they were greengrocers’ (Grandguillaume, 2004: 28). In the end, most of these Egyptian instructors turned out to be craftsmen unqualified for teaching and ignorant of the social realities of Algeria. Their spoken Arabic was unintelligible to Algerians in general and Berberophones in particular. What is more, the majority of these Egyptians belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, who sowed the seeds of religious fundamentalism among a population with a low literacy rate (Abu-Haidar, 2000: 161; Wardhaugh, 1987: 189). In 1964, Tewfik El Madani, the Minister of Religious Affairs, opened the first Islamic Institute in Kabylia. Since El Madani had openly equated Arabization with Islamization, Kabyles viewed the foundation of this Institute as ‘aggressive Arabo-Islamism’ to assimilate them linguistically. A highly symbolic illustration of Ben Bella’s hostility towards Kabyles is his abolition in October 1962 of the only existing Chair of Berber Studies at Algiers University. The president’s decision met with strong opposition from the Kabyle community. In 1963–1964, FLN historical leader Hocine Aït Ahmed led fellow Kabyles into an armed struggle against the central authorities under the banner of the newly formed party, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS in French). This front united various and sometimes opposed ideological strands who were unanimous in their opposition to Arabization. All members of the FFS were, in fact, former nationalist militants who adhered to Arabo-Islamism as a way of transcending divisions to fight French colonialism. But they refused this ideology as an official dogma for independent Algeria that ignored Berber language and culture. Finally, after his defeat, Aït Ahmed went into exile in Europe. The

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authorities felt thus legitimized in implementing their monolithic view of Algeria’s linguistic and cultural identity (Mahé, 2001: 442; Ouerdane, 2003: 132, 143, 155).

Politicizing Language The army finally assumed power when Colonel Houari Boumediene led the Coup d’Etat of 19 June 1965. The military takeover would probably have long-lasting effects on issues of language, culture, identity and education. It undoubtedly put an end to the ongoing debates on ‘Who are we?’ and stopped the building of a consensus on the nature of the cultural system necessary for national integration. Unsurprisingly, the Boumediene era began with a dissolved parliament, a suspended Constitution and general mistrust among the population. This suspicion was due to Algerians’ mode of representation of the State based on their age-old attitudes towards the central power with which they had been on bad terms. During the Turkish period, collective consciousness associated the State with the payment of taxes, and Ottomans made no effort to integrate within a single community the 516 or more tribes that lived in the country. French colonization put an end to the tribal system but did not improve the population’s mistrust towards the authorities: the relationship between the administration and the individual existed in a state of ‘domination-subjection’ maintained by brute force. Even the FLN, which helped free Algeria, had failed to unite Algerians. Following Eric Hobsbawm, one could argue that this party was not nationalist – that is, a movement ‘which seeks to bond together those deemed to have common ethnicity, language, culture, historical past, and the rest’ (Hobsbawm, 1990: 179) – but internationalist. For example, Kabylia’s unrest in 1963–1964 corroborated the rise of tensions between the different constituent parts of the independence movement on the eve of the country’s liberation (Tripoli Programme) and after independence. The FLN’s failure further weakened the authorities’ legitimacy: the population regarded its leaders as the ‘new colons’. As an antidote to this unstable situation, Colonel Boumediene used radical nationalism in various activities, including the economic sphere. Thus, the military regime imposed an authoritarian top-down process with state capitalism run by technocrats, and with the secret police controlling the administration and the economy. It adopted ‘revolutionary’ economic policies for a new phase of development, called the ‘postcolonial transition’ (‘economic nationalism’). Priority was given to industrialization which produced a highly centralized ‘administered’ rentist socioeconomic system.

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Within a decade, ‘economic nationalism’ turned Algeria’s economy from an agricultural mono-exporting State into a petroleum mono-exporting one. The number of workers in the agricultural sector fell from 50% in 1967 to less than 30% in 1982 (Dahmani, 1999: 31; Ollivier, 1992: 130). Algeria’s new leadership also used nationalism in the cultural sphere to solve the legitimacy problem. The core of Algerian nationalism was Arabic: the language question stood high on the agenda of the national movement and drew its strength from its status as a bond between Islam and nationalism. So, the policy of Arabization ranked high among the Colonel’s priorities: he needed the legitimizing cover of the Arabic language and Islam. So, the Coup leader declared that his presidency was to be guided by Islamic ideals (Arabo-Islamism). As a result of this, the religio-conservatives joined his cabinet in July 1965 and the authorities abandoned the cautious approach to Arabization. The determination of the new rulers is best illustrated in a declaration made by one Ulema minister during a government session in the late 1960s. Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, Boumediene’s first Education Minister, declared: ‘This [Arabization] will not work, but we have to do it . . .’ (Grandguillaume, 1995: 18). Surprisingly, in December 1963, this Minister had shared his predecessor’s wisdom when writing: ‘Arabization is essential but it must not be rushed or chaos will follow; witness [. . .] the example of Morocco immediately after independence. Bilingualism should continue for several decades’ (Gordon, 1966: 191). The military takeover certainly dictated this Minister’s change of heart: the violent changes taken at the top level of political power left legitimacy in dispute, and the authorities chose language and religion to legitimize politics. The severity of Algeria’s internal discord made its leaders prefer radical measures and let the language question monopolize the political scene. The Ulemas had their own idea of man and society, and they intended to implement their ideology (Arabo-Islamism) through linguistic and educational policies. For the religio-conservatives, Islam set the entire agenda, and they could not dissociate the Arabic language from Islam. For example, one Ulema who held major posts in the post-Coup administration claimed that ‘The Arabic language and Islam are inseparable. Arabic has a privileged position as it is the language of the Koran and the Prophet, and the shared language of all Muslims in the world’ (Rouadjia, 1991: 111). However, the Ulemas’ philosophy could not integrate Algeria’s past in its entirety: they considered Algerians as ‘fundamentally’ Arab and Muslim. Their insistence on the Arabo-Islamic dimension alone prevented any harmonious integration of other constituent parts of Algerian identity, namely the Berber and French dimensions. And their Jacobean identification of Algeria’s linguistic situation was inherently confrontational.

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Under Boumediene’s rule, the generalization of Arabization concerned all three aspects of language management: status, corpus and acquisition planning. In 1976, the government sought to regularize itself by bringing the country to elections. Between June 1976 and February 1977, Algerians voted for the National Charter, a new Constitution, the president and the parliament. The Coup leader legitimized his power as chief of State, head of government, secretary-general of the single-party FLN, and commander of the armed forces. The second Constitution defined Algeria as a socialist country and affirmed that Islam was the religion of the State. Article 3 confirmed Arabic as the sole national and official language of the country, but unlike the preceding and subsequent constitutions, this article also read: ‘The State must generalize the use of the national language in all institutions.’ Prior to the referendum for the Charter, the authorities organized a wide-ranging debate on the content of the draft charter. Some conservatives asked for the weekend to become Thursday–Friday, instead of Saturday–Sunday, while Berber militants posed the problem of the teaching of Berber. In August 1976, the government decreed Thursday–Friday as the weekend in Algeria while neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia maintained Saturday–Sunday. As to Berber, Boumediene’s Charter condemned the Berber militants’ demand as ‘regionalism’ and a ‘social scourge to be eradicated’ (Murphy, 1977: 7). Moreover, in his speech closing the debate on the Charter, Boumediene said: ‘How would our children make themselves understood by their brothers in Cairo and Bagdad if, instead of learning Arabic, they were to learn Berber?’ (Sadi, 1991: 189). Indeed, Pan-Arabism was part and parcel of officialized Arabo-Islamism and it even affected corpus planning activities. In the late 1960s, language planners from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia developed a corpus of basic words to standardize the lexis of school manuals. The final compilation contained approximately 4800 words. The great majority of entries were shared with Literary Arabic or Middle Eastern varieties of Arabic. Compilers rejected language use in the Maghreb in general and Algeria in particular. The final lexical choices clearly show that the overriding consideration of the planners was not real language use but ideology: the lexicon as a whole aimed at linguistic unity with the rest of the Arab world. So, the Maghreban compilers were tuned to the practices of the Arab language academies which rejected colloquial words as divisive (Altoma, 1971: 710; Benabdi, 1986: 76).

Ever More Radical Measures The particular historical experience of each North African State with French colonialism affected the post-colonial language policies. David

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Gordon describes the situation for the three Maghreban nations in the mid1970s as follows: ‘Morocco’s policies were confused and uncertain, Tunisia had clearly opted for a bilingual approach, and Algeria, while in effect bilingual, was the most adamant in proclaiming its Arab identity and in insisting on total Arabization as its ultimate goal’ (Gordon, 1978: 173). Two examples can shed some light on the uncertainties of the Moroccan policy of Arabization. Figure 3.1 shows three photographs taken in the three countries of the Maghreb between 2008 and 2010. The remarkable thing is that the Arabic-monolingual ‘stop’ sign is not Algerian but Moroccan. This is even more extraordinary when one considers the fact that, out of the three North African polities, Algeria is the least open to international tourism. By contrast, the latter constitutes a major source of revenue for Morocco (Errihani, 2008: 42). The second example concerns these countries’ attitudes towards

Figure 3.1 Linguistic landscape in the three North African countries: The ‘stop’ sign in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia

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the establishment of institutionalized Francophonie, and the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF in French). Habib Bourguiba, the first Head of State in post-independent Tunisia, and President Leopold Senghor of Senegal were among the African leaders who assisted in forming this movement in the mid-1960s. One of Bourguiba’s beliefs may illustrate reasons for this move: throughout his life, he expressed doubt whether ‘any foreigner can consider himself educated unless he can speak French fluently’ (Battenburg, 1996: 7). Of the three North African nations, Tunisians were the most enthusiastic about their French dimension and the founding of Francophonie which they joined as early as 1970. In contrast, Moroccans refused to become a member of this movement at its beginnings because nationalists rejected French as a component of the historical and cultural makeup of their national identity. Finally, after the matter had been considered carefully, Morocco became a member of the OIF in 1981. As for Algerians, they refused to join the movement they described as a Trojan Horse for the pursuit of the narrower interests of France. Under Boumediene’s reign, the authorities described Francophonie as ‘neo-colonialist’, and in 1980 the successor of Boumediene attacked this idea as an expression of imperialism and camouflaged neocolonialism (Gordon, 1978: 172; Weinstein, 1983: 171, 184). Finally, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika attended the OIF Summit held in Beirut in October 2002 where the possibility of membership was discussed. A decade after the Beirut summit, Algeria still has the title ‘special guest’ in the Francophonie organization. On the back of this, Bouteflika applied for membership in the Commonwealth in the late 2000s. The Algerian president’s decision to join the English-speaking coalition was dictated by considerations similar to those of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, a Commonwealth member since November 2009. Kagame’s decision was primarily a political act: to turn his country’s back to France because of the Franco-Rwandan conflict-ridden relations. Similarly, Algeria, being also badly treated by France in the past, sought to integrate the Commonwealth because relations between the excolonial power and its former North African colony had blown hot and cold since the country’s independence in 1962 (BBC News, 2006; Howden, 2009; Métaoui, 2002; SkyscraperCity, 2011). After the military Coup of June 1965, the Algerian authorities believed in the function of schools as major socializing agents that could reflect and (re)produce the dominant social order or the order that the new rulers aimed to set up. In November 1965, Taleb Ibrahimi, the newly appointed Education Minister, asked the fundamental question: ‘What kind of man do we want to train (in schools)?’ (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 72). In a report drawn up in August 1966, he wrote: ‘National Education is, in some

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respects, like a business firm which needs to plan its production according to its future perspectives mapped out not only for a few years, but for almost a generation’ (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 101). Taleb Ibrahimi stressed the organic nature of culture when he quoted Anglo-American poet Thomas Stearns Eliot saying: ‘Culture is something that must grow. You cannot build a tree; you can only plant it, and care for it, and wait for it to mature . . .’ (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 66). In primary schools, the second year was completely Arabized in 1967– 1968, and 51% of the teaching personnel taught in Arabic with the importation of 1000 Syrian teachers. The number of Arabophone instructors increased substantially between 1965 and 1977. While the number of Frenchlanguage teachers remained stable – from 17,897 to 19,769 – the number of Arabic-language teachers increased by a factor of 4 – from 12,775 to 47,096. As to parents’ reaction to the Arabization of the second grade in primary schools, many delayed registering their children until the third year where French remained dominant. In response to this practice, the authorities Arabized the remaining grades in primary and secondary education. The period between 1970 and 1977 was one of intensive Arabization. The year 1971 was declared the ‘year of Arabization’ with the total Arabization of the third and fourth grades at the primary level. Consequently, the status of French changed from medium of instruction to a mere subject. In fact, systematic Arabization came as a reaction to France’s trade boycott of Algeria’s hydrocarbons, after Algerians nationalized oil in February 1971. In 1974, the whole primary educational level was Arabized with French taught as a foreign language in the third grade. One year later, the Ministry of Education Arabized subjects in the humanities (geography, history and philosophy) at the secondary level. In March of this year, Algeria’s zeal to Arabize at all cost made Moroccans have doubts about their moderation and under-hasty approach. At a conference in Tunis on language problems in March 1975, a Moroccan delegate declared: ‘We talk about Arabisation; the Algerians are doing something about it’ (Gordon, 1978: 153, 158, 174). It was around this period that a two-track system appeared at the secondary level. In the Arabic track, all subjects were taught in Arabic with the exception of French, offered as a foreign language. The majority of students in this section had a rural or recently urbanized background. In the Arabic– French bilingual track, children who studied scientific subjects in French and others in Arabic came mainly from a middle-class and/or old urbanized strata. With regard to educational standards, Arabized students were generally inferior to bilinguals because of a weak form of bilingualism compounded by the mediocre professional training of teachers, and by textbooks of low quality. For example, the number of Arabized schoolchildren electing to

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major in scientific disciplines fell from 42.5% in 1974 to 28.8% in 1977. As a result of this, those who graduated from the Arabic track would find it difficult to get well-paid jobs in the emerging industrial sector and the new economy which required competency in French (Ruedy, 1992: 228). These discriminatory educational practices accompanied the strategy of ‘elite closure’. The leadership resorted to French educational institutions to prevent their offspring from enrolling at schools that catered for the masses. In truth, elites educated their children in French to have less competition for the high-paying jobs and prestigious career options in modern business and technology which required competence in the ex-colonial language. France which preferred elites to acquire the French language (colonial bilingualism) turned out to be an understanding partner. After 1962, the French government maintained the Office Universitaire et Culturel Français which operated between six and nine secondary schools (lycées) and 40 primary schools mainly for French children. The French institutions provided instruction for 15,000 children of which 37% were Algerian. The number of Algerian students would later rise to 13,500, most of whom came from the ruling and middle classes (Assous, 1985: 107; Gordon, 1978: 150). The French centres of learning maintained a high-quality education (with a strong form of Arabic– French bilingualism) while the national schooling system seriously declined in standards. That leaders showed their preference for exclusive institutions over national ones is corroborated by the Minister of Culture in the current Algerian government (in the autumn of 2012) when she recalled in 1995 her schooldays in a girls’ secondary school in Algiers. As she came from the country she had to follow the Arabic track while the nieces of Boumediene and Taleb Ibrahimi attended the bilingual section (Messaoudi & Schemla, 1995: 59). What is remarkable is that those leaders ideologically committed to the intensive Arabization of public life in the country used a strong form of ‘elite closure’ to maintain social differentiation and inequalities. This practice, which shows conflicting societal goals, can only increase people’s suspicion towards their leadership and severely undermine the credibility of the language policy implemented by the government. In April 1977, Boumediene chose a new Minister of Education, Mostefa Lacheraf, a significant intellectual in revolutionary and independent Algeria. Lacheraf was a staunch opponent of intensive Arabization, favouring gradualism and a strong form of Arabic–French bilingualism in public schools. His appointment signalled a pause in the overhasty Arabization, but this did not last long: Boumediene died in December 1978 and Lacheraf resigned. Another military officer, Chadli Bendjedid, succeeded the deceased Head of State. To consolidate his position, Bendjedid reversed many of his predecessor’s policies, in the economy in particular. He gradually dismissed socialist

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orthodoxy and, in late 1987, he started dismantling State capitalism. In January 1986, the government promulgated the new National Charter which defined Algerians as Arab and Muslim and asserted that ‘the Arabic language is an essential constituent part of the cultural identity of the Algerian people’. The charter allowed Bendjedid to turn to the Arabiclanguage quarters and to Muslim fundamentalists to counter Boumediene’s partisans. Indeed, the Muslim fundamentalists’ influence increased dramatically throughout the 1980s before the showdown in the early 1990s and the adoption of more radical measures in language legislation. In the meantime, the government had allowed the Arabic-language establishment to dominate educational matters. Lacheraf was instantly replaced by Mohammed Cherif Kharroubi, a Pan-Arabist Kabyle and a graduate of Bagdad University who was detested by his fellow Kabyles for his Arabist zeal and his refusal to speak his mother tongue (Roberts, 1980: 121, 124). The new Minister resumed the policy of total Arabization with the introduction of French and English as foreign languages in the fourth and eighth grade, respectively. In higher education, the social sciences, economics and communication curriculum were completely Arabized by 1985. In September 1989, the first fully Arabized freshman cohort registered in science and technology in institutions at the tertiary level. In March 1999, the rate of Arabization in higher education was 46% and concerned mainly the social sciences and the humanities – in the 2000s most scientific fields of study at the university were still taught in French (Cherrad-Benchefra & Derradji, 2004: 166). In sum, between 1965 and 1989, the Ministry of Education in charge of primary and secondary levels turned a completely Frenchified educational system into an Arabized one, both linguistically (Arabicization) and culturally (Arabization). Immediately after Taleb Ibrahimi became Education Minister in July 1965, cultural Arabization spilled over into most courses and school manuals. Under his authority, the educational administration remained faithful to pan-Arab practices: the curriculum was focused inward, beginning with History. The teaching of History for the sixth grade was the first to be Arabized both in form and content. In the form: starting from September 1966, History was henceforth taught in Literary Arabic. This is how a former cadre of the Ministry of Education described in 1995 the Arabization of content: ‘for that particular year [1966], school-children tackled History starting not from Antiquity but from the beginnings of Islam. These measures were symbolic of the new direction taken by the educational policy’ (Haouati, 1995: 56). In the early 1990s, students in the eighth grade used the only history book in their curriculum which dealt with Medieval

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Algeria. In this manual, Arab conquerors were constantly called ‘Muslims’ and presented as the ‘liberators’ of the native inhabitants, the Berbers. The latter, described as ‘Maghrebans’ and being colonized, then, by the Byzantines, were ‘liberated’ by the Arabs. Children were also taught that the Berbers had completely lost their identity and fused into Islam. Nowhere could be found any reference to slavery or war treasures collected by force from the native Berbers by the conquering Arabs. Moreover, designers of the History manual for the eighth grade kowtowed to Middle Easterners: 75% of the contents of this book dealt with the history of the Middle East (Remaoun, 1993). To return the favour to the French colons who had claimed to be the heirs of Ancient Rome, the five-century-long Roman presence in Algeria (evidenced by archaeological traces) was conspicuously absent from school books. The absence of relics from Algeria’s pre-Islamic past reinforced and maintained a kind of collective amnesia. It is worth mentioning at this point that, between the 1970s and the 2000s, Arabization was accompanied by the adoption of traditional teaching methods, rigid ‘Pavlovian’ pedagogical techniques that stress obedience, memorization and repetition. This undoubtedly affected young people’s linguistic ability and their intellectual development. Once in school, the child underwent teaching techniques and pedagogical contents that encouraged ossified linguistic models at the expense of linguistic complexity. For example, the 1965 instructions sent by the Ministry of Education insisted on the following: teachers should teach ‘oral Arabic’, the language of dialogues and avoid language for description and narratives; they should use simple linguistic structures for sentences: Subject–Verb–Object; in this ‘simplified’ language, only a restricted list of adjectives could be used with not more than 32 adjectives of the type ‘big-small’. One Ministerial recommendation read: ‘The teacher should avoid giving a large number of meanings. He should choose the generic term “bird” instead of “swallow” and the word “red” for “ruby”’. This insistence on concrete concepts meant that the child could not theorize and develop abstract ideas. Moreover, recommendations sent to teachers on how to use the book for reading in primary schools contained the following: • • • •

The programme will consist in correcting and organizing the linguistic expressions that children bring from their homes. The programme starts with the child’s language and his previous acquisitions with a view of correcting them. The school contribution only serves as a substitute for correcting the children’s expressions. To bowdlerize and correct expressions acquired by children before entering school (Boudalia-Greffou, 1989: 75, 33–35).

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The authors of these instructions adopted colonial linguicist ideology and discourse: the child’s mother tongue was constantly described as a ‘small language’, a ‘dialect’, ‘faulty’, ‘defective’, ‘unorganized’, ‘unsophisticated’ and so on (Chaker, 1981: 451). Most of these terms of denigration gave the impression that Algerian speakers were linguistically and culturally disabled and that they needed some kind of ‘rehabilitation’. Another series of ministerial ‘Instructions on Reading, Conversation, Religious education, Koran, Writing, Arithmetic’, published in 1971, clearly stated: ‘Our job will be twofold. We will correct through the child the language of his family. As the child is under the influence of his family, he will influence it in turn’ (Boudalia-Greffou, 1989: 36). By dissociating child and family, schools aimed at turning children into agents of linguicide, a legacy of the colonial era. In fact, one FLN party cadre advocated the solution of ‘natural death’ for the Berber question when he said that the problem of the Berber language would be solved when the children will not be able to understand their parents and vice versa (Saadi-Mokrane, 2002: 45).

Oppositional Identities President Bendjedid’s period of office was characterized by unprecedented social unrest which announced the 1990s showdown. Rapid social change (see the next section) led to the major uprisings of October 1988 which shook and transformed the regime. It also allowed Algerians to resume the debate on ‘Who are we?’ interrupted by the Coup d’Etat of June 1965 (see Chapter 5). Following the 1988 crisis, the government adopted a new Constitution in February 1989 which no longer defined Algeria as a socialist State. Article 3 confirmed Arabic as the single national official language, but the obligation upon the State imposed under Boumediene’s rule was removed. Unlike the first two constitutions, the third one guaranteed basic human rights (freedom of expression, meeting and association of a political character) and it explicitly asserted the Islamic nature of Algerian State and society. In the sphere of political liberalization, the authorities in Algeria imitated neighbouring Morocco and King Hassan II’s internal politics: they encouraged the proliferation of parties to diffuse opposition. Long before the 1988 intifada and the establishment of a multiparty system, Algerians were reacting with violence to the government’s inability to provide a better future for the majority, particularly the youth. But riots did not concern only economic performance: conflicts linked to language and identity erupted immediately after Bendjedid rose to power. Between the autumn of 1979 and the spring of 1980, the authorities confronted two major crises linked to language. The first conflict concerned

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Arabized students of Algiers University who went on strike in November 1979. Their movement, which lasted for two months, spread to other universities. Arabized students, who by then constituted 25% of the student body, rebelled against French favouritism and the lack of real economic opportunities for graduates in Arabic. Protesters identified with officialized AraboIslamism but they wanted to end French hegemony and reverse their unfavourable socio-economic position. In fact, the policy of Arabization had severely affected Algeria’s labour market: it generated a linguistic division of labour typical of differentially stratified societies with an unequal distribution of resources between core and peripheral groups (Hechter, 1975: 37). The core group consisted of French-speaking elites and urban dwellers, and the periphery comprised ‘frustrated’ Arabized graduates from poor rural backgrounds or recently urbanized families. The government feared that the student protest would be captured by Islamic fundamentalists who had been on the rise. So, it accelerated Arabization at the secondary and university levels through decrees and the appointment of strong advocates of this language policy in ministries and educational institutions. For example, in August 1980, the Ministry of Higher Education ordered the complete Arabization of the departments of social sciences and humanities in universities. Moreover, the authorities immediately Arabized the judicial system and provided many new jobs for unemployed monolingual law graduates. This is how Arabophone school- and university-leavers started to rise through the system to dominate the cultural spheres of the country’s activities. By contrast, functions related to economic power continued to be occupied by those competent in French. When Arabized students ceased their strike, unrest grew in Kabylia where uneasiness had been fuelled by, among other things, attacks on Berber language and culture, perceived as being under siege. In March–April 1980, the entire Kabyle region defied the central government and went into civil disobedience. This led to the first and most serious rioting of Algeria’s decolonized history. Kabyles demanded the institutionalization of Berber as the language of instruction, the media and so on. The police crackdown on striking students and workers caused the death of 30−50 people and the wounding of hundreds. After Kabylia’s convulsions, which have come to be known as the ‘Berber Spring’, Algeria’s socio-political panorama was never to be the same again – it was the first overt sign of the predictable collapse of officialized Arabo-Islamism. The language issue got the better of the regime which had felt invincible since the military Coup in June 1965. In fact, the ‘Berber Spring’ was the final stage of a long process of resistance by the Kabyle community which had started with the armed struggle in 1963–1964 led by Hocine Aït Ahmed. Following this uprising, all subsequent governments remained clearly hostile to Berberophones and their

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aspirations, relayed by activists in and out of Algeria, particularly in France. In the aftermath of Kabylia’s unrest in 1980, ideological guidance came from the Berber Cultural Movement (MCB in French) whose roots go back to the ‘Berberist crisis’ of 1949 (see Chapter 2). The agenda of the MCB is both national and regional, and its nationalism constitutes a direct challenge to officialized Arabo-Islamism. Its activists opposed compulsory Arabization and demanded the institutionalization of colloquial Arabic and Berber. They refused the Arabization of education because of its ‘de-Frenchifying’ objectives and its alleged inability to convey democratic and secular ideals. Berberist militants called for a Western-style socio-political system, and for democratization to guarantee their linguistic and cultural rights within Algeria. The MCB also demanded the advent of a secular State with the French language and culture as its vectors. It is true, one must point out, that Berberism is just as acculturationist and imitative of Western (French) culture as the Arabo-Islamic nationalism which it seeks to supplant. The Berberist movement in its ‘anti-Arab’ and extremist expression tends towards an exclusive and essentialist ideology similar to the ‘AraboIslamic’ dogma of ‘authenticity’ endorsed by Algeria’s central authorities. Indeed, it may not be unjust to see in Pan-Berber nationalism and its demand for a ‘Berber nation’ an effort to provide a counterweight to the international vision of Arabism. This Berber ‘authenticity’ would prove difficult to sustain in the face of national realities. As will be discussed in the Epilogue, a group of nationalist ‘awakeners’ would soon emerge with a narrative based on a recycled ‘Kabyle myth’ ideology inherited from the colonial age (Maddy-Weitzman, 2001: 38; Mahé, 2001: 471; McDougall, 2011: 252). Berberism as a colonial legacy has not affected neighbouring Morocco the way it has in Algeria. Historically, the Moroccan Berber movement is a recent phenomenon. Prior to the country’s independence in 1956, the long delay made by the French to occupy Morocco in 1912 prevented them from implementing a Berber policy similar to the one imposed upon Algeria. The 1930 Berber Dahir gave rise to an international campaign in Europe (Spain and Switzerland) and throughout the Muslim world. The Dahir did not only damage France’s policy of division among colonials, but it transformed Moroccan nationalism into a political current with a large audience at home and abroad. In fact, the 1930 Berber Decree unified the national movement that led to the defeat of France in Morocco. And unlike Algeria, the lack of penetration of Berberophone areas by French schools prevented the introduction of language teaching in Berber and a ‘print culture’ in this idiom. As a result of this, Berber nationalism failed to emerge under colonial rule. So, Moroccans rallied around the Sultan, the ancient AraboIslamic civilization, and its vector the Arabic language closely associated

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with religious prestige. After Morocco got its independence in 1956, the fear of separatism and disunity thwarted the advent of a Moroccan brand of Berberism. This lasted until the 1980s, and the foundation of several Berber associations. Voices calling for the recognition of Berber language and culture which were checked by the authorities in the 1980s became louder in the 1990s. In August 1994, King Hassan II called publically for the teaching of Berber in primary schools. The death of this monarch in 1999 and the accession of King Mohammed VI to the throne amplified Berberist demands. In July and October 2001, the new Sultan recognized Berber in two public speeches and called for its introduction in Morocco’s educational system. He also established the Royal Institute for Amazigh [Berber] Culture (IRCAM in French) to revitalize and promote the Berber language and culture (Errihani, 2008: 87–95; Segalla, 2009: 227–235). Prior to this Moroccan move, the Algerian authorities had created in 1995 an institution similar to IRCAM. In the 1990s–2000s, unrest in Kabylia was to be rekindled nearly every decade. Between September 1994 and April 1995 three general strikes known collectively as the ‘satchels strike’ affected the entire educational sector of the Berber-speaking regions. Consequently, in May 1995, the authorities decreed the creation of the High Commission for Amazigh (Berber) Affairs (H.C.A. in French) to be attached to the president’s office. The mission of the H.C.A. was twofold: rehabilitate Berber culture and introduce the Berber language in the systems of education and communication. Then in April 2001, a young Kabyle was shot dead while in custody, and uprisings burst out with unprecedented violence in Kabylia and the capital, Algiers. Following these incidents known as the ‘Black Spring’, parliamentarians amended, in April 2002, Article 3 of the Constitution and declared Berber a national (but not official) language. The Algerian government established by decree the National Centre for Berber Language Planning in the spring of 2002, and the National Pedagogic and Linguistic Centre for the Teaching of Berber (CNPLET in French) in December 2004 (Benrabah, 2007b: 76–80). It is interesting that Algeria’s leadership seems to have come a long way to admitting the country’s linguistic pluralism: in December 1981, the then Head of State, Chadli Bendjedid, did not accept Berber as an autonomous language because, he claimed, ‘two thirds of [its] words [. . .] are Arabic words or have Arabic roots’ (Chaker, 1998: 134). In effect, the partial recognition of Berber in 2002 can be considered a first step towards the establishment of a society that values its plurality. But it needs an atmosphere of tolerance and respect for differences. It faces a long and winding road, with major hurdles to be overcome. The main obstacle comes from the regime, its natural allies the Arabic-language cadre who dominate the educational sector,

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and Islamic fundamentalists who emerged in the 1980s as the most important movement with its own oppositional identity based on Islamic nationalism. As in the rest of the Arabo-Islamic world, Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria derived its success directly from the nationalist leaders’ incompetence and their failure to deliver the better lives they had promised to their people. Islamist discourse rejected the leadership’s foreign ideologies and demanded the establishment of theocracy to conform social and political institutions to the will of God as expressed in scripture, tradition and the holy law, Sharic a. In Algeria, the separation between Arabic-language militants and Islamic fundamentalists is far from watertight, as many of the former turned to Islamic fundamentalism. The most notable example is Abassi Madani, a former FLN loyalist and an Arabic-language teacher at Algiers University. He reinvented himself within Islamist nationalism and became a founder and leader of the FIS, the most powerful Islamist political party in the late 1980s. Moreover, most Maghreban and non-Maghreban observers believe that Islamist fundamentalism has spread its influence over the largest part of Algerian society mainly through the hasty Arabization of the educational system. Schoolchildren have come to accept obediently and uncritically xenophobic, chauvinist and obscurantist ideas that facilitate the recruitment of radical Islamists. US political scientist John Entelis, who had lived in Algeria in the late 1970s, was among the first to sound the alarm. In 1981, he warned against the rise of a ‘“third” generation of disillusioned and economically “unabsorbable” counter-elites [who] often tend to be semi-educated, traditionalist school-leavers, trained only in Arabic and more hostile than frustrated in their feelings toward modernization’ (Entelis, 1981: 208). Several empirical works tend to corroborate Entelis’ predictions. For example, James Coffman, a PhD student from Stanford University, carried out a qualitative and quantitative study at Algiers University campus in 1989/1990, the year the first promotion of entirely Arabized students was admitted to higher education. To Coffman, Arabization generated students with very weak critical and analytical skills, and compared with the previous cohorts, the new generation was more Arab-Islamic and more limited in its breadth and depth. Coffman’s study shows that a high correlation between Arabization and Islamization persisted across all groups studied (Coffman, 1992: 146–147, 185). Moreover, traditionalism and conservatism have increased dramatically since the 1980s–1990s. In March 2009, the Algerian Centre for Information and Documentation on the Rights of Children and Women (CIDDEF in French) published the conclusions of a large-scale survey. According to CIDDEF, two out of 10 adults tolerated women who had a job, and six ado-

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lescents and seven adults out of 10 wished ‘all Algerian women and girls wore the Hijab [Islamic veil]’ (CIDDEF, 2009: 26). There are at least two factors behind the collusion of Arabization with Islamization in Algeria. First, immediately after independence, the lack of qualified teaching personnel caused the authorities to employ whoever was available: graduates from Koranic schools in and out of the country, mainly from Egypt, who confused teaching Arabic with teaching the Koran and religion. Many members of this personnel made careers by gaining control of positions in (almost) completely Arabized ministries, the Ministry of Education in particular. Second, in the 1980s, Algerian society was overwhelmed by the powerful rise of political Islamism whose partisans proved to be staunch supporters of systematic Arabization. Their radicalism left no breathing space for moderates, and Arabic teachers were under Islamist pressure. For example, during an FLN-party Congress in 1986, Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, Boumediene’s first Education Minister, demanded the establishment of Sharica and an Islamic republic in Algeria (Harbi, 1994: 204). Finally, the FIS won the municipal elections in June 1990 and the parliamentary polls in December 1991 – the government’s annulment of the latter led to the 1990s crisis, the showdown Charles Gallagher had predicted in the 1960s. Within this escalating atmosphere characterized by collusion between Arabic-language elites, Islamists and the regime, the authorities imposed, in January 1991, probably the most important French-style Jacobean piece of language legislature ever to be enacted since 1962. As a final move towards total Arabization of public life in the country, the Algerian parliament enacted the law known as ‘Act N° 91–05 of 16 January 1991, on the generalization of the use of the Arabic language’. Following the implosion of the State at the beginning of 1992, this law was suspended. Then, in July 1996, it was readopted to appease Islamist fundamentalists and conservative nationalists. The government set new deadlines for its nation-wide implementation: the administrative sectors were to be totally Arabized by 5 July 1998 and tertiary education by 5 July 2000. As a result, Berberist militants declared this law racist and a prelude to bringing the FIS to power. Ten days before the full implementation of the revived law, a noted Kabyle singer was assassinated on 25 June 1998. Several week-long outbursts of violence followed in Kabylia, in some major cities and in France. Protesters attacked government property, tearing down Arabic-language signposts, leaving intact those in French and Berber. In sum, the enactment of the law of 1991 and its revival at the end of the 1990s crowned a three-decade-long era marked by the language question monopolising the political scene with ferocious linguistic debates, sometimes with tragic results. When the law officially came into force in July 1998, it was completely disconnected from social realities.

