Between Profit and Identity: Analyzing the Effect of Language of Instruction in Predicting Overt Language Attitudes in Morocco

摘要

This article examines two speech communities for which language of instruction (LI) is a marker of socioeconomic class that predicts respondents' overt language attitudes. Previous research has not investigated the relationship between LI and speakers' language attitudes. However, the results of this study show that LI underlies the contestation of codes within Morocco's multilingual educational domain. The theoretical framework of this study conceptualizes the role of language as a commodity that shapes socioeconomic asymmetries in the global economy (Heller 2010; Shankar and Cavanaugh 2012; Urciuoli and LaDousa 2013). I argue that the emergence of the trope of profit (Duchene and Heller 2012) in the global market has promoted new forms of linguistic hegemony that bifurcate Morocco into two speech communities based on LI. The results of a language attitude questionnaire administered to university student respondents with different LI backgrounds show a divide-an instrumental motivation that promotes positive attitudes toward French and English, as in the case of French-taught respondents, or by contesting such an ideology through asserting local identity for SA-taught respondents.