Issues of identity in Algerian literary discourse
If the Algerian national identity is treated as a potential point of conflict that
requires the constant process of negotiation, then the assassination of President
Boudiaf during the Islamist civil war of the 1990s was symptomatic of that
ongoing process - a violent ideological climax after decades of the antagonistic
processes of Arabization and Francization in Algeria. The war could be described
as the process of alterity manifesting in an especially potent manner, with radical
Islamists and secular government forces fighting for the political power to
establish their own boundary markers and impose their vision of a distinct
Algerian national identity. The Arabic language, in the form of MSA or
dialectal Algerian Arabic, evokes an Algerian national identity as an Arabo-
Islamic socio-political construct based on Islamic and Arabic traditions. This
ideological predilection was seen throughout the enforced Arabization from 1963
to the 1990s, a historical process discussed in Section 2.2, which was targeted at
constructing an Arabic-centric national identity. The French language imagines an
Algerian national identity as a secular, modernized Francophone socio-political
construct that may also be inadvertently associated with the socio-historical
trauma of French colonization and the dispossession of Algeria’s existing
indingeous languages. Arabic and French in Algeria have thus often been a “us-
versus-them” categorizer - powerful boundary markers and expedient political
tools that enforce identity exclusivity and evoke differing images of Algerian
identity.
Since Algeria’s independence in 1962, Algerian intellectuals and politicians
have expressed a plethora of views arguing for the future of Arabic and French in
Algeria. Algerian intellectuals such as Kateb Yacine and Assia Djebar viewed
French as a link to the greater Western world, where they could access scientific
works and philosophical thought through French translations. It was also a
language to communicate ideas from a uniquely Algerian perspective, connecting
Algerians to a larger Francophone world beyond their traditional Arabophone
sphere of influence.
While they objected against French rule in Algeria, they regarded the French
language as a legitimate vehicular metaphor for the Algerian experience,
disengaging it from its colonial origins and embracing it as a language
authentically
Algerian and as much a carrier of Algerian identity as Arabic. An independent
Algeria had to continue the teaching of French so as to produce literary, scientific
and philosophical works in French expressed within a uniquely North African
context, as French had become an inseparable part of Algerian history.
Assia Djebar, a prominent Algerian novelist renowned for her work in Algerian
feminist literature written in the French language, is a proponent of a strong
ArabicFrench bilingual policy. Djebar advocates preserving both Arabic (as MSA
and Algerian Arabic) and French as important boundary markers to define
Algerian identity. In a speech given at the L’Académie Française on June 22
2006, Djebar declares herself an Algerian who has internalized French in such a
manner that the stigma of French as a colonizing language no longer exists, as
French is a natural part of her as Arabic is:
The French language, which is yours, ladies and gentlemen, has
become mine, at least in writing, French has thusly become the
place of the deepening of my work, the space of my meditation or
of my daydreams, the target of my utopia perhaps, I will even say
it is the tempo of my breathing, from day to day: (it is) what I
would like to sketch right now, where I dwell as a silhouette
standing at your doorstep.
In her speech, Djebar acknowledges the trauma of French colonization on the
Algerian population, where the French language was imposed to the detriment of
Algeria’s other existing languages such as Arabic and Tamazight. She also fully
embraces French, dissociating it from its colonial origins and accepting it as a
language that is authentically Algerian and as much a carrier and preserver of
Algerian identity and culture as Arabic. However, Algerian writers such as Djebar
and Kateb Yacine, who continued writing in French, were harshly criticized
through accusations that they were sacrificing the integrity of their cultural
identity by using French.
Kateb Yacine (1929-1989) was an Algerian author raised in the colonial
education system who was a staunch advocate of preserving French within the
cultural sovereignty of Algeria. He is regarded as an Algerian revolutionary hero
who gave a literary voice to the previously undocumented Algerian experience. In
a televised interview in 1986, Yacine rejected accusations made by his critics: “I
write in French because France invaded my country and that it held such a
powerful position that I have to write in French to survive. But through writing in
French, I retain have my Arab and Berber roots that are still very much alive.”
His novel Nedjma, published in 1956 and written in poetic French, is
considered a literary masterpiece in contemporary French literature. The novel
takes place in Bône, Algeria, in the wake of the Sétif massacres in May 1945, and
revolves around an alluring married woman, Nedjma, who is pursued by four
revolutionary Algerians. Throughout the novel, the titular character is not
provided much character development, but it is implied that her character serves
as a metaphor for Algeria. Written in an unconventional, non-chronological
literary style, the novel instead focuses on the efforts of the four men who strive
for her attention and her heart. The metaphor of their endless pursuit of Nedjma
reveals the overarching theme of the novel: Algeria is a motherland, fiercely
independent, mysterious, indecipherable and unattainable, and no colonial power
or even her own people could ever completely restrain her or unravel her
mysteries.
Yacine’s novels thus emphasize on the resilience and diversity of Algeria and
Algerians. For Yacine, French only served as a vehicular mechanism for the
dissemination of ideas. What was more paramount was the voice of the Algerian
literary character, expressed in French, transmitted to other Francophone readers
and translated into different languages. In 1966 in an interview for a TV
broadcast, Yacine declared:
"The use of the French language is to serve a neocolonial political
machine, which only perpetuates our alienation. However, the
usage of the French language does not mean that we are agents of a
foreign power… I write in French to tell the French that I am not
French."
It mattered less that his works were written in French, the language of his
colonizers, as what mattered was the literary empowerment of Algerians. French
could thus engender a new and empowered generation of Algerians who would
use the language to gain their independence.
Likewise, Algerian novelist Rachid Boudjedra took a smiliar position when he
encountered criticism: “As an Algerian, I did not choose French. French chose
me, or rather, it was imposed upon me through decades of blood and tears and
through a painful history of colonialism.” To Boudjedra, language was a means to
an end and did not mean a betrayal of one’s cultural roots.
For Djebar, Yacine and Boudjedra, the imposition of French did create a
profound sense of loss in identity and culture, through the displacement of Arabic,
Tamazight and Algerian traditions. However, they also viewed Arabic and French
as two inseparable parts of a united whole. They believed in the importance of a
strong bilingual education system that taught both languages with equal
pedagogical emphasis to acknowledge the complex socio-linguistic history of
Algeria.
In particular, the usage of French did not amount to a betrayal of their
sociohistorical Algerian heritage; rather, the French language allowed them to
strengthen and reclaim their dispossessed heritage by carving a distinct Franco-
Algerian identity that was unique in itself. To them, what was more harmful was
forcing Algerians to learn only a particular language, such as Arabization that
destroyed the harmony of Algeria’s linguistic diversity, as well as the perpetuation
of the myth that Arabic was reserved for prayer, poetry and spirituality while
French was for scientific progress and technology. They believed that Algerians
should be educated and be allowed to write in both languages to express all
domains of the Algerian experience.
On the opposing side of the idelogical spectrum, there exists a class of
pronationalist, pro-Arabic Algerians who wish to see Arabic regain prominence
and French eliminated. Pro-nationalist groups were most active in the period
between the late 1920s to the start of the Algerian war of independence in 1954,
and amongst them two influential nationalist groups emerged: Étoile Nord-
Africaine (ENA) and Association des Uléma Musulmans Algériens (AUMA).
The ENA, formed in the late 1920s, is considered the first organized nationalist
movement in Algeria led by Ahmed Ben Messali Hadj, a prominent revolutionary
figure often referred to in Algeria as the father of Algerian nationalism. The ENA
was primarily composed of laborers from the northern Algerian region of Kabylie
who rejected French assimilationism and were committed to the domination of
Arabic and Arabo-Islamic culture. Their programs included calling for the
propagation of free, mandatory Islamic schools that taught Arabic and Islamic
values at every level of the education system, the withdrawal of French troops and
the independence of Algeria. Messali Hadj and ENA members were brought up in
the colonial system and thus acquired French literacy; however, they refused to
accommodate space for French in an independent Algeria.