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Planned and Unplanned Developments The de-Frenchification and Arabization of Algeria took place within major social changes which affected the language situation after 1962, in both its planned and unplanned developments. Demographic growth went unchecked by the authorities: from 10 million inhabitants in 1962, their number rose to 23 million in 1987, and an estimated 37.4 million in 2012. In the early 1990s, 70% of the population was aged 30 and under. In the late 2000s, young people represented around 63%. The rate of urbanization also increased substantially: from 25% to 30% in 1962, it moved to 50% in 1987 and around 66% in 2010. The universalization of education led to a dramatic increase in the student population: the number of enrolments in primary and secondary schools moved from 3.9 million in 1979, to 7.8 million in 2003 and to 8.2 million in September 2011. As a result of this, the literacy rate rose from around 10% in 1962 to 50% in 1987, and around 70% at the beginning of this millennium. On the back of this, the implosion of the single-party system following the 1988 uprisings led to (moderate) political liberalization, the implementation of a moderately diversified market economy and the proliferation of telecommunications media. For example, the technological revolution provided by satellite TV channels, radio stations, mobile telephony and computers (internet) has impacted greatly on Algerian society. The limited network of fixed lines estimated at 2.6 million in 2009 has been offset by the rapid increase in mobile-cellular subscribership following the privatization of the country’s telecommunications sector in 2000. From 21 million mobile-cellular phones in 2005, the number of subscribers reached 32.7 million in 2009. The number of internet users rose from 20,000 in 2003 to 4.7 million in 2009 (Benrabah, 2009b: 210, 215; CIA, 2012). The planned results of linguistic Arabization (i.e. Arabicization) have been spectacular, from a quantitative point of view. In the educational sector, Literary Arabic is the exclusive medium of instruction in primary and secondary schools and in the humanities at the university level. In addition to the Ministry of Education where de-Frenchification is almost complete, the shift to Arabic is either complete or almost complete in the Justice Ministry, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the registry offices in town halls. Most frontline local government services bear monolingual Arabic façades, while street and road signs are bilingual in Arabic–French in Arabophone areas and trilingual in Arabic–Berber–French in Berberophone regions. In fact, the post-1962 spread of Arabic has frustrated the triumphalism of colonial linguist William Marçais who based his 1931 predictions about the future of Arabic on, among other things,

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the linguistic landscape of the city of Tlemcen (see Chapter 2). Today, drivers and visitors are welcomed by a monolingual Arabic message when entering Tlemcen, and in the city centre they discover the same language alone on façades of the Arts Centre, for example, or with French on street signs (see Figure 3.2). Note that in Arabic–French bilingual signs, the positioning of Arabic at the top and French at the bottom expresses a linguistic hierarchy: the former language has an official status and represents the language preferred by the authorities, while the latter is tolerated and without any official status. The expansion of Literary Arabic in Algeria results from both the authorities’ political and ideological commitment to Arabization and the substantial increase in literacy and related aspects, such as population growth. For

Figure 3.2 Linguistic landscape in Tlemcen

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example, in July 2012, the majority of the literate population – estimated at around 70% for a total population of around 37.4 million – could read and write in Arabic. Compared with the situation in 1962–1963, these figures are remarkable. In this respect, Arabization has been a success story. Nonetheless, the rise of unplanned developments shows that Algeria’s language policy is not such a success after all. Some consequences of language choice were discussed earlier in this chapter. The most striking, the political consequences reveal spectacular conflicts born out of a linguistically divided labour market, and the emergence of oppositional identities based on Berberist and Islamist nationalisms. These developments have reinforced the deep divisions of Algerian society. A related issue concerns the effects of the rapid and complete Arabization of education on school-leavers. As an illustration, only the lowering of professional standards will be considered here. Many Algerian parents worry about school levels and an educational system which produces semi-literate generations of ‘bilingual illiterates’ who master neither Arabic nor French. In response to this situation, parents established private schools that existed in a legal vacuum until the beginning of this millennium. As to students’ weak linguistic competence, it makes headline news nearly every year when new freshman cohorts register in institutions of higher education. For example, when the results of the Baccalaureate exam were made public in July 2011, the media focussed on students’ poor performance in French for language and literature disciplines, and in English for management and economics fields of study (El Khabar, 2011). Students’ decline in French proficiency has become a major handicap for pursuing higher studies in courses taught in French (sciences, medicine, engineering and so on). In mid-November 2005, the Minister of Higher Education declared that 80% of first-year students at the university failed their final exams because of an erosion in their ability to speak and write the ex-colonial language (Allal, 2005: 13; Maiz & Rouadjia, 2005: 13). Similarly, Abdelâli Bentahila maintains that the implementation of Arabization in neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia has also placed obstacles in the path of language proficiency in French and educational success (Bentahila, 1983: 126). The most remarkable unplanned developments concern the spread of Berber in Kabylia. Following the 1988 uprisings and the opening up of political life, this region acquired relative linguistic and cultural autonomy. In 1989, activists of the MCB and the FFS formed the party called Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD in French). During the first really democratic municipal election of June 1990, the RCD won a majority and imposed its agenda. Its programme advocated multilingualism, the recognition of Berber, the reintroduction of French in schools for the teaching of scientific disciplines,

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and the reinforcement of bilingualism in institutions of higher education. Today, the spread of Berber in Kabylia is symbolically illustrated in its linguistic landscape, with Berber written in Tifinagh (the ancient North African script) and/or Latin characters. Street names, road signs and names of institutions are systematically transcribed in the three languages imposed by the RCD local authorities: Arabic, Berber and French in that order. Here, the positioning of languages clearly shows the official hierarchy imposed by the central authorities. The situation with commercial signs presents a sharp contrast with signage in public space: shops and businesses remain contested territories for these three languages. In recent years, most commercial signs have mainly been in Berber and French as shown in Figure 3.3. As to the positioning, size, prominence and order of the languages, French seems to have a slight advantage over Berber. Finally, the Kabyle situation provides a good example of how private (commercial) signs in the linguistic landscape of a territory realistically reflect the multilingual nature of a polity in general (Algeria) and a particular region in particular (Kabylia).

The Anachronism of Arabization: Multiple Voices and Hybridity In the closing years of the 20th century, the situation reached a deadlock. One man proved instrumental in breaking this impasse, and Algeria would illustrate yet again the influence of individuals in shaping public debates on language. After they had had five Heads of State during the 1990s, Algerians brought, in April 1999, Abdelaziz Bouteflika to the presidency – a former diplomat and a member of the hardline clique that seized power with Colonel Boumediene in June 1965. Bouteflika became President less than one year after the 1991 law on the generalization of Arabic (Act No. 91–05) had officially come into force. Surprisingly, the new president started dealing with the language issue in public. He declared: ‘It is unthinkable . . . to spend ten years studying pure sciences in Arabic when it would only take one year in English’. Bouteflika appeared to have tacitly acknowledged the failure of Arabization at least in science and technology teaching, and to envisage a return to bilingualism in these fields. In his opinion, ‘there has never been a language problem in Algeria, but simply rivalry and fights for French-trained executives’ positions’. Not only did Bouteflika make such comments, but at the same time he used French in public. Bouteflika also demonstrated his skill in Literary Arabic. He adopted bilingual fluency in Arabic and French to project a role model for the bilingual Algerian citizen. In fact, in 2003, one of

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Figure 3.3 Public and commercial signs in Kabylia

the military generals who handpicked him as their candidate in 1999 mentioned the power of Bouteflika’s oratory as a major reason for his choice (Nezzar, 2003: 62). The new Head of State’s discourse was clearly opposed to his predecessors’ linguistic practices. And with his use of French, he purposefully violated the 1991 law which prohibited any and all official public use of any other language than Arabic. He also underlined the anachronistic aspect of Act N°91–05. Furthermore, he admitted publicly that ‘our culture is plural’, in sharp contrast with previous job holders’ insistence on ‘authenticity’. His constant use of French created an uproar among those of the Arabized elite who supported monolingualism and the eradication of French. Bouteflika’s public response was: ‘For Algeria, I will speak French, Spanish and English, and, if necessary, Hebrew.’ Then, he declared: ‘let it be known

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that an uninhibited opening up to other international languages [. . .] does not constitute perjury. [. . .] This is the price we have to pay to modernize our identity. Chauvinism and withdrawal are over. They are sterile. They are destructive’ (Benrabah, 2007b: 27–30). Since Algeria’s independence, the various governments have tended to exacerbate and politicize the language issue. Some analysts have interpreted Bouteflika’s discourse as an attempt to make the language question less emotionally charged, to lessen the ferocity of linguistic debates, and to adopt a more pragmatic and rational orientation. In fact, his use of French has definitely freed Algerians from guilt: a phenomenon described by several sociolinguists as the ‘Bouteflika effect’. Other analysts saw the Head of State’s new discourse as the harbinger of change: the transformation of economic and political spheres required a new language policy. For example, whenever he talked about education, he described it as a ‘doomed educational system’ whose ‘standards have reached an intolerable level’. He even criticized Algeria’s youth who ‘master no language’ (Métaoui, 2011: 4). The Algerian schooling system has been in effect detrimental to the quality of education and open mindedness. Also, it has serious side effects: it encourages religious fanaticism which reinforces fundamentalist terrorism in the world. Prior to Bouteflika’s rise to power, international institutions had become aware of the dangers of this type of education (Byrd, 2003: 78). As a result, in 1999, Bouteflika’s first government committed itself to ending its interference in pedagogical matters, to revising school cycles, curricula and textbooks, and to promoting teacher training as means of eradicating Islamist fanaticism fuelled by schools. The State set itself the task of legalizing private schools that existed in a legal vacuum. Finally, in May 2000, Bouteflika set up the National Commission for the Reform of the Educational System (CNRSE in French). It was within this atmosphere of change that I decided to carry out a survey and measure language attitudes among secondary upper school students in Algeria. At least two reasons justified the choice of this population. First, young people represent the majority of the country’s population and they determine the future. Second, attitudes of adolescents in postcolonial societies can be nuanced by broader issues of identity that are negotiated within an educational system which minorizes their first language(s). In April–May 2004, 1051 students filled out a written direct closed-question attitude questionnaire. Informants were registered in secondary schools in three cities in the west of the country whose population was mainly Arabic speaking. The urban centres were chosen according to the number of their inhabitants: Oran as the large city, and Saïda and Ghazaouet as medium-sized and small-sized centres, respectively. All respondents were aged between 14–15 and 20, the 17–18 year olds

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represented 55.6%, and female informants 57.5%. One part of the written questionnaire consisted in associating 30 statements with one of the four major languages of Algeria (dialectal Arabic, Literary Arabic, French and Berber). In another task, students had to indicate, along a Likert attitude scale, the strength of their agreement or disagreement with a series of 25 statements on a five-point range. In the third activity, respondents answered one question by selecting one out of 10 alternatives, each containing one or a combination of two, three or four languages. These tasks were intended to assess several major attitudinal aspects, five of which will be considered here: (1) language preferences; (2) language and national identity; (3) traits related to ‘sacredness’, ‘beauty’ and so on; (4) traits pertaining to the language of action, development, modernity and so on; (5) attitudes towards bilingualism and multilingualism. (Results on the rivalry between English and French are presented in Chapter 4.) Table 3.1 presents students’ language preferences, and their attitudes towards the language of their ethnic (national) identity, of religious values and ‘modernity’. It is worth noting here that the statistics for Berber are consistently low for the majority of respondents come from Arabophone regions. Percentages for the first two statements on language preferences Table 3.1 Language preferences and the language of religious values, ‘modernity’ and national identity Statements

(1) Language that I like most (2) I like to learn/study in (3) I feel close to God in (4) The language of religious and moral values is (5) The language that allows me understand the past is (6) The language which allows openness to the world is (7) The language of science and technology is (8) The most modern language is (9) I say ‘I love you’ to my lover in (10) I feel really Algerian in

Literary Arabic (%)

French (%)

Berber (%)

17.3 5.8 15.3 12.4

36.0 37.6 82.0 80.0

44.4 55.3 1.9 3.2

2.2 1.3 0.8 1.4

33.8

51.6

12.1

2.5

1.5

6.6

91.5

0.5

1.8

11.7

85.7

0.8

3.4 24.5 72.4

9.1 15.0 22.4

82.1 58.6 3.0

5.4 2.0 2.2

Dialectal Arabic (%)

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show that French disqualifies Literary Arabic. The results for statements 3−5 reveal that traits related to ‘sacredness’, ‘religious values’ and ‘authenticity’ are usually associated with Literary Arabic. By contrast, French is the language of ‘openness to the world’, ‘scientific development’ and ‘modernity’ (statements 6−8). These reactions support what some Algerian intellectuals warned against in the 1960s: they argued that rapid Arabization might encourage new generations to prefer French as the language for action and Literary Arabic for prayers and poetry (see Chapter 5). What is more, the rulers’ use of ‘elite closure’ reinforces these preferences and myths. In return, the majority which is denied the right to social advancement considers, consciously or not, the official language policy as linguistic expropriation by the suspicious establishment. Arabization as a hegemonic socio-political project has thus led to resistance and to the maintenance of French. What is even more ironic is that the regime’s ideologues who had predicted the disappearance of dialectal Arabic and Berber would be just as frustrated as the colonial linguicist forecasters before them. Algerian Arabic and Berber have remained the major vectors of daily life and social interaction. Part of the answer to this language maintenance is provided by the results for the last two statements in Table 3.1. The percentages for statement 9 (‘I say “I love you” to my lover in . . .’) show that courtship for the majority of young Algerians involves French (58.6%), with Algerian Arabic coming second (24.5%). In fact, the use of the ex-colonial language in contexts of courtship is considered more ‘liberating’ because taboos, which cannot be communicated in Arabic, are transgressed by French which marks impersonality and socio-psychological distance. However, around one-quarter of the surveyed sample prefer colloquial Arabic to transgress taboos, and this contrasts with older bilingual generations’ exclusive use of French in North Africa in general and Algeria in particular (see Bentahila, 1983: 28). The rise in the use of Algerian Arabic in this context seems to reveal, among other things, a decline in the number of balanced Arabic–French bilinguals in Algeria. As to the language of national identity, the results for the 10th statement corroborate what has been reported about other countries in North Africa: in the post-independence era, Maghreban people tend to associate national identity not with Literary Arabic but with the form of Arabic spoken within the borders of their respective countries (for Morocco, see Marley, 2004: 38). The maintenance of minorized languages in Algeria can also result from the majority’s multilingual orientations, an aspect completely ignored by language planners. The latter prefer instead the transfer of the Western theoretical construct based on the myth of a unilingual nation-state (monolingual habitus). Respondents’ reactions towards bilingualism and multilingualism reveal that the majority value quite highly both speaking several languages

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and Algeria’s multilingualism (see Table 3.2). There is a comparable situation in Kabylia where the population has a high awareness of language and politics. Recent studies with young Kabyles have confirmed this tendency. Ninety-five percent of secondary upper level students surveyed in Tizi Ouzou (the administrative centre of Kabylia) in the mid-2000s chose Berber, described by them as ‘the language of the elders’. As regards French and Literary Arabic, 83% of Kabyle youth showed their preference for the former because ‘[i]t is the language of modernity, openness to the world, and future opportunity . . .’. But they associated Literary Arabic with the dictatorial regime, oppression and Hogra – the colloquial Arabic term for ‘omnipotence’ and ‘injustice’ (Zaboot, 2007: 158, 160). Young Kabyles’ responses seem to justify today’s widespread use of Berber and French in commercial signs mentioned in the preceding section. However, the statistics presented in Table 3.3 reveal a far more complex situation. They show that youngsters remain resolutely opposed to monolingualism in any one of the competing languages in Algeria. And Table 3.2 Attitudes towards bilingualism and multilingualism Statement

(1) Today, it is an advantage to speak several languages. (2) The existence of several languages is a valuable resource for Algeria. (3) Arabic–French bilingualism is an advantage when living in Algeria. (4) I am for bilingualism in Algeria. (5) Being bilingual in Arabic and French is an advantage and allows one to live and prosper in Algeria.

1 Agree completely (%)

2 Agree (%)

3 Neither agree nor disagree (%)

4 Disagree (%)

55.8

31.8

4.8

4.1

1.7

48.3

34.3

7.7

5

3.9

40.2

41.6

9.8

4.7

3

28.6

41.3

8.3

9.2

40.5

41.9

4.7

3.1

10 9.9

5 Disagree completely (%)

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Table 3.3 Best choice of language(s) for social advancement Question: Out of the following 10 possibilities, what is the best choice of language(s) to allow you to live and prosper in Algeria and elsewhere? Choices

%

(1) English only (2) Arabic only (3) French only (4) Berber only (5) Arabic and Berber (6) Arabic and French (7) French and Berber (8) Arabic and English (9) Arabic, English and French (10) Arabic, English, French and Berber

2.9 4.4 2.8 0.2 0.5 15.5 0.1 3.9 58.6 11.1

they do not necessarily support all types of bilingual choices. For example, there are low percentages for alternatives involving Berber. Three main reasons could explain the rejection of this language: first, respondents come from an exclusively Arabic-speaking region with very limited contact with Berber; second, the common trend in diglossic societies views ‘Low’ varieties negatively; third, the hostility generated by the regime’s propaganda that describes the rebellious Kabyle community as ‘anti-Algerian’ and ‘separatist’. The other results in Table 3.3 show that the combination of Arabic and French with one or two other languages emerged as the most interesting pattern (15.5% and 11.1% for choices 6 and 10, respectively). Finally, the choice with Arabic, English and French represents the majority (58.6%). The positive evaluation of linguistic pluralism which favours additive bilingualism/multilingualism seems to be a constant in the three North African countries. In his language attitudes survey carried out in the late 1970s with balanced Moroccan Arabic–French bilinguals, Abdelâli Bentahila shows that his results accord with those described above for Algeria: Moroccan Arabic serves as the vehicle of intimacy, Classical Arabic of religion and French of openness and modernity (Bentahila, 1983: 165). As to future developments, he writes: ‘a significant majority of the respondents expressed their desire for bilingualism to continue rather than to be replaced with Arabization’ (Bentahila, 1983: 147). Most of his informants valued the knowledge and use of further languages, with a clear preference

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for English. Then he quotes some of his respondents describing monolingualism as ‘a kind of illiteracy in the twentieth century [and the mark of] an ignorant person’ (Bentahila, 1983: 141–142, 149). In the early 2000s, Mohamed Daoud conducted a small-scale survey in Tunisia. He asked a sample of students and teachers from secondary school and university a question similar to the one presented in Table 3.3, but with only five choices. The answers were: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Arabic only?: maybe (several said: no); French only?: yes; Arabic and French?: yes; English only?: no; Arabic, French and English?: yes (most added: the best).

Daoud has found that, for Tunisians, literacy in Arabic alone cannot secure a prosperous future, and that multilingualism with Arabic, French and English represented the best choice to ensure this security. As with Algerians and Moroccans, youngsters in Tunisia consider English important, not on its own but in combination with the language(s) they use in daily life (Daoud, 2007: 264). Young Algerians also convey their multilingual orientations in language use. Just like new generations in the rest of the world, they are linguistic hybrids with flexible and adaptable behaviours typical of the postmodern era. Algeria’s youngsters pick and mix linguistic forms available to them in their immediate environment or via new technology and the virtual world (internet). In Algeria, picking and mixing linguistic forms in spoken interaction goes back to the birth of urban centres and attendant language contact. Several historians and writers have attested to the rich interaction between different linguistic communities in Algiers under Ottoman rule (see Chapter 2). Contemporary linguistic hybridity erupted in the public sphere in both speaking and writing as part of the uncontrollable world of economy and marketing in the aftermath of (controlled) economic liberalization. The ‘Bouteflika effect’ has also affected not only elite language use – some of his ministers use French in public today – but also most activities, particularly those related to economic life be it in large urban centres or remote areas. For example, in 2003, historian James McDougall discovered a modest family pizzeria in the town of Ghardaia, on the edge of the Sahara, called McSud, a name that translates the local appropriation of global consumer branding (McDougall, 2011: 262). In 2005, I myself ran into a take-away restaurant called McDolma – dolma is Algerian Arabic for ‘fish dish’ – in Oran, the second largest urban centre in Algeria.

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It is certainly the world of mobile telephony and advertising which has struck it rich since the beginning of Algeria’s transition towards market economy. In short message service (SMS) text messaging, Algerians use almost exclusively dialectal Arabic or Berber, and/or new hybrid forms which intermingle French, Literary Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Berber and English. And unlike texters from Libya, for example, who use primarily Arabic script, Algerians prefer Latinized representations of Arabic. Distinctive Arabic sounds like gutturals which do not exist in the Roman alphabet are transcribed with letters or numerals similar in shape to Arabic characters. The texter who writes rabi 3awnek (‘May God help you’) uses Latinized Algerian Arabic with the numeral ‘3’ to represent the guttural ع‬called ‘âyn’. In the message STP stenini (‘Please wait for me’), the first part is the abbreviation of the French expression ‘S’il te plait’, and the second the conjugated form of the dialectal Arabic verb ‘to wait’. When mobile users master English, they sometimes mix it with Algerian Arabic as in I love you 3omri which can be translated as ‘I love you, sweet heart’ – 3omri literally means ‘my life’. Cellphone operators, who came into existence after the 1990s upheaval, joined in this linguistic bonanza. Their slogans offered Algerians the possibility for reestablishing networks of family and friends when peace returned in the country. One operator mixed colloquial Arabic and French in the slogan ‘iche la vie (‘enjoy life’), and its competitor named one of its content portals Zh¯u, an Algerian word for ‘entertainment’ (Ali-Bencherif, 2009: 30; Amara, 2011: 346–347; Mostari, 2009: 381, 383). The oral and written use of dialectal Arabic, Berber and code-switching in public domains increased dramatically with the qualifying campaign of Algeria’s national team for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. And the football clash between Algeria and Egypt in the fall of 2009 heavily impacted discourses and language use, with the media, the internet and mobile operators playing a major role. Indeed, the crisis between Algeria and Egypt over football brought to the fore the public debate on identity (‘Who are we?’ and ‘Who is the Other?’) interrupted by the military Coup of June 1965 and which reemerged after the 1988 intifada. While the pre-Coup discussions involved mainly elites, the clash between Algeria and Egypt led to nationwide debates on ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’. The new dispute boomeranged on the regime’s ideologues and their official a-historical narrative on Arabo-Islamic ‘authenticity’. Euphoria over football was so high that millions of Algerians from all walks of life occupied streets to celebrate their national team’s qualification for the World Cup while the country lived under a state of emergency. The demonstrations of joy resembled those that followed the declaration of independence in 1962. However, there were at least two major differences. First, the demographics then represented less than one third of what they are today.

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Second, the ‘Other’ shifted from France to Egypt, or from the ex-colonial occupier to a member of the Arab League and the leader of the Arab world, especially during President Nasser’s reign. The challenge to Pan-Arab ideology began when Algerians responded to anti-Algerian campaigns in the Egyptian media. These followed the Algerian squad’s 3–1 win in the first confrontation in June 2009 for the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification tournament. The crisis reached the point of no return with a quasi-diplomatic incident during the away game in mid-November 2009, after the assault against the bus that transported the Algerian national team from Cairo airport to the hotel. The play-off match in Sudan a week later continued a six-month rivalry which would continue throughout the year 2010, until the beginning of the Arab Spring and the fall of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime in February 2011. In the meantime, the Egyptian media had inflamed relations between the two countries when it regretted Algerians not showing their gratitude to Egyptians who helped them during the War of Algeria and who let them have teachers for Arabization after 1962. Newsmen used their Middle Eastern-centrist perceptions of the Maghreb in general, and Algeria in particular, to refute their populations’ ‘Arabness’ and to peripheralize their contribution to Arabo-Islamic culture. They identified Egyptians as ‘pure Arabs’, ‘civilized’, ‘peaceful’, ‘intelligent’, ‘tolerant’, ‘generous’, ‘trustworthy’, ‘brave’ and ‘revolutionary’. The media opposed this Egyptian ‘We’ to the ‘Other’, the Algerian, described as ‘not really Arab’ at all, ‘Berber’, ‘too Europeanized’ and less Islamic. In opposition, Algerians rearticulated their own ‘Algerianness’ through their generally unflattering view of Egypt, and particularly its regime, as the quintessential ‘Arab’ State. Finally, Egyptian and Algerian fans insulted each others’ culture, language, history and even sexuality through the internet (YouTube), the written media, and songs aired on the broadcast media, television and so on. In the midst of this tense period, the marketing campaigns of mobile phone operators in Algeria became more aggressive than ever. They used advertisements to reconcile Algerians with their ethnic diversity and linguistic pluralism. In fact, players in the then Algerian national team were ethnically diverse: they had Berber, Arabic or mixed race backgrounds, for they came mainly from the Diaspora often with a European mother. The most daring operator invented TV commercials in colloquial Arabic only and in mixed French-Algerian Arabic (code-switching). Two commercials proved very popular among the public. The first one, nationalistic and patriotic in tone, became one of the football fans’ chants in support of the national team whose players often wear green shirts: m¯ak ya al-khadra (‘we are all behind the green [of Algeria]’). The second football chant which contained language

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mixing went Allez Allez tout le Monde . . . wa insh¯a Allah la Coupe du Monde, and can be translated as ‘Come on, everybody . . . God willing we will qualify for the World Cup’ (Amara, 2011: 350, 353). Less than six months before the World Cup tournament in South Africa, in February 2010, I visited Algeria. Traces of the euphoria generated by the Algeria–Egypt crisis over football were still visible in the linguistic landscape of rural and urban Algeria. Images in Figure 3.4 show two slogans written on the same wall (city of Ghazaouet). The graffiti writer used Latin and Arabic script to congratulate in French and Arabic S¯a dan the then coach of Algeria’s national team – the message in the photo on the left can be translated as ‘Long live S¯adan’. The graffiti on the right, which became the most emblematic chant among Algerian fans, contains at least three languages and was pronounced One, two, three, Viva l’Algérie. The numerals were in English, Viva in Spanish, and l’Algérie in French pronounced with an Algerian accent (with rolled ‘r’, for example). Interestingly enough, this graffiti contains the three colours of

Figure 3.4 Linguistic landscape and language mixing in the midst of football euphoria (city of Ghazaouet)

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Algeria’s national flag (numerals in green, viva l’Algérie in red and the wall in white). Finally, when the Arab Spring got under way, many demonstrators in Arabic-speaking countries appropriated this slogan. For example, Libyans chanted One, two, three, Viva la Libye, or One, two, three, Viva Sarkozy to express their appreciation of French military help in toppling Muammar El-Qaddafi.

Conclusion The defeat of colonial France in 1962 led to the victory of the military arm of the FLN which finally seized power after the Coup d’Etat of June 1965. This Coup profoundly affected the future developments of matters related to language, culture and identity. Lack of legitimacy made the regime adopt radical measures in language planning and politicize the linguistic issue. Further, Algeria’s leadership resorted to their former colonial masters’ techniques, namely linguicide and linguicist tools, to annihilate dialectal Berber and Arabic, and French. Forcibly implemented Arabization has produced resistance and a deeply divided society. As an essentialist ideology officialized Arabo-Islamism has cloned other essentialist ideologies, particularly Berberism and Islamist fundamentalism. The ‘cultural’ civil war of the 1990s represented the climax in the struggle between these different warring ideological factions with the language occupying central stage. Finally, one man proved instrumental in lessening the ferocity of linguistic warfare and in adopting more pragmatic solutions. Since coming to power in 1999, President Bouteflika has probably paved the way for a post-Arabization era. However, the road ahead is long and rough: conflicts linked to language did not end completely with the celebration of Algeria’s 50th anniversary of independence (see the Epilogue). The next chapter looks at how independent Algeria became the scene in which language rivalry rose between two major imperial languages, English and French.

4 Geopolitics and Language Rivalry: French versus English

By the time the French conquered the city of Algiers in 1830 [. . .] French political leaders had come to believe that Britain’s growing empire was a major source of its international power and had to be imitated if France was to remain a significant power. Jennifer Pitts (2005: 13) English, here, finds itself in the strange situation of being a language without connotations of domination, without a political past and [. . .] a convenient way of getting the job done. Dennis Ager (2001: 21) Might not Algerian leaders, present or future, see benefits in decreeing a change from French to English as the country’s second language? Edward H. Thomas (1999: 38) [French language] policy is not without its dangers and may contain within it the seeds of its own destruction. Ronald Wardhaugh (1987: 14) As an ironic result of the difference in the experience of the three peoples [of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia], the French presence might prove to be most vulnerable, one day, in that part of North Africa in which it has been the most deeply rooted, culturally and materially. David C. Gordon (1962: 23)

In Chapter 4, I look at how and why competition between English as a world lingua franca and French as the ex-colonial language intensified in Algeria in the last quarter of the 20th century. English lost its battle against French to become the first mandatory foreign language in schools. But the war is not over: post-independence social developments as well as France’s

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post-colonial policies towards its ex-colonies undermine the presence of French in Africa in general and Algeria in particular. There are warning signals which do not augur well for the French language in the medium or long term, especially with English (and other rising idioms) standing on the sidelines.

Empires and Languages in Competition Despite the lack of historical connections between Algerians and the Anglo-Saxon world (e.g. United Kingdom), there is, somehow, an indirect link between British expansionism and the French conquest of Algeria. Indeed, the colonization of this country began with rivalry at the international level between France and the United Kingdom as imperial powers. When the British defeated the French in Canada in 1759–1760 and took possession of New France, they put an end to France’s empire in North America, the eastern coast of India and Senegal (the ‘Treaty of Paris’ of 1763). The result of Britain’s victory over France was twofold. First, Britain gained huge military, maritime and commercial advantages which led to the irresistible expansion of its rule over the world in the 19th century. Second, following its military defeat in Canada, France lost its status as a truly great power. The year 1763 was to be remembered as one of ‘national humiliation’ suffered at the hands of the old rival, the ‘Anglo-Saxon race’. To the French, this marked the beginning of their decline, and they felt less self-confident than before. So, out of their military-political retreat grew an inferiority complex (Le Cour Grandmaison, 2005: 10–11). The supremacy of imperial Britain in the 19th century created the necessary initial conditions for the rise of English as a global lingua franca, and the displacement of French as the international language par excellence. In the 17th and 18th centuries, France built its first colonial empire thanks to its political, economic, cultural and ideological dominance. Its ascendancy was linked to the superiority of its language with its alleged universality as sanctified in Antoine Rivarol’s triumphalist essay written at the end of the 18th century (see Chapter 2). It was around this period that signs appeared in the changing map of the world’s languages: Portuguese lost its role to English as the lingua franca in maritime Asia around 1830 (Osterhammel & Petersson, 2005: 76). This is the year France started colonizing Algeria and the beginning of the second period of French colonial expansionism. Historian Le Cour Grandmaison claims that Algeria’s annexation was motivated by the old rivalry between France and the United Kingdom and the French ‘envious bitterness’ towards the latter (Grandmaison, 2005: 11–12).

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The conquest of Algeria allowed the French to rebuild a new colonial empire, to end France’s decline as a world power and to even the score for the 1763 defeat. For example, when voices were raised against the Algerian colonial ‘adventure’, Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1841 that France could not ‘abandon’ its colony as it could ill afford the appearance of decline. He then added: ‘if we could keep firmly and peacefully this coast of North Africa, our influence on the general affairs of the world would be strengthened’ (Tocqueville, 1991: 691, 692). The French used assimilationist policies to build a ‘New France’ in North Africa to make up for lost territories in North America. However, the annexation of Algeria as an integral part of France, and assimilationism proved to be a deadly trap in the 1950s and 1960s (see the Prologue). Charles de Gaulle finally liquidated France’s colonial empire and changed his country’s mission in world politics by trying to circumscribe the global Anglo-Saxon hegemony led by the United States. De Gaulle believed that US supremacy worked against his country’s interests and its grandeur of the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition to the General’s hostility to the United States, there were at least two other sources of anti-American feeling in post-World War II (WWII) France. First, French communists vehemently rejected the ‘CocaColonization’ of their country and the ‘corruption’ of their language invaded by Americanisms or franglais. In 1964, René Etiemble, the communist language expert, captured this ‘invasion’ vividly in the title of his book Parlezvous franglais? (‘Can you speak Franco-English?’). Anti-Americanism also thrived among groups of colonial rightists, mainly composed of military officers and French colons from North Africa. They were opposed to US anticolonialism and suspicious of the American middling approach to the Algerian War, guessing correctly that the United States refused to fully support its N.A.T.O. ally for fear of losing influence in a future independent Algeria. To the Anglophobes of the French colonial rightist group, decolonization was a ‘bitter’ pill to swallow. They certainly viewed President John F. Kennedy’s anti-colonialism approach as another 1763 ‘national humiliation’: the ‘Anglo-Saxon race’ was, once again, intent on liquidating their empire to deprive them of the long-lost magical France (Bouzidi, 2004: 43–44; Chen, 2010: 10; Duroselle, 1976: 207–221; Hazareesingh, 2010). It is interesting that in his book published three years before Algeria’s independence (Algérie française, 1959), André Figueras echoed de Tocqueville’s plea for maintaining France’s North African colony: ‘As long as Algeria is ours, we are great, we are strong, and we are durable. In it [Algeria] we are promised unrivalled destinies’ (Stora, 2006: 91). So, the fear to see the North African bastion of Francophonie become English-speaking was to haunt, for a long time, France’s intelligentsia, from right, left or centre.

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Language without a Political Past After independence in 1962, Algeria’s leadership embarked upon an ambitious Arabization policy to transform the country linguistically and to achieve independence and distinctiveness. In comparison with neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco, to a lesser extent, which adopted a fairly dispassionate and gradual approach in their post-colonial transition, Algerian elite’s commitment to do away with French was ‘something approaching [. . .] revolutionary zeal’ (Sirles, 1999: 122–123). For Algeria’s language planners, the purpose of a substitute for French was twofold. First, the language to be adopted needs to be more dominant than French in the world as a vehicle of modernity and technological progress. Second, there was a need for a language not irredeemably tainted by its colonial provenance. English proved to be the ideal candidate and planners intended to return the favour by adopting the arch-enemy of French. In fact, claims to substitute English for French were made immediately after independence. In an interview recorded by sociologist David Gordon in 1963, a leading Algerian poet/writer predicted that: ‘In ten to fifteen years [. . .], Arabic will have replaced French completely and English will be on its way to replacing French as a second language. French is a clear and beautiful language, [. . .] but it holds too many bitter memories for us’ (Gordon, 1966: 113). Nevertheless, following the country’s liberation, Algeria’s leadership could not replace overnight a language imposed on them by a 132-year-long history. The majority of the elite were French-speaking and they simply could not afford to switch to English because of practical reasons: lack of teachers, finances and so on. What is more, many members of the establishment internalized the ‘superiority’ of French over their native tongue(s) because of their schooling in the colonial language – note the poet/writer’s description of French in the preceding quote (‘French is a clear and beautiful language’). In fact, competition between French and English resulted from an increase in the demand for English following the remarkable development of the educational system coupled with natural population increase, urbanization and other social changes. This rivalry intensified with the rise of literacy in Arabic. The more Algeria became Arabized with Arabic displacing French as a medium of instruction, the more demands for English increased. The more the status of French changed into a mere subject, the more it faced competition from English as the first mandatory foreign language. And the peak was reached at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. In Algeria, the contest between English and French takes different routes: status, corpus and acquisition planning. In the literature, the first sign of this

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competition surfaced in the early 1970s. In the development of basic words as a lexis for elementary school textbooks, the final compilation depended largely on pan-Arab ideology and on the imposition of lexical items used in the Levant (see Chapter 3). This tendency to kowtow to the Arab Middle East in corpus planning activities also transpired in the selection of foreign loanwords in the Press which ignored language use: instead of ordinateur, SIDA and institutions, French loans widely used by the population, planners preferred computer, AIDS, and Establishment, respectively. Most of these English borrowings came from Middle Eastern Arabic forms. More recently, English loanwords have increased dramatically in the Arabic-language written media, with the adoption of words like stand-by, management, timing, jetset, mobile, sms, roaming, sitcom and prime-time. When words are more or less similar in both languages, journalists prefer the English spelling pronunciation forms as in hysteria, propaganda and phobia. As to status and acquisition planning activities, there was some talk in 1975 of Algerian administrators who planned to replace French by English in the long run (Gordon, 1978: 173). But impassioned debate on this issue was triggered in the 1980s and 1990s by plans to introduce English as the preferred foreign language because scientific education at university level found English of greater use than French. The latest ministerial proposition to hit the headlines appeared on 17 September 2010 as a lead story in an Algerian daily and read: ‘English gives French a rough ride at the university!’ (Semmar, 2010). Rivalry between French and English in Algeria became fierce in the 1990s, in parallel with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country, and with the religio-conservative quarters feeling strong, particularly in educational institutions. The pro-Arabization lobby demanded the teaching of French as the first mandatory foreign language to be delayed from fourth to fifth grade in the primary cycle. The Education Minister refused to delay French teaching, but in return, he decided that, starting from September 1993, parents could choose between French and English for the children entering the fourth grade. Discourses rationalizing this educational move came from both the pro-Arabization lobby and the Ministry of Education. The former justified their choice on the grounds that English was ‘the language of scientific knowledge’ (HCF, 1999: 28). In their political manifesto, the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the most powerful Islamist party at the time, clearly stated that English should replace French in Algeria. Mohamed Souaiaia summarizes the logic behind the FIS decision: The Francophones, having argued for so long that they wanted to maintain French only because of its instrumental value as a language of

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science, left themselves exposed to the Islamists who argue that any language can be a language of science. Furthermore, argue the Islamists, if there is a need to know a second language to keep in contact with the world of science that language should be English because it is the language of scientific publishing. (Souaiaia, 1990: 115) What is more, to rationalize their choice Islamo-conservatives associated French with colonialism arguing that French was ‘in essence imperialist and colonialist’ (Goumeziane, 1994: 258). Opponents to the religio-conservatives, mainly Francophiles with left-wing leanings, claimed that the English language was ‘imperialist’ and ‘reactionary’ – I heard these terms used in 1994 by an Algerian sociologist trained in a French university. As to the Islamoconservatives’ justification, a typical nationalist stance, it relies on historical amnesia about English as stated in Dennis Ager’s epigraph. To understand this amnesia, it is instructive to compare the British and French empires and the way both imperialisms managed their colonial territories. As shown in Chapter 1, during the second colonial wave, the British adopted a policy of ‘indirect’ rule which encouraged local forms of control and institutions to enforce colonial government policy. The French, by contrast, used a policy of ‘direct’ rule whereby government officials were appointed by and accountable to Paris, leaving no room for indigenous autonomy or economic development. It is in the area of culture and the way they went about spreading their languages that the British and French modes of colonization were to have long-lasting effects on post-colonial developments. While the British respected local customs and traditions, the French disparaged indigenous traditional life and used their language to dismantle local cultures and idioms. As shown in Chapter 2, France rejected the use of Algeria’s indigenous languages at any stage in the schooling system and did not encourage the colons to learn Arabic. Educational policies in British imperial territories were often more pragmatic: the use of local languages was encouraged in the early schooling stages to educate a subservient population and make it participate in colonial capitalism. As to colonial service officers, they were required to learn local vernaculars; otherwise there were financial penalties (Phillipson, 1992: 127). To put it in a nutshell, the British viewed their colonial subjects from a distance and treated colonial life in a detached and somewhat objective manner. By contrast, assimilationist ideology and beliefs in the superiority of their culture and language made the French become involved with colonial life to the point of being subjective. To Muslim colonized subjects in particular, the British cultural aloofness was more tolerable than the French attempt to Frenchify its colonies. As Clara Tsabedze has pointed out, ‘[t]he FrenchMuslim conflict was therefore more a cultural one than was the case with

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the British’ (Tsabedze, 1994: 9). Hence, the British ‘indirect’ model of colonialism proved less aggressive in promoting English in that part of the Middle East where they were dominant. In connection with this aspect, one should not underestimate the role played by the Arab Middle East in the development of nationalist discourses and practices among the members of Algeria’s pro-Arabization lobby who have called for the replacement of French by English since the late 1980s (see Chapter 3). The lobbyists hold a preconceived favourable opinion towards English partly because of the British way of ruling the Levant during colonization.

Top-down Intervention: Unsuccessful Penetration of English Under pressure from the pro-Arabization lobby, the Education Minister revealed in September 1996 that, from then on, his Department was privileging English over French. He argued that ‘experience has proved that schoolchildren prefer English in many schools’. What is remarkable is that, that very same year, the Ministry of Education made public the results of a survey on language preferences among parents and teachers in Algeria. Over 73% of the parents polled agreed with the maintenance of French as the first foreign language in schools. Around 71% preferred their children to learn French and 29% English. Among the group of teachers polled, less than 52% refused the replacement of French by English against 46% who supported this switch. So, the competition between the two European languages turned unexpectedly in favour of French and the prediction made in 1963 by the Algerian poet/writer quoted earlier in this chapter was startlingly wrong. Between 1993 and 1997, out of two million schoolchildren in grade 4, the total number of those who chose English was insignificant – between 0.33% and 1.28%. Finally, by the end of the 1990s, Algeria became, from a statistical point of view, the second largest Francophone community in the world after France (Asselah-Rahal et al., 2007: 16; Queffélec et al., 2002: 38, 118). The failed initiative to introduce English at the primary level in the Algerian educational system teaches us at least two lessons. First, it challenges Robert Phillipson’s (1992) view which attributes the post-colonial spread of English to US and British officials who stand to benefit. This explanatory model for the expansion of English does not seem to operate in the case of Algeria. The demand for replacing French with English arose from local elites for ideological and nationalist reasons: the extensive linguistic Arabization of the country did not rid French of its colonial

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provenance. Similarly, in neighbouring Morocco, for example, linguistic Arabization has enhanced the role and status of English, and the retreat of French in relation to English is mainly due to the association of the former with the colonial period (Ennaji, 1999: 392; Sadiqi, 1991: 110). As to Tunisia, recent research corroborates the progressive decline of the French language as it is spoken most fluently by the older generation than the younger one. To Euromonitor International (2012: 91), ‘English is the most dynamically evolving language in [Tunisia].’ But it is not only a matter of age: recent political events do not seem favourable to the maintenance of French either. Following the overthrow of long-time President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, the Islamist party of Ennahdha won the largest number of seats during the elections for a Constituent Assembly in October 2011. The French government, which had supported unwaveringly Tunisia’s dictatorship, failed to recognize the Islamist ascendancy. To return the favour to France, Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi declared in October 2011: ‘We are Arabs and our language is Arabic. We have become Franco-Arab; it is linguistic pollution’ (Belkaïd, 2011). (Ghannouchi’s attack concerned French in both language mixing and the issue of national identity in Tunisia.) What is more, conservative and Islamist opponents of the French language call it ‘the language of dictatorship’, and they describe Tunisian Francophones as ‘the orphans of France’ (Dorra Ben Alaya and Khaled Labidi, personal communication, January 2012). Finally, following the Arab Spring, new relations – particularly at the economic level – developed between the Islamist regimes of Tunisia and Turkey. As a result of this, the Tunisian authorities decreed in June 2012 the introduction of the Turkish language in all Tunisian secondary schools, as of September 2012 (Oueslati, 2012). The second lesson learnt from the failure to replace French by English in Algerian schools shows that most language spread is unplanned. And it may still be largely the case even when authorities engage in language management activities. This top-down intervention in linguistic matters can be perverted by unplanned aspects due to resistance and reactions from below. In Algeria, the issue of French is further complicated by the Berbers’ fight against Arabization. Some analysts have argued that Kabyles use French, strategically, as a disguise, to allow Berber progress because Arabophone Algerians consider this language divisive and hold it in suspicion (Calvet, 1999: 52). Undoubtedly, the use of French in Kabylia has long represented a political challenge to the linguistic hegemony of Arabo-Islamism as the official ideology of the State. As a direct result of this resistance, many middleclass parents have recently begun to use French at home with their children who would then attend private French-medium schools (Nadia Ahouari-Idri,

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personal communication, June 2012). These assimilationist practices, not yet corroborated by empirical studies, could become dangerous for the Kabyle community and individuals. The rise of an educated middle class becoming monolingual and monoliterate in French could lead to language loss, with alienated young adults incapable of using the Berber language for familial, social and private communication. It is, however, noteworthy that several institutions, public officials and academics from the English-speaking Centre, particularly from the United States and the United Kingdom, adopted a triumphalist attitude as to the possible demise of French in North Africa. At the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, the British Council published two reports predicting the displacement of French by English in the French-speaking bastion of the Maghreb in general and Algeria in particular (British Council, 1977, 1981). Discourses and writings on this eventual success of English grew substantially in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Islamo-conservative forces dominated the Algerian socio-political scene (FIS). Among triumphalist academics, there is linguist David Crystal with his book English as a Global Language, first published in 1997. When describing the spread of English to countries formerly part of other colonial empires, he wrote twice in this book that, in 1996, Algeria as a former French colony replaced French by English as the chief foreign language in schools. When the second edition appeared in 2003, the same passages were kept unchanged even though the socio-political context was completely different (Crystal, 2003: 5, 126). In a more cautious tone, American scholar John Battenburg links the success of English over French in North Africa with the potential changes and social reforms brought about by the rise of Islamization and Arab nationalism. He, however, admits that English will not replace French in the near future but the status of English will increase dramatically (Battenburg, 1996: 11, 12; 1997: 288). Battenburg reports on the discoveries made by several North African researchers. His conclusion is that French has gradually declined in the three countries of the Maghreb as a result of Arabization. As to the rivalry between French and English, he claims that ‘while French is more used; English is more loved’ (Battenburg, 1997: 282). In the mid-1990s, American public officials and diplomats considered favourably a possible takeover by the FIS At the time, a French journalist was even told by an advisor to Anthony Lake, Chief of the National Security Council in President Bill Clinton’s administration: We do not believe the current regime [in Algeria] will collapse. If it were to be so, France would be the major loser. Not us. Read the Islamist

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political manifesto. They intend to replace French by English as the first mandatory foreign language. You have become the Great Satan. We will continue business as usual. We have all the reasons to be optimistic. (Laurent, 1995: 35) In the following quotation, Edward Thomas, an American scholar and formerly Executive Secretary of the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange in Rabat, describes the maintenance of French in North Africa as ‘useless’: the independent countries that eventually emerged [after decolonization] found themselves saddled with European languages of less usefulness than English, the sole world language today. [. . .] English – thanks largely to the predominant world role of the United States – is now the international language most sought everywhere, including in North Africa [. . .]. But the visitor to those areas cannot help but notice the continuing use of, and independence on, French. (Thomas, 1999: 1–2) Then, in a patronizing mood, Thomas goes so far as to ‘suggest’ his own solution to Algeria’s language conflicts – as if Algerians were incapable of independent decision. For the American scholar, linguistic peace takes the route of English: many thoughtful Algerians across the political spectrum would probably agree that their country needs a second language, one with wider international and modern capabilities than Arabic has at present. Most Arab countries other than the three North African ones that fell under French colonial rule use English for that purpose. The Islamic Republic of Iran sees nothing amiss in fostering the study of English. Might not Algerian leaders, present or future, see benefits in decreeing a change from French to English as the country’s second language? Such a policy might quickly reduce the ferocity of language dissensions. And it might even give Berberists something to grasp in resisting the complete overwhelming of Berber language by Arabic. (Thomas, 1999: 38–39) This type of triumphalism and the bitter alienation felt by French officials and academics result from a long-standing competition between major imperial states struggling with one another to promote their own languages. Linguistic imperialism here means that foreign policy and national self-interest are geared towards extending and gaining a competitive advantage economically. What is more, intelligentsia in the United States and in

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France continue to adopt typical Eurocentric attitudes towards linguistic pluralism. They still favour subtractive bilingualism/multilingualism: as monolingually oriented (nationalist) speakers, indifferent or even blind to the implications of multilingualism, they take linguistic plurality to mean one language taking the place of other languages – for example, the above quotation by Thomas implies the overwhelming of Berber by Arabic and eventually French by English. In fact, people’s multilingual orientations in linguistically plural societies usually entails privileging additive bilingualism/multilingualism: any language with a high value on the local or international linguistic market has a place to take and its role is not to take the place of other languages – at least as long as these languages have been appropriated and/or have remained attractive products within a particular social, cultural and economic context (linguistic market). Research work in Berber-speaking Kabylia corroborates the peculiarity pointed out here: sociolinguist Tahar Zaboot describes the relation of French vis-à-vis English in Algeria as a pseudo ‘rivalry’ (Zaboot, 2007: 161). The misrepresentation of the struggle between English and French also emerges from the Islamo-conservative leaders’ discourses (e.g. the FIS leadership). Their nationalist ideology derives, in part, from Arabic linguistic nationalism strongly influenced by the 19th century European unilingual model. Most linguists would agree with the logic behind the FIS decision to replace French by English (see Mohamed Souaiaia’s summary presented in the preceding section). In fact, ideologies of language ‘superiority’ do not stand up well to scrutiny – mention should be made here of the ‘equality of grammar’ principle described in Chapter 1. However, most analysts would agree that the FIS posed the right questions but offered the wrong solutions. The publically stated aim of the FIS was to set up theocracy in Algeria through democratic means and, then, once in power rid the country of democracy. Just as in politics, the FIS also intended to leave out other linguistic groups, especially French-speaking Algerians, and use repressive modes of life and politics. Several observers have argued that a continuum exists between French colonial assimilationism, officialized Arabo-Islamism of the post-1962 FLN regime, and Islamist-fundamentalism of the FIS According to Hafid Gafaïti, the latter two ideologies ‘are based on an obsession with unity, a monotheism, be it secular or religious, that by definition cannot bear multiplicity’ (Gafaïti, 1997: 76). What is more, both the FLN and the FIS admitted the ideology of language ‘superiority’ with Arabic, regarded as literally being the word of God – that is, the perfect language spoken by the chosen people (Calvet, 1998: 22–25). Like French under colonial rule, the supremacy of Arabic represents a key aspect of linguicism in post-colonial Algeria.

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Maintenance of French, Uncertain Future The misrepresentation of the contest between English and French in Algeria relies on top-down language planning activities occurring in a social vacuum. In other words, it does not account for input from the community’s language practices and attitudes, and it ignores extra-linguistic factors that are likely to affect language spread or decline. And the study of the maintenance of French among Algerians provides insights into changes in their language use and attitudes. The measurement of language spread requires two major sets of data, measurable sociological variables and indirect evaluations based on attitudinal surveys. Only the most relevant sociological factors will be summarized here as a basis for understanding responses to the questionnaire already described in Chapter 3, including the rationale behind data collection methods. The diffusion of French in post-colonial Algeria has been effected by industrialization and (limited) economic liberalization, demographic growth and urbanization, the rise of literacy rates, the profusion of telecommunications media, the existence of a significant community in France and (controlled) political liberalization following the 1988 uprisings and the implosion of the single-party FLN Separately or in combination these sociological indicators can account for the spread of French in Algeria (Benrabah, 2007a: 197–208). In addition to these direct measurable factors, there are indirect measurements based on language attitudes. The next sub-sections present Algerians’ attitudinal reactions towards the relationship between French and English. I will first discuss the status of both ex-colonial languages, then look at the reality of the contest between the two tongues, and finally consider the future prospects of this rivalry. Table 4.1 gives the results for three statements, the first two measure respondents’ reactions to the status of French in Algeria, and the third one assesses their reactions to its future. For the first statement, the majority does not consider French as a ‘foreign language’ in the way they do for German, English and Spanish. This ‘special’ status transpires in foreign language classes in Algerian schools: several researchers have reported on the role of French as the language of ‘mediation’, for giving instructions in classroom activities involving the learning of English, German and Spanish (Benhouhou, 2007: 153; Kebbas, 2007a: 132; 2007b: 163). As to the second statement in Table 4.1, the number of subjects who consider French to be part of Algeria’s heritage is slightly higher than the one for the opposite view. However, respondents who cannot make up their minds represent 11.3% for the first statement and 13.8% for the second one. Concerning the third

244

15.7

12.5 4.3

163

129 45

(1) As an Algerian, I consider French a foreign language like German, English and Spanish. (2) French is part of Algeria’s heritage. (3) In the future, French will disappear in Algeria. 86

341

N

2 Agree

1 Agree completely N %

Statement

Table 4.1 Status of ‘foreign’ languages, and future of French

8.3

33.2

23.5

%

121

142

117

11.6

13.8

11.3

3 Neither agree nor disagree N %

336

204

303

N

4 Disagree

32.2

19.8

29.2

%

454

212

212

43.6

20.6

20.4

5 Disagree completely N %

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statement, 11.6% are undecided as to the future disappearance of French in their country. By contrast, 75.8% disagree or disagree completely with this statement. Originally, the third statement had intended to measure claims made in the literature by some scholars who study identity and resistance through language attitudes in multilingual societies. The evidence seems to side with those who believe that favourable attitudes towards multilingualism and the survival of a particular language can support the maintenance of this language. Another way of assessing the status and future of French in Algeria is by looking at its position in relation to the English language. Answers given in Table 4.2 show that a significant proportion of respondents refuse the idea of substituting English for French (first statement). Schoolchildren also reject the replacement of French by English as the major foreign language and refuse to have English as the medium of instruction in scientific disciplines (second statement). In fact, for the first statement, the majority do not want French replaced by English when categories 4 and 5 are added: 49.6% against 31.9%. There is a clear majority for the second statement: 62.3% refuse English as the medium of instruction of scientific subjects. So, the high prestige associated with French in Algeria overlooks reality and the fact that English is, at the moment, the major international language of science and technology. Such behaviour supports those who argue that image and prestige are not necessarily grounded in reality. The findings with the third statement presented in Table 4.2 tell us certainly more about the reality of the contest between English and French in Algeria than all the other results. A total of 76.4% agree or agree completely with this statement, and thus confirm the hypothesis stated above that the two ex-colonial languages are not perceived as being in competition: respondents’ multilingual orientation seems to make them prefer additive instead of subtractive bilingualism/multilingualism. There is no doubt that this attitude has been misrepresented by Algeria’s leaders and overseas academics in the form of a conflict between the two European languages. The evidence supports a secure future for both French and English. What is more, the findings shown in Table 3.3 in Chapter 3 tend to corroborate this forecast: recall that out of the 10 possibilities offered to all respondents, 58.6% chose ‘Arabic, English and French’ as the best choice of language(s) that could allow them to live and prosper in Algeria and elsewhere. However, the remarkably high percentages of undecided informants in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 do not completely support the claim on a secure future for French in Algeria. The high number of irresolute respondents shows that, under unfavourable conditions, the pendulum could swing to more negative attitudes towards French. As a matter of fact, Algeria is fertile ground for

1 Agree completely N % 14.0 5.2 33.4

146 54 344

Statement

(1) I would like French to be replaced by English in Algeria (2) Scientific subjects should be taught in English (3) When I choose English, this does not mean that I reject French

Table 4.2 Language rivalry between French and English

442

160

187

N

2 Agree

43.0

15.4

17.9

%

98

177

194

9.5

17.1

18.6

3 Neither agree nor disagree N %

95

349

275

N

4 Disagree

9.2

33.7

26.3

%

50

297

243

4.9

28.6

23.3

5 Disagree completely N %

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such a possibility because the memory of the colonial era is still very much alive in this country. On the back of this, the French language has not been deethnicized to rid itself of its colonial provenance. When Islamists and conservatives claim that French is ‘in essence “imperialist” and “colonialist”’, they simply express feelings shared by at least some members of their society, particularly among those who encode discourses, practices and media products which individuals use to construct their identity. In the past, Algerian authorities did take retaliatory measures against French when a crisis erupted between the governments of Algiers and Paris, respectively. The most recent flare-up concerns President Bouteflika’s 2006 decision to apply for membership of the Commonwealth and imitate Rwanda’s Head of State (see Chapter 3). What is more, France’s trade boycott of Algerian hydrocarbons in the 1970s led to the systematic implementation of Arabization in education. As a result of this, the status of the French language changed from medium of instruction to mere subject (see Chapter 3). And as shown below, such a move was to prove fatal to the future of French in Algeria. In the 21st century and despite dramatic changes in the post-colonial demographic, urban and economic structures, the memories of French colonialism have not completely faded away. French remains irredeemably tainted by its colonial history. Table 4.3 shows informants’ responses to the language they associate most with a painful past, with 53% choosing French. It is worth noting that it is the only statement for which a substantial number of informants did not respond: 91 out of 1051 respondents, that is, 8.7%. The findings presented in Table 4.3 are confirmed by responses to one statement in the Likert scale activity. In Table 4.4, 47.1% agree or agree completely, against 35.5% who disagree or disagree completely. For this task, only 26 informants (2.5%) did not respond but the number of undecided informants was quite high: 178 responses (17.4%). From a statistical point of view, age and gender variables do not yield any significant results, but the difference between cities is significant. Table 4.5 shows the larger the city the fewer informants associate French with a painful past or colonialism, and vice versa. The results here indicate that the French colonial

Table 4.3 Language associated with painful past (colonialism) Statement

Language associated with a painful past

Algerian Arabic N %

Literary Arabic N %

French N

%

N

%

201

105

509

53.0

145

15.1

20.9

10.9

Berber

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103

Table 4.4 Language associated with ‘painful past’ (colonialism) Statement

I associate French with colonization

1 Agree completely N % 187 18.2

2 Agree

3 Neither agree nor disagree N % N % 296 28.9 178 17.4

4 Disagree N 229

5 Disagree completely % N 17.1 22.3 135 13.2

Table 4.5 Association of French with ‘painful past’ and size of town Statement

Large town

Language associated with a 43.0% painful past

Medium town

Small town

54.4%

59.1%

p< 0.000

era is an enduring memory in less populated towns and cities, where the largest part of Algeria’s urban population lives. In these areas where extended families with a rural or recently urbanized background tend to live together, resentment of French is easily transferred from one generation to the next. Fifty years have elapsed since Algeria got its independence in 1962. And in an age when the world has undergone as great a change as ever before, conditions which have favoured the maintenance of French among Algerians so far, could become less favourable in the future. French could finally surrender to the onslaught of English and/or any other language currently on the rise (e.g. Chinese). The prospect is conceivable for there are warning signals which do not augur well for the French language. In addition to the highly volatile situation described above and from which attitudes could change suddenly, there are other potential sources of conflict that are intrinsic to post-colonial developments in France. These pose serious problems and threaten the future of French in Algeria, especially with English waiting in the wings – while most observers predict the retreat of French in the world, English by contrast is promised a bright future because of developments in communications technology, and its numerical strength: by 2150, half the world will be more or less proficient in English (Graddol, 1997: 13; Maurais, 2003: 15; Xiaoqiong, 2005: 28). Opportunities for conflict abound as a result of the way French elites continue to address issues related to their ex-colonies. Among the eximperial nations of Europe, France remains an exception. The end of French colonialism in Africa did not mean a definitive break between France and its former colonies. Within this neo-colonial policy, successive

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French leaders have adopted a ‘Byzantine manner of doing politics’: they have gained the reputation of supporting African dictators against the will of local populations, and they have openly favoured African politicians who squander public money to grow wealthy at the expense of their own people (Bernard, 2008: 20–21; Maurais, 2003: 15). (As mentioned earlier in this chapter, calling French ‘the language of dictatorship’ in post-January 2011 Tunisia is one reaction to this ‘Byzantine’ behaviour during Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s reign.) In relation to Algeria, the ‘bitterness of decolonization’ has been maintained, since the 1960s, by a powerful minority of (pieds noirs) activists filled with nostalgia for France’s colonial empire and their country of birth, Algeria. On 23 February 2005, the French Parliament passed a law on the ‘positive role’ of colonialism and ‘its benefits’. If the law was to be revoked later by President Jacques Chirac, it did show, however, the strength of a small group of retarded colonialists who refuse to consider colonialism as morally unacceptable. Consequently, politicians’ discourses have been openly and inflexibly ethnocentric recently. For example, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to ‘Africa’s Youth’ in Dakar in July 2007 rationalized racialist ideology when he said that ‘Africans had no history of their own.’ President Sarkozy is not the only inflexible Franco-centric who is not shy about France’s ‘values’ and grandeur which willy-nilly include its imperial past. Colonial nostalgia also transpires in academic circles where the discipline of Postcolonial Studies has not yet been fully accepted as an independent field of knowledge. Intellectual projects that animate the postcolonial approach imply a ‘non-Western’ world view that endeavours to free itself from Eurocentric illusions and to open up to scholars (literary critics, historians, sociologists, linguists, political theorists and so on) from ex-colonial territories, or the Periphery. In short, it encourages the bottom-up investigation of any cultural product, historical event or social configuration from alternative perspectives – from the perspectives generated by Periphery communities themselves (Howes, 2006: 207). Postcolonial theory blossomed at the end of the 1970s, when Indian scholars researched cultural and political relationships between colonizing and colonized societies within the field of Subaltern Studies. This research was to be part of the discipline known as Postcolonial Studies which grew in the United States in particular. Compared to North America and the United Kingdom, France lags behind in research on the postcolonial. As an academic discipline, it deals with questions that are disturbing to the French political and cultural establishment which dismisses Postcolonial Studies on the grounds that it is ‘ideology’ or militant activism, the surest way to avoid rational debate (CoqueryVidrovitch, 2009: 27, 50, 85–86).

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The issue is further complicated by the fact that the intelligentsia from former French colonies in general and from Algeria in particular have not met the challenge. Their proximity with France does not help them acquire real intellectual autonomy. This concerns at least those who fought and defeated colonialism. As an illustration, I shall take the example of historian Mohammed Harbi quoted, in the concluding section of Chapter 2, recalling his days as an FLN rebel fighter smuggling weapons into France. As an advisor to President Ben Bella, Harbi was imprisoned and put under house arrest after the military Coup of June 1965. In 1973, he settled in Paris and, since then, has been an academic specializing in the history of modern Algeria. In an interview published in an Algerian daily in May 2011, the journalist asked him: ‘Being yourself both actor and witness of history, can you remain objective in the telling?’ In his answer, Harbi resorts to France and its historians to justify his position: ‘Let me tell you how it was done in France. All the major actors make use of (research) institutes to bring their testimony before historians who had studied the period concerned. And these accounts are duly stored in the archives’ (Benfodil, 2011: 5). Harbi’s rationalization is an illustrative example of the inability of Algerian intellectuals to bring French language and culture new and fresh possibilities. A year before Algeria’s independence, David Gordon pointed out that many Algerians trained by the French could not acknowledge the fact ‘that there are alternative and equally valuable kinds of civilizations other than that of Europe and of France in particular’ (Gordon, 1962: 4). The absence of a fully developed bottom-up research on colonialism affects mainstream intellectual opinions in France. In consequence, the French elite’s rhetoric on the global hegemony of English and linguistic imperialism shows a credibility gap between what is said and what is done. While professing a fear for being dominated by English and calling for the recognition of international multilingualism, the French ignore their own totalizing policies in the past and presently. Their crusade against English is not credible because the French intelligentsia fail to admit their own violent Frenchification campaigns and attendant cultural/linguistic genocide in their ex-colonies (e.g. Algeria). In addition to this historical amnesia, they also forget their own hegemonic tendencies in modern times: other languages are being restricted by French both in France and abroad, in Sub-Saharan Frenchspeaking Africa in particular. And the world of French linguistics is not different for it lacks enlightenment from insights provided by Postcolonial Studies. This handicap could have serious consequences for the maintenance of French in Africa in general and Algeria in particular. Most French linguists seem to be unaware of the seeds contained in their country’s language policy which could cause its own destruction (see Ronald Wardhaugh’s epigraph).

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Recycling Old Colonial Ideologies The foundations of the ideology of French linguistic superiority were discussed in Chapter 2. One such founding element is xenophobia toward language ‘contaminators’ (hybridity) to safeguard the alleged superior qualities of the internal structure of Standard French (authenticity). The fear comes from linguistic ‘impurities’ and ‘accents’ alleged to be catching, especially when used by speakers of ex-colonized and subordinated languages. Common even among French linguists, the linguicist tendency to refuse and/or ridicule bilingual forms dissimilar to French norms – that is, ‘contaminated’ French spoken with ‘an accent’ – is typical of colonial bilingualism. Like most ideologies used to subjugate ‘natives’ in French Algeria (see Chapter 2), French colonial bilingualism relies on hierarchical structures characterized by at least two attributes. First, the monolingual speaker is privileged over the multilingual one as the best model for the French language. The former is believed to be immune from borrowings and external ‘contaminations’ viewed as a threat to both the linguistic unity of France and the purity and universality of the French language (Bourhis, 1982: 40; Moreau, 1997: 220). Second, the multilingual speaker is unreliable for he is ‘loyal’ to more than one language and cannot, thus, adopt the blind loyalty required to prize French under all circumstances. As a result of this, the prioritization of monolingual speakers tends to turn non-native multilingual subjects, who did not acquire French as a mother tongue, into illegitimate ‘inauthentic’ users of this language. These can be tourists with an elementary mastery of French, natives with any regional/local linguistic form such as Québécois, or even writers with a highly sophisticated literary style but who come from (ex-colonial) territories outside metropolitan France. The discourses of France’s elite are clearly tainted by colonial bilingualism, especially when French-language authors are categorized according to their ethnic origin. Some recurrent questions put to these writers are part of the French intelligentsia’s stock-in-trade. For example, a few days before the book fair held in Paris in March 2006 and dedicated to multiple Francophonies, two major French dailies published a special issue each. Libération asked 31 authors to answer the question ‘Why do you write in French?’, and Le Monde published nine writers’ answers to the question ‘Which type of French do you use in writing?’ (Le Monde, 2006; Libération, 2006). A simple and superficial analysis of the questions asked by both newspapers shows the presence of a feeling of suspicion towards the chosen authors as to their motivation and their mastery of the French language. In fact, several writers criticized the aberration pointed out here. Chad-born

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Nimrod said that, as an African, he finds Le Monde’s ‘question suspect and dubious’. Boubacar Boris Diop, a Senegalese author, read in Libération’s question ‘a deadly invitation to keep silent’ and ‘Why do you cling stubbornly to writing [in French]?’ To Chinese-born Ying Chen, Le Monde’s question implied that people like him were ‘alien translators, renegades [...] incapable of being “authentic”’. Congolese Alain Mabanckou justified his ‘foreign’ accent through ‘the influence of African languages’ which he ‘will never renounce’, he wrote. It is certainly the Montreal-author Monique Proulx who argued most vehemently when she said: Can’t you see that the way you ask your question, and the way you consider Francophonie implies that you were not part of it (on the one hand the French – that is, the real salt of the earth, its unique guardians [. . .] – and on the other, Francophonie, all foreigners and more or less scrawny second-rate products of the former). (Benrabah, 2009a: 261–262) In his answer to Libération, Boris Diop said: ‘I may say in passing that I have not understood how no French writer is identified as Francophone.’ Boris Diop addresses here the debate over the dichotomy of ‘Francophone literature’ and ‘French literature’. Among France’s educated elite who prefer the former concept, there is a tendency to confine writers like Diop to the ‘Francophone’ category, separate from the ‘French of France’. This implies that a legitimate French writer (speaker) needs to have native linguistic competence as a monolingual, preferably with a Gallic name. In his paper ‘Against Francophone literature’ published in March 2006, Lebanese-born Amin Maalouf claims that confining non-French authors to the ‘Francophone’ ghetto denotes a nationalistic attitude which marks poets who come from distant places as ‘language thieves’ (Maalouf, 2006: 2). Maalouf’s article was an echo to Salman Rushdie’s essay called ‘Commonwealth literature does not exist’, and written 15 years earlier. To Rushdie, ‘the English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago’ (Crystal, 2003: 140). A comparison of post-colonial developments for English and French reveals that the native speakers of the former are less exclusive than the latter. Undoubtedly, members of the British educated elite do wage wars against linguistic ‘impurities’ and ‘contaminators’. For example, among self-appointed custodians of the English language, there are those who fear their language ‘going down the drain’ and they put the blame on native speakers from different national communities: witness Prince Charles’ comments in March 1995 when he described American English as ‘very corrupting’ (Jenkins, 2009: 4–5). There are also English mother tongue speakers who dread to think what

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should happen to their language if it were ‘misused, corrupted in the mouths of all these foreigners’ (Widdowson, 1993: 323). As to right-wing politicians like Enoch Powell, ‘[o]thers may speak and read English – more or less – but it is our language not theirs. It was made in England by the English and it remains our distinctive property, however widely it is learnt or used’ (Lampert, 2011). Concerning attitudes towards authors of non-English origin, they are frequently referred to as ‘Indian-born writers’, or ‘born in the UK immigrants from Pakistan’ and so on. But these expressions are not necessarily negative nor are they used to suspect the linguistic competency of writers like Salman Rushdie or Hanif Kureishi who do not feel confined to a ghetto. However, when comparing French and English exclusive attitudes towards non-native users of their language, it is clear that the French experience has been a long and consistent one. It is certainly Kenyan-born and successful Englishlanguage writer Ngûgî wa Thiong’o who illustrates best this difference. When he stopped writing in English and chose his mother tongue, Gikuyu, he was often asked by English-speaking people: ‘Why have you abandoned us?’ (Ngûgî wa Thiong’o, 1986: 27). Before Rushdie wrote ‘Commonwealth literature does not exist’, Indian sociolinguist Braj Kachru had claimed that when English acquired a new identity through colonized subjects’ creative writings, the language lost its colonial character (Kachru, 1997: 232). Kachru made a great impact on scholars who had characterized English in diverse parts of the world. Since the early 1960s, he has argued persuasively that the English language has undergone a process of ‘indigenization’ to develop multiple norms according to local contexts – a process called ‘contextualization’. He advocated a pluralist view of ‘World Englishes’ to account for different accents, styles, lexicons and so on. He also acknowledged the creativity of bilinguals in these new English varieties and characterized relations between core English-speaking (colonizing) communities and colonized societies in the Periphery. As a linguist, Kachru was, therefore, instrumental in the development of Subaltern Studies, and the subsequent rise of Postcolonial Studies as an academic discipline. Not surprisingly, Kachru’s work attracted criticism from the French, namely sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet. In 1974, Calvet refused ‘Indian English’ as a distinct and autonomous variety on an equal footing with ‘British English’ and ‘American English’. He rejected Kachru’s notion of ‘Indianness’, in relation to ‘Englishness’ and ‘Americanness’. He justified this by the very limited number of native speakers of English in India. Calvet also criticized the concept of ‘contextualization’ because, for him, English remained a neo-colonial language, ‘the language for oppressing the people’ (Calvet, 1974: 117). In truth, the French scholar seems to misread Kachru