Likewise, the AUMA, formed by Abdelhamid Ben Badis in 1931, assumed
similar ideological positions as the ENA, calling for Algerians to reject French
assimilationism. The AUMA, backed by Algerian religious ‘ulama, actively
undermined French influence, organizing social activities in mosques and opening
free, clandestine Quranic schools that taught Arabic. In an AUMA manifesto
published in April 1936, Ben Badis proclaimed:
“[Algeria] has her own religious and linguistic unity, her culture,
her traditions and her characteristics, both good and bad like any
other nation. We then say that this Algerian nation is not France, it
cannot be France and it will not be France. It is impossible to
become French even if she desires so; on the contrary, it is a nation
completely different from France, by its language, its customs, its
ethnic origins and its religion. She rejects assimilation.”
In his declaration, Ben Badis rejected assimilationism, affirmed the
irreconcilability of France and Algeria and shattered the carefully constructed
colonial myth of the intertwining of French and Algerian destinies. Like Djebar,
Yacine and Boudjedra, Ben Badis and Messali Hadj believed in Algeria’s
territorial and cultural sovereignty. However, unlike Yacine, they saw French as a
false prophet, as subserviently participating in the colonial project was tantamount
to betraying their Algerian roots. It was necessary to reject French to remain
authentically Algerian.
It is worth noting that the FLN government and the Islamists of the civil war
traced the origins of their anti-French, pro-Arabic ideological lineage to Ben
Badis and Messali Hadj. The FLN government saw the role of Arabic in a secular
context, as Arabic was a symbolic antithesis to counter French influence and
solidify national unity, stopping short of imposing Islamic law as a basis for
political governance. The Islamists of the civil war, on the other hand, wanted to
enforce Islamic law, as for them linguistic Arabization also meant political
Islamization. This divide in beliefs over the future of Arabic and French in
Algeria is rooted in the history of Algerian language policy-making that stretches
back to the French colonial era. To understand how this ideological divide came
into being, the next chapter examines the historical development of language
policies over three successive historical eras: the French colonial era (1830-1962),
the postindependence Arabization era (1962-1999) and the post-civil war era
(1999present).
CHAPTER TWO:
Au Cœur et l'Ame de l'Algérie:
Arabic, French and the Algerian Education Sytem in Crisis
« When one of the languages is the language of the ruler, when it provides access to a great, modern
civilization, when it is clear, when its spoken and written expressions are as close as possible; and when the
other language is the language of those who are ruled, when even its best writings express a medieval ideal,
when it is ambiguous, when it takes on a different form when it is written than when it is spoken, the match is
really unfair: the first must inevitably overcome the second.»
- William Marçais
2.1 L’ALGÉRIE FRANÇAISE: FRENCH COLONIAL RULE (1830 - 1962)
« All of you are good little French children; all of you love your homeland… Starting from today you have to
fulfil a duty towards France: which is to better know it to serve it well! »32
- Claude Augé and Maxime Petit (1892)
2.1.1 Ideological basis for the spread of French in French Algeria
On the eve of the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, there were at least 1 - 3
million indigenous inhabitants in Ottoman Algeria, governed by local authorities
appointed by the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople. A mix of dialectal Arabic and
varying strains of the Berber language served as the principal lingua franca of the
indigenous population. After the French conquest in 1830, colonial administrators
began to enforce Francization, the process of cultural assimilation that introduced
French culture and the French language onto the indigenous population through a
national colonial education system. The introduction of a national colonial
education system constituted the first historical encounter indigenous Algerians
had with the French language.
The initial propagation of the French language starting from 1830 was rooted
in
French approaches to colonial policy. France labeled itself as “la patrie” or “the
motherland,” a necessary mother figure responsible for the protection and
nourishment of its daughter colonies. French literature written about Algeria in the
early twentieth century, decades after the initial conquest in 1830, indicated how
the Franco-Algerian relationship was imagined in the early decades of French
Algeria. The titles of texts such as L’Algérie, fille de France (1935) and Notre
Enfant l’Algérie (1949) written by French intellectuals affirmed the matriarchal
mother-daughter relationship as envisoned by French colonial administrators, an
effective metaphorical strategy aimed at legitimizing the re-shaping of Algeria as
a daughter colony embodying French culture.
The French also utilized the ideological concepts of “la mission civilisatrice”
or
“the civilizing mission” and cultural assimilationism in envisioning the future of
French Algeria. The ideology of the civilizing mission instructed colonial
administrators to “civilize” colonized populations by turning them into
“Frenchmen” and to re-shape Algeria, a daughter colony, in the image of its
motherland, France. In a parliamentary debate on March 28 1885, Jules Ferry, a
French statesman who served as Minister of Public Instruction between 1880 –
1883 during the French Third Republic (1870-1940), defended colonialism by
using the civilizing mission as justification:
“It must be stated openly that, in effect, superior races have rights
over inferior races. I repeat that superior races have a right,
because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize inferior
races…”
Ferry’s views were not radical at the time as they were shared by like-minded
proponents of the continued colonial expansion of the French Third Empire. Ferry
staunchly believed that colonial schools played a vital role in spreading the
“civilizing” influence of French culture and in eliminating corrupting vestiges of
non-French influences. Pro-colonialist advocates like Ferry thus regarded
themselves as preservers and proponents of human rationality and scientific
progress, charged with the perceived moral duty of molding other non-French
civilizations to their image.
Indigenous Algerians were thus often referred to as “sauvages” or “barbares”
in French, loaded terms for groups of savages lacking attributes of civilization.
To achieve the goal of civilizing those who they viewed as “savages,” the French
adopted a policy of cultural assimilationism in which indigenous Algerians were
made to learn French through a massive colonial education project. The French
language was regarded as a natural extension of French culture and a potent
carrier of French thought and self-expression.
French Algeria was treated as a non-contiguous extension of mainland France,
as French colonial administrators intended to develop Algeria an inseparable part
of mainland France through permanent French settlement. To achive this vision of
fully incorporating and assimilating Algeria as part of mainland France, Algerians
needed to develop characteristics associated with French culture before they could
become civilized “Frenchmen.” The concepts of colonial matriarchy, the civilizing
mission and cultural assimilationism thus provided the collective moral impetus
and ideological basis for launching systemic, comprehensive national education
policies in French Algeria that would entrench the French language in Algerian
society starting from 1848.
2.1.2 Cultural colonialism and the teaching of “French-ness” (1848 – 1962)
The establishment of colonial schools, based on the French model of cultural
colonialism, contributed significantly to the Francization of Algerians between
1848 - 1962. At the onset of colonization in 1830, literacy rate in Modern
Standard Arabic (MSA) among indigenous Algerians was estimated to be around
40 – 50% while French remained a completely unfamiliar language. To
discourage the use of Arabic and to permit the spread of French, the French
instituted a direct system of colonial administration. They set up a new national
education system that taught the history of French civilization and French
philosophical thought.
The process of dispossessing MSA and introducing French in schools was
gradual. Starting from 1863, religious Islamic schools called Medersas that taught
in MSA were slowly phased out, in favor of public colonial schools that instructed
in French: There were initially around 2000 religious schools in 1863, but by the
end of the 1880s, only around 750 remained with approximately less than 100
students enrolled in each of them. The teaching of Arabic pedagogy and Arabic
literature was officially banned starting from 1904, and in 1938, French colonial
authorities introduced a law decreeing Arabic a foreign language and completely
prohibited its usage in official government documents. As a result, literacy rates in
Arabic plummeted between the 1880s and 1962. By the end of the colonial era in
1962, literacy rates in MSA among young Algerians were as low as 10%. In
the same manner in which Arabic was gradually phased out in schools, the
introduction of French as the principal language of instruction was just as slow
but progressive. In 1870, forty years after the initial French conquest, school
attendance rates were at an all-time low: 5% of indigenous Algerian children were
attending any form of education in schools. In March 1882, France introduced a
group of educational reforms called the Ferry Laws that declared primary
education free, secular and mandatory for all young children; these laws were also
extended to French Algeria, by then considered a non-contiguous extension of
France. In October 1882, reforms were introduced which decreed for the
establishment of specific vocational schools and elite schools in French Algeria, in
part to combat low indigenous school attendance rates seen in 1870. Vocational
schools, taught in French, prepared for jobs in agriculture and non-skilled labor. In
addition to spreading French, vocational schools also helped direct the indigenous
population to specific types of jobs to serve the labor needs of the colonial
economy.
On the other hand, elite colonial schools created a small, significant elite of
French-speaking, French-educated Algerians who had successfully adopted a
French cultural identity and assimilated fully into French culture. These elite
intellectuals were also most often semi-lingual, fully proficient in French but
somewhat proficient in MSA. They were appointed in political and administrative
positions where indigenous representation was necessary. However, their usage of
French by these Algerians was paradoxical: The language of Descartes finally
became a legitimate language of Franco-Algerian self-expression, capable of
articulating the Algerian experience, but French colonial policy dictated that they
could only do so through the lens of subservient matriarchal loyalty to France.
Franco-Algerian self-expression by Algerians who had access to political power
was confined by imposed ideological limitations.
Thus, colonial schools also served a socio-political purpose in addition to
spreading the French language. Through academic exclusion, the French
controlled social mobility among the indigenous population. This allowed them to
build an educated, albeit subservient, French-speaking Algerian elite who took up
political and administrative positions in government, while maintaining a lower-
class peasant majority who pursued vocational training in less elite institutions
and fulfilled the labor needs of the expansionist Third French Empire.
Instruction in the French language was a cornerstone of the colonial education
system. By instructing in the French language, colonial schools could teach
French history, philosophy and cultural norms, as French was regarded as an
important tool for Algerians to achieve cultural assimilation and become
“Frenchmen.” Colonialera textbooks were designed to present French as a
language linguistically capable of expressing sentiments crucial to everyday
Algerian life. These textbooks aimed at presenting French grammar in an
accessible manner, using familiar terms and concepts recognizable to Algerian
children.
For example, science textbooks included chapters that described North African
flora, fauna and natural landscapes, while social studies textbooks covered issues
related to villages, farms, markets and various aspects pertinent to Algerian daily
life. Several textbook chapters were also titled using words of Arabic-origin, such
as Un Souk (A Market) and Matin dans le Bled (Morning in the Countryside), to
bring an immediate sense of indigenous familiarization to the teaching of French.
Other words of Arabic-origin, such as toubib (doctor) and cleb (dog) were also
imported and became a common feature of the colloquial French spoken by
indigenous Algerians.
The teaching of French cultural and social norms in classrooms were also
considered essential in inculcating a French identity. Consider the following
example: in an illustration in a textbook titled Bonjour Ali! Bonjour Fatima ! , a
refined mouse regards another less sophisticated-looking mouse and advises him:
“Mon cher, nous, les gens de la ville, nous ne mangeons pas comme vous. Chacun
a son assiette, sa cuillère, son couteau.”56 The illustration was based on a popular
children’s fable by famed French fabulist, Jean de La Fontaine, written in the late
seventeenth century. The French syntax employed is simple and straightforward,
with the usage of affectionate terms such as “mon cher” (my dear) and “nous, les
gens de la ville” (we, the people of the city) to appeal to the sensibilities of young
children. The grammatical simplicity of the text meant that it could be easily
understood by young children while transmitting a valuable cultural lesson: In
order to be French and “civilized,” it is necessary that one eat like a French person
with the appropriate cutlery and social etiquette. To lack such basic values for a
simple task such as eating is to lack the fundamental elements to become truly
French. Algerian colonial schools also taught how the histories of France and
Algeria were inextricably intertwined. Segments from French history would be
taught in tandem with corresponding segments from Algerian history, often on
pages backto-back, so as to emphasize the inseparability and simultaneity of
French and Algerian history. The contributions of Algerian infantrymen who
served under the French Army during World War II were also included in revised
editions of textbooks printed after 1945 to emphasize the importance of colonial
participation in the liberation of Nazi-occupied France. By providing a historical
space where Algerians could fit within a broader, grandiose notion of French
history, Algerians would eventually see themselves as a quintessential element of
French culture and accept the ongoing Francization of Algerian society.
The social usage of French in familial situations expanded exponentially
between 1882 - 1962. By the mid-twentieth century, more than half of the
indigenous Algerian population could speak some form of French, using it in
familial conversations. While degrees of oral fluency and literacy in French varied
from person to person, the fact remained that French had begun to take root.
Colonial education policies, along with the continued interaction between
Frenchspeaking European settlers and French-speaking Algerians, thus cemented
the unofficial status of French as the common lingua franca of French Algeria by
the early 1950s.
2.1.3 Consequences of French influence in French Algeria (1882 – 1962)
There are three principal consequences of the propagation of French and the
dispossession of Arabic between 1882 and 1962. Firstly, there was the rise of
antiFrench, pro-independence nationalist groups as early as the 1920s. On May 8
1945 in the northeastern Algerian town of Sétif, in response to Nazi Germany’s
surrender that officially ended World War II, Algerians gathered on the streets to
celebrate the end of the war and to protest for Algerian independence. The
demonstrations escalated into violence as French police opened fire on protesters
and riots continued for at least five days. Subsequent retaliatory attacks by French
police on Algerians also contributed to the death toll, estimated to be anywhere as
low as
1,400 by the government of then-French President Charles de Gaulle to as high as
30,000 by Algerian nationalist groups. The Sétif incident was a major turning
point in French-Algerian relations as it affirmed the growing Algerian distrust of
French colonial rule and the increasing popularity of nascent nationalist
movements calling for independence.
In the late 1940s, French colonial authorities introduced reforms that fused
indigenous Algerian schools and European settler schools, creating common
schools where Algerian and European children learned in the same classroom and
were taught the same material. These new fusion schools were aimed at assuaging
rising tensions between Algerians and European settlers and at encouraging social
interaction between Algerian and European children. New textbooks were
circulated and included lessons on encouraging peaceful co-existence between
communities. One textbook published in 1949 proclaimed the importance of
intercultural communication:
“School children from cities, towns and the countryside, regardless
of belonging, you are all seated at the same desks and studying the
same books. Perhaps most importantly, you are learning to know
one another and to love one another. This is essential.”
This emphasis on a common school system and on the French language serving
as the unifying link between the two disparate communities became more critical
than ever, in efforts by the French to pacify increasingly persistent calls for
independence and resistance against colonialism.
The second principal consequence of French influence in Algeria was the
refusal of many Algerians who refused to send their children to public colonial
schools. They resisted what they perceived as encroaching French influence
detrimental to their cultural identity. They sent their children to Quranic schools,
which were few and far between by the 1950s, that instructed in Arabic and
transmitted Islamic teachings in a passive act of resistance against French
influence.
Thirdly, as discussed in Section 1.2, the introduction of French triggered an
ideological divide within the new generation of bilingual Algerians born in the
early twentieth century who went through the colonial education system. While
they would go on to wield their acquisition of French as a tool to call for
independence, their visions for an Algerian identity were starkly different. One
side advocated for the preservation of French along with Arabic in defining the
Algerian character, while the other sought for the complete elimination of French
while promoting Arabic.
As discussed in the following section, the consequences of French influence
played a vital role in the shaping of the language education policies of the Front
Libération Nationale (FLN), the first Algerian government post-independence in
1962. They demonstrated how language quickly became a nationally-divisive tool
in the conversation defining Algeria’s national identity and how it created
persistent conflict even after independence.
2.2 POST-ALGERIAN INDEPENDENCE: ARABIZATION (1962 - 1999)
« Arabic is to Islam what the Church is to the Catholic religion; one could not live without the other. The belief
of an illiterate Muslim is a web of indigestible superstitions. The reading of the Qur’an is everything. It
stands at 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?»
- Ferhat Abbas (1936)
2.2.1 Oral proficiency and literacy rates in 1962 post-colonial Algeria By
independence in 1962, the spoken languages of everyday Algerian life were a
combination of French, dialectal Algerian Arabic and Berber. MSA was used
exclusively for learning and writing in religious schools, and it was estimated that
only 300,000 out of approximately 10 million Algerians in 1962 could understand
MSA. Most Algerians conversed in dialectal Algerian Arabic, a mix of Arabic and
French, which became the principal lingua franca. Due to colonial schools,
approximately 6 million Algerians could speak some form of French, using both
French and Algerian Arabic to fit a wide array of social circumstances.
However, aside from the universality of complete oral fluency in Algerian
Arabic, individual oral proficiencies in MSA and French varied from person to
person. In general, Algerians who had access to elite higher education could
express themselves in French fluently, but were not as knowledgeable in MSA.
Those who only attended colonial vocational schools could also speak French,
perhaps in a less eloquent manner than their elite counterparts, but they were not
as knowledgeable in MSA. For those Algerians who rejected colonial schools and
attended religious Islamic schools, such as those established by Ben Badis and
Messali Hadj, they could express themselves in MSA better, but were
linguistically less competent in French.