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whose work is exclusively concerned with bilinguals using English within the Indian multilingual context. The French sociolinguist’s misunderstanding clearly demonstrates the ignorance of the multilingual orientation of excolonial subjects in general and Indians in particular. It also illustrates another dark side of the role of inflexibly Franco-centric linguists: they tend to operate with a monolingual consciousness to define socio-political groupings, or make assumptions about how a community should be. In this respect, most French linguistic circles are very backward, and incapable of characterizing French in diverse contexts free from ‘national’ French. Many of these ideas have become obsolete with the postmodernity age, and the recognition of complex identities and multilingualism as the norm. Louis-Jean Calvet’s uncomfortable position as a sociolinguist also appears in his attitude towards Francophonie. During a conference held in Tokyo in November 1999, Japanese sociolinguist Miura Nobutaka quoted a Tunisian writer speaking about the conspicuous absence of the postcolonial in intellectual debates in France. In the final paper of her presentation published in 2005, Nobutaka admits being surprised by Calvet, her moderator at the time of the conference, when he said: ‘Jewish-Tunisian writer of Berber origin Albert Memmi, or Black writers from Martinique Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon were writers of Francophonie, and that Francophonie was in fact the best illustration of the postcolonial’ (Nobutaka, 2005: 154). Nobutaka was understandably surprised with Calvet’s reaction because the latter is well-known for his book on ‘linguistics and colonialism’. In the last chapter of this work, titled ‘French in Africa’, Calvet presents a strong attack on Francophonie. Recalling that the original idea for the creation of this international linguistic coalition came from two African presidents, Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor and Tunisian Habib Bourguiba, he refutes this French-speaking commonwealth in which he can smell cultural domination and a war against African indigenous languages. He describes French as the language of a small elite who ignore the mother tongue(s) of their people. To him, these rulers use Francophonie to maintain linguistic oppression rationalized by colonizers in the past but whose conceptualizing falls to the African intelligentsia now. Then in his concluding remarks, Calvet prophetically predicts the retreat of French in Africa (Calvet, 1974: 216, 218, 233–236). Today, most observers agree with the decline of this ex-colonial language in the world in general and in the African continent in particular (Chaudenson, 2003: 291; Graddol, 1997: 13; Maurais, 2003: 15; Roy, 2008: 250). As to Calvet’s book on ‘linguistics and colonialism’, it is full of ‘leftist’ and ‘Third Worldist’ rhetoric typical of French intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. According to Nobutaka, what Calvet could smell in the

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1970s as neo-colonialism has disappeared ever since Francophonie became an ‘idea of the Left’, especially after François Mitterrand won the presidential election of 1981 (Nobutaka, 2005: 154). Unlike De Gaulle who feared accusations of neo-colonialism, Mitterrand was unscrupulous. In actual fact, the name of the latter was associated with the excesses of the War of Algeria from its beginnings in November 1954 as Minister of the Interior until he resigned as Minister of Justice in May 1957 (Malye & Stora, 2012: 99–101, 134; Stora, 2006: 13–14, 29). Interestingly enough, French elites deny that they had anything to do with the formation of institutionalized Francophonie in the mid-1960s: they claim that it was African leaders who initiated it (Nobutaka, 2005: 153; Weinstein, 1983: 167). Moving back to Calvet’s criticism of Kachru, it stems not only from the ‘leftist’ views of the time, but also from the Franco-centric indoctrination in matters of language and culture. This inflexible attitude comes from the old ‘modernist’ argument that linguistic and cultural difference is a threat to national authenticity and unity – by rejecting the marriage between French and ex-colonial subordinate languages, the French prefer interbreeding with its unfortunate results. Seeing difference as a problem is at the root of refusing a pluralist view of the French language. It also accounts for most Frenchmen deriding other ways of using French. Some members of France’s intelligentsia even ridicule tolerance in other linguistic communities, namely the English-speaking one. In 1995, for example, when campaigning for changes in the language policy of the European Union institutions, the French government used linguicist discourse to depreciate non-native forms of English. ‘The French’, writes Robert Phillipson, ‘made the point that the unclear English of non-native users of the language was an inferior instrument for international communication, a feeling that many interpreters and translators in Brussels would doubtless agree with’ (Phillipson, 2003: 48). When the French belittle ‘accented’ linguistic forms, they seem to overlook one of the real sources of power for languages: numerical strength, perhaps the most basic of the indicators of the international standing of a language. English has in effect become a lingua mundi mainly because of the sheer number of non-native speakers who represent the majority today and who guarantee its future as a world dominant language. The French never contemplated democratizing the acquisition of their language in independent Algeria. Immediately after 1962, they approved of elite bilingualism, and a horizontal diffusion of French: its spread was selective and only dominant groups could learn it and have real competency in it. Elite bilingualism ensured that it was acquired perfectly by a few who would reproduce the same attitudes to French language and culture as in France. Learners were expected to cherish what they had acquired as ardent

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Francophiles. It was shown in Chapter 3 how this type of language acquisition produced a durable mechanism of strong ‘elite closure’: the Algerian military and socio-political leadership resorted to the French educational institutions to prevent their offspring from joining schools that catered for the masses and, hence, allowed them retain an advantageous fluency in French, the real passport to social advancement. As a direct result of ‘elite closure’, many Algerians are refused the right to have access to French because French, along with scientific knowledge, is a form of cultural capital, a ‘Bourdieusard’ concept coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to refer to dominant discourses, languages and knowledge that profit elite groups. Undoubtedly, this situation has counterparts in the other two North African nations which also indulged in a strong form of elite closure. In Morocco, the children of those ideologically committed to the intensive Arabization of national culture and education were often educated at exclusive institutions to attain an advantageous proficiency in French (Bentahila, 1983: 124). When Tunisia gained its independence in 1956, the French linguistic presence remained strong by choice. And in 1967, the cultural section of the French embassy ‘taught 10,609 students in French schools of whom only 4,321 were French’ (Gordon, 1978: 150). Nonetheless, Algeria’s elite closure was stronger than that in neighbouring countries: economic liberalization in Morocco and Tunisia allowed the establishment of a private schooling sector which provided a strong form of bilingualism. By contrast, the adoption of the socialist development model in postindependent Algeria led to the closing down of the private sector that had existed since 1962, and the emergence of a limited number of private schools for the exclusive use of the political and military ruling classes. For example, in Algiers, those schools were unofficially maintained as bilingual schools. The most famous, the former French Lycée Descartes, ‘nationalized’ and renamed Cheikh Bouhamama, provided instruction in French for the children of the elite (Messaoudi & Schemla, 1995: 59). While private schools were banned, the Bendali School was created on the outskirts of Algiers in November 1987. According to the founder of the school, the authorities have always helped the school ‘but never officially’. As journalist Jean-Pierre Tuquoi pointed out, several members of the political, military and educational elites ‘have chosen to educate their children in this private school that the State, officially, does not recognise’ (Tuquoi, 2003: 4). As a strategy, Algeria’s elite closure produced a strong form of bilingualism for a limited number of privileged students who learned content (e.g. mathematics, social studies) through both French and Arabic. The vast majority of children in public schools were monolingually educated in Arabic with a weak form of bilingualism. These schools did not produce

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substantial numbers of competent bilinguals, and language proficiency in the second language was low due to poor teaching methods or to limited exposure to the French language and teaching – in certain rural areas, for example, the educational authorities refused to provide vacant posts with French teachers between the 1970s and 1990s. Today, most secondaryschool students are thus weak in their written skills, a competency that opens doors for them for advanced studies. Differences of punctuation between Arabic and French represent a source of great anxiety for learners in writing tasks. They also use a discourse style influenced by Literary Arabic culture which cannot be found in Standard French. Another obstacle the three North African countries have in common is the emphasis placed in Arabic language teaching on elegance of expression when writing Literary Arabic. Abdelâli Bentahila describes as follows this attitude typical of Arabic teaching in the Maghreban context: The possibility of merely stating their [students’] ideas, in the simplest possible way does not accord with the training they received when learning Arabic, which taught them that Arabic is to be regarded as an end in itself rather than simply a means of communication. (Bentahila, 1983: 135) As a result of this, French language proficiency levels have dropped considerably and pictures from the Algerian linguistic landscape (see Figure 4.1) corroborate this: the spelling mistakes that occur in signs when writing in a language not fully mastered reflect the state of literacy in French and the inadequate levels of competence in this language. It is an expression of linguistic insecurity: the users of French know they have an unsure grasp of the language and a lack of confidence in their abilities. For example, in the spring of 2011, I collected attitudinal reactions with a questionnaire similar to the one used in 2004 and with a similar population (upper secondaryschool students). With the 2004 questionnaire, the majority of respondents, who were given the choice of completing questionnaires in Arabic or French, chose to respond in French. During the pilot study for the latest questionnaire the majority preferred Arabic. The same behaviour has been reported elsewhere (see, e.g., Kebbas, 2007a: 117). If we agree with Ronald Wardhaugh that linguistic insecurity is a ‘clear linguistic sign [. . .] that a language is in serious trouble’ (Wardhaugh, 1987: 20), then it follows from this that French is in sharp decline and its future is not completely secure in Algeria. From a qualitative point of view, this country is far from being the world’s second largest French-speaking nation after France. These developments

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Figure 4.1 Faulty use of French in Algeria’s linguistic landscape

stem directly from both Arabization and France’s language policy. They might prove deadly for the French language as in imperial Russia where only upper classes used French until it disappeared as a major second language. And the French will only have themselves to blame for they will be victims of their certainties and aggressive self-confidence, typical of 19th century practices.

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The Possibility of Alternative Voices To return to the attitudes of English- and French-speaking natives towards the appropriation of their mother tongue, there are differences for both excolonial languages as to the post-colonial developments. Once again, a comparison of the French and British philosophies of colonialism is in order. The driving ideological forces behind the two imperialisms were in complete opposition. The French policy of assimilation was inspired by the philosophy of the Enlightenment whose humanism viewed colonial ‘natives’ as human beings with the same rights as the colonizers. However, equality also entailed similarity: citizenship implied that colonizer and colonized shared the same values and the same language to be acquired ‘perfectly’ and ‘beautifully’. Linguistic and cultural qualifications were the principal and fundamental criteria in determining citizenship. By contrast, the British believed in inequality and difference between people. Anglo-centric ideology required the superiority of the British and their language over any other colonized subject and indigenous language. This racist worldview considered access to the English language as a dangerous thing and only a certain elite could acquire it to serve as a class of mediators between rulers and ruled. To challenge these beliefs and contradict the racialist myth of the Negro’s ‘retarded mentality’, colonials proved that they could master the imperial language and culture. As a result of this, literary creative writing flowered in colonial Englishes (Karmani & Pennycook, 2005: 159; Phillipson, 1992: 131; Todorov, 1982: 58). These autonomous ‘New Englishes’ or second languages derived from Britain’s pragmatic policies and they were certainly encouraged by the British sense of detachment from their colonized subjects. After decolonization, such attitudes were translated into a tendency among natives from the Centre to accept other peoples’ ways of using English. Most of them even considered the appropriation of the ex-colonial language by others to be beneficial for its ameliorating potential. Native English speakers did not seem to be very possessive of their mother tongue. This being said, I must agree here with Alastair Pennycook when he says that such ‘bland liberal pronouncements’ should not mask the fact that English is laden with meanings and attendant colonial discourses (Pennycook, 1998: 190–191). I am nevertheless confronted in this book with two ex-colonial languages with one being far more encumbered than the other. Compared to English and its native speakers, French has failed to reach even the absolute minimum in ridding itself of its national origins and its speakers’ possessiveness. The powerful Parisbased establishment does not allow for alternative ‘voices’ to exist independently from ‘national’ French, the French of France – not only non-natives

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are denied the right to appropriate dominant discourses, they are also expected to assimilate into them. They have even imposed their Francocentric view on the Francophonie, an organization supposed to be international in scope. Brian Weinstein describes one key objective of this linguistic coalition: ‘[t]he maintenance and extension of a standard spoken and written French language purified of unacceptable English language borrowings and local idiosyncrasies is one general goal’ (Weinstein, 1989: 53). As described in Chapter 1, the contrast between French and English native speakers’ tolerance to different ways of using their language shows that the French language is ‘closed’ and English ‘open’. Algerian Islamonationalists, who turn a blind eye to British imperialism and prefer English over French, confirm the perceived ‘openness’ of English. What is more, the natives’ acceptance of linguistic forms from the Periphery blurs the national origin of English and its links with English-dominant nations. Unlike English, the equation of the French language to its national origin and culture is still very much alive. Its exclusiveness appears in the French possessive attitudes towards their language which tends to exacerbate the national origin of this idiom and France’s colonial excesses. In sum, language possessiveness and lack of ‘openness’ prevent others as potential learners and speakers, to take the language to themselves, and to appropriate it without feeling threatened in their (linguistic) identity. In this regard, English seems to have been more successful than French in accepting appropriation and not assimilation in the post-colonial age. Such evolution is found in approaches to language learning, traditionally based on monolingually oriented and native-speaker-oriented models. Most French-speaking areas continue to follow Franco-centric language norms based on the prioritization of linguistic ‘pure’ forms and the stigmatization of borrowings. So the monolingual speaker is privileged over the multilingual one as the ‘best’ model. The Gallic-authenticity syndrome implies that only teachers of French stock can own the language, keep it ‘pure’ and transmit it to others. As an illegitimate owner of French, the Other, a ‘language thief’ is likely to ‘contaminate’ the language. This obviously derives from colonial bilingualism which is likely to produce linguistic insecurity. When, in March 2006, the French newspaper Libération asked Turkish author Orhan Pamuk why he refused to write in French despite his upbringing in a French-speaking environment, he said: ‘the impression of self-importance and arrogance expressed by the French language, the feeling that everything is perfect in it give foreigners who believe in this a sense of powerlessness’ (Pamuk, 2006: 34). Moreover, prioritizing the monolingual speaker from the Centre tends to prevent the existence of multiple models. For example, the profession of the Teaching

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of French as a Foreign Language (FLE in French) is conspicuously absent in the major bastions of Francophonie such as Lebanon and Tunisia. So when, starting from September 2004, cohorts of teachers mainly monolingual and of Gallic origin were sent from France to Algeria to help supervise doctoral students, some Algerians started to complain. No wonder Algerians complained: the French academics’ insensitivity to local people’s multilingual orientations and their ignorance of Postcolonial Studies – and their country’s colonial excesses – can be interpreted as arrogance in Algeria where the memory of colonialism is still very much alive. In the English-speaking world, the issue of linguistic norms has been settled from the ex-colonized subjects’ point of view. This has been achieved through language appropriation which is apparent in at least two aspects. First, pedagogical materials for the teaching of English, which were first criticized for being too Anglo-centric, have been modified by governments to suit local demands through the use of indigenous materials. Consequently, the approach centred on the native speaker and often based on ethnocentric, unrealistic, puristic, intolerant and unpragmatic views is less and less accepted in the English-speaking Periphery. Second, in most former British colonies, the pressure to conform to the Centre or external linguistic standards (American, British and so on) is slowly being resolved in favour of local educated norms. For example, the majority of Indians prefer now their own brand of English described as ‘a non-aligned variety’. Moreover, the English Language Teaching (ELT) profession in the Indian sub-continent has developed separately and it provides models and teaching materials for emergent countries. As a result of this, ELT in local contexts has become big business in India (Kachru, 1986: 23, 25; McCrum et al., 1992: 330; Schneider, 2011: 225; Spichtinger, 2000: 23, 30). In Pakistan, language experts promoted in the 1980s an ‘Islamic Approach’ to teaching English as a foreign language turning it into a religiously ethnicized tool for the ‘propagation of Islam’. Then, they exported their expertise in teaching ‘Islamic English’ to the Muslim States in the ex-Soviet Union in search of a new identity, and to Arabic-speaking countries, including Algeria (Shafi, 1983: 34–35; Siddiqui, 1992: A25). However, how a dominant language is put to different uses should be treated with caution. Appropriating a language like English and using it in ELT environments is necessary in order to avoid cultural values that could endanger one’s identity. Propagating Islam through English, even within a limited ELT context, is acceptable as long as mainstream culture happens to be Islamic. In this case, it is not even propagation since the majority is Muslim: it is Islam through another voice. But the appropriation of English for Islamic purposes raises one major concern: one needs to oppose the use

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of English for the promotion of extremist ideological positions which prevent alternative voices from being heard. Islamists’ nationalist call for the replacement of French in Algerian schools in the 1990s was primarily meant to leave out other (French-speaking) groups and, thus, represented a repressive mode of life and politics. They also aimed at social control. It was argued in Chapter 3 that the policy of Arabization promoted education through Arabic to maintain a compliant population. Within this educational context, education through Islamic English could seek similar goals. When these concerns have been clarified, it is important to recognize the need for working with or through English to get alternative voices heard and to present a different picture of the world. It is even more so when the first mandatory foreign language ignores such possibilities. The acquisition of the French language often requires speakers to understand and perhaps share certain cultural values. The elaborate ideology of linguistic superiority in French culture contains the post-1789 revolutionary message of freedom, equality and fraternity, later reinforced by secularization or ‘laïcité’. To the French, this message is ‘the highest expression of human civilization’ and is thus potentially universal. While North Africa was under French control, colonial indoctrination and linguicism consisted in making colonials believe that Arabic reflected religious and traditional values (irrationality), and French science and modernity (rationality). As shown in Chapter 3, the elite of independent Algeria reproduced these beliefs and passed them onto the new generations to maintain many myths about the value of French over the indigenous languages. Similarly, ‘[t]his colonialist ideology is still deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Moroccans to this day’ (Errihani, 2008: 22). So, unlike English which allows Muslims to appropriate it in an ‘Islamic’ form, the idea of having ‘Islamic French’ does not seem conceivable at the moment to the majority of French teachers in general and Algerian French teachers in particular. To validate this claim, I will report on my own observations made during the celebrations held at an Algerian middle school in April 2008. I must admit, however, that these observations cannot be generalized to the whole country – more systematic research is required. The programme of the festivities was in Arabic but the school authorities kindly accepted to provide me with a bilingual Arabic–French programme (see Figure 4.2) and a video recording of this cultural event. Teachers and students used three languages to sing, act and make speeches. All activities were in Arabic except Act 3, Act 11 and Act 8 which were in French, and Act 4, Act 6 and Act 9 in English. The number of students singing in French (Act 3) and in English (Act 4) was strikingly different: there were four for the former and 20 for the latter.

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Figure 4.2 Prize-giving celebrations: Captain Ziani Middle School Ghazaouet, Programme 16 April 2008

Moreover, students were more creative in English than in French. For example, a student read a text in perfectly intelligible English to introduce the three English activities prepared by students and teachers. The remarkable thing is that students did not perform any religious act in French. In fact, Act 8 was an adaptation of La Fontaine’s ‘The Cicada and the Ant’, a fable whose moral encouraged rationality and efficiency at work. As to the religious song in English (Act 4), students inserted in the lyrics a number of Arabic words or expressions with religious connotations. The chorus read as follows: ‘Every night and every day | Every night and every day | Never forget to say | [there is no God but Allah].’ It was argued in Chapter 3 that Algeria’s new literate generations had a more religious orientation than their elders. Linguistic use during the school celebrations described here shows that it is English and not French which allowed young Algerians to express their own values whether religious or otherwise. Other voices could be heard in English but not in French. Thus, the latter language seems to be at a disadvantage because it is more exclusive than English in terms of social functions and domains of use in a society where mainstream culture is Islam. Nonetheless, the limited data gathered through the observation of one school concert

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may be suggestive but it needs to be corroborated by further (quantitative and/or qualitative) evidence.

Future Prospects Very helpful in understanding the rivalry between English and French and future developments in North Africa is the custom report compiled in April 2012 for the British Council by the global research organization Euromonitor International. Its study seeks to best map quantitative evidence of English language against the importance it imparts to individuals and countries in eight nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including Algeria, Mococco and Tunisia. The paragraphs that follow are partly a summary of this research report. According to Euromonitor research, out of the three countries of the Maghreb, it is in Algeria where the English language is the least developed: people with a good command of English represent 7% of the total population in Algeria, 14% in Morocco and between 10% and 15% in Tunisia. What is more, Algeria has the lowest percentage of English speakers compared to the other MENA countries researched by Euromonitor International – Jordan, for example, has the highest score with 45% (Euromonitor International, 2012: 26, 58, 111, 157). Nonetheless, in the concluding remarks of the section on Algeria, the research organization claims that there is a growing awareness of the importance of speaking English, particularly among young Algerians in urban areas. Euromonitor International gives several factors as potential contributors to the eventual expansion of English in Algeria. The first one relates to the strong urban population (estimated at 66% of the total population) which is far more likely to acquire English skills for personal and professional needs. In truth, most Algerian speakers of English live in large cities, notably in the capital Algiers and other urban centres in the coastal area. The second key driver for English in Algeria concerns youngsters’ growing exposure to the media (satellite TV channels), Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), and very high rates of mobile telephone usage (see Chapter 3). The number of ICT users rose from 0.64 million in 2010 to 0.72 million in 2011, and, as a result, there is growth in the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, which predominantly use English as an international medium. What is more, investments made by English language institutions over the last 4–5 years positively impact English in Algeria. For example, the world’s leading language training provider The Linguaphone Group entered the Algerian market in 2007 to serve

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1000 students. The British Council and the US government have also reached an agreement with the Algerian Ministry of Education to improve the country’s educational system through the training of teachers and inspectors in English to raise language standards. It is probably employment opportunities that most strongly motivate youngsters to learn English because unemployment is especially high among Algeria’s youth. There is growing realization that solid English language skills open doors to better career prospects both at home and abroad (see also Algerian youngsters’ attitudes discussed earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 3). Internationally, students can pursue higher education in the United Kingdom and North America – for example, Canada, where job opportunities are relatively plentiful, has less stringent immigration procedures. But it is Algeria’s oil and gas industry that creates the most demand for English education in the country. Hydrocarbons are the backbone of the Algerian economy: in 2011, they generated 60% of budget revenues, and over 95% of export earnings. With its 10th-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and its 16th-largest oil reserves, Algeria has historically attracted multinational companies (CIA, 2012). Energy companies in Algeria consider English to be very important for doing business in the country. According to Euromonitor’s research, 97% of the demand for English speakers comes from the oil and gas multinationals, and a mere 5% from sectors excluding hydrocarbons. Many energy companies have production facilities in the less populated areas of the Sahara desert, in the south of the country. Owing to the lack of local workers with good English-speaking skills, these companies tend to hire expatriates, especially in executive and middle management positions. This trend is expected to change over the next 10 years with southern regions generating more demand for English compared to other parts of Algeria. To Euromonitor International, ‘with the small population in the South, there is significant interest in learning English and reluctance towards French is apparent’ (Euromonitor International, 2012: 59–60). This reluctance towards French in the countryside in general and in the South in particular is historically founded. Before the War of Algeria (1954–1962), French language and culture did not have much influence on the illiterate peasantry, completely ignored by the pieds noirs. As mentioned in Chapter 2, European colonialists had settled in the urban centres of the fertile coastal band that lines the Mediterranean Sea. As a result of this, the majority of the rural Muslim population was not influenced by literacy and ideals of rational culture and democracy. However, the establishment of ‘regroupment camps’ and ‘pacification zones’ during the War of Liberation (see the Prologue) allowed the peasants’ children to discover the French language and culture in schools run by the military who

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favoured poor populations living in remote areas. Interestingly enough, Frantz Fanon, a Black intellectual from Martinique and major publicist of the Algerian Revolution, wrote in 1959: ‘It is the Algerian Revolution that is facilitating the spreading of the French language in Algeria’ (quoted in Gordon, 1978: 165). He was not, however, referring to the role of ‘pacification’ zones in the diffusion of French, but to the Algerians’ appropriation of the colonial language as an instrument of liberation. After France’s defeat, the majority of displaced people who had lived in ‘regroupment camps’ preferred to settle in the urban centres deserted by the pieds noirs who had left the country. This ‘delayed Frenchifying process’ influenced quantitatively and qualitatively the expansion of the French language and positive attitudes towards it in Algeria. The North of the country was particularly affected by this process. But the less populated areas of the South, with a very low European presence and with no ‘regroupment camps’ during the War of Algeria, remained immune to these late developments of the colonial period (Benrabah, 2007a: 201–202; Pervillé, 2011: 40). When reading the Euromonitor report, one cannot help formulate one key hypothesis: in comparison with neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia, the weak expansion of English in Algeria comes from the absence of a diverse and market-orientated economy and an opening to the world market. Today’s economy remains dominated by the State, a legacy of the country’s socialist post-independence development model. When oil prices collapsed in the late 1980s, the government could not repay its external debt by the mid-1990s. Then, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed the implementation of a structural adjustment programme – from April 1994 to March 1995 and from April 1995 to March 1998 – to encourage the transition to a market economy (Dahmani, 1999: 184–192; Martín, 2003: 40). Following the high rise of international oil prices in the early 2000s, the State resorted once again to its old centralized socio-economic system typical of ‘rentier’ States. It reinforced its control of the economic sector with the help of an inert bureaucracy. Since 2009, the government has halted the privatization of state-owned industries and restricted foreign involvement in the country’s economic sector. It has also failed to diversify the petroleum mono-exporting economy, and to attract foreign and domestic investment outside the oil and gas industry (CIA, 2012). For example, the complex formalities for establishing foreign business in Algeria does not help attract and/or retain overseas investments in the country. This is best illustrated in The World Bank’s 2012 Doing Business report which shows how easy it is to do business in a given country, and which compares regulation for domestic firms in around 183 nations across the world. Compared to Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria held the worst position: the World Bank’s report ranked Tunisia in the 46th position

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in the global market, Morocco in 94th and Algeria in 148th. It also promoted Morocco to first among the 12 economies that have improved the most in the ease of doing business – it stood at the 115th position in 2011. By contrast, the Algerian situation deteriorated: it held the 143rd position in 2011 (The World Bank, 2012: 2, 6). On the back of this, the private education sector remains under strict regulation in Algeria. Public educational institutions, which give relatively limited exposure to English and other foreign languages, continue to dominate private establishments. These provide better qualifications and English language skills of better quality than public institutions – private schools usually commence English education from the early stages of the primary cycle. The weak penetration of English and the dominant position of French in Algeria are, therefore, partly related to the government’s failure to liberalize the country’s economy. One could speculate that relaxing the State control of economic activities, and opening the economy to the world market are more than likely to increase the use of English in Algeria. This is particularly important given the high number of Algerians who acknowledge the importance of English. According to Euromonitor’s research, English is highly valued by the majority of the population, with 57% of individuals indicating that this language is important or very important – among students, the score rises to 74%. However, this report also shows that 60% of Algerians consider French to be the most important language for international business. In fact, France is one of the leading sources of non-oil foreign investment and trading partners for Algeria. However, at the end of 2012, the ex-colonial nation was superseded by China as Algeria’s first imports partner – a position held by the French since Algerian independence in 1962 (Aït-Aoudia, 2012: 53; Euromonitor International, 2012: 62, 81–83). Interestingly enough, economic competition between France and China is already visible in the Algerian linguistic landscape. Figure 4.3 shows two photographs taken in June 2010 on the construction site of a motorway built by a Chinese company in the outskirts of the city of Tlemcen. The billboard in the image on the right does not even contain Arabic but the two languages of business, Chinese and French. Symbolically, Chinese dominates French on this placard: it is positioned at the top in a more prominent red colour, and French is not only at the bottom in light blue, but it is presented in a faulty written form – the apostrophe coming after the two ‘l’ letters is followed by blank space. Going back to English–French rivalry in Algeria, the question arises as to whether or not the old statist nationalist economy safeguards the French language in this country against English, its most serious rival at the moment. Any future liberalization of the economic sphere would certainly accelerate the expansion of English as a result of both the establishment of foreign and

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Figure 4.3 Chinese and French in Algeria’s linguistic landscape (building site of a motorway outside the city of Tlemcen)

non-French companies, and its opening to the world market. Incidentally, the relatively high penetration of English in Morocco and Tunisia derives partly from their freer markets. What is certain is that, since the beginning of the ‘Arab Spring’, the desperate situation of Algerian youngsters (high youth unemployment, housing shortages and so on) has put enormous pressure on the authorities to relax State control of the economy, to be more reform-minded, and to implement long-awaited reforms for the benefit of the majority (see the Epilogue). How far these developments would affect the current unassailable position of the French language remains an open question, for predictions are a risky game in sociolinguistics.

Conclusion Following Algeria’s independence, French gradually declined as a second language: its status changed from main medium of instruction to mere subject. Foreign languages were offered as part of the school curriculum, and children could choose one among a small number of possibilities. Even though English was the most popular additional language, it remained ‘invisible’ until the late 1970s and early 1980s when linguistic Arabization gained momentum. Then, the pro-Arabization lobby sparked the conflict between French and English when Islamists and conservatives dominated the Algerian socio-political scene of the 1980s and 1990s. The possibility of

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English displacing French was relayed to the world by politicians and academics from the United Kingdom and the United States. Between 1993 and 1997, the Algerian government allowed English to compete with French as the first mandatory foreign language in primary schools. This top-down offer failed to attract large crowds for English despite its ascendancy elsewhere in the world. Unplanned aspects of the country’s language situation confounded the members of Algeria’s elite who had planned the disappearance of French. However, if the ex-colonial language has been maintained, its future seems uncertain. There are at least three indicators that point to the eventual decline of French in Algeria. First, the spread of Arabic monolingualism through Arabization and ‘elite closure’ have produced a weak form of bilingualism as well as linguistic insecurity among the countrys’ new generations. Second, unlike English, French remains irredeemably tainted by its colonial provenance. Third, in contrast to the Algerian religio-conservatives’ ideologically motivated decision to impose English from above, a growing number of Algerians, who do not let ideology get in the way of making a living, feel that Arabic monolingualism, Berber–French or Arabic–French bilingualism are not enough. Graduate students and researchers feel an urgent need for English language proficiency to reach important personal and/or professional goals (e.g. raising student achievement, increasing employment opportunities at home and abroad). For several years now, English has been gaining dominance in the oil sector, computing and in scientific and technological documentation. Recent research by Euromonitor International (2012) confirms this positive attitude towards English despite a major obstacle: the persistence of a ‘rentier’ system which both prevents opening Algeria’s economy to the world and maintains myths about the value of French over the other languages, including English. A sign of this success of English at the grassroots level is the number of enrolments in higher education. English departments in Algerian universities continue to attract more and more students and teachers. For example, in 2010–2011, the number of students enrolled in French and English departments in two major universities in the western part of Algeria was as follows: University of Oran: French Department: 990 students, English Department: 767; University of Mascara: French Department: 766, English Department: 744. These figures show that English is close on the heels of French. English seems to emerge as another valuable linguistic option perverting the long-established belief that French is the only window to the world, to ‘modernity’, and to science and technology. The new intruder in Algeria’s sociolinguistic scenery is a blessing in disguise: the presence of the English language demonstrates that French indoctrination inherited from the colonial

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era does not stand up well to scrutiny in the long run. The penetration of English will certainly encourage the new generation of Algerians to awaken to the idea that no language or culture is ‘the highest expression of human civilization’, and that there are other alternative and equally valuable cultural and linguistic forms. It could also sensitize people to the value of their native tongues which have the potential to become forms of cultural and knowledge capital on a par with the two ex-colonial languages that have been competing in Algeria for a few decades now.

5 Writers and Language as a Battlefield: ‘Authenticity’ versus ‘Hybridity’

The elite [France has formed] is only a minority as yet, a noisy, tumultuous one, whose aspirations are sometimes quite different from those of the people. It happens, even, that some of them are much closer to us than they are to the mass. [. . .] But let us take care: there is [a possibility] of a sudden fusion, a demagogic one let us admit, of the intellectuals and their co-religionists, this notably if a crisis, unsolved on the economic plane, is transferred to the political. Augustin Berque (1947: 127–128) [Colonized] representatives became familiar with a literary tradition which contained potentially subversive ideas that could be at variance with colonial interests. Robert Phillipson (1992: 127) [T]he French-educated class [. . .] has directed the Algerian revolution for independence. David C. Gordon (1962: 3) [M]any of these Algerian authors [. . .] remained Algerian, deeply attached to Algeria, but [they] also gained a deep feeling of loss, of distance from their own roots, which they sought to rediscover with an energy that sometimes approached demonic dimensions. Alf Andrew Heggoy (1984: 108) The colonized literature in European languages appears condemned to die young. Albert Memmi (1974: 111)

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[T]wo categories of writers quickly developed: those who embraced the privileges offered by the regime, accepted its constraints, and participated in the process of censorship; and those who rejected the regime’s conditions. The latter were condemned to silence or exile. Many of Algeria’s best writers moved abroad, or were forced to publish their works overseas or underground. JuliJa Šukys (2007: 60) [I]t is suggested that language policy and language planning have repercussions for creativity. These repercussions are often unforeseen by the planners/policy makers, and their reactions to them are often negative; but they are inevitable as long as policy makers base themselves on some perception of what is good for the nation and forget what is essential for the individual. Jean D’Souza (1996: 259) [B]ilingual and multilingual communities have been especially rich in the production of creative artefacts, and there is some evidence to suggest that conditions of multilingualism and multiculturalism may favour creative production. Ronald Carter (2004: 171–172)

In examining the debate on ‘Who are we?’ and the thinking of actors involved in language planning in Chapters 3 and 4, this analysis has, so far, considered only half the story. To understand how Algerian intellectuals’ internal conflicts linked to language came about, it is necessary to consider the war of words between artistic and literary creators. This chapter is the story of how colonials, dispossessed of their native tongue(s) as tools for creativity, appropriated the colonial language to write about their lives as colonized writers and their feelings about colonialism. They turned French against their colonial master who had refused them education in this language for fear of its empowering capacity. They wrote back against the empire to express their deep opposition to the ideal of cultural assimilation to France. It is also about authors drawn into a language-linked conflict with each other in a newly independent nation: writers who were sometimes opposed to a State that refused to acknowledge the country’s linguistic pluralism. And just as under colonial rule, these authors fought for or against the official narrative of Arabo-Islamic ‘authenticity’.