However, oral proficiency rates did not accurately reflect literacy rate. Literacy
rate in the Algerian context referred to those who were able to read and write in
both MSA and French. In 1962, Algeria’s literacy rate was as low as 10%, leaving
the remaining 90% unable to read and write in both MSA and French, despite
being able to speak them.
The asymmetrical distribution of oral proficiency and literacy rate could be
attributed to a complex intersection of socio-linguistic factors, exacerbated by
French colonial education policies: the limited social usage of MSA, the limited
instructional and academic usage of Algerian Arabic, the historical association of
French with colonialism and a lack of ideological consensus on the linguistic
character of Algerian language education policies. These irregularities thus
engender a new generation of Algerians who each speak, write and read MSA,
Algerian Arabic and French with disproportionate levels of proficiency.
2.2.2 Arabization reforms in the Algerian education system (1963 - 2001)
The systemic Arabization of Algeria following independence was complex, fueled
by a rigid fixation in rejecting French influence and fraught with pedagogical
shortfalls and poor educational planning policies. In 1963, a year after
independence, school enrollment was as low as 850,000 students as Algerian
society attempted to recuperate in the wake of six continuous years of strife and
conflict. As the first step of the Arabization process, the first Algerian president,
Ahmed Ben Bella, in 1963 decreed MSA as the national language of Algeria and
the sole language of academic instruction, instructing all primary and secondary
institutions to comply. The process was progressive and began from the basic
levels of education. Textbooks and educational materials in French were gradually
abandoned in favor of teaching material in MSA.
For example, Grade One of the primary level, cycle de base, became fully
Arabized a year after in 1964, teaching only in MSA and using Arabic educational
material imported primarily from Egypt. Other levels also began teaching certain
subjects in MSA, while maintaining the use of French for the rest, and in 1967,
Grade Two became fully Arabized.74 To make up for the lack of Algerian teachers
qualified to teach MSA in any circumstance, the Algerian government recruited
starting from 1964 as many as a thousand Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi teachers.
With the influx of imported educators, Arabization gained momentum and the
teaching of MSA as a subject in itself increased to as much as ten hours of
classroom instruction per week, with the addition of religious and Islamic studies
as core subjects. By end of the 1960s, French had been completely removed from
primary schools, but it still persisted in the teaching of several subjects at the
secondary level.
The most drastic Arabization changes occurred during the presidency of the
second Algerian president Houari Boumediène (1965 – 1978), whose supporters
staged a military coup of Ben Bella’s government in 1965. Boumediène adhered
strictly to the vision of Algeria as an Arabo-Islamic entity, and initiated more
stringent Arabization. In February 1966, Boumediène terminated the market
monopoly of French publishing houses that distributed French literature in
Algeria, and established a new publishing house, Société Nationale d'Édition et de
Diffusion (SNED) to publish Algerian writers who wrote exclusively in MSA;
FrancoAlgerian writers like Kateb Yacine who wrote mostly in French were
chastised by national newspapers and media.
By the mid-1970s, teaching of MSA as a subject rose to fifteen hours per week.
By 1974, all levels of primary and secondary education and even training
academies for teachers had been fully Arabized – core subjects were taught in
MSA and French was reduced to an optional foreign language subject taught
starting from Grade Three. In May 1975, the first National Conference on
Arabization was held to devise more reforms. A January 1991 law completed the
process, adopting harsher language and explicitly decreeing French a foreign
language to be banned completely in all educational, governmental and economic
spheres.
Besides education, Arabization also influenced various facets of Algerian
public life. In the workplace, a 1968 national law decreed that all government
administrators were required to prove themselves competent in MSA by January
1971; those who could not meet these minimum standards would eventually be
dismissed and only potential candidates fully proficient in MSA would be
considered for government employment after 1971.81 By 1971, all government
documents, court cases, and workplace interactions were expected to be
conducted solely in MSA. In 1977, an official Technical Committee on
Arabization was established to entrench further the usage of MSA in government
administration jobs. The use of colloquial Algerian Arabic and French in these
work circumstances was thus stringently forbidden by law.
A 1976 law, unusually written in French, firmly states: “Arabiser totalement
toutes les enseignes extérieures des administrations et sociétés publiques et
interdire absolument toute inscription en langue étrangère.” The law was primarily
targeted at converting French names of streets and buildings to those of Arabic
origin. For example, a street named La Rue de Baudelaire, eponymously named
after the famed French poet, was changed to Shā-ra’ Sakiet Sidi Youcef, named
after a historical
Algerian warrior, with shā-ra’ as the MSA word for “street.”
In December 1990, stricter Arabization laws were passed, mandating that all
meetings, debates and conferences in both the public and private sectors be
written solely in MSA. Documents and records that were written in any other
language would be considered null and offenders would be subject to harsh fines
amounting to at least 1,000 Algerian dinars.87 These reforms altered visible facets
of public life and were aimed solely in promoting the use of MSA over French.
In the same manner in which the French attempted to convert Algerians into
Frenchmen through an assimilationist policy to foster colonial unity, Algerian
governments post-independence attempted to conduct a systemic make-over of
national identity through Arabization, in a hastened effort to distance Algeria from
its French colonial roots and to carve a geopolitical Arabo-Algerian identity,
which had not existed prior to independence, within the Arab-Muslim world.
2.2.3 Criticisms of Algerian language policies in re-making national identity
Successive Algerian administrations envisioned MSA as the sole official language
of Algeria and wanted to displace French in public domains, particularly in
education. However, the reality was that majority of Algerians could neither speak
nor write in MSA, French was still widely used and Algerian Arabic, an
improvised mix of dialectal Arabic and French, emerged as the dominant lingua
franca.
A major criticism of Arabization was that it ignored Algeria’s multi-cultural
character, in particular the fact that most Algerians were of ethnic Berber descent.
The Arabization process involved a dogmatic compulsion in convincing Algerians
that they had always been ethnically, linguistically and culturally Arabs, in the
same way the French attempted to convert them into Frenchmen. As a result,
antagonistic confrontations between Berber nationalists and government forces
broke out in 1980, known as the year of the Berber Spring, and active Berber
resistance continued until the early 1990s. Pro-Berber activists refused to speak
MSA, prefering to use French and the Tamazight language in public domains.
Berber resistance persisted until 2001 when violent demonstrations erupted in
Kabylie, a fiercely pro-Berber region in northern Algeria, in an event called the
Black Spring. Following these clashes, President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika
introduced a law in 2002 recognizing Tamazight as a national language of Algeria
to appease pro-Berber Kabyle activists. However, the law stopped short of
according Tamazight full recognition, and did not mandate that the language be
taught in public schools. A critical flaw of Arabization was therefore the failure to
recognize the ethno-linguistic plurality of Algeria and the attempt to erase the
Berber origin of Algerians, even if a significant part of the population did
eventually identify themselves as Arabs.
A second major criticism of Arabization was directed at its poorly-executed
pedagogical methods of teaching MSA as a language of academic instruction,
from which emerged two principal problems. Firstly, because the majority of
French Algeria’s teachers who were mostly of European origin left the country
after independence in 1962, Algeria suffered from a severe shortage of highly-
skilled teachers. There were Algerians who had attended Islamic schools during
the French colonial era and were fluent in MSA, but their numbers were
insufficient to support the nationwide Arabization process.
To resolve this, Ben Bella’s government starting from 1964 began recruiting
individuals from Egypt, Iraq and Syria, even if they did not have formal
experience in teaching in MSA, as anyone from the Middle East who could speak
it was regarded with approbation and esteem. This created low standards for entry
into the teaching profession in Algeria, allowing even those with questionable
teaching competence to qualify.
Secondly, the Arabization of the education system was poorly monitored and
suffered from inadequate long-term planning and a lack of clearly-defined
pedagogical methods from its moment of inception. Modern Standard Arabic
textbooks were imported primarily from Egypt, but Algerian students found it
difficult to comprehend the complex intricacies of Modern Standard Arabic
presented in a syntatic rubric meant for Egyptian Arabic speakers. This is further
compounded by the fact that their Middle Eastern teachers had to overcome huge
lexical and phonological differences between MSA and Algerian Arabic to
communicate with students, which adversely affected scholastic performance of
students who failed to receive the proper linguistic instruction needed to master
MSA.