Colonials Write Back Despite the long resistance of Algerian society to cultural domination and the colons’ opposition to the democratization of the schooling system,

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colonial educational policies eventually produced a class of assimilated Algerians or évolués. The term évolué, which has no English equivalent, applied to a person who ‘has become not only French (enculturated) but also civilized’ (Gordon, 1962: 4). To the colonizers, this guaranteed that the majority of the population did not have a natural leadership (see Chapter 2). Caught between two mutually exclusive and conflicting cultural groups, the évolués were not completely at ease in either. They considered their Arabo-Berbero-Islamic ‘authenticity’ questionable, and the French dimension of their identity like an ill-fitting suit. The situation of French-educated intellectuals took on tragic dimensions after World War II (WWII), when they started publishing books of good quality in French. Alhough the cultural confrontation between the colonizer and the colonized was cruel, it generated a creativity, whereby artists wrested the language from their oppressor to turn it against him. In the face of colonial domination, some évolués used their French culture and language to fight for the political, social and economic rights of their fellow Algerians, ‘the wretched of the earth’. In this struggle, the writers’ experience as colonials shaped their way of writing French, a tool they used to find a voice and express an identity. In 1891, M’Hamed Ben Rahal wrote the first work of fiction, a short story. Ben Rahal’s work represented a major break in the indigenous literary tradition. It signalled the intrusion of French as the linguistic vector of a new literature, and the decline of Arabo-Berber literary expressions. As a committed intellectual, Ben Rahal believed in the progressive transformation of his community. In 1897, he encouraged his countrymen to become impregnated with new ideas from Western civilization. Ben Rahal led his struggle mainly against the colonizers’ refusal to extend education to all Muslims. To a parliamentarian opposed to a more inclusive educational policy, he said: ‘Before judging us, give us the means to develop our innate abilities; give us education’ (Djeghloul, 1986: 39, 58). He asked the authorities to provide job opportunities for those who attended colonial schools as a way to boost school enrolments. For the fact was that not only was a French education perceived as damaging to Algerians’ cultural values, but it was also considered ‘useless’: it did not guarantee social advancement. Nevertheless, Ben Rahal had no illusions about his compatriots’ feelings towards those who were integrated into colonial schools. In their opinion, they were ‘renegades’ (Ageron, 1968: 340). The fight for socio-political rights became more vocal after Algerians began, in the 1920s, to adopt more favourable attitudes towards French language and culture. At the time, Ferhat Abbas was among the most articulate of the indigenous authors. As a young man studying at Algiers University, he wrote several newspaper articles published in book form in 1931. The

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content of this work reflected Abbas’ support for the assimilation and Frenchification of Algeria, but he regretted that France had failed in blending ‘the Occident and the Orient [. . .] [and] the formation through French– Muslim culture of an oriental France that would have been the most beautiful creation of modern times’ (Abbas, 1931: 99). As mentioned in Chapter 2, Abbas urged the French government to teach Arabic in the educational system. But his faith in the Whorfian hypothesis embodied in his colonial indoctrination let him ask France to modernize Algeria through ‘a powerful lever: the language of Corneille and of Racine’ (Abbas, 1931: 143–144). Then, echoing M’Hamed Ben Rahal’s appeal, Abbas declared: ‘Help us to re-conquer our dignity or else take back your schools’ (Abbas, 1931: 128). Throughout the 1930s, Abbas advocated for Algeria the status of a province principally Muslim in faith and politically attached to metropolitan France. He did not believe in a separate national identity for Algerians, and in February 1936, he wrote the following much-quoted statement: Had I discovered the ‘Algerian nation’, I would be a nationalist and I would not blush as if I had committed a crime. [...] However, I will not die for [it], because there is no such thing as an Algerian Fatherland. I have not found it. I have examined its History, I questioned the living and the dead, I visited cemeteries; nobody talked to me about it. I then turned to the Koran and I sought for one solitary verse forbidding a Muslim from integrating himself into a non-Muslim nation. I did not find that either. One cannot build on the wind. (Collot & Henry, 1978: 66–67) Two months later, the reformist leader of the Ulemas, Abdelhamid Ben Badis, answered Abbas most forcibly. He said that the Ulemas had also ‘searched History’, and had indeed discovered an ‘Algerian Muslim nation’, which ‘has its own culture, its traditions and its characteristics, good or bad like every other nation of the earth. And, next, we state that this Algerian nation is not France [. . .], cannot be France, [and] doesn’t wish to [be France]’ (Collot & Henry, 1978: 68–69). Ben Badis’ trenchant response calls for two remarks. First, the Ulema leader’s quote highlights the enormous gap between defenders of assimilation and their opponents during the interwar era. Ben Badis and his followers rejected French education, assimilationism and Western rationalism. In this regard, the position of the fundamentalist orthodox reformists (the Ulema) seemed closer to the masses whose majority continued to refuse French language and culture. In truth, Ben Badis was not closer to his people than Abbas was (see Chapter 2). Historian Gilbert Meynier recalls a telling event about the Ulemas’ failure to bridge the gap that separated them from the masses. After Ben Badis had

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made his public speech in Literary Arabic in the Eastern city of El Eulma in the 1930s, people in the audience asked: wach qâl? (‘What did he say?’) (Meynier, 2002: 53). The second remark concerning Ben Badis’ response to Abbas relates to the maintenance of literary and artistic creativity in Algeria’s native languages. Despite the damage inflicted by colonialism, creative works did not disappear altogether under French rule. Until independence in 1962, artists produced works in an oral form in Berber and in oral and written forms in Arabic. The most famous Kabyle bard Si Mohand ou Mehand produced a rich poetic tradition transmitted orally from one generation to another, until it was transcribed in writing in 1960 (Feraoun, 1960: 85–90). Between 1830 and 1900, a few short treatises were published in Arabic on religious themes, the education of women and so on. With the end of World War I (WWI), the tone became more nationalistic. Major literary themes included attacks on colonialism and the defence of Arabism. In the pre-1954 era, several writers published books on the history of Algeria and of Arabo-Islamic civilization. It is worth noting here the journalistic and literary activities of the Association of Algerian Students of al-Zaituna mosque-university in Tunis. By 1947, the majority of al-Zaituna students, formerly strong supporters of the Ulemas, rejected the reformist leaders’ moderation and became adepts of Revolutionary Messali Hadj and his PPA/MTLD party. For example, in their annual publication of 1948, student writers produced nationalistic texts which attested to their allegiance to Messali. As for pre-independence Algeria, poetry and drama represented the biggest share of literary expression in Arabic. As an illustration, an anonymous poem in Arabic recorded in Algiers in 1960 began: ‘Whenever the Frenchman goes | He leaves behind him bloody traces . . .’. Poet Moufdi Zakkaria wrote in Arabic and produced during the Revolution Qasaman (‘I swear!’) which would become Algeria’s national anthem. Playwright Rachid Ksentini developed popular drama and wrote his plays in colloquial Arabic. Both of these writers, who joined the FLN during the Revolution, had Berber origins (Mzabite for Zakkaria, and Kabyle for Ksentini), and were educated in both French and Arabic. As to writers of novels and short stories in Literary Arabic, they only emerged in the 1960s. So, creative works in Arabic did not reach the scale attained in French during colonization. And the mainstream of revolutionary leadership was Frenchspeaking, not Arabic-speaking, even though the first writer to be assassinated by the French secret police in March 1956 was Ahmed Réda Houhou, an Arabic-language author (Annaciri, 1960: 52–55; Gordon, 1966: 178–179; 1978: 152; Laredj, 2003: 8; McDougall, 2011: 254–257; Temlali, 2012: 621–624). Moving back to Ferhat Abbas, he lost his faith in assimilationism around the end of 1942. In fact, before WWII, the intense admiration for French

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culture blinded many Algerian intellectuals who lacked self-confidence and chose assimilation. The capacity of this culture to dazzle disappeared with the humiliation of France’s occupation by Nazi Germany during WWII. In August 1946, Abbas declared in the French National Assembly: ‘The Algerian personality, the Algerian fatherland, which I was unable to discover among the Muslim masses in 1936, I have discovered today’ (Lacouture, 1961: 301). Finally, in January 1956, he dissolved his party (UDMA) and joined the FLN to stand aside for the chiefs of the armed resistance. He became the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria (GPRA) created in September 1958. In the meantime, literary creativity in French had developed substantially in quantity and in quality.

Some Effects of Colonial Bilingualism After WWII, most of the members of the new school of Muslim writers got involved in raising Algerian self-consciousness. They enlightened the world on the social realities in Algeria, a different country from that of official statements, press releases and colonial propaganda. They expressed their feelings both directly in personal statements and indirectly via their fictional characters. Critics break down this search for identity into three major chronological periods. The first one, which lasted from 1945 to 1952, corresponds to ethnographic attempts to describe the colonized society and its culture. In the second period, authors dealt with the theme of personal and national ‘alienation’ – people felt strangers in their own country. They thus reflected upon the effect of French education on the évolués as individuals, and on the consequences of colonialism on Algeria’s traditional environment. The third period started in 1956 and dealt with the theme of national liberation. French-educated intellectuals, unsure of their ‘real’ identity, re-discovered at last their ethnic roots by committing themselves to the struggle against French imperialism (Collingwood-Whittick, 1980: 245–246, 288; Heggoy, 1984: 109). In this section, the work of a small number of indigenous authors is briefly analysed, particularly in relation to the language question and related issues – Sheila Collingwood-Whittick’s work (1980: Chapter 5) has been very helpful in choosing these themes. All these writers discussed here emerged in the 1950s, and became known as the ‘1954 generation’. They were all novelists-poets, the first generation of Muslims to suffer psychologically from their violent experience with colonial schools and with an alien and dominant language and culture. So, most of them described their violent encounter with colonial educational institutions, the French language, and

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the difficulty to learn this idiom. In his first novel Le Fils du pauvre, published in 1950, Mouloud Feraoun, the most emblematic author of the ethnographic period, describes how his child-hero, Fouroulou, discovered life in his village school and in the lycée of Tizi Ouzou. Fouroulou had spoken only his mother tongue Berber until he entered the colonial school where instruction was in French. Until the age of 11 or 12, he was not aware of the European presence, and he hardly realized what was happening to him. But he did remember his two Kabyle teachers in the elementary school of his village. Feraoun’s childhero certainly did not feel the sudden divorce between the language of home and that of school. It is more than likely that his teachers used their bilingualism to allow for a smooth transition from a monolingual Kabyle milieu to a French one. But, when at the age of 12 he joined the lycée in Tizi Ouzou, he met pieds noirs students for the first time, and felt like ‘an intruder’ in this environment (Feraoun, 1954: 58, 134). Mohammed Dib also brought out his experience with French education in his first novel La Grande maison published in 1952. Even though colonialism is not directly mentioned in this book Dib does refer to the colonial school attended by his young hero, Omar. One of the child’s earliest experiences at school is when his Muslim instructor, M. Hassan, announces ‘the Motherland’ as the topic for the day. ‘Which of you can tell me what the word Motherland means?’ asks the teacher. After an embarrassing moment of silence and stir one pupil says: ‘France is our Motherland.’ Then the pupils begin to chatter while Omar broods: France, capital Paris. He knew that. The French one saw in the city came from there. To go there and back one took a boat and crossed the sea, the Mediterranean. He had never seen the sea or a boat. [. . .] France, a pattern of many colours. How could this faraway land be his mother? His mother is at home; it is Aïni; there weren’t two. Aïni is not France. Nothing in common. Omar had discovered a lie. Motherland or not motherland it was not his mother. He was learning falsehoods to escape the famous olive-wood switch. The young boy keeps wondering while the instructor goes on to explain what a patriot is. Suddenly, Omar hears the teacher speaking in Arabic. The very man who defended the use of this language. Well I never! It was the first time! Although he knows the teacher, M. Hassan, is a Muslim and where he lives, Omar could not believe it. He had no idea he could speak Arabic. In a low voice marked with intensity [the instructor tells the students]: ‘It

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isn’t true when they tell you France is your Motherland.’ (Dib, 1952: 17–21) As an alien language, French proved difficult to acquire. In several novels, characters talk about their experience in learning to speak, read and write the colonial tongue. For example, in the novel Le Mont des genêts, Mourad Bourboune evokes the difficulties encountered by his hero Omar acquiring French: ‘I did not learn French in my mother’s womb. I did not find it like a present in her lap at my birth. I had to fight for every word, to tear it away from those who claimed to be the only trustees’ (Bourboune, 1962: 226– 227). Similarly, Kabyle-born Mouloud Mammeri uses Arezki, his hero in Le Sommeil du juste, as a mouthpiece for his own struggle with French at the beginning of his secondary education: For a long time, the lessons which I tried as hard as I could to understand remained for me like the dead incantations of a foreign tribe. [. . .] In the evening, as soon as the master on duty switched off the light in the dormitory, I buried my head in the pillow and I cried for not understanding half of what the French teacher had said. (Mammeri, 1952: 132) Arezki also evokes his communication problems with his European peers who made him discover linguistic stigmatization and conflict: ‘I could not understand what my schoolmates were saying: they were not speaking the French of my books. I had the slow Ighzer [Kabyle village] drawl. They laughed at me’ (Mammeri, 1952: 131). To his pieds noirs contemporaries brought up in the myths of language superiority and the Gallic-authenticity syndrome, Arezki did not have the ‘correct’ accent. As a result of this, indigenous children strove to achieve native competence in French, and this reveals ‘how self-conscious and hyper-sensitive the apprentice Francophone is in the use of the colonizer’s language’ (Collingwood-Whittick, 1980: 295). However, French colonial bilingualism would not allow colonized multilingual intellectuals to be at home in the French language, no matter how excellent their competence may have been. For example, during a scene of torture in Le Mont des genêts, the police officer-torturer reminds Bourboune’s hero Omar of the colonial negative image of French-educated indigènes: ‘You are of a different species from the others. [. . .] You are a frontier man. Obviously, the French nationality fits you like a badly-cut suit. But a burnous would be even worse.’ To Omar, the ‘badly-cut suit’ is ‘the French spoken on this side of the Mediterranean’ (Bourboune, 1962: 224–225, 227). Novelist Malek Haddad is certainly the most emblematic author of the ‘alienation’

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period. Before discussing in the next section his laments over his difficulties with French, it is worth noting here that Haddad is also renowned for his expression ‘language defect’. He once wrote: ‘I who speak in French, my poet friend, if my accent should shock you, remember that colonialism has inflicted this speech defect upon me’ (Parfenov, 1960: 80). In truth, many Algerian intellectuals internalized the fact that they could not own or appropriate the colonial language to be at ease ‘in the way that even the most illiterate of native French-speakers is sure to be’ (Collingwood-Whittick, 1980: 297). One expression of this sense of inferiority is the tendency among French-educated Algerians to marry French (European) women who were less well-educated than they. And evidence found in Algerian novels and/or in their authors’ statements shows that colonials were led to believe that French was simply a language for hire, not to be appropriated. In a speech delivered in May 1957, Algerian writer Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche interpreted the reason behind such a feeling when he said that ‘the colonized must never forget that this language is not his, that it is somehow, conceded to him, for one exclusive purpose – to sing the colonizer’s praises’ (Collingwood-Whittick, 1980: 298). Colonial bilingualism and the rhetoric of Gallic-authenticity constantly reminded colonized authors of their ‘inauthenticity’ and of their inferior status as speakers of French, as human beings, and as citizens. The proscription of Arabic illustrated this status and heightened the indigenous writers’ internal conflicts as bilinguals. And what exacerbated Algerian intellectuals’ uneasiness with French was the pieds noirs’ refusal to learn the majority language, Arabic. For example, in 1961, Malek Haddad observed: It is staggering to note the tiny number of Algerians of European descent who can speak Arabic and the even smaller number who can write it. Yet, most of them were settler families that had been in Algeria for several generations. Yet, they were bound to come into contact with Muslims every day. (Haddad, 1961: 38) Mohammed Dib was also preoccupied by cultural conflict. For example, in his third novel, Le Métier à tisser, cultural misunderstanding is symbolized by the negative attitude towards the child-hero’s French education: an old man is shocked when he discovers that the child could read and write, but ‘not in [his] language’, Arabic (Dib, 1957: 57). Here, Dib raises two questions. First, the child’s lack of linguistic proficiency in his mother tongue evokes the pain of language loss. The second question relates to the issue of learning French and its utility for colonized Algerians (the revolution and its preparation).

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Almost all writers of the ‘1954 generation’ turned the colonial language against imperialist France through their characters or their stylistic use of French. For example, Dr Idir Salah of Malek Haddad’s L’Elève et la leçon (first published in 1960) responds in French to an Algerian caïd (local governor of Muslim origin) who has just addressed him in Arabic. Through French, he transmitted his distance from a colonial collaborator who has looked for solidarity but deserves detestation (Haddad, 1973a: 86). In 1956, Algerian poetwriter Kateb Yacine wrote Nedjma, a novel in which he applied advanced writing techniques accessible only to a limited readership to depart from French literary canons. Of this way of writing, he would say later that ‘at the time, I felt it was necessary to speak French even better than the French themselves. To convince them that we were not French, the book had to be written in a style to seriously disturb the French. And then they would say: well, that is Algeria’ (Benrabah, 1999: 67). As to Bourboune’s hero, Omar, he responds to the police officer-torturer: It is not with you, but against you that we learn this language. You held your classics above our heads, shining and inaccessible. You did not want us to touch them. We did so on our own and we have only ourselves to thank. And here they are turned against you. We handle them like tools. Tools that can become weapons. [. . .] So when I speak to you in French, [. . .] I do not confide in you, I lay siege to you in the last bastion you have. (Bourboune, 1962: 226–227)

Hybridity and Long-Term Prospects Under the influence of colonial bilingualism, colonized intellectuals in French Algeria expressed their helplessness, uneasiness and sense of marginality. The problem of marginality took on tragic dimensions with two authors, Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche and Malek Haddad. In 1913, Amrouche’s family moved from Kabylia to Tunis where he spent his elementary and secondary school years. He then attended the teachers’ training education on the university level in Paris. Before WWII, Amrouche’s life as an exiled and uprooted Algerian and his upbringing in a Christian family made him adopt the next logical step – that of becoming a French writer (Memmi, 1964: 29). At the time, neither Amrouche nor any other Algerian writer could envisage their French writings as being more Algerian than French. With the humiliation of France by Nazi Germany, and the 1945 massacre perpetrated by colonialists in the northeast of the country (Setif uprising), Amrouche began to seriously cast doubt upon his allegiance to

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France. In the following years and until his death in 1962, he claimed he was torn between his Algerian (ancient Berber) identity and his new status as a Frenchman and a Christian. As a result of this, Amrouche’s work has been described as a poetry of pain – pain resulting both from the loss of homeland and from the disruption of (cultural) memory that loss entails. When the War of Independence broke out in 1954, he became an apologist for the FLN In his opinion, the root cause of Algerians’ uprising in November 1954 was psychological and stemmed from the oppressor’s violation of a people en masse. The logical outcome of France’s assimilationist policies was ‘perfect genocide’, he said. He thus denounced French colonialism as more pernicious than the colonialism of other European powers (Amrouche, 1963a: 75). Amrouche’s commitment to the Algerian revolution did not prevent him from persistently referring to his divided loyalty to Algeria and to France. This bred personal despair and demoralization in his writings. In a letter dated 22 July 1957, he declared ‘I no longer know Who I am.’ He also agonized over his cultural hybridity when he referred to himself as ‘a cultural monster’ encouraged by colonial society to think of himself as abnormal, freakish and inauthentic (Collingwood-Whittick, 1980: 242; Gordon, 1966: 167). In fact, he rejected his linguistic dualism for he believed ‘bilingualism an extremely dangerous thing’ and that a child should be raised in only one tongue with any other language added later in life (Amrouche, 1963b: 116–117). He lived at a time when academia and the mainstream ideology of the modern age viewed bilingualism as psychologically harmful for young people. There was another reason for Amrouche’s negative attitudes towards linguistic pluralism. At the time, colonial bilingualism and the rhetoric of authenticity implied that literature in French had no future. And intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre rationalized in the late 1940s the demise of French literature after decolonization. Sartre compared colonialism to a spring which breaks when tightened to its extremities (Bloch, 1996: 2–3). He thus believed that colonial writers would turn against the French language when their homelands were liberated. Tunisian-born Albert Memmi shared Sartre’s pessimism on the future of French-language literature: his epigraph at the beginning of this chapter (written in 1957) corroborates this view. He later said that he expected North Africa to become wholly Arabic linguistically (Gordon, 1978: 170). Similarly, in January 1961, Jean Senac, an Algerian of European descent who chose Algeria as his homeland, referred to himself and authors like him as ‘writers of transition’. Less than a month later, Amrouche made a sweeping forecast: ‘I am a cultural hybrid. Cultural hybrids are very interesting monsters, but monsters with no future. I consider myself, therefore, condemned by history’ (Gordon, 1962: 52). In sum, the end of France’s

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occupation would lead to the replacement of cultural hybridity by authenticity and the abandonment of the French language for the native tongue(s). Malek Haddad, the most violent critic of French assimilationism, shared Amrouche’s pessimistic view about the future of French literature in Algeria. Haddad’s extreme position regarding the colonial language in the 1950s and after independence stems from his social background. His father was a Kabyle primary school teacher who settled in Constantine. As a student in this home town, Haddad discovered the wretched conditions of his compatriots and felt uneasy because of his secular and privileged social upbringing. When he finished his secondary education in Constantine, he registered at a university in France which he abandoned before graduation. Haddad’s career as a journalist began in 1950, the year he became a member of the Algerian communist party. Then in 1956, he joined the FLN and, between 1958 and 1961, he wrote one novel every year, and an essay titled Ecoute et je t’appelle. Like Amrouche, he felt insecure and did not have a clear idea of who he was. Like his novelist-hero Saïd in La Dernière impression, published in 1958, he bitterly laments his marginality as a cultural hybrid. He believed that bridgebuilders had no prospects: ‘Men must die, a generation of transition must disappear. That generation built the bridge. And the bridge must be blown up. Saïd’s generation was a generation of bridge-builders of goodwill. But the bridges must be blown up’ (Haddad, 1958: 165–166). In his 1961 essay, Haddad exhibits his ideological conversion from communism to FLN AraboIslamism on the first page of this book which contains a dedication to the Ulema leader Abdelhamid Ben Badis. However, as a cultural hybrid born and raised in a secular family and denied by colonialism a mastery of Literary Arabic, he could not comfortably fit into an FLN culture and ideology founded on Arabic and Islam (Arabo-Islamism). So, like most new converts, he became more Arab than the Arabs. In Ecoute et je t’appelle, he describes Literary Arabic as ‘the language of which we were weaned and whose inconsolable orphans we are’. In the concluding words of his essay, Haddad yearns for revenge: ‘It’s that writer [of Literary Arabic] that we are waiting for and we have no other ambition or satisfaction than to have been for him the damned and willing preface writers of novels full of smiles and certainties that he will write to avenge us’ (Haddad, 1961: 32, 46). Haddad is well known for his laments over the difficulties he had with French. As an FLN spokesperson, he delivered a speech in Beirut in June 1961, in which he apologized for not addressing his audience in Arabic. He then declared: ‘the French language is my exile’ (Gordon, 1962: 36). This theme, evoked again and again in Ecoute et je t’appelle, appears in the opening sentence of the text: ‘I am separated from my homeland less by the Mediterranean than by the French language! I am incapable of expressing in Arabic what I feel in

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Arabic’ (Haddad, 1961: 9). Haddad remains emblematic for his exaggerated outbursts and almost neurotic attitudes towards French. In fact, this foreshadowed what he would become famous for once the struggle for independence had ended: his decision to give up writing fiction in French. His future resolution is also hinted at in his novel Le Quai aux fleurs ne répond plus, first published in 1961. In it, Haddad says of the novelist-hero: ‘Solitude is his realm and silence will slowly become his empire’ (Haddad, 1973b: 37). Contrary to Amrouche and Haddad, there were intellectuals who did not want to resent the French language even though it came as part of a package deal which included racial arrogance, genocide and so on. Kateb Yacine is one of those writers who refused to throw out the good when rejecting the evil. He openly stated favourable attitudes towards the colonial language during the Algerian Revolution. Following the publication of Nedjma in 1956, he declared on French TV: ‘the French language [. . .] is now part of the history of our country. It has also shaped the heart of our nation. [. . .] If we sacrifice it, we would really behave like barbarians’ (Benrabah, 1999: 254). To Kateb, the appropriation of French by Algerians was one of ‘the spoils of war’. Sadek Hadjeres is another notable author who did not believe in the future disappearance of ‘bridge-builders’ after national liberation. His description of indigenous children’s encounter with colonial schools was reported in Chapter 2. Hadjeres concludes his paper published in January 1960 with the presentation of Algeria’s linguistic scenery on the eve of independence, and with forecasts for a liberated Algeria. He describes his country’s multilingualism as a ‘mosaic’ of three languages, and his view of the future is based on two certainties. First, the State of independent Algeria will implement national educational policies based on Arab-Islamic values disparaged by colonialism. Second, when Arabic becomes the official language of a free Algeria, ‘French, as a second language, will play, with the culture it is a medium for, a far more brilliant role than during the sombre period when French was an official and imposed language’ (Hadjeres, 1960: 49). The second certainty illustrates colonial indoctrination and Hadjeres’ admiration for French culture which, to him, was without equal in the world. What is more, he hints at Algerians’ attitudinal change during the final two or three decades of colonialism: they admired the cultivated man ‘who is instructed in both Arabic and French’, he wrote (Hadjeres, 1960: 49). He thus underestimated the decades-long rift between Arabic- and French-language intellectuals. To Hadjeres, this old conflict had disappeared during the struggle for independence for pragmatic reasons, and the ‘necessities and the lessons of the national struggle’ (Hadjeres, 1960: 48). He was speaking far too soon: in the post-1962 era, language wars would be as violent as in the colonial period and even more tragic at times.

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Finally, among the ‘1954 generation’ two authors died on the eve of Algeria’s independence: Mouloud Feraoun was assassinated by the extremist Europeans of the Secret Army Organization (OAS in French) in March 1962, and Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche died from leukemia in April 1962. Both expressed their pessimism about future developments in the postindependence era. In October 1959, Amrouche wished that Algeria would not turn inwards (Amrouche, 1963c: 114). Feraoun made a remark which would prove prophetic. In his Journal 1955–1962, published posthumously, he reported almost daily his feelings and comments on his experience of the Algerian War. After reading the special issue of the organ of the FLN (El-Moudjahid), he reported in his entry dated 12 January 1957, that it was ‘naive’ and ‘demagogic’. Then, referring to Algeria’s future (FLN) leadership he added: ‘Poor hill-dwellers, poor students, poor youths, your enemies of tomorrow will be worse than those of yesterday’ (Feraoun, 1998: 235).

‘Silence Will Slowly Become His Empire’ Ever since the three North African countries achieved their independence – Morocco and Tunisia in March 1956, and Algeria in July 1962 – the language question in general and the bilingual situation in particular remained a burning issue. Journalists, novelists and poets continued to complain about the problem of diglossia, the French language as a colonial legacy and its ‘alienating’ and ‘detrimental effects’ on individuals and communities. For example, Tunisian poet Salah Garmadi described the dilemma he faced when choosing a medium for his creative work. In 1971, he claimed that the choice between dialectal Arabic, Literary Arabic and French may cause ‘a serious split in national integration, a variety of imbalances at the level of individual and collective conscience, almost insoluble psycho-pedagogic problems, impairment of the message leading to a distressing linguistic and cultural block and sometimes to the silence of death’ (Bentahila, 1983: 24). Nonetheless, Garmadi openly defended his French heritage as a liberating factor from the bonds of tradition (Gordon, 1978: 169–170). In Morocco, writer Tahar Ben Jelloun said in 1973: ‘I write with foreign symbols about a reality which is profoundly Arab’ (Bentahila, 1983: 24). But the most obsessed by the language issue were the Algerian authors who had experienced the most traumatic cultural disruption of the three Maghreban nations. Most surviving authors of the ‘1954 generation’ contributed to the public discussion on ‘Who are we?’ which took place during the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella (see Chapter 3). Mourad Bourboune, who had become a (FLN) party apparatchik with Ben Bella, was of the opinion that Algerians should have no

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inhibitions over using the French language. He also believed that intellectuals did not need to transmit their painful and culpabilizing sensation of being alienated to future generations. Following the Coup d’Etat of June 1965, he settled in France as a journalist, and wrote another novel and a collection of poetry between 1968 and 1972. Since the 1980s, he has embarked on a career as script-writer (Bourboune, 1982: 97; Merdaci, 2010: 94). After independence, Mouloud Mammeri continued writing in French, in addition to his work as an academic in Algiers University, and as President of the Union of Algerian Writers between 1966 and 1967. He also made personal statements on issues of language and culture. Contrary to Arezki, his hero in Le Sommeil du juste, who agonized over his ‘alienation’, Mammeri did not consider it artificial to express an (Arabic or Berber) Algerian ethos in the French language. In an interview of November 1965, he evoked his new and pragmatic commonsense approach: [A]s far as I am concerned, to think that our passions and our ideals are irremediably tied to the use of any one language, is precisely to fall into the trap of those who previously wished to deny us [as subjects]; [. . .] The French language is, for me, not at all the despised language of an enemy, but an incomparable instrument of liberation and, secondly, of communion with the rest of the world. I consider that it translates us more than it betrays us. (Mazouni, 1969: 221) Soon after the 1965 military Coup, the regime ostracized Mammeri. The author resigned from his post in the Union of Algerian Writers because of disagreement over the role of the writer in his country. He continued his academic work which consisted in studying the Berber language and culture. In 1969, he wrote a grammar of Berber (Tajerrumt) to extend the language functions and provide it with a meta-language. Tolerated since October 1965, Mammeri’s teaching of Berber at Algiers University was suppressed by the Ministry of Higher Education in September 1973. When he published his collection of ancient Berber poetry in 1980, the University of Tizi Ouzou invited him for a public debate in the spring of 1980. The government banned the meeting and the entire Kabyle region went into civil disobedience: the ‘Berber Spring’ was born. Mammeri died in a car accident in February 1989. As to Mohammed Dib, he ceased to write novels in the 1960s and 1970s. When he resumed creativity in the late 1980s, the content of his books – mainly concerned with Scandinavia (principally Finland) – was divorced from the real-life messages of his child-hero Omar, the mouthpiece for his own experience as a colonized indigène. With the beginning of the Algerian civil war in the early 1990s, it was as if Dib had been born again. In February

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1993, he published a short text in a newly founded weekly in Algeria to tell his fellow Algerians that their French ‘had a taste that they [Frenchmen] didn’t recognise’ (Dib, 1993: 30). Then, Dib revolted against those who had led the country to a failed State. In his paper titled ‘The Aborted Debate,’ he reviewed 32 years of post-independence policies doomed to failure. His analysis of the root causes of this ‘tragic mess’ was a severe rebuke for the powerto-be and those intellectuals who ‘were only interested in joining the race for positions [. . .]; it was a veritable gold rush’. In his opinion, the root cause of Algeria’s tragedy is the violent suppression of the debate on the country’s future by the 1965 Coup d’Etat (Dib, 1994: 6). Like Mammeri, the Algerian authorities boycotted Dib, particularly after the military overthrow. To make both ends meet, he settled in France as ‘an immigrant worker’, as he has called it. In May 2003, Dib died in Paris, in exile. He, however, made a startling announcement on the language issue in Algeria less than four months before his death. In an interview in January 2003, the interviewer asked him whether all his books had in common the theme of two countries and two languages, and if so whether he needed to recreate mental images in Arabic. ‘My mental images’, he said, ‘are different from those of a Frenchman, they belong to spoken Arabic, which is my mother tongue – Algerians should be ashamed today of writing in an archaic language, Classical Arabic, which would be, for the French, the equivalent of writing in Latin or Greek’ (Sautel, 2003: 66). This declaration provoked a storm of condemnation from the Arabic-language establishment, especially when the Algerian government, deciding to make up for their neglect of Dib, honoured the author posthumously during the Algiers book fair in the fall of 2003. Another survivor of the ‘1954 generation’ is Kateb Yacine. Most observers agree that Kateb is the most brilliant, complex and original author of the 1950s school of writers. After independence, the novelist’s radical orientation proved problematic for a regime which opted for Arabo-Islamism to legitimize its unconstitutional authority. One month after returning from exile in July 1962, he was deported by the government for he had described in the press his fears of new developments, and sometimes expressed his revolt. His new exile did not prevent him from commenting on religion and political events in satirical skits. It is certainly his attacks on religious and political authority that have polarized his readers and critics: some love him, while others loathe him – he once stated that he found the Koran ‘boring’ and its language of no interest to him (Maschino & M’Rabet, 1972: 243). In the mid-1960s, Kateb went back to Algeria, and after the publication of his last and final novel in 1966, he admitted that he had ‘dried up’ (Déjeux, 1980: 215). He finally gave up the struggle and returned, in the early 1970s, to creativity through drama to rid Algeria of ‘the myth of both French

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Algeria and Arabo-Islamic Algeria’, as he once put it (Benrabah, 1999: 257). Between 1970 and 1987, he founded and led a popular theatre company to revive the Algerian theatre with colloquial Arabic and Berber as its vectors. Kateb’s public statements and writings on the language question turned him into a major symbol against the policy of Arabization. In January 1967, he defended Algeria’s linguistic pluralism when he said: ‘We are trilingual, a situation which is truly exceptional. We must therefore develop three cultures in parallel. We must be open to all influences. That will be our strength in the future’ (Maschino & M’Rabet, 1972: 243). He described the institutional idiom ‘liturgical, the language of pedants and religious zealots’, the language ‘offered by a caste, the Ulemas’. He claimed that ‘the languages of the future are popular Arabic and Berber’. In January 1976, Ach-Cha’b, an Arabic-language and government-sponsored newspaper, printed an article titled ‘cultural treason’. In it, Kateb was described as a ‘traitor’ for his favourable attitude towards dialectal Arabic (Benrabah, 1999: 255–257). The writer’s outspoken opposition to Arabization and his defence of Algeria’s vernacular languages prompted the authorities and Arabist sympathizers to describe him as ‘Berber’ and/or ‘Berberist’, even though he spoke no Berber and his mother tongue was colloquial Arabic (e.g. see Assous, 1985: 76). The day after Kateb’s death on 28 October 1989, an Egyptian imam who worked as a teacher in an Islamic university in Constantine declared: ‘[Kateb] should not be buried in a Muslim cemetery.’ (In 1992, this imam confirmed the fatwa or religious decree that allowed Islamists to assassinate Egyptian writer Farag Foda.) As to the burial of Kateb, thousands of young Algerians accompanied the poet’s remains to the cemetery of Algiers (Benrabah, 1999: 257–258).

The Triumph of Unanism and ‘Authenticity’ Writer Malek Haddad lived to see post-independence developments, and notably to fulfil his novelist-hero’s prediction of consigning himself to silence. In his personal statements made after 1962, he kept repeating his favourite expressions, those used before independence: ‘exile in French’, ‘writers of transition’ and so on. Then, in the early 1970s, Haddad enriched his verbal repertoire with another pithy expression: ‘It is easier to resist Massu than Molière,’ he said (Gordon, 1978: 163). By this, he meant that although Algerians had defeated France militarily during the War of Independence – General Jacques Massu fought the FLN between 1957 and 1960 – they had not managed to resist the French language and culture. In the meantime, Haddad had attended a meeting organized in May 1965 by

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the National Union of Algerian Students (UNEA in French). Some students criticized his creative work in French, and he promised to cease writing in this language which he did (Le Monde, 1978: 16). One month after his dispute with UNEA students, Colonel Boumediene led the military takeover to implement systematic Arabization and Islamization. It is interesting that Haddad was among the first intellectuals to send a telegram to congratulate Boumediene on his Coup d’Etat. He opposed Ben Bella and admired the colonel for his strength and composure (Le Monde, 1978: 16; Merdaci, 2010: 135–136). As a result, Haddad became an apparatchik who accepted ideological regimentation and mechanical dogmatism. This is symbolic of subsequent developments: Haddad’s ideological intransigence, and his almost neurotic attitude and agonizing over French prevailed. What is more, his allegiance to Boumediene turned him into a servile intellectual blind to a certain number of realities. Until his death in June 1978, Haddad held the post of Secretary General of the Union of Algerian Writers. Like their Soviet colleagues, writers in Boumediene’s Algeria were required to belong to the Union of Writers and become the instruments of an officialized antidemocratic apparatus. As part of their mission, artistic creators had at least three functions. First, they had to comply with the new official narrative of Arabo-Islamic ‘authenticity’, the true essence of ‘real’ Algerians. Second, they committed themselves – they became ‘engaged’, as they used to say – in the creation of an ‘obsessive unanism’ (Bensmaïa, 1998: 10). The writers’ third function involved rewriting the history of the War of Independence for the purposes of the powers that be. So, in the name of nation-building, ‘engaged’ writers became ‘soldiers in a war of words’ (Šukys, 2007: 54). In the late 1960s and most of the 1970s, creative writing in the excolonial language came to a complete standstill. Most French-language writers who would emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s were adolescents at the time of independence. In the meantime, the questions of Arabization and bilingualism were widely debated in Algeria and abroad. For reasons of space, I will limit myself here to considering the position held by two prominent Algerian intellectuals and one Ulema ideologue in the 1960s, and the heated debate in the 1970s between pro-Arabic and pro-French groups. In the 1960s, Mostefa Lacheraf, who was to be appointed the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education by Colonel Boumediene in April 1977, expressed his concern over possible negative outcomes of Arabization. In 1963–1964, Lacheraf had argued that language and culture were linked. The latter, he said, was fundamental and the link was like content to form. But the colonial period ossified Arabic culture and left it in a degraded state. The contact with French culture and bilingualism – a temporary but inevitable stage – were a necessary condition to revitalize Algerian culture of Arabic expression

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(Lacheraf, 1963). In parallel, he disparaged the government’s first attempt to Arabize the educational system. He warned against Arabic school manuals which were so full of abstract words that they might awaken a dislike for Arabic among Algerian students and encourage them to prefer French. So, he advocated the maintenance of French for as long as it would take to reform Arabic and the ‘sacred’ aspect of traditional culture. Hostile to Lacheraf’s position, a writer attacked him ‘as a pawn of the [French] “cosmopolitan” socialists [. . .] and as guilty of a “racism . . . of the Left” in his opposition to rapid Arabization’ (Gordon, 1966: 192–194). The other intellectual who cast doubts upon the future results of Arabization was Abdallah Mazouni. In an extensive work, Mazouni treated the difficulties involved in the implementation of Algeria’s language policy, especially when hasty and precipitous. Such an approach, he wrote, might prove harmful to the Arabic language itself, and it might be retrograde. It could alienate students because the language was difficult and the teaching tools were inadequate. In particular, he warned against the persistence of the colonial legacy based on the myth which allocated the Arabic language for prayers and poetry and French for action and modernity. This distribution, internalized by the future decolonizing leaders, would have two results: first, it would imply that Arabic was less valuable than French and, second, it would put at a disadvantage those who chose or were forced to study Arabic. To Mazouni, the monolingual Arabophone would have access to peripheral ministries only and would thus become ‘a second-class citizen’ in his own country (Mazouni, 1969: 21–28, 54, 38, 185). Mazouni’s observations, and to a lesser extent Lacheraf’s, were prophetic: discontented and frustrated Arabic-language degree-holders were instrumental in the tragic developments of the 1990s, and new generations still believe that French is the passport to socio-economic advancement and ‘modernity’ (see Chapter 3). Within the escalating atmosphere of the 1970s, the decade of systematic and assertive Arabization, a fierce debate pitted pro-Arabists, who claimed French to be the language of privilege, against those who argued that Arabization would lead to mediocrity. At the time, the prevailing view stemmed from revolutionary socialist ideology and opponents were very easily accused of being ‘bourgeois’ or ‘reactionary’. As a result of this, in the spring of 1974, for example, pro-Arabic and pro-French groups treated each other as being ‘reactionary’, the former for being elitist and the latter for frustrating socialist advance (Gordon, 1978: 168). In 1973, a book was published by the emblematic figure and champion of ‘national authenticity’, Colonel Boumediene’s first Education Minister, the Ulema Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi. This book contained Taleb Ibrahimi’s writings and speeches made between 1962 and 1972. A common thread runs through these texts: the

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need to recover for Algeria her ‘authenticity’ and ‘national identity’ through the Arabization–Islamization of the educational system (see Chapter 3). This, he claimed, would help the Algerian ‘return to the sources of AraboIslamic culture [. . .] to fully rediscover his authentic personality’ (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 61, 98). What is more, Taleb Ibrahimi dismissed Algeria’s linguistic and cultural substratum with the exception of the Arabic-Muslim heritage. In his opinion, Algeria’s irrevocably mixed and complex history was ‘corrupted’. During his 1967 visit as Education Minister to several Middle Eastern capitals, he said that the school’s mission was to annihilate this mixture of elements from ill-assorted and often contradictory cultures, inherited from periods of decadence and from the colonial period, and to replace it with a unified national culture, closely linked to our past and our Arabo-Islamic civilization. (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981: 63) It is certainly Mostefa Lacheraf ’s writings and personal statements of the 1970s that are worth considering here. Lacheraf took part in one of the most memorable debates over the language issue during his short-lived experience as Education Minister in 1977–1978. Shortly after his appointment to this post, he wrote a series of articles in the daily El-Moudjahid. In addition to reiterating the thesis he had advanced in his 1963–1964 writings, he called for a new language policy: ‘This Arabization project must give way to an Algerianization project which will correspond to our reality’ (Benrabah, 1999: 343). Lacheraf moved away from a pan-Arab stance, and into Algerianness and patriotism. He, of course, privileged the predominance of vernacular Arabic and Berber, and this infuriated Arabophone intellectuals. One month later, Abdallah Cheriet, a pan-Arabist university teacher, responded to Lacheraf in an Arabic-language newspaper (Ach-Cha’b). He wrote, among other things, that Algerian Arabic varieties were incapable of transmitting science and high culture, and they were divisive for an ‘Arab nation which yearns for a total and global unity’ (Cheriet, 1983: 28). Later, in the midst of the 1990s civil war, Lacheraf condemned Pan-Arabists as ‘antinationalists’, and as ‘Algerian agents full of complexes instilled by Pan-Arabists in the Middle East where they had been indoctrinated during the patriotic war of Algeria from which they had been absent’ (Lacheraf, 1996: 2). Before this condemnation, Lacheraf had already described the PanArabists’ role in giving a negative image of Algeria’s culture to Middle Easterners during French colonization. In 1965, he wrote that Algerians who had settled in the Middle East convinced intellectuals there that colonial France had eradicated the Arabic language, even in its spoken forms. Some were led to believe that a large part of Algeria’s population only had French

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as their mother tongue. Consequently, they had come to believe that Algerians had lost one of the main vectors of their collective identity, colloquial Arabic. That is why Egyptians were in part convinced that Algerians were French and ‘not really Arab’ at all (see Chapter 3). In truth, these Egyptian stereotypes also come from comments made by the noted Egyptian writer Ahmed Chawki after his visit to Algiers in 1905. He wrote that Algeria ‘has been so much degraded that when you speak to a shoe shine boy he would only answer in French’ (Temlali, 2012: 622). Lacheraf also pointed out that the future success of the notion of ‘alienation’ stemmed from this kind of propaganda (see, e.g., Taleb Ibrahimi’s rhetoric quoted earlier in this section). In his opinion, ‘alienation’ was impossible because Algerians had their spoken languages which had a stabilizing function. And when Literary Arabic was available, both forms of Arabic helped colonials acquire poetic education and sensitivity (Lacheraf, 1978: 325, 328).

Creativity and Resistance In the 1970s, history repeated itself: as in colonial times, creativity in banned or minorized languages evolved as an expression of unplanned development. This mainly stemmed from people feeling hampered by conservatism and governmental repressive measures. Artistic and literary creativity in Berber and Algerian Arabic was particularly important in music and the theatre. From the early 1970s and following the authorities’ repression of the Berber language and culture, Kabyle protest songs provided the main impetus for the spread of the Berberist movement among the masses in Kabylia and the Diaspora. This protest tradition centres primarily on the call for the freedom of speech and democratization (Chaker, 1998: 43, 75; Khouas, 1995– 1996: 157). As an illustration, it is worth reproducing here an excerpt from a song on the language issue written by artist and Berberist militant Ferhat Mehenni. The song titled ‘Arabic’ preaches the virtues of an Algeria reconciled with its history, its diversity, and its multiple identity: ‘Languages are like human beings | Truly equal on earth [. . .] | And if they killed each other | It means their children were unjust | As to us, it is our governors | Who deny where we come from | Arabic is certainly a wonderful language | As beautiful as French | For Arabs, it has no equal | For us, Berber is the best | As our forefathers used to say | For everyone what belongs to us is the best |’ (Khouas, 1995–1996: 165–166). As for creativity in Algerian Arabic, it is mainly visible in theatre and music. The struggle between Literary and dialectal Arabic as the language of dramatic works had been going on since the 1920s until Abderrahmane Kaki,

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the father of Algeria’s modern theatre, decided against the use of Literary Arabic. In addition to Kateb Yacine who played a major role in developing drama in colloquial Arabic in the 1970s, there is also Abdelkader Alloula, an adolescent at the time of independence, who succeeded in fusing the two forms of Arabic (Bencharif-Khadda, 2003: 119–120, 125; Médiène, 1995: 10). It is certainly in music, with lyrics spoken in colloquial Arabic, with or without code-switching (Arabic-French, Arabic-English), that created the appropriate environment for the rise of positive attitudes towards this linguistic form. The musical genre called rai, which had the status of World Music in the late 1990s and early 2000s, spread the word in dialectal Arabic and projected Algerian identity. Rai is a traditional musical genre born among the Bedouins in western Algeria. In the late 1970s, young artists modernized that music to convey their frustrations, dreams and rebellions. In Arabic, the word rai means ‘my opinion’ or ‘my point of view’: it values the freedom of the individual in a traditional society which dilutes it within the group. At the beginning, rai singing was a reaction against society’s conservatism and against those who had power. This music, which breaks taboos by mentioning alcohol, sex, love and so on, was first described as ‘dirty rai’ (Daoudi & Miliani, 1996: 39–45; Poulsen, 1993: 266). Then rai lyrics gradually evolved so as to express Algerian social unrest and the artists’ resistance. In fact, the authors of these texts were literate in Arabic. In a TV interview, rai star Cheb Hasni (gunned down in October 1994 in an attack attributed to Islamist extremists) admitted that the new lyrics were being written in dialectal Arabic by students who had studied Literary Arabic in Arabized schools. In July 1998, the rai group Raina Rai underlined the militant dimension of their music and asserted that: ‘We keep our ears open while living amongst our fellow-countrymen. One should dare to say things [. . .]. Suffering uncovers deep hidden feelings. It is like the blues, Reggae. They did not come out of Saudi Arabia’ (El Watan, 1998). The use of Algerian Arabic by rai singers with such a social conscience has generated attitudinal change towards this linguistic form. For example, the ‘King of rai’ Khaled, who was in the late 1990s and early 2000s the most celebrated Arab artist in the world, gave rise to pride in identity when he said that he sang bel ‘arbiya ddarja louahraniya nta’ na – ‘in the good old Arabic of Oran, our Arabic’ (Benrabah, 1999: 203). Consequently, rai singing enhanced selfesteem through an appraisal of Algerianness, its culture and one of its linguistic vectors, colloquial Arabic. It is interesting that rai singers have become the mouthpiece of a young generation alienated by their leaders’ policies that turned Algeria inward after independence. Youngsters appreciate the rai performers’ ability to open up their music and lyrics to the rest of the world. Rai artists use code-switching

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as a strategy to reach a wider range of audiences. According to Bentahila and Davies (2002: 202–204; 2006: 375–378), the mixing of Arabic and French in rai lyrics has two functions. First, performers use Algerian Arabic as a strategy to express their loyalty to their local and national community. Second, they insert French (and rarely English) words and phrases to go beyond the highly localized culture and target an international public. The spirit of these artistic developments were captured by the late novelist-poet and journalist Tahar Djaout when he wrote that it was high time ‘we lived Algerianness serenely, peacefully, unimpaired, reconciled with its multiple parts’ (Djaout, 1991: 7). Djaout is probably the most famous literary creator of the school of French-language writers that emerged after 1962 – he was born in 1954. This ‘independence generation’ has, so far, disconfirmed the pessimism of certain members of the ‘1954 generation’, the likes of Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche and Malek Haddad. Djaout was the author of books of poetry, novels and short stories, and the editor and contributor to newspapers. His much-quoted phrase reads: ‘Silence is death | And you, if you speak, you die | If you remain silent, you die | So speak out and die’ (Kebbas, 2010: 48). Djaout had indeed refused to ‘hoist the flag of silence’, as he once said (Bererhi, nd: 11). And so he spoke out in his works of fiction, journalistic writings and public statements, until of course his voice was silenced, assassinated. Djaout made his mark with novels and newspaper articles. His works of fiction command attention because they explicitly confront major problems generated by the military regime in post-colonial Algeria: the government’s appropriation and cynical manipulation of the writer for political ends, cultural amnesia, the return of Medieval Puritanism and so on (Geesy, 1996; Kazi-Tani, nd; Kebbas, 2010; Šukys, 2007). In his journalistic writings, Djaout confronted in a concrete way the problems he dealt with in fiction on a theoretical plane. Between 1976 and 1992, he wrote for two government-owned newspapers. Following the uprisings of October 1988, the independent media began to grow as a result of the liberalization of the press. In January 1993, Djaout founded the weekly Ruptures, a title which implied a radical break in Algerian culture and politics. As a matter of fact, with the October 1988 intifada, young people demanded a new narrative based on another history of Algeria, the one that had been banned until then. So, new voices emerged to mark the end of unanism and the acceptance of Algeria’s linguistic and cultural pluralism (Aït Saadi-Bouras, 2011: 197). As of 1988, Djaout’s commitment to positive values and to an open and democratic society became more daring. With Ruptures, he implicated himself politically even further than he ever had before. His journalistic texts dealt with the myriad problems of modern Algeria, but only two

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themes will be considered in this section. The first one concerns his assessment of the educational system and its effects on Algeria’s youth. Djaout lamented the intolerant behaviour of male youths and laid the blame on their indoctrination in schools. For example, he said: ‘During the past decade schools and universities have become fortresses of the repression of intelligence, knowledge, and beauty’ (Šukys, 2007: 72). The second theme studied in Djaout’s journalistic texts relates to the language issue and Arabization. As a multilingual speaker, Djaout valued his country’s pluralism. In May 1993, he wrote: ‘Algeria is a trilingual country. It has the good fortune to open up three windows to the world instead of one, to be able to feed on three cultures instead of one. But this luck was confiscated right from the start’ (Djaout, 1993b: 8). One month earlier, Djaout had denounced FLN ideologues who exclusively favoured the AraboIslamic dimension of national identity at the expense of their Berber cultural ‘substratum’. This substratum, he said, ‘is seen by FLN cadres as a curse, a calamity, a monstrosity, a cause of shame that they will try to deal with through denial, distortion, and repression’. In his opinion, the demand for the recognition of Berber culture and language was a necessity for Algerians who refused ‘self-mutilation’ (Djaout, 1993a: 8). As to the French language, he wrote as early as January 1989 that ‘this language [French], which we believed would die one day of a natural death, is still here, more alive than ever’ (Djaout, 1989: 38). On the subject of Algeria’s language policy, Djaout believed that ‘the implementation of Arabization has sometimes been presided over by revenge: the desire to dislodge the “intruder” and take his position as quickly as possible, the desire to reign supreme’ (Djaout, 1993a: 8). Djaout’s murder in May 1993 happened at the height of terrorist attacks against Algerian intellectuals. It soon became clear that the regime was responsible for his death. Several intellectuals who made their suspicions public were later assassinated. The truth is that Djaout represented what the authorities dreaded most, intelligence and creative thinking. Since Algeria’s Islamist extremists (FIS) were cloned by the regime (FLN), by tacit agreement neither side mourned the purging of their society of impure influences such as music, alcohol, sexuality and creativity. Algeria was thus purged of Tahar Djaout, Abdelkader Alloula, Cheb Hasni, and fellow writers, playwrights and comedians, singers and so on. And the language issue weighed in their deaths as well. For example, Islamists blamed Abdelkader Alloula for he ‘presented his plays in Algerian Arabic, a medium of expression which fundamentalists saw as too far removed from the language of the Koran’ (Abu-Haidar, 2000: 160). In the aftermath of Djaout’s assassination, one media event revealed the huge rift between Arabic- and French-language intellectuals in Algeria. In the

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beginning of 1994, the BBC made a documentary about the murder of Djaout in which Arabic-language author Tahar Ouettar shocked Algerian and European television audiences. To the interviewer who asked him whether the death of Djaout was a loss to his country, Ouettar replied ‘the death of Djaout is not a loss to Algeria, but a loss to his wife, his children, and France’. In June 1994, a journalist asked Ouettar about the strange situation whereby some Algerian writers admitted to never having read Mouloud Mammeri, Mouloud Feraoun, Kateb Yacine or Tahar Djaout. ‘Would you please,’ he said, ‘withdraw this question, for the people you mention will be one day or another forgotten by History.’ Two years earlier, in April 1992, Ouettar had an interview with an Algerian daily on a conference held in Paris in March of that year. He condemned those who had attended the event, particularly Djaout and a university teacher: ‘I accuse them of being in the service of France. I told them “you are not with your people”.’ During this conference, Djaout reminded Ouettar of his role as a national censor before the 1988 uprisings. Ouettar did not deny this, and went on rationalizing his bad old ways through the competition for ascendancy between Arabic- and Frenchlanguage writers and through Arabists’ legitimacy as to (State-sponsored) national ‘authenticity’: Yes I was [a national censor] and I am proud of it [. . .] Malek Haddad was the Secretary General of the Union of Algerian Writers when the FLN was a single party. Djaout shined Malek Haddad’s shoes [. . .] It is we Arabophones who taught them about the Revolution, through our literature, and through [my novel] l’As in particular. We taught them History, authentic History.’ (Benrabah, 1999: 249) The gap between the two groups of writers – Algeria’s ‘two solitudes’ – began to widen when the Union of Algerian Writers fell under Colonel Boumediène’s control. At the time, the number of authors in Literary Arabic was insignificant. The policy of Arabization played a major role in the development of literary works in institutional Arabic. However, until now, this literature has not caught up with that of French expression either quantitatively or qualitatively. As for thematic contents, two trends have emerged since independence (Laredj, 1995–1996: 171). In the 1960s and 1970s, some Arabophone authors were involved in a ‘neo-classical’ literary current characterized by the triumphalist tone it adopted in dealing with issues such as colonization and the struggle for independence, socialist ideology, Arabo-Islamic ‘authenticity’ and so on. Ouettar gained fame in the 1970s with his first novel, the one he refers to in the above quote. The second trend dominated the 1980s and 1990s when Arabic-language writers distanced themselves

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from nationalism and revolution habitually dealt with by their elders. They were influenced by the movement based on prose poetry and realist literature born in the Middle East in the 1950s. New poets transgressed the line that separated the Classical written code from the dialectal spoken one and used the linguistic vitality of everyday conversational Arabic. This background knowledge is necessary to understand Ouettar’s attack on Djaout. What is more, his rhetoric of ‘authenticity’ and exclusion stems from Algeria’s socio-economic development in the 1980s. President Chadli Bendjedid’s choice of a market economy and the abandonment of socialism meant the end of the privileges embraced by monolingual Arabists under the umbrella of the single FLN party and its satellite organizations. As a result, there was, from then on, tacit agreement between some members of the Arabic-language establishment and Islamists whose movement started to grow in the 1980s (Harbi, 1994: 204). So Ouettar joined the band wagon. In his BBC interview, he justified the assassination of Djaout as follows: ‘they [the terrorists] murdered Djaout the politician and not Djaout the intellectual’. The fact was that Djaout had been a staunch opponent of Islamic fundamentalism and favoured the cancellation of the elections won by the FIS in December 1991. ‘When Algerian intellectuals oppose the people’s will, they have to expect death or exile,’ said Ouettar to the BBC (Benrabah, 1999: 248).

Writing in Troubled Times Unexpectedly, the 1990s wave of cultural cleansing had a knock-on effect on creativity. Talented Algerian wordsmiths emerged with more innovative ways that combine different voices and languages, often mixing several tongues. At the end of the 1990s, linguistic hybridization and glocalization appeared in song lyrics within rap music, a genre far more pamphleteering than Kabyle and rai musical styles. Unlike rai, a local genre turned into an international phenomenon, rap has its origins in the New York of the 1970s and 1980s. Young urban New Yorkers, from deprived inner city districts, developed themes based on a mix of already existing samples as political voice to express their discontent and resistance. As a global musical style, rap has been appropriated by young Algerian artists to address social issues, taboo topics, Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s and attendant violence and so on. For example, in 1999, a female rap trio named Les Messagères (‘The Female Messengers’) recorded a song with lyrics on illegitimate children born of unmarried young girls, and on Algeria’s civil war (Bentahila & Davies, 2006: 370; Power, 2000: 23; Smail, 1999: 23; 2000: 17).

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Like rai performers, rap artists’ use of language shows a high degree of linguistic mixing characterized by new and flexible combinations of languages. Hybrid lyrics allow them to build bridges between local and global cultures and audiences. And the fusion of colloquial Arabic, French and to a lesser extent English allocates roles to languages similar to those found in rai (see the preceding section of this chapter). Algerian Arabic localizes rap and symbolizes the performer’s North African and Algerian identities. The French language aims at an international audience, particularly the Francophone world. Unlike rai, rap songs sometimes juxtapose English and Arabic (with or without French) to show the artist’s awareness of the English language heritage (Bentahila & Davies, 2006: 386). At times, the insertion of English words and phrases becomes a strategy to criticize Algeria’s inefficient educational system and the policy of Arabization. One interesting example analysed by Bentahila and Davies (2006) comes from a song written by the group of rappers named Le Micro Brise Le Silence (‘The Microphone Breaks Silence’, or MBS). One MBS’s song called Ya Chabab (‘O young people’), sometimes referred to as Système Primitif (‘Primitive system’), targets the inconsistencies of the Algerian schooling system. The lyrics alternate passages in Literary Arabic to parody the patronizing power-to-be’s discourse directed towards parents and students, and passages rapped in a mix of Algerian Arabic and French to express the students’ reaction to Algeria’s failed language-in-education policy and planning. The following extract is representative of this technique (French blocks are in italics): (Spoken, the voice of the authorities [in Literary Arabic]): ‘O young people | every country has its dreams | and among you are students | in whom we place great hopes. | don’t disappoint our great expectations of you | after all we have done | through difficult and beautiful years’ (rapped [in Algerian Arabic and French]): ‘a primitive system | the ministry of education | it doesn’t exist, it’s imaginary | they increased the number of experimental schools | whoever comes along throws [new experiments] at us: | this is not in the curriculum | there are no holidays this year’ (Bentahila and Davies, 2006: 382). The final passage of Ya Chabab consists of two parts. The first one deals with a student’s complaint about his failure to continue his studies because of the lack of practical work. The second part comprises three lines again spoken by the voice of the authorities in Literary Arabic. This section contains the English phrase what’s your name, typical of beginners’ English classes, to

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announce the introduction in school programmes of another language, English. The extract reads (French words and expressions are in italics): (rapped [in Algerian Arabic and French]): ‘you study science, physics | theory without practice | I don’t have practice here in physics | some have chosen mathematics | some have chosen for me | they don’t know that I am just a tourist in high school | when the year finishes they send me to work | I don’t know this year what they are doing with me’ (Spoken by the authorities [in Literary Arabic]): ‘we are relaxing, we are getting arabised | and you are not an interesting sentence | and your children are failing | ‘What’s your name?’ | or whatever is the new language’ (Bentahila & Davies, 2006: 387). As regards the French-language writers of the ‘independence generation’, they came to realize that French was also part of Algeria’s sociolinguistic profile. They thus adopted the rhetoric of language appropriation and ‘hybridity’ completely. This is best illustrated in the words of three authors. The first is Aziz Chouaki who said: ‘I felt free when I discovered a simple thing: that the French language does not belong to France alone. Why this guilt complex since French is spoken all over the world, since people own it’ (Caubet, 2004: 158). The second, writer-journalist Akram Belkaïd, wrote in 2005: ‘Am I less Algerian than others because I express myself in French? The French language is not merely part of the ‘spoils of war’, to borrow Kateb Yacine’s famous expression. From now on, it is a constituent part of Algerian identity’ (Belkaïd, 2005: 93). The third author is Yasmina Khadra whose literary work was the most widely translated in the world in the 2000s. To a journalist who asked him why he did not publish his writings in Algeria, he declared in October 2005: To ask me to publish in Algeria reminds me of Malek Haddad who was forced to give up his huge talent for base considerations: because he wrote in French! As if the French language was a venereal disease, a heresy. As a result, Algerian literature prematurely lost one of its great masters. It won’t work with me. I won’t be silenced in that way. I love the French language and it works well for me. It has taught me all I know and has allowed readers from all over the world to know me. (Ben Achour, 2005: 19) The literary work of the ‘independence generation’ has also been impregnated with cultural interpenetration and linguistic indigenization. It is certainly the case of novelist Malika Mokkadem. Mokkadem speaks

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colloquial Arabic, her mother tongue, Literary Arabic and French. In her creative work, there are no traces of her being torn between her native tongue(s) and the ex-colonial one. As a result, her novels are full of new encounters and cultural mixing, with Mediterranean and African cultures coming together. Mokkadem began writing in the early 1990s, that is, at the beginning of the civil war, and her novels contain strong criticism of postindependent developments in Algeria. Those written in the 1990s are full of anger, and it is no wonder she dedicated two of these books to Tahar Djaout and Abdelkader Alloula, respectively. Mokkadem uses her first languages to enrich French, and multilingual readers fully appreciate the content of her work. To help monolingual readers, she uses writing techniques which involve translating Arabic loanwords, using italics, quotation marks, different kinds of notes and so on (Chaulet Achour, 2007: 11, 72, 79, 85–86). It is interesting that Mokkadem’s translations cast doubts on the future maintenance of French in Algeria: she and her contemporaries who write in French are mainly addressing a Francophone audience (Metropolitan France and the rest of the French-speaking world). This brings us to the themes of literary texts published by Arabiclanguage novelists of the ‘independence generation’. The most emblematic are Waciny Laredj and Ahlam Mostaghanemi. The former is bilingual and pursued his higher education in Arabic at Damascus University, Syria. Most of his literary works were originally written in Arabic and then translated into French. For example, central to his first major novel, translated into French in 1997 as Le Ravin de la femme sauvage (The Ravine of the Wild Woman), is the negative effects of officialized Arabo-Islamic narrative on national identity. Whole periods of Algeria’s history fell into oblivion and produced a cultural vacuum and generalized amnesia. One hero in Laredj’s novel resists this cultural repression as a way to both re-appropriate Algeria’s history in its entirety and open up to the Other as a healthy sign of fraternity and tolerance. Unlike Laredj, Mostaghanemi, who completed her education at the Sorbonne University, Paris, writes only in Arabic. Her 1985 novel Dhakirat al-Jasad – translated into English as Memory in the Flesh – is haunted by the rulers’ failure at nation-building, and the broken promises of the Algerian Revolution (Guenatri, 2010: 44–46; McDougall, 2011: 263–264). It is worth noting that both Laredj and Mostaghanemi use thematic contents specific to realist literature. What is more, they do not seem to have any particular complex about languages and, unlike their monolingual elders they commute with ease between Arabic and French. They usually adopt multiple identities with multilingualism as the vector of their literary works, and reject an exclusively Arabo-Islamic identity and the accompanying rhetoric of ‘authenticity’. Arabic- and Italian-language author Amar Lakhous

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provides corroborative evidence of this postmodern attitude. During a conference on ‘Multiple identities’ organized in Algiers in January 2012, he said that he recognized himself in the theme of the meeting through his own plural identity, namely a mixture of Algerian, Berber and Italian identities. ‘I try’, he commented, ‘to Arabize Italian and to Italianize Arabic. My novels are translated from Italian. I am a worthy representative of this cultural identity’ (Chabani, 2012: 27).

Conclusion This chapter has examined language conflict among Algerian wordsmiths since the end of the 19th century. It has described some of the tragic consequences of French linguistic and educational policies of assimilation. Ultimately, authors got over this difficulty with the start of the War of Independence: the colonial language became a tool for the liberation of the homeland. Paradoxically, the struggle against France’s presence in Algeria was mainly fought in French, with Literary Arabic playing a minor role, apart from being a strong symbol of resistance to imperialism – the other symbol being Islam. The colonial and post-colonial eras were times for negative opposition to develop resistance. These were the times of ‘authenticity’, and writers could not respond favourably to the languages around them, accommodate them or even use them to their advantage. In the aftermath of Algeria’s independence, the decolonizing leadership adopted Arabo-Islamic ideology as a State-sponsored project for social control and legitimacy. Their policies of language and cultural dispossession and expropriation led to a deadlock. By the 1970s, the predictable collapse of the official Arabo-Islamic formulation of national identity appeared in the persistence of revivalized old artistic and literary activities and in the rise of new forms of self-expression. These creative works were marked by linguistic cross-fertilization. The decade-long ‘cultural’ crisis of the 1990s turned out to be a bonanza era for creative thinking. And the language conflict of the 1960s–1980s driven by ideas of ‘authenticity’ was supplanted by linguistic and cultural ‘hybridity’. Rather than decreasing, creativity in the mother tongues, dialectal Arabic and Berber, amplified substantially. As to creative works in French and Literary Arabic, they have gradually evolved in the same direction to deal with real social issues. The major difference is that French-language writers aim at a readership outside Algeria. The fact that, in November 2010, Francophone authors asked the Algerian government to translate their works into Arabic (Métaoui, 2010: 15) casts serious doubts on the future maintenance of French literature in Algeria. This decline can be measured against the proliferation of

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Arabic newspapers: for example, Al-Khabar, Algeria’s most widely circulating daily, has successfully challenged the French-language press that dominated the Algerian market until the 1990s. What is more, the tour de force of writers like Laredj and Mostaghanemi living in a postmodern world is to combine ‘authenticity’ and ‘modernity’ in their literary works – the complexity and contradictions created by this overlap do not generate excessive conflict because postmodernity accepts hybridity and cross-fertilization. Thanks to their multilingual competence, they show that there is no clash between these two notions at all. As to matters purely linguistic in nature, the major challenge facing future writers of Arabic expression is to move towards a language of literature that reduces the linguistic distance between literary and colloquial Arabic forms to produce a written Koiné in the long run.

Epilogue: The Language Question As a ‘Lightning Rod’

[L]anguage issues may, like medical problems, be well under control, or in a state of chronic or acute pathology. Proper diagnosis, consultation with those affected, and the existence of well-tried remedies are essential for progress and linguistic health. Robert Phillipson (2003: 13) Arabisation has become one more prop of an authoritarian regime that refuses to engage in much-needed economic and political reforms. Jonathan Eric Lewis (2004: 42) The process of reshaping and redefining the meaning of . . . Algerian identit[y] has already begun and will surely be fraught with tension and difficulty. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (2001: 44) An emphasis on peace rather than on linguistic war is a much-needed counterpart to the overheated discussions around language [. . .]. [O]ne can imagine [. . .] peace through language, one that can be achieved by long-range respect for and maintenance of linguistic rights, the ecology of languages, cultural and linguistic diversity, and language education. Patricia Friedrich (2007: 73, 74–75)

The medical analogy in Robert Phillipson’s epigraph corresponds to the language question in Algeria. There was no real exploration, nor interaction with the population, nor tested techniques to adopt and implement the policy of Arabization after the country’s independence. Algerian planners never contemplated using the basic language planning model which consists of a survey, a survey report, policy decisions, implementation plan and execution – with the provision of feedback at all these stages (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 105). As mentioned in Chapter 3, there was a survey and a survey 157

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report made by a US team of sociolinguists in 1963–1964. But the authorities rejected it. They relied on their intuitive feelings and viewed language management as beginning with the policy decisions. So, Algerian ‘language plans’ overlooked the importance of methodology. As a result, history seems to repeat itself in Algeria where linguistic issues continue to be in a state of chronic pathology. However, major advances were made in the 2000s to diminish the ferocity of language conflict. President Bouteflika tried to limit the monopolization of the political scene by the language question. But autocrats cannot resist the temptation to exploit language for political ends, especially when their positions are at stake.

Language and Politics Wedded in an Indissoluble Union During his first term in office (1999–2004), President Bouteflika promoted national reconciliation through an amnesty programme. Consequently, 25,000 Islamists agreed to stop their armed struggle, and violence fell off. So, the outgoing presidential candidate reaped the benefit of that strategy at the poll of April 2004. Following his 2004 re-election, the Algerian Head of State had plenty of work on his hands, especially when the country’s economic fortunes had brightened. When he was first elected in 1999, Bouteflika inherited an economy in bad shape. In the mid-1990s, the government could not repay its external debt, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed a structural adjustment programme to encourage the transition to a market economy. Thanks to the sudden rise in oil prices in the early 2000s, government spending increased substantially. With macro-economic stabilization and high oil revenues, Bouteflika’s first government launched, in April 2001, a multi-million dollar programme of economic growth but the growth rate was insignificant. In fact, the government failed to implement the three objectives it set itself in 1999: develop the private sector, promote trade liberalization, and implement a series of ‘structural reforms’. There was progress in the modernization of trade legislation to make multilateral trade liberalization irreversible. However, the old statist nationalist quarters stalled the other two governmental objectives. This deadlock over reforms was and still is largely responsible for the authorities’ failure to transform the oil bonanza and excellent macroeconomic health into wealth and wealth directed into the population’s well-being. Today, the majority which consists of young people – those under 30 represented around 63% in 2011 – suffer the most from a situation characterized by large-scale unemployment, a shortage of housing,

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government inefficiencies and corruption, and the persistent attacks by extremist Islamists. For example, according to the latest evaluation by Transparency International, Algeria remains one of the most corrupt nations in the world: it stood at the 105th position out of 178 countries in 2010, and at the 112th position out of 182 countries in 2011. One symptom of this situation is the persistence of illegal emigration to Europe through the Mediterranean – a phenomenon called Harraga – which rose dramatically at the beginning of Bouteflika’s second term in office (Benrabah, 2006: 63–65). Faced with long-standing socio-economic problems translated sometimes into violent demonstrations throughout the country, Bouteflika amended the Constitution in 2008 to remove presidential term limits. He then won a third term in 2009. Before the amendment of the Constitution, Bouteflika needed the support of the conservative-Islamist clans. He, thus, renewed the old practice of manipulating the language issue to deflect challenges to elites’ positions from below. Recall that the president of the National Commission for the Reform of the Educational System (CNRSE) handed in the final report to President Bouteflika in March 2001 (see Chapter 3). The document recommended, among other things, the introduction of French in year 2 of basic education instead of year 4 as well as its systematic teaching in (rural) areas where it had not been offered. It also urged the authorities to privilege teaching scientific disciplines in secondary upper levels in French instead of Literary Arabic. The conservative-Islamist establishment strongly opposed the implementation of the CNRSE recommendations. The polemics reached a climax when some were zealous enough to declare a fatwa against these reforms and their supporters. On 3 September 2001, the Ministry of the Interior announced the suspension of the implementation of the educational reform. Finally, some recommendations of the CNRSE report were implemented discreetly and progressively. In September 2004, the Ministry of Education introduced French as the first mandatory foreign language in the second year. However, the re-introduction of French for scientific disciplines in secondary education was not yet part of the agenda. In fact, the government started back-pedalling on its engagements towards educational reforms and bilingual education. In November 2005, the Parliament banned the use of languages other than Arabic as the medium of instruction in private schools which had provided a strong form of (Arabic–French) bilingualism for 10 years. In May 2006, the Ministry of Education moved the teaching of French from year 2 of primary school to year 3, starting from September 2006. The educational authorities gave two main reasons to justify this change. First, they claimed that the implementation of reforms had been overhasty. Second, a ministerial circular stated that one year was not enough for strengthening the

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acquisition of Literary Arabic, the medium of school instruction. The latter reason hinted at the problem of diglossia and the refusal to accept the child’s mother tongue (dialectal Arabic and Berber) as a first and necessary step in the acquisition of knowledge (Chelli, 2011: 14–15). In reality, the decision to delay the teaching of French in elementary education and the strict control of private schools followed the nomination of Abdelaziz Belkhadem as the new Prime Minister. Bouteflika appointed this conservative-Islamist political figure for he needed the support of conservative quarters to amend the Constitution and remove presidential term limits. Belkhadem was known for his strong opposition to the French language. He led the Algerian government for two years, until mid-June 2008, after the amendment of the Constitution – Bouteflika won a third term in 2009. Less than two months after his dismissal as Prime Minister, he called, as Secretary General of the FLN Party, for the total Arabization of the curricula in higher education. To him ‘the problem with the university [was] the French language’. He also attacked Francophones whom he described as ‘“potential” traitors to God and to the nation’. In September 2008, a university professor published a paper in a French-language daily and described Belkhadem as a demagogue. Then the Arabic-language press railed against this academic. These reactions and counter-reactions during the year the authorities amended the Constitution showed that language wars were far from over in Algeria (Benrabah, 2010: 258).