2.2.4 La Décennie Noire: The Algerian civil war (1990 – 2001)
“The Black Decade” (or La Décennie Noire as it is referred to in Algeria in
French) is a cautionary tale used as a reminder of the volatility of Algerian
politics. It refers to the ten to eleven years of sectarian conflict that started when
an Islamic fundamentalist group, Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), won national
elections in 1990 and took the incumbent government by surprise.
The rise of the FIS and other radical groups triggered a particularly violent
civil war between radical Islamists and government forces that was completely
unprecedented; the assassination of the Algerian president Mohamed Boudiaf was
but one of the many casualties. The Algerian civil war was at its core a conflict
between radical Islamists, who wanted to glorify the Arabic language, eliminate
French and adopt a fundamentalist version of Islamic law as basis for governance,
and a secular government struggling to find a balance between its secular
Arabization policies and Francophone linguistic roots. The resulting political
vacuum plunged Algeria into chaos, leaving up to 100,000 dead, ravaging
infrastructure and completely destroying public trust in both governmental and
religious institutions.
The rise of these opportunistic radical Islamist groups occurred within the
context of unresolved socio-economic problems plaguing the country since
independence. In 1989, four million out of a population of twenty-five million
Algerians were unemployed. Up to two million young Algerians were also
without a job, creating a gaping socio-economic divide between the
Frenchspeaking elite and the Arabic-speaking working-class majority.99
Compounded by a poorly maintained and underfunded education system and an
unstable job market, Arabization produced generations of Algerians who could not
find employment in sectors that demanded a mastery of technical, technological
and scientific knowledge in French.100 The weak economy, the pervasive sense of
pessimism and the rise in resentment against the government encouraged some to
turn to radical ideology as a means for political governance.101 In particular, the
Hittistes - jobless youth who roamed the streets – were aggressively recruited, and
Islamic fundamentalism was presented as a way out of economic poverty and
employment discrimination.
When I was conducting research in Algiers in December 2014, the Black
Decade was discussed with a mixture of somber reminiscence and fearful respect.
The majority of Algerians directly attributed radical Islamism in Algeria to the
Arabic language and the arrival of Arabic-speaking teachers from Egypt and other
Middle Eastern countries, whom they blamed for introducing radical strands of
Islam that would not have otherwise taken root in the country. It is imperative to
emphasize, however, that it was not the concept of Arabization itself that directly
gave rise to Algerian Islamist groups. Writer Francis Karam explains that the
outcome of language policies depends greatly on the socio-political realities of the
country in question:
“Regardless of the type of language planning, in nearly all cases
the language problem to be solved is not a problem in isolation
within the region or nation but is directly associated with the
political, economic, scientific, social, cultural, and/or religious
situation.”
Rather, it was a volatile combination of enduring economic woes, political
instability, unemployment and shortfalls in the education system that collectively
fostered the suitable conditions for the FIS and radical Islamist groups to take root
in Algerian society.
The effects of the war, to this day, are still prominent, leaving a permanent scar
in the Algerian conscience. Most strikingly, there is a prevalent atmosphere of
distrust and suspicion of foreigners embedded within the Algerian bureaucratic
administration – Algeria remains a closed country with few diplomatic relations
with other nations, visas are notoriously difficult to obtain and foreigners are
explicitly discouraged from discussing Algerian politics. Even though the
government officially declared the war over in 2001, radical Islamists who
survived are still operating clandestinely in the Algerian mountains to this day.
The beheading of a French mountain guide, Hervé Gourdel, by fundamentalists in
September 2014 in the Djurdjura mountains of northern Algeria is a bleak
reminder of this unresolved chapter in Algerian history.
2.3 POST-CIVIL WAR: EDUCATION SYSTEM IN CRISIS (late 1990s - present)
“For Algeria, I will speak French, Spanish and English, and, if necessary, Hebrew. Let it be known that an
uninhibited opening up to other international languages does not constitute perjury… This is the price that
we have to pay to modernize our identity.”
- Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika (2002)
2.3.1 Political rise of Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika and new educational reforms
Since the end of the Algerian civil war in the late 1990s, the issue of language
policy in the education system has remained contentious and controversial. The
Islamist civil war was blamed on socio-political discontent towards a stagnating
economy, employment discrimination and the failure of the education system to
meet the scholastic needs of graduates. Upon the election of current Algerian
president Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika in April 1999, the Algerian government began to
re-evaluate its education system and its language educational policies.
In a televised address to the nation in 1999, Bouteflika criticized the state of
the education system: “The level (of the education system) has reached an
intolerable threshold.” Prior to his election, Bouteflika as a presidential candidate
had utilized the term “doomed schooling system” numerous times in public to
describe the state of the education system.107 Likewise, in 1992 two months before
his assassination, President Mohamed Boudiaf delivered a short speech expressing
similar sentiments about the decline of the Algerian education system:
“Our education system is broken. Our education system produces
rejects on the streets, Hittistes without qualification and
unemployed graduates. We must consider nothing less than a
complete overhaul of our education system. Schools must be a
place for the transmission and production of knowledge. They must
be placed outside of the spheres of political, partisan, and
ideological interests. The future of our children compels us to
devote the maximum attention to this task.”
Boudiaf’s and Bouteflika’s call for language reforms resonated with a similiar
demand within the Algerian population at the time: In 1999, a general survey
conducted by central Algerian authorities showed that as many as 75% of
Algerians were in favor of teaching scientific subjects in French, as opposed to
teaching them in MSA.
The election of Bouteflika in 1999 as president heralded a new era in the
realization of these demands for sweeping educational reforms, in attempts to
move away from basing language policy on ideology towards one grounded in
addressing practical concerns. It also witnessed the government’s commitment
towards a stronger form of bilingual education, placing equal pedagogical
importance on training students in both Arabic and French. In 1999, one of
Bouteflika’s first reforms was to allow public schools to design their own
curriculum as they saw fit, which meant that teaching textbooks and teaching
materials were no longer controlled by limitations. Another reform was the
legalization of private schools, which meant that French private institutions were
finally allowed to operate legally after having been shut down for decades due to
Arabization laws.
In May 2000, Bouteflika established the Commission Nationale de Réforme du
Système Éducatif (CNRSE), an official body tasked with evaluating public
schools and recommending reforms to resolve pedagogical issues in the teaching
of Arabic and French. One of their first proposals recommended three major
reforms: 1) the re-introduction of French as soon as in Grade Two instead of in
Grade Three, 2) making the learning of French as a subject mandatory instead of
optional in primary school and 3) teaching scientific and technological disciplines
in French instead of in Arabic in secondary schools. These reforms were aimed at
recognizing the socio-economic importance of French and its perceived capability
to facilitate the teaching of scientific discourse that required terminologies absent
in MSA.
However, the concerns of Bouteflika on the decline of the quality of the
Algerian education system were not groundless: scholastic rates were at an all-
time low throughout the 1990s (a comprehensive description of the current
Algerian education system is provided in Appendix B).
Table 1: Results of
the Baccalauréat
(1991-1999)
1991
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Passing rates (%) 19.1 22.62 11.98 17.90 19.43 23.08 26.55 23.43 24.64
9
As shown in Table 1, throughout the height of the Algerian civil war from 1991
– 1999, percentage rates of students who passed the secondary school exam, the
Baccalauréat, were at an all-time low, with almost less than ¼ of students
passing, and as low as 11.98% in 1993.
Table 2: Results 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 of the Baccalauréat
(2000-2005)
Passing rates (%) 32.9 34.47 32.92 29.57 42.52 37.29
As the civil war gradually dissipated at the start of the new millenium,
percentage pass rates slightly improved between 2000 – 2005, as shown in Table
2. Passing rates gradually increased, reaching 42.52% in 2004, an all-time high in
fourteen years since the start of the civil war, which could be attributed to
Bouteflika’s initial reforms in 2000. However, these results were still
discouraging: more than half of secondary school students failed in their first
attempt to even qualify for university studies.