Cultural Marginalization Breeds Radicalism The government’s great indecision over the Berber language continued to fuel language conflicts following its 2002 institutionalization as Algeria’s second national (but not official) language. The introduction of Berber in the educational system in the 1990s was a historical achievement. And its new status sought to end the improvisation of the early experience. However, the authorities’ refusal to accept Berber on a par with Literary Arabic, as the second official language of the country, undermines the progress achieved so far. For example, less than a decade after its consecration, there was a crisis in the teaching of Berber even in the Berberist stronghold of Kabylia. In 2009, a teacher said: The poor teaching tools and the absence of a real academy for Berber have reduced this language to a discipline with an optional status. As a result, even in Kabylia, Berber classes are being deserted and teachers abandon the teaching vocation. (Ouazani, 2009: 28)

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Sociolinguist Amirouche Chelli has pointed out that, following the CNRSE report, the introduction of Berber in year 4 in elementary education was without precedent: the teaching of a mother tongue is introduced after two ‘foreign’ languages, Literary Arabic and French (Chelli, 2011: 16–17). This is what ideologically motivated planners had certainly feared most before this innovation: contradictions such as this one magnify the urgent need for the use of Algerian Arabic and Berber as a prerequisite for educational efficiency and linguistic peace. In fact, all the three North African countries seem to have this problem in common. Talking about Morocco, Bentahila once said: ‘Replacing French with Classical Arabic [. . .] is replacing one non-native language with another’ (Bentahila, 1983: 129). Moving back to the teaching of Berber, its crisis breeds a sense of cultural marginalization among the Berber-speaking population. The radical arm of the Berberist movement has jumped in to capitalize on this feeling of marginalization. In actual fact, the Algerian Berber movement does not speak with one voice. Moderates who have, for example, joined governmental institutions like the HCA and the CNPLET (see Chapter 3) are opposed to hard core activists. In the recent past, in April 2012, Mouloud Lounaouci, academic and founding member of the MCB, described the HCA as an ‘empty shell’ with no means or status (Lounaouci, 2012). The most radical leaders and ideologues call for greater autonomy for Kabylia, particularly those from the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK in French). In a book written in 2004, artist–activist Ferhat Mehenni, the MAK party leader, claimed that Arabic-language Algerians were hostile to Kabyles who felt abandoned by the rest of the population (Mehenni, 2004: 167). To some analysts, this lack of solidarity comes from the authorities’ policy of divideand-rule and the state of exhaustion suffered by Algerian society during the 10-year-long crisis of the 1990s (Belkaïd, 2005: 85; Temlali, 2003: 55). The former justification is more credible than the latter since the majority of Arabic-speaking Algerians did not support the Berber Spring – that is more than a decade before the beginning of the 1990s civil war. In fact, the regime has never ceased presenting Kabyles as a threat to national integration in order to seek support from the Arabophone majority. As for Mehenni, he used in his book a Berberist narrative directly derived from the ‘Kabyle myth’ invented by French colonialists in 19th-century Algeria (see Chapter 2). In his opinion, Kabyles were mentally, culturally and politically different and more sensitive to ‘modernity’ than their Arabic-language compatriots. As a matter of fact, some Berberophones have a quasi messianic perception of Kabylia’s role: because Kabyles have been ahead in the fight against dictatorship, some Berberists believe that their mission is the ‘democratic liberation’ of Algeria. In contrast, the MAK leader wrote in 2004 that Kabylia should

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take care of its own destiny and stop thinking of the rest of Algeria or the pan-Berber North African movement (Mehenni, 2004: 58, 84, 95; Temlali, 2003: 54). Interestingly enough, Moroccan Berberists have moved in the opposite direction: dissatisfied with their government’s failure to promote the Berber language and culture in Morocco, activists tend to turn to international support and solidarity. As with Algeria, Berberist activists do not speak with the same voice. Following the introduction of Berber in Morocco’s educational system and the establishment of IRCAM in 2001, the Berber movement split into at least two groups. There is, on the one hand, hard core activists and, on the other, moderate ones who joined the IRCAM The former label the latter as ‘traitors to the Berber cause’ because they have accepted to be ‘coopted’ onto the Establishment. And like their Algerian neighbours, Berberists in Morocco remain unsatisfied with their government’s refusal to include the Berber language in the Constitution as an official language. Activists who do not accept to be brought in line with the official policy (IRCAM) tend to seek support from overseas Berber sympathizers, and from human rights organizations. They also call for a pan-Berber movement that unites all the Berber people of North Africa, from Southern Egypt to the Canary Islands (Errihani, 2008: 99–10). To return to Algerian artist–activist Ferhat Mehenni, he concludes his 2004 book with a typically primordialist and essentialist viewpoint: Kabyles were separate ‘people’ and they needed their own ‘regional state’, he wrote. Unsurprisingly, in June 2010, Mehenni established in Paris the Kabyle Provisional Government (GPK in French) (Makedhi, 2010: 1, 6; Mehenni, 2004: 127−128). Mehenni’s radical change of heart from a position calling for the co-existence of a pluralist and tolerant Algeria (see Chapter 5) to essentialist ideology results from the Algerian authorities’ indecision over the Berber question. But this radicalism can also be traced to the major theorist of essentialist Berberism, Salem Chaker, a Paris-based linguist who, among other things, prefaced Mehenni’s 2004 book. In 2002, this university professor talked about the existence of ‘a Kabyle people, with its collective identity, its language, its territory’ (Chaker, 2002: 209). His ideas echoed colonial linguist-officer Antoine Carette who in 1848 described the differences between ‘Arabs’ and ‘Berbers’ and concluded that each community had its own ‘genius’ (see Chapter 2). In mid-November 2009, the Jeune Afrique magazine published a special issue on the Berber movement in Algeria. To the journalist who inquired about the meaning of being Berber today, Chaker replied: ‘Only Berber speakers are Berber’ (Ouazani, 2009: 24). In his opinion, language represented the main criterion for identifying Berbers. It is particularly interesting to contrast Chaker’s worldview with that of late

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writer and academic Mouloud Mammeri. In September 2012, Spanishspeaking Antonio Cubillo, a Berberist activist from the Canary Islands, recalled Mammeri telling him back in the 1960s–1970s: ‘You are Berbers, even without speaking the language today’ (Fares, 2012). Expectedly, on 11 December 2009, Professor Khaoula Taleb Ibrahimi, from Algiers University, answered indirectly Salem Chaker: she called for the end of ‘chauvinism and narrow nationalism [. . .], in particular the rhetoric like “We are Berbers, yes, but all those who cannot speak Berber are not”’ (Matarese, 2009). As to the Jeune Afrique magazine, it published by the end of November 2009 another special issue on the Berber movement in Morocco. One of its journalists asked a Moroccan linguist to give his definition of today’s Berber identity. His response was in marked contrast to the MAK ideologue’s and confirmed the deep-rooted French (colonial) legacy among Algerian intellectuals. The Moroccan scholar privileged an identity with its complexity more in tune with postmodernity: Moroccan culture, like any culture, is a compromise between an indigenous substratum and exogenous inputs. [. . .] To put it differently, the cultural substrate is not completely covered by Arabic, French and other layers. In this case, Berber identity is not defined in exclusive terms. (Barrada, 2009: 26)

Language and Identity as Distractors It is ironic to see how essentialist Berberists adopt the same strategy as those who have imposed Arabo-Islamism since Algeria’s independence. For example, back in the 1960s − 1980s, to be a ‘real’ Algerian, one had to be Arabized, preferably monolingual in Arabic and trained in Middle Eastern institutions (Benrabah, 1999: 114). It is equally ironic that when more and more Arabic-speaking Algerians identify themselves as ‘Algerians’ or ‘AraboBerbers’ and not exclusively ‘Arabs’, essentialist Berberists reject their Algerian identity based on their mixed and complex history. This self-identification among Arabophone Algerians increased dramatically during the qualifying campaign for the 2010 FIFA World Cup (see Chapter 3). It was reinforced by the football crisis between Algeria and Egypt in the fall 2009. When Egyptians questioned the ‘Arabness’ of Algerians, many said ‘very well then, we are not “Arabs”, and we can be nobody but ourselves’. This is how Kamel Daoud, a French-language journalist, renowned for his daily skits, summed up the general atmosphere at the time. In his journalistic text of 17 December 2009, he also said:

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Why cannot I call myself ‘Algerian’ even though I live in Algeria and speak Algerian? Why should I be ashamed of not being a Kabyle and feel bad when I say to myself that I am not Arab? Because the answer was before my eyes and I had not understood it: I am Algerian and my official language is Algerian. It is the language of the majority which excludes no one, contrary to the other competing languages. [. . .] It is not a language yet and its words are rare, shapeless, originating from everywhere and not yet sculpted, but it is me and it is mine and in my mouth and my body, in the tongue of my mother and my children. I am not ashamed of it and I am proud of it. One day it will be a written language. (Daoud, 2009: 15) On 2 January 2010, sociologist Djamel Labidi excoriated what he saw as Daoud’s subordination to France. He described him as suffering from ‘colonial alienation’, ‘self-hate’ and ‘self-racism’ because of his perception of himself through the ex-colonizer’s eyes. The social scientist brought into play conspiracy theory to justify the new debate in Algeria on ‘Who are we?’. He found no coincidence between the latter and the ongoing controversial discussion in France on French identity which soon turned into Arabophobia and Islamophobia. (Prior to the 2012 presidential election, President Sarkozy launched this polemic to distract his people’s attention from the bad performance of his term in office.) As to language, Labidi unleashed his most vehement attacks on what the journalist called ‘Algerian’. The sociologist described this linguistic form as mere ‘spoken Arabic’, ‘a despicable pidgin made of a simplified mix of French and Arabic words’. He even belittled the slogan ‘One, two, three, Viva l’Algérie’ chanted by millions of his fellow countrymen at the time. This negative attitude towards Algerian Arabic code-mixing based, among other things, on ‘impurity’ is typical of proArabization intellectuals, be they Arabic-speaking or French-speaking. Finally, Labidi attacked Daoud’s lack of ‘authenticity’ because he wrote in French – to defend the ‘Algerian’ language – and was, thus, ‘French’. And like most Algerian intellectuals trained in France, the social scientist used anecdotes about his life in France and the example of French language policy to rationalize the imposition of Literary Arabic in Algeria (Labidi, 2010: 8–9). The debate was further inflamed online and in the written press by other intellectuals, mainly sociologists and/or political scientists. It is worth noting here the contribution to this debate of Ahcène Amarouche, a former colleague of Labidi. On 13 January 2010, Amarouche reminded his ex-colleague that, as a counsellor of the Minister of Higher Education, he had strongly supported, in the 1980s, the systematic and precipitous Arabization of the social sciences at the university, with its attendant result: ‘a complete fiasco’,

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he wrote (Amarouche, 2010). Incidently, journalist Kamel Daoud was born after Algeria accessed its independence in 1962. Then, in the summer of 2010, two other sociologists, Lahouari Addi and Ali Kenz, revived the war of words. This time, the issue concerned the choice of a written system for the transcription of Berber. The debate on the orthographic representation of this language had been going on since the ‘Berber Spring’ in the 1980s. It intensified when Berber was introduced in the educational system in the 1990s. Today, the Ministry of Education tolerates five major varieties of Berber (Kabyle, Mzab, Shawia, Chenoua and Tamashek), and the school manuals are presented in all five linguistic forms and in three different scripts: Latin, Arabic and the old Tifinagh (Berber) letters. The educational authorities encourage three writing systems but teachers, who largely use the Latin alphabet, reject this choice as anti-pedagogic. In fact, the dispute over the written representation of Berber is mainly ideological. The Berberist Cultural Movement (MCB) has adopted quasi-unanimously the Latin writing system as an opening towards the allegedly ‘modern’ Western culture (‘modernity’). The Ministry of Education privileges three scripts to eventually reverse the future tendency in favour of the Arabic alphabet and of Arabo-Islamic values and culture (‘authenticity’). Moving back to Lahouari Addi and Ali Kenz and the question of transcription, they both ‘advised’ their Berber-speaking fellow countrymen to adopt the Arabic script. The response from Berberophone quarters was instantaneous: between June and September 2010, supporters of the ‘modern’ Latin script criticized those who preferred the ‘archaic’ Arabic writing form, as some put it. At the time, two events reinforced beliefs in the authorities’ manipulation of the language question. First, in September 2010, the Ministry of Education issued a circular banning the use of colloquial Arabic in the teaching of sciences (maths, physics, chemistry and so on). Second, in an interview published in early October 2010, ex-President Chadli Bendjedid condemned Berber culture and language describing them as mere folklore (Koudil, 2010). It was around this period that Benmohamed, a renowned Berberophone poet, attacked Addi and Kenz who preferred Arabic script over Latin. He called them demagogues and reminded them of the need to let language specialists deal with the issue, and to give priority to the socioeducational situation of Algeria. The poet invited the two sociologists to use their expertise as university professors ‘to save our school, from primary to university levels, from the wreck that brings it closer and closer to the edge of an abyss’ (Hadjeres, 2010). In truth, two major problems continue to affect negatively the majority of Algerians (young people): the state of the educational system and unemployment. This is what youngsters in Algeria share with the rest of the Arab

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world. At the start of this millennium, survey results for Arabic-speaking countries in general and Algeria in particular suggested that lack of job opportunities and education were the most common concerns of youth. What is more, these potentially explosive indicators were compounded by high rates of change in literacy and urbanization. Such developments proved lethal for dictators on the eve of the ‘Arab Spring’, which started in neighbouring Tunisia at the end of 2010. Today, Algeria is not immune from a possible contagion: because of the ‘Arab Spring’ syndrome, another October 1988 upheaval could have devastating results for the Algerian elite. And youth desperation can be measured against the persistence of illegal emigration via the Mediterranean (Harraga) which has never stopped since the mid2000s – it persisted at the time of writing this Epilogue, in the autumn of 2012 (Gaïdi, 2012). It also appears in recurrent and sometimes violent socioeconomic demonstrations in various parts of the country. Very helpful in understanding Algerians’ opinion on the upheaval generated by the Arab Spring is a survey report by a Doha-based research centre, the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS). This centre surveyed a sample of Algerians in May 2011. Eighty-seven percent and 89% supported the toppling of Tunisian President Ben Ali and of Egyptian President Mubarak, respectively. Respondents gave corruption, lack of freedom and injustice as the main root causes for regime change in Tunisia and Egypt. What is more, 5–6% were satisfied with the political and economic situation in their country. On the back of this, 26% of Algerian respondents declared their wish to leave Algeria. Finally, the ACRPS’s survey gives one result that hints at the eventual future evolution of the Algerian linguistic panorama. Forty-eight percent of those surveyed by the Doha-based centre would accept a democratically elected Islamist party to lead the country, and only 38% a secular party (Blidi, 2012). This scenario, which could be a repeat of what has already happened in other Arab countries as a result of the Arab Spring (Islamists’ rise to power in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia), might seriously affect the French language. Islamists would certainly try to further Arabize– Islamize Algeria, and to accelerate the replacement of the ex-colonial idiom by English, for example. The uncertainty of this scenario remains the Kabyle community: how would Kabyles react to this likely development? In response to the ‘Arab Spring’, President Bouteflika’s regime, desperate to save itself, introduced in 2011 some political reforms (lifting the 19-year-old state of emergency restrictions, and ending the State’s monopoly on broadcast media). And to secure mass loyalty, it used extensively the State coffers overflowing from strong money growth – high oil budget revenues and excess liquidity in the banking system, with a cushion of $173 billion in foreign currency reserves in 2012 (CIA, 2012). In the summer

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of 2012, there was still frustration with a lack of democracy and serious socio-economic deficits. To Jonathan Laurence, the remaining two years of Bouteflika’s third term seemed like ‘the twilight of a lame duck’ (Laurence, 2012). Parenthetically, language wars ignited by politicians and renowned intellectuals conspicuously ended when neighbouring Tunisians began their revolution in November–December 2010. However, there were still minor skirmishes in 2012. For example, in the beginning of February 2012, one Arabic-language journalist wrote in the daily Echourouk a text titled: ‘The French language: is it a spoils of war or a form of neo-colonialism? After 50 years of independence . . . Algerians feel a complex towards the Arabic language’ (Houam, 2012). Around 10 days later, a contribution in the Francophone daily El Watan called for the end of political manipulation of language and identity and for the celebration of Algeria’s linguistic pluralism (Akika, 2012: 21).

What Can We Do? Under colonial rule, Europeans and Arabo-Berbers came into violent contact. France introduced forcibly modernity in Algeria and, with it, the politicization of the language issue unknown to Algerians before French colonialism. So, decolonized elites appropriated this characteristic aspect of the model of linguistic Unitarianism that rose in the 19th-century Europe. Since the liberation of Algeria in 1962, language has been used as a proxy for conflict by an autocratic regime. Its officialized antidemocratic ideology based on essentialist Arabo-Islamism generated oppositional identities, just as essentialist as colonial assimilationism. Officialized and oppositional narratives share a common denominator: they are imitative and draw their raison d’être from either Middle Eastern Pan-Arabism or French Jacobinism, two equally exclusive ideologies. The Berber Spring in 1980, the October 1988 uprisings, and subsequent social developments highlighted the gap that existed between the official ideological agenda (‘authenticity’ and homogenization) and the linguistic and cultural realities which had never ceased to be plural. In 2012, Algeria is at a crossroad. As in the days before October 1988, the generational divide is real and avenues appear obstructed to young people. So, a dialogue needs to take place between the generations to avoid further violence. The ‘Arab Spring’ has proved that Arabic-speaking populations are not condemned to live perpetually under political systems that prevent the majority from having a better future in open, tolerant and more inclusive societies. There are at least two prerequisites for this future to exist in Algeria. First, Algerian institutions need to be democratized so as to end expropriations of

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all sorts, particularly language expropriation. The era of ‘authenticity’ (Arabization) associated with authoritarianism infringed at least two articles of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights: articles 13–2 – ‘Everyone has the right to be polyglot’ – and 26 – ‘All language communities are entitled to acquire a full command of their own language.’ As a ‘top-down’ planning process with complete disregard for methodology, Arabization has so far deprived many individuals from acquiring multilingual competence for a better future. And the maintenance of diglossia prevents the majority from using their native tongues to the full. In sum, the implementation of real democracy could favour the representation of people’s systems of communication and expression in State structures. Two examples from the recent history of the Maghreb can be used as proof of this claim. In post-October 1988 Algeria, political liberalization and the emerging independent press allowed intellectuals and the public to discuss issues related to language and identity banned in the past. Writers supported the indigenization of French as a stable norm and acknowledged bilinguals’ creativity as legitimate linguistic forms. As to colloquial Arabic and Berber, several linguists celebrated multilingualism in general and Algeria’s plural linguistic scenery in particular. Sadly, this democratic transitional period, described by some as ‘playtime’, came to a halt when the purge of intellectuals and artists began in 1993. Moroccans have lived a similar situation since King Mohammed VI succeeded his father to the throne in 1999. With political liberalization, Morocco began to enjoy a moderately free press. In June 2002, Tel Quel, a French-language magazine, published a special issue titled ‘Derja [Moroccan Arabic] is our real national language’. Soon after, Tel Quel issued a version in Moroccan Arabic. By the end of the 2000s, Moroccan satellite TV channels started dubbing TV series in this language. And in June 2010, a non-governmental organization called Foundation Zakoura Education (FZE) convened an international conference on languages to make recommendations for the Moroccan government. The most daring recommendation was the institutionalization of dialectal Arabic and Berber as national languages, in addition to Literary Arabic, the official language of the country (FZE, 2010: 353–354). According to one co-organizer, Professor Abderrahim Youssi (personal email, 9 February 2012), this situation was unprecedented in contemporary Morocco: the media relayed the conference and the issue was hotly debated for a month. One year later, in July 2011, King Mohamed VI took the bold decision to include in Article 5 of the new Constitution the official recognition of Berber alongside Literary Arabic. Article 5 also contains another shift in line with the FZE recommendations: it announces the creation of the National Council for Moroccan Languages and Culture (CNLCM in French) ‘to protect and develop the Arabic and

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Berber languages and the diverse Moroccan cultural expressions which represent an authentic legacy and a source of inspiration for the modern times’ (Royaume du Maroc Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement, 2011: 5). Enshrining Morocco’s linguistic and cultural pluralism in the country’s constitution is part of the ongoing political reforms introduced in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. However, these changes need to also deliver a truly citizen-based identity for all Moroccans in the near future (Abouyoub, 2011). In the meantime, what the Algerian and Moroccan examples show is that democratic transitions in the Maghreb unleashed linguistic activism banned under authoritarian rule. In Algeria, the establishment of harmony and just social institutions could reduce inequalities and integrate the majority into a more equal and just society. Democracy has the potential to make the intensity of language wars decrease or cease completely because the legitimizing cover of language and its use as distractor from socio-economic realities become obsolete. It is, in fact, fertile ground for building on positive attitudes towards minorized languages to reach linguistic peace as an antidote to linguistic war. Linguistic education (enlightenment) and linguistic activism would be better alternatives to ‘Berber-is-evil’, ‘dialectal Arabic-is-evil’, ‘French-is-evil’ and ‘code-switching-is-evil’ discourses. The energy spent in this kind of discourse should be used to establish dialogue where dialogue does not exist, namely between Arabic- and French-language intellectuals – Algeria’s ‘two solitudes’. ‘Multilinguality’ could provide alternatives to linguistic exclusion and to a less divided society. Algeria offers excellent potential for appeasing linguistic conflicts and fostering peace. It was shown in Chapters 3 and 4 that Algerians held positive attitude towards multilingualism and linguistic ecology. So a ‘bottom-up’ approach to language planning activities is more likely to suit the population’s multilingual orientations than the current ‘top-down’ unilingual method. And there is a precedent in Algerian modern history: the Berber-speaking community started to value its centuries-long stigmatized language thanks to linguistic education (enlightenment) and linguistic activism, mainly developed in diasporic communities. There are also hopeful signs. Recently, some young Algerian academics have conceptualized frameworks for the promotion of linguistic diversity through bottom-up activism (civil society), schools and policy making. This is in view of educating responsible cosmopolitan citizens in a post-Arabization Algeria which accepts official/national languages grounded in the country’s sociolinguistic reality (e.g. see Belmihoub, 2012). The second prerequisite for attaining a better future resides in Algeria’s intellectual community. In this Epilogue, emphasis has been placed on the country’s intelligentsia, who try to maintain the status quo by inflaming

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‘from above’ the conflict arisen from social realities, often far removed from linguistic issues. Elites around the world do manipulate language to deflect class-based challenges to their positions, but in authoritarian regimes with totalizing linguistic policies the result can be tragic as exemplified in Algeria. What sets Algeria apart from most other Arab countries is its intellectuals who need to address the challenge posed by the crisis of the modern nationstate and the rise of ethno-nationalism. Algeria’s intelligentsia need to adopt new conceptual tools, especially those developed in the Periphery nations like India and South Africa. They should stop looking at their country’s diverse linguistic scenery through the lenses of ‘France’. They often use a dated rhetoric derived directly and uncritically from French analytical categories and jargon usually conceptualized by monolinguals raised in the ideological milieu of French language superiority. Algerian elites’ obsessive recourse to French concepts and categories, sometimes with anecdotal illustrations, corroborates what Charles Gallagher claimed in the 1960s: ‘[Algerian intellectuals] feel themselves to be “second-hand” in any case, condemned to have ideas and the symbols to express them passed on to them from either the Middle East or from France’ (Gallagher, 1968: 140). The greatest hope for the complete decolonizing of the colonized’s mind lies in the celebration of multilinguality. This could be an important resource to fight essentialist ideologies and dangerous sociolinguistic stereotypes often used for political exploitation in Algeria today. Since 1830, Algerians have been affected by different ideological models all equally exclusive: French assimilationism led directly or indirectly to Arabo-Islamism which in turn generated Berberism and Islamist-fundamentalism. The future lies in new models stemming organically from the country’s mixed and complex history as well as Algeria’s plural linguistic scenery, and Algerians’ multilingual orientations.

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Index

Abbas, F., 42, 43, 128, 129, 130, 131 The Aborted Debate (Dib), 141 academy (language), 3, 59, 160 accent, pronunciation, 4, 11, 40, 85, 91, 106, 107, 108, 110, 133, 134 Ach-Cha’b, 142, 145 acquisition planning, 11, 53, 59, 90, 91 A.C.R.P.S. (Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies), 166 Act N° 91–05 of 16 January 1991, 71, 75, 76 activism, 17, 18, 104, 169 Addi, L., 165 additive bilingualism/multilingualism, 18, 20, 81, 97, 100 administration, 13, 29, 30, 36, 48, 53, 54, 57, 58, 64, 95 advertising, 83, 84 Africa, 11, 21, 38, 61, 88, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 154, 161 Ager, D., 87, 92 Agnihotri, R.K., 18, 19 agriculture, 22, 48, 58 Aït Ahmed, H., 56, 67 al-Azhar (university), 35 Algeria (origin of the term), 29 Algeria-Egypt football crisis, 83–85, 163 Algerian communist party, 137 Algerian Popular Union, 42 Algerian War, War of Algeria, War of Independence, War of Liberation, xi, xii, 41, 47, 52, 84, 89, 110, 120, 136, 139, 142, 143, 145, 155 Algerianness, Algerianization (patriotism), 46, 84, 145, 147, 148

Algerians’ distrust of the State, 32, 57, 63, 79 Algérie française (Figueras), 89 Algiers, 21, 25, 27, 29, 55, 63, 67, 69, 70, 82, 87, 102, 111, 119, 130, 141, 142, 146, 155 Algiers University, 33, 35, 45, 56, 67, 70, 128, 140, 163 Al-Husri, S., 43–44 alienation, marginality, xiv, 4, 7, 33, 36, 49, 51, 95, 96, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 140, 144, 146, 147, 160–163, 164 Al-Khabar, 156 Alliance Israëlite Universelle, 2 Alloula, A., 147, 149, 154 All Saints’ Day (1st November 1954), xii, 41, 110, 136 alphabet, 5, 24, 30, 83, 165 al-Qarawiyyin university, 35 alternative voices, 114–119 al-Zaituna university, 35, 42, 130 Amarouche, A., 164 Amazigh, 22, 69 American English, 107, 108 Americanisms, franglais, 89 Americanness, 108 amnesia, 65, 92, 105, 148, 154 Amrouche, J.E.M., 134, 135–136, 137, 138, 139, 148 Andalusian (Moor), 21, 23, 27 Anglicization, 3, 6, 8, 9 Anglo-centric ideology, 114, 116 Anglo-Irish Protestants, 9 Anglo-Irish Treaty, 10 Anglo-Saxon (world, ‘race’), 88–89

186

Inde x

anti-Americanism, 89 antiquity, 22, 64 apartheid, 15, 34, 39 Applied Linguistics, 5 approaches to language learning, 115 appropriation, 97, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 127, 134, 138, 151, 153 Arab League, 84 Arab Spring, 84, 86, 94, 123, 166, 167, 169 Arab world, Arabo-Islamic world, xiii, 44, 59, 68, 70, 84, 165–166 Arabic (Algerian, colloquial, dialectal, spoken), 23, 24, 38, 50, 53, 54, 56, 59, 68, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 86, 130, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 164, 165, 168, 169 Arabic (Literary, Classical), xiii, 23, 26, 38, 40, 43, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 59, 64, 72, 73, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 102, 112, 130, 137, 139, 141, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 161, 164, 168 Arabicization, 53, 64, 72 Arabization, Arabisation, xiii, xiv, 43, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 81, 84, 86, 90, 93, 94, 95, 102, 111, 113, 117, 123, 124, 142, 143, 144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 157, 160, 163, 164, 168, 169 Arabization-Islamization, xiii, 43, 51, 53, 54, 56, 70, 71, 143, 145, 166 Arabo-Islamic Algeria vs. Algerian Algeria, 54, 58, 142, 143, 144, 145, 149, 150, 154, 155, 165 Arabo-Islamism, Arabo-Islamic ideology, 46, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59, 67, 68, 83, 86, 94, 97, 127, 137, 141, 143, 149, 150, 154, 155, 163, 165, 167, 170 Arabophobia, 164 Arabophone, 48, 62, 67, 72, 78, 94, 144, 145, 150, 161, 163 Arabs (colonial ethno-type), 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 39, 40 Aramaic, 24 army, military, xii, 4, 6, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 41, 45, 47, 52, 54, 57, 58, 61,

187

63, 67, 76, 83, 86, 88, 89, 105, 111, 120, 139, 140, 141, 143, 148 Arslan, C., 45 Aryans, 28 Asia, 6, 88 assimilation (ideology), xii, 6, 10, 17, 20, 25, 26, 27, 42, 43, 45, 47, 53, 89, 92, 95, 97, 114, 115, 127, 129, 130, 131, 136, 137, 155, 167, 170 Association of Algerian Students of al-Zaituna University, 130 association, integration (ideology), xii, 26, 37, 45 attitudes to language, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 33, 36, 43, 49, 50, 77, 78, 80, 81, 97, 98, 100, 103, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 120, 121, 124, 128, 134, 136, 138, 142, 143, 147, 155, 164, 169 authenticity, 10, 13, 17, 20, 34, 68, 76, 79, 83, 106, 110, 115, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 136, 137, 142–146, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 164, 165, 167, 168 authoritarianism, totalitarianism, 3, 10, 15, 44, 50, 57, 105, 157, 168, 169, 170 Baccalaureate, 74 backwardness (colonialist label), 25, 26 Bagdad, 59, 64 Barbaresques, 27 Ba’th, 44 Battenburg, J., 95 BBC, 150, 151 Bedouins, 147 Beirut, 61, 137 Belkaïd, A., 153 Belkhadem, A., 160 Ben Ali, Z.E.A., 94, 104, 166 Ben Badis, A., 42–43, 129–130, 137 Ben Bella, A., 47, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 105, 139, 143 Bendali School, 111 Bendjedid, C., 63, 64, 66, 69, 151, 165 Ben Jelloun, T., 139 Benmohamed, 165 Ben Rahal, M., 128, 129 Bentahila, A., 74, 81, 112, 148, 152, 161 Benyahia, M., 49 Berberism, Berberists, 46, 68, 69, 71, 74, 86, 96, 142, 146, 160–163, 165, 170

188

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Berberist crisis, 46, 68 Berber language, 23, 28, 37, 38, 48, 50, 53, 54, 56, 59, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 94, 95, 96, 97, 102, 124, 130, 132, 140, 142, 145, 146, 149, 155, 160, 161, 162, 165, 168, 169 Berberophone, 37, 43, 48, 56, 67, 68, 72, 161, 165 Berber policy (colonial), 28, 68 Berbers, 22, 27, 28, 37, 44, 65, 94, 162, 163, 167 Berber Spring, 67, 140, 161, 165, 167 Berlin, 2 Berque, A., 126 Bey of Tunis, 41 bilingual (balanced), 48, 79, 81 bilingualism, multilingualism, 3, 9, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 36, 44, 46, 53, 54, 55, 58, 62, 63, 69, 74, 75, 78, 79–82, 84, 97, 100, 105, 109, 111, 124, 127, 132, 136, 138, 142, 143, 149, 154, 159, 167, 168, 169 Black Decade, xi, xiii Bône, 39 borrowings (linguistic), 38, 91, 106, 115, 154 bottom-up, 15, 104, 105, 169 Bou Ismail, 30 Boumediene, H., 47, 52, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 71, 75, 143, 144, 150 Bounfour, A., 44 Bourboune, M., 133, 135, 139 Bourdieu, P., 111 Bourguiba, H., 61, 109 Bouteflika, A., 61, 75, 76, 77, 86, 102, 158–160, 166, 167 Bouteflika effect, 77, 82 British Council, 95, 119, 120 British empire vs. French empire, 6, 7, 10, 19, 31, 88, 92–93, 107–108, 114–116 British English, 108 business (language of), 39, 63, 75, 120, 122 caïd (local governor of Muslim origin), 135 Cairo, 35, 59, 84 Calvet, L.J., 36, 108–110 Canada, 88, 120

Canary Islands, 162, 163 capitalism, 46, 57, 64, 92 Captain Ziani Middle School (Ghazaouet), 118 Carette, A., 28, 162 Carter, R., 127 Casablanca, 39 Castiglione, 30 Catholicism, 6, 8, 9, 10, 42 celebrations, xiv, 26, 83, 86, 117, 118 Centre vs. Periphery, 5, 16, 95, 104, 108, 114, 115, 116, 170 Césaire, A., 109 Ceuta, 6 Chad, 106 Chair of Berber Studies (Algiers University), 56 Chaker, S., 162, 163 Chawki, A., 146 Cheb Hasni, 147, 149 Cheikh Bouhamama, 111 Chelli, A., 160, 161 Chen, Y., 107 Chenoua, 165 Cheriet, A., 145 China, 122 Chinese, 103, 107, 122, 123 Chinese-French economic competition (in Algeria), 122 Chirac, J., 104 Chouaki, A., 153 Christian, 21, 23, 29, 44, 49, 135, 136 C.I.D.D.E.F. (Centre d’Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l’Enfant et de la Femme), 70 citizenship, 21, 28, 30, 114, 134, 169 civilizing mission, xii, 25, 26 civil war, xi, 10, 71, 140, 145, 151, 154, 155, 161 cleansing (cultural, intellectual, linguistic), xiii, 37, 47, 151 Clinton, B., 95 closed language, 19, 115 C.N.L.C.M. (Conseil National des Langues et de la Culture Marocaine), 168 C.N.P.L.E.T. (Centre National Pédagogique et Linguistique pour l’Enseignement de Tamazight), 69, 161