Table 3: Results June June June June June June
of the BEF (2000-2005) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Passing rates (%) 41.41 41.34 37.54 34.99 35.60 41.68
Table 3 provides percentage rates of students between 2000 – 2005 who passed
the Brevet d’Enseignement Fondamental (BEF), the final primary level exam
determining eligibility to secondary school. These figures reflect passing rates for
students who were taking the BEF for the first time. Despite the fact that these
figures showed minor improvements, with passing rates varying between 34% to
42%, the majority of them could not even qualify for advancement into the
secondary school level, as failure rates still exceeded half of the primary student
population. 118 Those students who failed were required to re-do the grade and take
the BEF a second time.
Statistics for scholastic achievement rates in universities also reflected poor
passing rates in exams. The Minister of Higher Education announced in
November 2005 that 80% of first-year university students in the science and
technical fields failed their final examinations, and called for further educational
reforms beyond the initial Bouteflika reforms made in 2000. He attributed high
failure rates to the lack of linguistic competence in French, asserting that students
were unable to utilize French in a complex academic context. He implied that a
stronger bilingual Arabic-French policy, where students would be fluent in French
as they were in Arabic, would contribute to higher scholastic achievement rates
and a better economic future for Algeria.
2.3.2 Challenges in changing Algerian language policies
Boudiaf’s and Bouteflika’s assessments of the deterioration of the education
system were correct: low scholastic achievement rates were due to the failure of
language policies – in MSA and French - to meet the linguistic needs of students.
However, the main challenge in changing language policies to improve scholastic
achievement rates is rooted in the fact that language policy-making in Algeria has
been traditionally based on satisfying ideological convictions first, as opposed to
addressing the practical needs of the country.
As discussed in Section 2.1, French was introduced in Algeria based on the
French colonialist ideology of “civilizing” Algerians. As discussed in Section 2.2,
when Algeria gained independence in 1962, ideology again became the main
impetus for the Arabization process, in an attempt to rid Algeria of French and
completely replace it with MSA. The rhetoric of ideology as a basis for language
policy-making is no more evident than in the Algerian Ministry of Education’s
statement of missions, created in 1962. The ministry’s education manifesto
declares that “The teaching of Arabic must be developed so that it can be the
language of communication in all aspects of life,” thereby installing “Arabic”
(which refers to MSA) as the de-facto language of instruction of all subjects
except foreign language classes. The manifesto further declares it as a necessary
component of
Algerian society, stating that “The Arabic language, like Islam, constitutes the
forging of the cultural identity of the Algerian people and an essential element of
its national conscience,” and that “it is capable of expressing our
AlgerianMaghrebo-Arabo-Mediterranean-African universe, of accessing a
universal
civilization, and of participating in scientific and technological progress.”
French is not mentioned in the manifesto, although the teaching of foreign
languages is referenced, stating that “it must permit (students) to be able to attain
a
simple understanding of these languages, to know foreign civilizations and
cultures.” This is interesting as the importance of French in Algeria lies in its
visible presence in Algerian public life today. Many French companies operate in
Algeria and require the use of French in conducting business affairs, French is
used extensively in tourism, university courses in science and technology are still
conducted in French and French exerts a significant presence through television,
news reports, radio, newspapers, magazines, films, music and popular media.
The deliberate omission of French in the manifesto and in official Algerian
language policy-making, despite its visible presence in Algeria, is significant as it
is clear that the marginalization of French and the privileged status of Arabic in
Algerian schools are inextricably tied to ideological beliefs on how Algerian
identity should be expressed. Due to the historical complications of language
hegemony between Arabic and French, Algerian language policy-making has
traditionally been based on political calculation and ideology. In recognizing this
historical pattern in the machinations of Algerian language policy-making, the
next chapter attempts to answer the previously-stated research question, through
questionnaire results and discursive analysis, in determining how Arabic and
French in relation to national identity are perceived in a group of Algerian
respondents.
CHAPTER THREE:
Methodology & Data Analysis:
Deconstructing Algerian Attitudes Towards Language and Identity
« My thanks goes to those who offer moral support to Algerian writers writing in Arabic who confront the
unarmed the onslaughts of Francophony and its temptations. Glory to Arabic! Glory to our beautiful
language! »
- Ahlam Mosteghanemi
« I write in French because France invaded my country and it held such a powerful position that I have to
write in French to survive. But through writing in French, I retain have my Arab and Berber roots that are still
very much alive. »
- Kateb Yacine
3.1 Centrality of Algeria
The research question is as follows: How have Algeria’s Arabic-French
language policies in its schools since independence shaped Algerian attitudes
regarding the relationship of Arabic and French with national identity? The
research question posits the existence of a causal link between language and
national identity formation in Algeria: how Arabic and French, as expressed
through language educational policies, have affected individual attitudes towards
national identity, due to the historical tensions between Arabic and French within
the context of decolonization and civil conflict. As Boumediène Berrabah argues,
“Being intimately linked to identity, political power and social mobility, language
has become a controversial question and a bitter battlefield for competing
ideologies and vested interests.”
As the fourth-largest African economy, the second-largest African oil exporter
and the largest country in Africa and the Arab world by territorial expanse, Algeria
is an influential geopolitical player in contemporary African and Arab politics,
with memberships within the African Union, the Arab League and the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Algeria is also the
largest Francophone country outside of metropolitan France, with an estimated 16
million native speakers of the French language.
Algeria oscillates between three worlds: 1) Western Europe, with its historical
ties to France and approximately five million French citizens of Algerian descent,
2) the Arab-Muslim world, to whom it owes religious and linguistic ties and 3)
the African Francophone world, with whom Algeria shares geopolitical ties,
common linguistic roots and similar colonial histories. Examining national
identity in Algeria in light of its geopolitical importance, diverse socio-cultural
heritage and unique colonization history thus constitutes a worthwhile research
inquiry.
3.2 Demographical data
In December 2014 – January 2015, I traveled to Algiers, Algeria and
distributed questionnaires to assess the attitudes towards Arabic and French by
young Algerians between 18 – 25 who had completed at least a secondary school
education. The complete demographical breakdown of the respondents is provided
in Table 4 in the following page, according to: 1) gender, 2) age, 3) maximum
educational attainment and 4) language chosen to answer questionnaire. A total of
121 respondents filled out the distributed questionnaires. Young Algerians
between 18 – 25 who had at least completed secondary school were selected for
participation due to three principal reasons.
Firstly, in present-day Algeria, the youth population aged under 30 comprises
62% of the population and it is likely that the attitudes of such a large segment of
the population will have a significant impact on the nature of language policies
and discussions of national identity in the future. Secondly, Algerian youth
between 18 - 25 would have gone through at least twelve years in the public
education system, after having been exposed to both Arabic and French in various
academic and social contexts. Their attitudes will reflect broader societal
sentiment with regards to major language shifts, such as Arabization and the
recent education reforms under President Bouteflika. Thirdly, the majority of
Algerian youth between 18 – 25 years old are pursuing studies in university; this
will provide another layer of insight into how language policies progressing into
the tertiary education system contribute to attitudes towards national identity.
Based on the captured demographical data, the average respondent is male
(78.5%), between the age of 21-24 (69.4%), currently pursuing tertiary studies in
a university in Algiers (62.0%) and chooses French as the language to answer the
questionnaire (70.2%).
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Table 4: Demographical breakdown (121 respondents in total)
a) Gender
b) Age
c) Maximum educational attainment
d) Language chosen to answer questionnaire
Table 4 (a)
Male (%)
Female (%)
Total (%)
Gender 78.5 21.5 100
Table 4 (b) 18 (%) 19 (%) 20 (%) 21 (%) 22 (%) 23 (%) 24 (%) 25 (%) Total (%)
Table 4 (d)
MSA (%)
French (%)
Total (%)
Language chosen to answer questionnaire 29.8 70.2 100
Age 6.6 8.3 9.1 15.7 18.2 19.8 15.7 6.6 100
Table 4 (c)
Completed secondary
school ( % )
Currently in
university ( % )
Completed university
(% )
Total (%)
Maximum educational
attainment
16.5 62.0 21.5 100
In addition, Algiers was chosen primarily due to its pre-eminent position as the
educational and political capital of Algeria, where both Arabic and French are
spoken frequently. Students within the Algiers education network also come from
a mix of urbanized and rural settings, thereby capturing the wider social realities
of
Algeria.
3.3 Research methodology & questionnaire format
As discussed in Section 1.1, I use the theoretical framework of “national
identity” as a multi-dimensional, invented construct that is created, negotiated,
imposed, removed, and re-negotiated depending on prevailing socio-political
circumstances. As presented in Chapter 2, the Algerian government, at various
points in post-independence Algerian history, was able to invent and impose its
own reconstructive, narrowed version of national identity through specific
language-in-planning education policies. The questions posed in the surveys
investigate attitudes with regards to the implementation of these policies: how
Arabic and French, as presented through the education system, were perceived by
Algerian students in their own formation of an Algerian national identity, as well
as their vision for the future of the two languages within Algerian society. To
analyze attitudes towards Arabic and French, the questionnaire is broken down
into three segments, containing various “select-only-one-response” multiplechoice
questions; refer to Appendix A for the full questionnaire in MSA and French. Each
segment corresponds to a specific component of Algerian national identity based
AZIZ 51
on the theoretical framework established in Section 1.1: 1) the process of AZIZ
57
imagining an Algerian political community based on a shared historical narrative,
2) the process of inventing Algerian traditions and 3) the exclusivist process of
alterity, or “othering,” that requires the drawing of boundary markers to
administer identity exclusivity and force the explusion of characteristics perceived
as “non-
Algerian.”
The first section of the questionnaire is titled “Political governance, public
administration and statehood” and is composed of six questions aimed at
deconstructing how Arabic and French fit into the concept of an “imagined
political community” embedded into constructions of Algerian national identity.
The second major segment is titled “Culture, religion and memory” and is
composed of eight questions targeted at analyzing how Arabic and French fit
within each respondent’s notion of what constitutes the cultural, religious and
historical components of Algerian national identity. The third major segment is
more expansive as it utilizes the broad concept of alterity to analyze how the
state-sponsored process of “othering” was used, throughout Algeria’s history, to
promote one particular language over another and enforce identity exclusivity. It
is thematically divided into four smaller sub-sections: “Attitudes towards
bilingualism,” “Knowledge capital and social empowerment,” “Employment and
labor markets” and “Science, technology and modernity,” with each sub-section
containing five questions. Further explanation on how these sub-sections relate to
“othering” is provided in
Section 3.6.
3.4 Analysis of Section 1: Political governance, public administration and
statehood
Section 1 of the questionnaire was composed of six questions that analyzed
how Arabic and French fit into the notion of an imagined Algerian political
community vital to the construction of a postcolonial Algerian national identity.
The assumption of the existence of an imagined camaraderie between Algerians,
strengthened by a sense of a political community who speak the same languages,
is a quintessential feature in the construction of Algerian national identity.
The Arabic language is a broad category further divided into MSA and
Algerian
Arabic, in recognition of their different sociocultural and linguistic importance in
Algerian society. These questions attempt to investigate how MSA, Algerian
Arabic and French are accommodated within three components related to the
maintenance of a united political polity.
Table 5, provided in the following page, shows the breakdown of these
language preferences in notions of Algerian political identity. Statements (1) – (4)
are dedicated to the language of preference for matters of political leadership,
judicial discourse and government employment.
AZIZ 59
AZIZ 54
At first glance, French appears to be the language of preference for these
questions, with a clear majority at 55.4% preferring the language for
parliamentary political discourse, while a significant percentage preferred it for
presidential speeches and ministerial addresses at 42.6%, judiciary courts at
48.6% and public employment jobs at 46.7%. MSA follows not far behind and is
still statistically significant, while Algerian Arabic manages to amass the interest
of a small minority. These results are not indicative of a linguistic deficiency for
MSA and Algerian Arabic to accommodate expressions of the very same political
sentiments in French. Rather, it is necessary to keep in mind that these preferences
for the usage of French in political, judicial and bureaucratic domains are simply
subjective attitudes on an individual level.
The results of Statements (1) – (4) support the theory that a majority of
Algerian youths tend to adopt a utilitarian view of French, perceiving its ease in
oral facility and lexical dexterity as a pragmatic alternative for the expression of
political sentiments, complex judicial discourse and the facilitation of
bureaucratic management. This shift towards French in the political domain can
be traced back to the pedagogical shortcomings and the issue of the poor
standardization of the Arabization process, in which Algerian students encounter
semantic difficulties in expressing complex political discourse using MSA and
Algerian Arabic. Even though all primary and secondary institutions were
completely Arabized by 1974, university institutions resisted. In 1973, university
degrees in philosophy, literature, sociology, history and various fields of study in
the humanities were completely taught in MSA, while degrees in politics, science,
AZIZ 55
technology, mathematics and engineering remained in French. The maintenance
of French in several university domains had its roots in arguments that MSA could
not accommodate political, scientific and technological terms in a manner that
French could, which sociolinguist Hind Amel Mostari highlights:
“[Arabization] was integral in literature, history and pedagogy;
partial in geography, law, journalism, sociology and psychology;
non-existent in scientific and technical specialities such as
medicine, the hard sciences and engineering, where French had
acquired a position of paramount importance since it became an
essential and omnipresent tool of teaching. Despite linguists’
efforts to modernise [Modern Standard] Arabic, it remains
relatively unable to replace French in such departments, which
have strongly resisted
Arabisation campaigns.”
As such, French still carries a great amount of prestige as a transmitter of
political thought, technological progress and science, a status that has remained
largely unchanged in Algeria today, and attitudes towards the failure to completely
Arabize university education is reflected in the results for Statements (1) – (4).
It is also worth noting that responses to Statements (1) and (2), with the
overwhelming preference for French as a language of discourse for the Algerian
political leadership, does not necessarily reflect a nostalgia for the French colonial
era or a political rejection of the highly Arabized revolutionary leadership of the
FLN. Rather, it reflects, to some extent, the effects of the relaxation of Arabization
laws and the educational reforms re-introducing French under the administration
of current President Bouteflika in 2000.
In addition, Bouteflika is himself a skilled, bilingual orator especially eloquent
in French, often using it in public speeches in defiance against Arabization laws
AZIZ 56
banning the usage of French in public domains, and is therefore especially popular
among Algerian youths who wish to see a stronger return of French in schools.
Bouteflika also envisioned an efficient education system that would produce
highly-skilled, bilingual Algerians fluent in both French and MSA, with an
emphasis on the usage of French to cultivate stronger political and diplomatic ties
with France and Francophone states. Through the de-politicization of the language
issue, Bouteflika’s administration was able to implement pragmatic reforms that
actually addressed the pedagogical problems of the education system.
Even though the state of the Algerian education system leaves much to be
desired, Bouteflika’s reforms were revolutionary, prioritizing the pressing
socioeconomic needs of Algerians over abstract ideological concerns. As such,
Bouteflika’s reforms and political popularity among Algerian youth can be
understood, in this context, to explain how respondents for Statements (1) – (2)
came to recognize the utilitarian importance of French in political leadership.
Responses to Statements (5) and (6), which explore language in notions of
political statehood and independence, are striking as Arabic appears to be the clear
favorite: 53.3% in favor of Algerian Arabic to best express Algeria’s political
struggle for independence, 82.5% preferring MSA for the composition of national
anthems, while French attracts the favor of a scant minority.
These statistical results indicate the existence of strong psychological and
sociohistorical ties of Arabic (as MSA and Algerian Arabic) to Algerian national
identity. While respondents accept that French could be used in various present-
day circumstances, the core of Algerian statehood still remains firmly rooted in
AZIZ 57
Arabic, a language upon which the revolutionary FLN had used to build and
ensure fierce Algerian pride in its tumultuous history of independence – a
conventional psychological response to the socio-historical trauma of French
colonization. More specifically, upon making a comparison between MSA and
Algerian Arabic in (5)
– (6), two conclusions are apparent: literary MSA is preferred to express the
Algerian national anthem, while Algerian Arabic is more closely identified with the
Algerian struggle for independence.
3.5 Analysis of Section 2: Culture, religion and memory
Section 2 of the questionnaire was composed of six questions that analyzed
how how Arabic and French fit within each respondent’s notion of what
constitutes the cultural and religious components as well as national memory in
Algerian identity. Table 6, provided in the following page, shows the breakdown
of these language preferences.