Inde x

C.N.R.S.E. (Commission Nationale pour la Réforme du Système Educatif), 77, 159, 161 Coca-Colonization, 89 Code de l’indigénat (native code), 29 code-switching, mixing (language/ linguistic), 17, 82, 83, 84, 85, 94, 147, 148, 151, 152, 164, 169 Coffman, J., 70 Collège de France, 39 Collingwood-Whittick, S., 131 colon, pied noir, 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 42, 57, 65, 89, 92, 104, 120, 121, 127, 132, 133, 134 colonial bilingualism, 4, 5, 14, 20, 36, 63, 106, 115, 131–135, 136 colonial ideologies, 4, 5, 6, 21, 25–40, 50, 66, 92, 93, 97, 104, 106–113, 114, 117, 170 colonialism, xi, xii, xiii, 1, 4, 6–10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21–50, 54, 56, 59, 66, 68, 86, 88–89, 92–93, 95, 102–103, 104, 105, 109, 114, 116, 121, 124–125, 127–139, 143, 145, 161, 162, 167 Commonwealth, 61, 102 Commonwealth literature, 107, 108 conquest, invasion, xii, xiv, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 46, 48, 65, 87, 88, 89, 106, Constantine, 25, 137, 142 Constituent Assembly (Tunisia), 94 constitutions, 44, 53, 54, 57, 59, 66, 69, 159, 160, 162, 168, 169 constructivist viewpoint (nationalism), 13 contextualization, 108 Cooper, R.L., 2 Corneille, 129 corpus planning, 11, 53, 59, 90, 91 corruption, 42, 89, 159, 166 Corsica, 29 Coup d’Etat of June 1965, 47, 57, 58, 61, 66, 67, 83, 86, 105, 140, 141, 143 courtship, 79 creativity, 9, 23, 108, 114, 118, 127, 128, 130, 131, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146–156, 168 Crémieux Decree, 28

189

Critical Sociolinguistics, 5 Critical World Englishes, 5, 16, 17 Crusades, 27 Crystal, D., 95 Cubillo, A., 163 cultural capital, 111 cultural civil war, xiii, 86 culture, 12, 14, 35, 125, 145 Dahir (Berber Decree), 37, 46, 68 Dakar, 104 Damascus University, 154 Daniel, J., 39, 49 Daoud, K., 163–165 Daoud, M., 82 de-Anglicization movement (Ireland), 9 de-baptization, 54 Debré, M., xii decadence (colonialist label), 27, 145 decolonization, xiii, xiv, 1, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 50, 67, 89, 96, 104, 114, 136, 144, 155, 167, 170 decrees, 28, 32, 33, 34, 37, 46, 47, 54, 59, 67, 68, 69, 94, 142 deethnicization, 19, 102 de Gaulle, C., xii, 47, 55, 89, 110 de Haëdo, D., 23 delayed Frenchifying process, 121 democracy, 12, 16, 18, 32, 68, 74, 97, 110, 120, 127, 143, 146, 148, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169 demographics, demolinguistics, xii, xiii, 8, 21, 23, 24, 26–27, 39, 48–49, 55, 72, 73, 74, 77, 83, 90, 98, 102, 103, 119, 120, 121, 122, 145–146, 158 Demotic, 12 deracination, 24, 48 La Dernière impression (Haddad), 137 de Tocqueville, A., 89 detribalization, 24–25, 30, 46, 48, 57 Dhakirat al-Jasad, Memory in the Flesh (Mostaghanemi), 154 dialect (colonialist label), 4, 18–19, 66 Diaspora, 84, 146 Dib, M., 132–133, 134, 140–141 diglossia, 11–12, 38, 39, 81, 139, 160, 168 Diop, B.B., 107 direct rule, 6, 92

190

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diversity, pluralism (cultural, linguistic), 3, 4, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 26, 46, 51, 52, 54, 69, 76, 81, 84, 97, 108, 110, 127, 136, 142, 146, 148, 149, 155, 157, 162, 167, 168, 169, 170 divide and rule (ideology/policy), 26, 28, 34, 37, 55 Djaout, T., v, xiii, 148–151, 154 Djebbar, A., 34 Djité, P., 21 Doha, 166 domains of use, social functions (of language), 4, 12, 23, 50, 53, 67, 118, 140, 148 dominant language, xi, 3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 17, 38, 40, 50, 51, 56, 61, 62, 90, 93, 110, 111, 115, 116, 122, 131 D’Souza, J., 127 Dunkirk, xii Echourouk, 167 economic liberalization, free/market economy, 72, 82, 83, 98, 111, 121, 122, 123, 148, 151, 158 economic nationalism, postcolonial transition, 57, 58 economy, 3, 6, 8, 14–15, 42, 48, 57–58, 63, 66–67, 70, 72, 77, 82–83, 92, 94, 96, 98, 102, 111, 120–124, 151, 157–159, 166–167, 169 Ecoute et je t’appelle (Haddad), 137 edicts (of 1944 and 1947), 30 educational standards/efficiency, 55, 56, 63, 74, 79, 93, 94, 95, 144, 152–153, 165–166 education in French Algeria, 31–35 education in Ottoman/pre-colonial Algeria, 24, 32 education in post-independent Algeria, 54–56, 61–63, 64–66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 90, 91, 93, 98, 102, 110–112, 117–118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 138, 140, 143–145, 149, 152, 159–161, 164, 165, 166, 169 Education Minister, Minister of Education, 55, 58, 61, 63, 64, 71, 91, 93, 144, 145 Egypt, 53, 71, 83, 84, 85, 162, 163, 166 Eire, 8, 10

elections and referendums, xi, 59, 71, 74, 94, 110, 151, 158, 164 El Eulma, 130 L’Elève et la leçon (Haddad), 135 Eliot, T.S., 62 elite bilingualism, 36, 110 elite closure, 14–15, 18, 34, 63, 79, 111, 124 elites, leaders, rulers, xiii, xiv, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 76, 79, 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 114, 117, 124, 126, 128, 130, 139, 141, 144, 147, 151, 154, 155, 159, 161, 162, 166, 167, 170 El Madani, T., 43, 54, 56 El-Moudjahid, 139, 145 El-Qaddafi, M., 86 E.L.T. (English Language Teaching), 116 El Watan, 167 English as a Global Language (Crystal), 95 English departments, 124 English language, 3, 5–11, 15–17, 19, 20, 34–36, 64, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81–83, 85–88, 90–101, 103, 105, 107–110, 114–125, 152, 153, 154, 166 Englishness, 108 Enlightenment, 114 enlightenment, education (linguistic), 17, 18, 105, 169 Ennahdha, 94 enrolment, 55, 63, 72, 124, 128 Entelis, J., 70 equality of grammar (principle), 18, 97 essentialism, essentialist ideologies, 68, 86, 162, 163, 167, 170 ethnicity, 19, 44, 57 ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, 35, 97, 104, 116 ethnolect, 24 ethnological and anthropological societies (colonial), 7, 27 Etiemble, R., 89 Etoile Nord-Africaine, 45 Euromonitor International, 94, 119–120, 124 Europe, 2, 13, 21, 25, 26, 29, 35, 56, 68, 103, 105, 159, 167

Inde x

European settlers/colonialists, xii, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 46, 120, 135, 161 European Union, 110 évolué, 128, 131 exile, xiii, 45, 50, 56, 127, 135, 137, 141, 142, 151 external debt, 121, 158 Facebook, 119 Fanon, F., 109, 121 A Farewell to English (Harnett), 7 fatwa (religious decree), 142, 159 Fekkar-Lambiotte, B., 40 Feraoun, M., 40, 132, 139, 150 Fez, 35 F.F.S. (Front des Forces Socialistes), 56, 74 F.I.F.A. 2010 World Cup, 83, 84, 163 Fifth Congress of Algerian Students, 56 Le Fils du pauvre (Feraoun), 132 Finland, 140 F.I.S. (Front Islamique du Salut), xi, 70, 71, 91, 95, 97, 149, 151 Fishman, J.A., 12, 19 F.L.E. (Français Langue Etrangère), 116 F.L.N. (Front de Libération Nationale), 41, 45, 47, 49, 52, 56, 57, 59, 66, 70, 71, 86, 97, 98, 105, 130, 131, 136, 137, 139, 142, 149, 150, 151, 160 F.L.N.-party Congress (1986), 71 Foda, F., 142 formation of Algerian revolutionaries, 49 Fort National, 30 Franco-centric ideologies, xii, 104, 109, 110, 115 Francophile, 36, 43, 92, 111 Francophone, xi, xiii, 91, 93, 94, 107, 133, 152, 154, 155, 160, 167 Francophone literature vs. French literature, 107 Francophonie, 61, 89, 106, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116 Franco-Rwandan relations, 61 French Communist Party, 45 Frenchification, xii, 25, 26, 28, 30, 34, 35, 37, 38, 50, 64, 68, 72, 92, 105, 121, 129 French language, xii, 19, 25, 33, 36, 38, 42, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 63, 68, 87, 88, 94, 102, 103, 105, 106, 110, 112, 113,

191

115, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 128, 129, 131, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 148, 149, 152, 153, 155, 156, 160, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170 French National Assembly, 131 French Revolution (1789), 13, 32 Friedrich, P., 17–18, 157 F.Z.E. (Foundation Zakoura Education), 168 Gaelic, Irish, 7–10 Gaelicization (policy of), 10 Gaelic League, 8, 9 Gafaïti, H., 97 Gallagher, C.F., 52, 71, 170 Gallic authenticity, 20, 115, 133, 134 Galtung, J., 5 Garmadi, S., 139 generation of writers (1954, independence), 131, 135, 139, 141, 148, 153, 154 genocide (cultural, linguistic), 4, 10, 49, 105, 136 genocide (of populations), 8, 24, 138 German, 2, 3, 6, 11, 34, 98, 99 Ghannouchi, R., 94 Ghardaia, 82 Ghazaouet, 30, 77, 85, 118 Gikuyu, 108 Globalization, 17 glocalization, 17, 151 Gordon, D.C., 31, 39, 49, 59–60, 87, 90, 105, 126 G.P.R.A. (Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne), 37, 131 La Grande maison (Dib), 132 Great (potato) Famine (Ireland), 8 Greece, 11–12 Greek, 11, 12, 23, 141 Guedroudj, M., 49, 50 Haddad, M., 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 142, 143, 148, 150, 153 Hadjeres, S., 34, 138 Haifa, 2 Harbi, M., 49, 105 Harnett, M., 7, 8 Harraga (illegal emigration to Europe), 159, 166 Hassan II (King of Morocco), 55, 66, 69

192 L anguage Conf lic t in Alger ia

H.C.A. (Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité), 69, 161 Hebrew, 2, 3, 11, 23, 24, 77 hegemony, 3, 5, 10, 15, 16, 19, 37, 50, 52, 67, 79, 89, 94, 105, 170 Heggoy, A.A., 126 higher education, 33, 64, 70, 74, 75, 120, 124, 154, 160 Hijab (Islamic veil), 71 Hilfsverein (der Deutschen Juden), 2, 11 Hindi, 7 history, xi, xiv, 3, 6, 11, 13, 22, 23, 34, 35, 44, 48, 54, 62, 64, 65, 67, 84, 90, 102, 104, 105, 129, 130, 136, 138, 143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 154, 158, 163, 168, 169, 170 Hobsbawm, E., 57 Hogra, 80 homogenization, Unitarianism (linguistic), 11, 13, 15, 46, 167 Houhou, A.R., 130 housing shortage, 123, 158 human rights, 66, 162 hybridity, hybridization, interpenetration (cultural, linguistic), xii, 9, 16, 17, 23, 30, 75, 82, 83, 106, 126, 135, 136, 137, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156 hydrocarbons, oil and gas sector, 62, 102, 120, 121, 122, 124, 158, 166 I.C.T. (Information and Communications Technologies), communications technology, 17, 103, 119 identity, xiv, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 70, 77, 78, 79, 83, 86, 94, 100, 102, 108, 115, 116, 128, 129, 131, 136, 145, 146, 147, 149, 153, 154, 155, 162, 163–167, 168, 169 imam, 142 Imazighen, 22 I.M.F. (International Monetary Fund), 121, 158 imperialism theory (cultural), 5 India, 6, 7, 88, 108, 116, 170 Indian English, 108 Indianness, 108

indigène (native) (colonialist label), 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 40, 48, 133, 140 indigenization (linguistic), 108, 153, 168 indirect rule, 7, 92 Indo-European (language), 28 insecurity, xiv, 49, 56, 112, 115, 124, 137 instruct to conquer (ideology), 26, 31–35 intellectuals, v, xiii, xiv, 12, 13, 36, 43, 47, 52, 56, 63, 79, 89, 96, 105, 106, 109, 110, 121, 126, 127, 128, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 149, 151, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 170 interethnic conflict, 3, 15 intergenerational transmission (of language), 4 internal colonialists, 5 internal conflict, inter-lingual conflict, identity crisis, 3, 127, 134 international language, 7, 88, 100 internet, 17, 72, 82, 83, 84 I.R.C.A.M. (Institut Royal de la Culture Amazigh), 69, 162 Ireland, 6–10 Irish Free State, 10 Irishness, 9 Islah (Islamic reformism), 42 Islam, xi, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 49, 52, 53, 54, 58, 59, 64, 65, 116, 118, 137, 155 Islamic English, Islamic approach (to teaching English), 116, 117 Islamic French, 117 Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalists, Islamists, xi, xiii, 6, 56, 64, 67, 70, 71, 86, 91, 97, 129, 149, 151, 170 Islamic Institute, 56 Islamic Republic of Iran, 96 Islamization, xiii, 43, 51, 53, 54, 56, 70, 71, 95, 143, 145 Islamophobia, 164 Ismaelites, 28, 30 Italian, 23, 34, 36, 154, 155 Italy, 29 Jacobinism (French, linguistic), 45, 46, 167 Jahr, E.H., 1 Jeune Afrique, 162, 163

Inde x

Jew, Jewish, xiii, 2, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 39, 109 Jordan, 119 Journal 1955–1962 (Feraoun), 40, 139 Joyce, J., 9 Judeo-Arabic, 24 judicial system, 67 Justice Ministry, 72 Kabyle myth, 27, 28, 29, 37, 68, 161 Kabyles, 27, 28, 29, 34, 43, 56, 64, 67, 80, 94, 161, 162, 166 Kabylia, 25, 27, 28, 29, 34, 37, 43, 46, 56, 57, 67, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 76, 80, 94, 97, 135, 146, 160, 161 Kachru, B.B., 108, 110 Kagame, P., 61 Kaki, A., 146 Kateb, Y., 135, 138, 141–142, 147, 150, 153 Katharevousa, 12 Kennedy, J.F., 89 Kenz, A., 165 Khaled (King of rai), 147 Kharroubi, M.C., 64 Koran, 26, 27, 31, 33, 53, 58, 66, 71, 129, 141, 149 Ksentini, R., 130 Kurds, 44 Kureishi, H., 108 Labidi, D., 164 labour market (Algerian), 67, 74 Lacheraf, M., 63, 64, 143, 144, 145, 146 La Fontaine, 118 laïcité (secularization), 117 Lake, A., 95 Lakhous, A., 154–155 land expropriation, 8, 24, 25, 29, 32, 48 language competency/proficiency, 39, 48, 63, 74, 108, 110, 111, 112, 124, 134 language competition/rivalry, 2, 3, 5, 6, 16, 20, 36, 37, 43, 53, 75, 78, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 119, 122, 150 language contact, 1, 2, 3, 12, 20, 23, 25, 81, 82, 143 language displacement, 8, 10, 88, 95 language ecology, 18, 157, 169

193

language expropriation, 14, 79, 155, 167, 168 language for hire, 134 language killers, 6 language loss (pain of), 8, 10, 95, 134 language maintenance, 6, 14, 16, 38, 53, 79, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 103, 105, 115, 144, 154, 155 language of dictatorship, 94, 104 language of liberation, 10, 121 language of mediation, 98 language planning/management, 1, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 41, 50, 53, 59, 69, 86, 94, 98, 127, 152, 157, 158, 168, 169 language policy, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 41, 50, 63, 67, 74, 77, 79, 87, 105, 110, 113, 127, 144, 145, 149, 164 language preferences, 78–82, 93 language problems, 10, 14, 62, 75 language spread, 2, 3, 5, 11, 16, 19, 31, 35, 36, 72, 74, 75, 80, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 110, 121, 124 language superiority, xii, 3, 4, 19, 26, 35–41, 50, 88, 90, 92, 97, 106, 114, 117, 133, 170 language use, xiv, 2, 7, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23, 38, 40, 48, 51, 54, 59, 65, 71, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 106, 112, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 128, 132, 133, 135, 140, 147, 148, 152, 154, 155, 159, 161, 165 language war, 2, 4, 17, 54, 86, 127, 138, 143, 157, 160, 165, 167, 169 Larba Nath Iratten, 30 Laredj, W., 154, 156 Latin, 11, 23 Latin alphabet, 30, 75, 83, 85, 141, 165 Laurence, J., 167 law of February 2005 (French Parliament), 104 law of June 1889 (French citizenship), 29, 30 law of March 1882 (system of patronymics), 30 Lebanon, 116 Le Cour Grandmaison, O., 88 Left, Marxist, 12, 46, 52, 53, 55, 89, 92, 109, 110, 144

194 L anguage Conf lic t in Alger ia

legacy (French, colonial), 47–50, 66, 68, 139, 144, 163 legitimacy (political), 10, 12, 15, 25, 31, 37, 57, 58, 59, 86, 141, 150, 156, 169 Leroy-Beaulieu, P., 38 Lewis, J. E., 157 Libération, 106, 107, 115 Libya, 47, 53, 83 Libyans, 86 Likert attitude scale, 78, 102 Lingua Franca (Mediterranean pidgin), 23 lingua franca, lingua mundi (English), 17, 87, 88, 110 Linguaphone Group (The), 119 linguicide, language death, 4, 8, 10, 37, 66, 86 linguicism, 4, 5, 6, 14, 15, 36, 37, 38, 50, 66, 79, 86, 97, 106, 110, 117 linguistic activism, 17, 18, 169 linguistic culture/ideology, 13, 36, 44, 50 linguistic distance, 12, 156 linguistic imperialism, 4, 5, 14, 16, 36, 37, 96, 105 linguistic landscape, 39, 60, 73, 75, 85, 112, 113, 122, 123 linguistic market, 97 linguistic oppression, 1, 4, 15, 80, 109 literacy, 24, 32, 33, 40, 47, 48, 55, 56, 72, 73, 74, 82, 90, 95, 98, 112, 118, 120, 147, 166 literature, 9, 45, 74, 90, 100, 107, 108, 126, 128, 136, 137, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156 lobby (pro-Arabization), 91, 93, 123 localization, 17, 148, 152 Lorcin, P., 21 Lounaouci, M., 161 Lycée Descartes, 111 Lycée, 63, 132 Maalouf, A., xi, 21, 107 Mabanckou, A., 107 Macias, E., 39 Madani, A., 70 Maddy-Weitzman, B., 157 Maghreb, North Africa, xii, 4, 22, 26, 27, 29, 30, 40, 44, 48, 49, 59, 60, 79, 84, 87, 89, 95, 96, 117, 119, 136, 162, 168, 169

M.A.K. (Mouvement pour l’Autonomie de la Kabylie), 161, 163 Malta, 29 Mammeri, M., 133, 140, 141, 150, 163 Manifesto of the Algerian People, 42 Mansouri, A., 51 manuals, textbooks (school), 59, 62, 64, 65, 77, 91, 144, 165 marabouts (holy men), 31, 42 Marçais, W., 38–39, 72 marginalization, 4, 36, 135, 137, 160–163 Martinique, 109, 121 Massu, J., 142 Mauresques, 27 Mazouni, A., 144 M.B.S. (Le Micro Brise Le Silence), 152–153 M.C.B. (Mouvement Culturel Berbère), 68, 74, 161, 165 McDougall, J., 51, 56, 82 media, xiii, 13, 43, 53, 67, 72, 83, 84, 91, 98, 102, 106, 115, 119, 128, 138, 141, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 156, 166, 168 Medieval Puritanism, 148 Mediterranean Sea, 22, 23, 25, 120, 132, 133, 137, 154, 159, 166 medium of instruction (language as), 11, 53, 62, 72, 90, 94, 100, 102, 123, 159, 160 Mehenni, F., 146, 161, 162 Memmi, A., 1, 4, 109, 126, 136 memory, 102, 103, 116, 136 M.E.N.A. (Middle East and North Africa), 119 Les Messagères, 151 Messali Hadj, 45–46, 130 Mesthrie, R., 1 Le Métier à tisser (Dib), 134 Meynier, G., 129 Middle Ages, 27, 52 Middle East, Levant, 2, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 53, 56, 59, 65, 91, 93, 119, 145, 151, 170 Middle Eastern-centrism, 84 migrants, 3, 8, 17, 25, 46, 120, 159, 166 Minister of Culture, 63 Minister of Education, Education Minister, 55, 58, 61, 64, 71, 91, 93, 143, 144, 145

Inde x

Minister of Higher Education, 74, 164 Minister of Justice, 110 Minister of Religious Affairs, 43, 54, 56 Minister of the Interior, 110 Ministry of Education, 32, 62, 64, 65, 71, 72, 91, 93, 120, 152, 159, 165 Ministry of Higher Education, 67, 140 Ministry of Religious Affairs, 72 Ministry of the Interior, 159 Mitterrand, F., 110 mobile telephony, 72, 83, 84, 119 modernity, modernism, modern age, 6, 13, 14, 38, 78, 79, 80, 81, 90, 117, 124, 136, 144, 156, 161, 165, 167 Mohammed VI (King of Morocco), 69, 168 Mokkadem, M., 153–154 Le Monde, 106, 107 monolingual habitus, 13, 36, 79 monolingualism, unilingualism, 4, 13, 15, 38, 40, 54, 55, 76, 82, 124 Le Mont des genêts (Bourboune), 133 Montreal, 107 Moors, 21, 23 Morocco, xii, 6, 24, 36, 37, 39, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 66, 68, 69, 74, 79, 87, 90, 94, 111, 119, 121, 122, 123, 139, 161, 162, 163, 166, 168, 169 Mostaghanemi, A., 154, 156 mother tongue, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 19, 50, 54, 64, 66, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 132, 134, 141, 142, 146, 154, 155, 160, 161 Mouhleb, N., 21 M.T.L.D. (Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques), 45, 46, 130 Mubarak, H., 84, 166 multilingual competence, 156, 168 multilingual orientation, 79, 82, 97, 100, 109, 116, 169, 170 multilinguality, 18, 19, 169, 170 multiple identity, 16, 109, 146, 154, 155 multiple norms, 108 music, 146, 147, 149, 151 Muslim Brotherhood (of Egypt), 53, 56 Muslim elder, 33, 42 Mzab, 130, 165 Nasser, G.A., 56, 84 nation (imagining the), 12–13

195

National Charter, 59, 64 national language, 11, 36, 55, 59, 168, 169 national reconciliation, 158 nationalism, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 27, 28, 36, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 52, 57, 58, 68, 70, 74, 93, 95, 97, 107, 151, 163, 170 nation-building, 10, 14, 18, 143, 154 nationism, 13 N.A.T.O. (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), 89 Nazi Germany, 131, 135 Nedjma (Kateb), 135, 138 Nehru, J., 7 Nelde, P., 1 Nemours, 30 neo-colonialism, 110, 167 new colons, 57 New France, 88, 89 new man (ideal), 26 New York, 151 Ngûgî, T., 108 Nimrod, B.D., 107 Nobutaka, M., 109 nomads, 22, 28 non-aligned variety (of English), 7, 116 North America, 88, 89, 104, 120 nostalgia (for French colonial empire), 104 numerical strength, 103, 110 O.A.S. (Organisation Armée Secrète), 139 October 1988 uprisings, intifada, 66, 83, 148, 166, 167, 168 O’Donnell, R.H., 8 O.E.C.D. (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), xiii Office Universitaire et Culturel Français, 63 Official Journal, 54 official language, 3, 23, 36, 42, 59, 66, 69, 79, 138, 160, 162, 164, 168 O.I.F. (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie), 61 oil prices, 121, 158 O’Neill, S., 8 open language, 19, 115 oppositional identities, 16, 66–71, 74, 167 Oran, 39, 77, 82, 124, 147 Ottoman domination, 12, 23, 41, 57, 82 Ouettar, T., 150, 151 Oujda, 39

196 L anguage Conf lic t in Alger ia

pacification (military), 24, 31 Pakistan, 108, 116 Palestine (Ottoman), 2, 3, 11 Pamuk, O., 115 pan-Arab/Islamic ideology, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 59, 64, 84, 91, 145, 167 pan-Berber ideology, 68, 162 Paris, 2, 32, 34, 45, 49, 88, 92, 102, 105, 106, 114, 132, 135, 141, 150, 154, 162 Parlez-vous franglais? (Etiemble), 89 patois (colonialist label), 4 patriotism, 44, 84, 145 patronymics (colonial system of), 30 Peace Linguistics, Peace Sociolinguistics, 16, 17–20, 157, 161, 169 Pearse, P.H., 9 Pennycook, A., 114 peripheralization (self-imposed), 56 Philipville, 30 Phillipson, R., 5, 6, 50, 93, 110, 126, 157 Phoenicians, 22 pied noir, 25, 29, 30, 39, 40, 42, 104, 120, 121, 132, 133, 134 Pitts, J., 87 planned developments, 72–74 pluralism (cultural, linguistic, political), 3, 16, 17, 18, 25, 46, 52, 54, 69, 76, 81, 84, 97, 108, 110, 127, 136, 142, 148, 149, 162, 167, 168, 169, 170 pluralist view (of English, of French), 108, 110 political liberalization, 66, 72, 98, 168 politicization, polarization (cultural, linguistic), xiv, 3, 22, 34, 57–59, 77, 86, 167 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce), 9 Portuguese, 5, 6, 23, 31, 88 possessiveness (native-speaker), 20, 114, 115 post-Arabization (Algeria, era), 86, 169 Postcolonial Studies (the postcolonial approach), 104, 105, 108, 109, 116 postmodernism, postmodernity, 17, 82, 109, 155, 156, 163 Powell, E., 108

power (cultural, economic, political), 4, 5, 14, 15, 17, 29, 32, 37, 40, 47, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, 66, 67, 71, 75, 77, 86, 110, 147, 166 P.P.A. (Parti du Peuple Algérien), 45, 46, 130 premodern (age), 14 prestige (language of), 4, 11, 12, 35, 69, 100 primitive (colonialist label), 4, 28, 31 primordialist/romantic viewpoint (nationalism), 13, 28, 162 Prince Charles, 107 Protectorate, xii, 36, 37, 41 Proulx, M., 107 purification, purism (linguistic), 13, 36, 50, 115 Qasaman (I swear!), 130 Le Quai aux fleurs ne répond plus (Haddad), 138 questionnaire, 77, 78, 98, 112 Rabat, 39, 96 racial theory, racism, 4, 6, 7, 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 39, 104, 114, 138, 144, 164 Racine, 129 rai music, 147–148, 151, 152 Raina Rai, 147 Ramackers, R., 49, 50 rap music, 151–153 Le Ravin de la femme sauvage (Laredj), 154 R.C.D. (Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie), 74, 75 Reconquista, 23 Regency of Algiers, 23, 29 registry office, 30, 72 regroupment camps, pacification zones, xii, 120, 121 religion, 3, 6, 8, 12, 21, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 41, 42, 43, 45, 53, 58, 59, 71, 81, 141 religious orientation (of new generations), 70–71, 118 repression, 97, 117, 146, 149, 154 reproduction (of colonial ideologies), xiv, 4, 5, 10, 36, 50, 110, 117 resistance, xii, 1, 9, 16–20, 22, 24, 32, 33, 40, 46, 51, 52, 56, 67, 79, 86, 94, 96, 100, 127–131, 142, 146–151, 154, 155

Inde x

resistance-refusal (cultural), 32, 33 Right (political), 12, 89, 108 Rivarol, A., 36, 88 Romance, 23 Roman Empire, 29 Romanized Byzantines, 22 Romans, 22, 29, 65 Rome (Ancient), 29, 65 Ruedy, J., 21, 51 Ruptures, 148 Rushdie, S., 107, 108 Russia, 113 Rwanda, 61, 102 Saadi-Mokrane, D., 51 sabir, 23, 40 sacredness, 18, 35, 78, 79, 144 Sa ¯dan, 85 Sahara, 22, 82, 120 Saïda, 77 Sarkozy, N., 86, 104, 164 Sartre, J.P., 136 satchels strike, 69 Saudi Arabia, 147 science and technology (fields of study), 2, 5, 64, 75, 100, 124 second language, 34, 87, 90, 92, 96, 112, 113, 114, 123, 138 secularism, xi, xiii, 32, 42, 46, 52, 56, 68, 97, 117, 137, 166 Senac, J., 136 Senegal, 61, 88 Senghor, L.S., 61, 109 Setif uprising (May 1945), 47, 135 sexism, 4 Sharica (Islamic law), 37, 70, 71 Shawia, 165 Si Mohand ou Mehand, 130 Silence is death (Djaout), 148 Silverstein, P.A., 51 Skikda, 30 social change (in post-independence), 66, 72, 90 social control, 117, 155 socialism, 45, 53, 59, 63–64, 66, 111, 121, 144, 150, 151 social mobility/advancement, 14, 18, 33, 79, 81, 111, 128, 144 Le Sommeil du juste (Mammeri), 133, 140

197

Sorbonne University, 154 Souaiaia, M., 91, 97 South Africa, 15, 85, 170 Soviet Union, 116 Spain, xiii, 23, 29, 68 Spaniards, 23 Spanish, 5, 23, 34, 39, 76, 85, 98, 99, 163 spoils of war, 53, 138, 153, 167 standard language, 12, 116 Stanford University, 70 state of emergency, 83, 166 status planning, 11, 53, 54, 59, 90, 91 stereotype, 6, 18, 19, 27, 146, 170 stigmatization, minorization (linguistic), 4, 5, 6, 16, 18, 35, 36, 40, 50, 77, 79, 115, 133, 146, 169 strikes, 3, 67, 69 students, 2, 31, 33, 34, 35, 43, 47, 55, 56, 62, 63, 64, 67, 70, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 82, 111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122, 124, 130, 132, 137, 139, 143, 144, 147, 152 Subaltern Studies, 104, 108 substratum, 145, 149, 163 subtractive bilingualism/multilingualism, 97, 100 Sudan, 84 Šukys, J., 127 Sultan, 41, 68, 69 surveys, 39, 54, 70, 77, 81, 82, 93, 98, 157, 166 Switzerland, 45, 68 Syria, 44, 154 taboos, 30, 79, 147, 151 Tajerrumt (Mammeri), 140 Taleb Ibrahimi, A., 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 144, 145, 146 Taleb Ibrahimi, K., 163 Tamanrasset, xii Tamashek, 165 Tamazight, 22 teachers, 2, 6, 18, 32, 33, 34, 40, 47, 55, 56, 62, 65, 70, 71, 77, 82, 84, 90, 93, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 124, 132, 133, 135, 137, 142, 145, 150, 160, 165 teaching methods, 34, 39, 43, 65, 66, 71, 112, 116, 144, 160, 161, 165

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L anguage Conf lic t in Alger ia

Tel Quel, 168 terrorism, xii, xiii, 77, 149, 151 theatre, 142, 146, 147 Third Conference of Arab Teachers, 55 Thomas, E.H., xi, 51, 87, 96, 97 threat factor, 15 Tifinagh, 75, 165 Tizi Ouzou, 80, 132 Tlemcen, 39, 73, 122, 123 Tokyo, 109 tolba (students of the Koran), 31 top-down, 15, 16, 52, 57, 93–97, 98, 124, 168, 169 torture, xiii, 133, 135 trading partners (Algeria’s), 122 Transparency International, 159 trauma, xii, xiv, 49, 55, 139 Treaty of Paris (1763), 88 tribes, tribal system, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 46, 48, 57, 133 Tripoli, 47 Tripoli Programme, 47, 57 Tsabedze, C., 92 Tudor Dynasty, 6 Tunis, 35, 62, 130, 135 Tunisia, xii, 24, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 55, 59, 60, 61, 74, 82, 87, 90, 94, 104, 111, 116, 119, 121, 123, 139, 166 Tuquoi, J.P., 111 Turkey, 24, 94 Turkish (Osmanli), 23, 94 Turks, 21, 22, 23, 24 Twitter, 119 two solitudes, 150, 169 U.D.M.A. (Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien), 42, 131 Ulema (Muslim elder), 42, 43, 45, 53, 54, 58, 129, 130, 137, 142, 143, 144 unanism, 142–146, 148 U.N.E.A. (Union Nationale des Etudiants Algériens), 143 unemployment, 67, 120, 123, 158, 165 Union of Algerian Writers, 140, 143, 150 Unions of French Teachers, 47 United Kingdom, Britain, 19, 87, 88, 95, 104, 114, 124 United States of America, 2, 3, 15, 89, 95, 96, 104, 124

Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, 18, 168 University of California Berkeley, 54 University of Mascara, 124 University of Oran, 124 University of Tizi Ouzou, 140 unplanned developments, 16, 72, 74–75, 94, 124, 146 uprisings, xii, 28, 29, 34, 47, 66, 67, 69, 72, 74, 98, 135, 136, 148, 150, 167 urbanization, 22, 23, 24, 25, 46, 62, 67, 72, 77, 82, 85, 90, 98, 102, 103, 119, 120, 121, 166 Vandals, 22 Vermeren, P., xiii-xiv vernacular (language), 2, 7, 12, 92, 142, 145 violence, xi, xii, 4, 22, 24, 25, 48, 66, 69, 71, 151, 158, 167 volk, genius, 13, 28, 162 Wardhaugh, R., 87, 105, 112 W.A.S.P. (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), 3 Weinstein, B., 51, 115 Whorfian faith/hypothesis, 38, 129 World Bank Doing Business report (2012), 121 World Englishes, New Englishes, 108, 114 World Music (rai), 147 World War I (WWI), 33, 45, 130 World War II (WWII), 6, 10, 89, 128, 130, 131, 135 writers, v, xiii, 7, 9, 39, 40, 49, 82, 85, 90, 93, 106, 107, 108, 109, 126–156, 163, 168 writing system, 11, 19, 24, 30, 38, 75, 83, 85, 165 writing techniques, 135, 154 Ya Chabab, Système Primitif (M.B.S.), 152–153 yahudi, 24 Yasmina Khadra, 153 Yeats, W.B., 9, 10

Inde x

Yiddish, 2, 3 Yishuv, 2 Youssi, A., 168 youth, 7, 16, 17, 26, 34, 35, 47, 65, 66, 69, 72, 77, 79, 80, 82, 94, 95, 104, 118, 119, 120, 123, 128, 132, 136, 139,

142, 147, 148, 149, 151, 158, 165, 166, 167, 169 Youtube, 84 Zaboot, T., 97 Zakkaria, M., 130

199