Statement
MSA
(%)
Algerian
Arabic
(%)
French
(%)
Total
(%)
(1) The language that can best express Algerian oral literature in 30.7 68.2 1.1 100
traditional folklore, fables and mythologies
(2) The language with the richest cultural heritage that can best 18.5 80.8 0.7
100 express the essence of being Algerian
Statements (1) – (2) investigate the notion of a national Algerian culture.
Statement (1) investigates how Arabic and French fit into oral traditions through
folklore, fables and mythologies. They transmit tales of heros and warriors
wrapped around lessons in morality to form an inseparable part of what Eric
Hobsbawm calls
AZIZ 58
“invented traditions,” reinforced through repetition to complement a
predetermined historical narrative of a nation. Results are overwhelmingly in
favor of Arabic in general as the core of Algerian oral traditions, with 68.2% for
Algerian Arabic and 30.7% for MSA. French garners the favor of a miniscule
1.1%.
Likewise, with Statement (2) about the language with the richest cultural
heritage that best articulates the quintenssential essence of “Algerianness,” Arabic
again wins by a huge margin, with 80.8% favoring Algerian Arabic and 18.5% for
MSA and a scant 0.7% in favor of French.
There are two important corollaries that can be derived from these results.
Firstly, the clear dichotomy between French and Arabic, in particular the rejection
of French as a language carrying Algerian oral traditions and cultural heritage,
reflects the ongoing persistence of the socio-cultural trauma of the French
language among Algerians. The status of French as the language symbolizing the
French legacy of “cultural colonialism” thus makes it culturally and necessarily
nonAlgerian, despite its position in Algeria as a language of technology and
scientific progress. As such, Arabic manifests as the only language of the two that
better reflects Algerian cultural heritage.
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AZIZ 60
Secondly, an explanation for the dominance of Algerian Arabic over MSA in
both statements is rooted in the socio-linguistic importance of colloquial Algerian
Arabic. Again, even though Algerians accept MSA in principle as part of the
repertoire of languages they may use in certain situations, such as in the sphere of
Islamic education, Algerian Arabic still remains an important language “of the
streets,” by virtue of its pre-eminent status as the colloquial dialect capable of
expressing the more intimate, informal aspects of the Algerian day-to-day
experience. Its inherent lexical diversity, incoporating words of Arabic, French,
Spanish and Berber origin, adds to the depth and expansiveness of the language,
while its perceived grammatical ease adds to its allure.
It can also be argued that MSA, in its capacity as a literary, formal register of
Arabic, transmits the notion of a universalist, pan-Islamic Arabic culture and may
seem as something that has been imposed onto Algerians, appearing more foreign
and impersonal when compared to Algerian Arabic. Algerian Arabic, in its
capacity as a non-standardized, colloquial dialect of Arabic, may transmit a more
distinctive, authentically Algerian culture within a unique Algerian Arabic lexical
context reflecting the unique socio-linguistic diversity of Algeria. This certainly
suggests a certain amount of tension exists between MSA and Algerian Arabic
with regards to the notion of an Algerian national culture.
In addition, as a side observation, during the French colonial era there was a
flourishing of Algerian Arabic poetry, folk tales and historical narratives, such as
that of the famous conquests of legendary Berber general Tariq ibn Ziyad and
various mythological Kabyle warriors. These works were produced in the
AZIZ 61
colloquial form in the first half of the twentieth century, due to the French-
mandated censorship of the usage of MSA starting from 1938. Thus, this
proliferation of oral traditions in Algerian Arabic, as well as Algerian Arabic’s
functionality as an oral language, explains in part the preference for Algerian
Arabic over MSA as seen in Statements (1) – (2).
Statement MSA Algerian French Total
(%) Arabic (%) (%)
(%)
(3) The language that can best express my religious values 55.9 42.8 1.3 100
and convictions
(4) The language that can best express the religious unity of 61.7 38.3 0 100
the Islamic community in Algeria
Statements (3) – (4) investigate how Arabic and French relate to the conception
of religion and results show the dominance of Arabic over French. For the
language that expresses Algerians’ religious values, MSA is the favorite at 55.9%,
Algerian Arabic at 42.8% and French at 1.3%. For the language that expresses the
Islamic unity of Algeria’s Muslims, referring back to the notion of a religious
ummah central to understandings of supra-national Islamic unity, MSA dominates
at
61.7%, followed by Algerian Arabic at 38.3% and French at 0%.
However, what is interesting is not the unanimous rejection of French as
symbols of religious values, but the relative statistical proximity of Algerian
Arabic to MSA in (3) and (4). Algerian Arabic still earns the favor of a significant
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percentage of respondents at 42.8%, as opposed to 55.9% for MSA, in Statement
(3). Likewise in Statement (4), Algerian Arabic gains the interest of more than a
third of respondents at 38.3%, with MSA at 61.7%. In both cases, Algerian Arabic
is within less than 25% statistical distance from MSA. This reflects the ongoing
maintenance of the socio-linguistic importance of Algerian Arabic in another
domain of public Algerian life: religion. It suggests that despite MSA possessing a
monopoly over Algerian Arabic in terms of religious education, Islamic
jurisprudence and daily prayer, Algerian Arabic is seen as a carrier of the Sunni
strand of Algerian Islam of relatively equal symbolic weight as MSA, in part due
to its close phonological and grammatical relation to MSA itself.
In contrast, the statistical dominance of MSA over Algerian Arabic can be
interpreted as Algerians making a cognizant differentation between the two: the
fact that Algerian Arabic may not yet categorically substitute MSA in all manners
of religious import, as MSA still retains a particular religious importance by virtue
of its immutable status as the written language of the Holy Qur’an and the spoken
language of the Prophet Muhammad and his ummah in sixth and seventh-century
Arabia.
Statement MSA Algerian French Total
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Statements (5) – (6) investigate how Arabic and French relate to the
transmission of Algerian national memory in constructions of its recent historical
past with independence and colonization, two pivotal stages in contemporary
Algerian history. In Statement (5), investigating national memory of Algerian
independence, Algerian Arabic dominates at 45.8%, with French at a 34.1% and
MSA trailing behind at 20.1%. The statistical distribution in this statement is
interesting as it reflects a certain willingness for the incorporation of both Arabic
and French in historical associations with Algerian independence. That both
Algerian Arabic and French resonate in expressions of recent Algerian historical
memory suggests two things: a still-lingering resonation with French and a
subliminal disavowal of MSA in matters of recent historical memory.
Various Algerian intellectuals have suggested that this reluctant acceptance of
French and a certain subconscious antipathy to MSA are somewhat
interconnected, due to the deep-rootedness of Algeria’s unique colonial history –
that one language will always exist at the expense of the other in the struggle to
determine Algeria’s “true” linguistic character. As the distinguished Franco-
Algerian writer Assia
(% ) Arabic
(% )
(% ) (% )
(5) The language that I associate with the triumphs
and victories in Algeria’s path to independence
20.1
45.8
34.1
100
(6 The ) language that brings up painful historical
memories in Algeria’s past with colonization
23.1
0
76.9
100
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Djebar discussed in a February 2012 interview with World Policy Journal, the
French language, as an enduring legacy of French cultural colonialism, could only
spread within the vacuum left by MSA:
Algeria is somewhat averse to the literary form of Arabic. Because
it was a country more closely tied to its French colonizers, so
literary Arabic was forced out of the schools by the dominance of
the French language.
As for Statement (6) that evokes national memory of French colonization with
its mention of “painful historical memories,” French, quite unsurprisingly, is the
undisputed winner with 76.9% of respondents, with 23.1% for MSA and 0% for
Algerian Arabic. The interesting observation here is not the predictable result for
French, as Algerians clearly recognize it as the language of their colonizers, but
that MSA has amassed the attention of a considerable 23.1%, almost a quarter of
all respondents.
Hence, the questions are: How and why does MSA even evoke “painful
historical memories” with regards to colonization, despite its usage and
association with liberationist rhetoric during the birth of modern Algerian
nationalism in the early twentieth century? Does the phrase “painful historical
memories” necessarily relate only to the trauma of French colonization, or can
Algerian memory be tied to other events perceived as equally traumatic in
Algerian history?
To properly answer this question in its appropriate socio-historical context, it is
imperative to draw upon two aspects of Algerian history. Firstly, it is necessary to
return to the Arabization process that began in the 1960s. When Arabization was
enforced to make MSA the sole official language of Algeria, the majority of
AZIZ 65
Algerians could neither speak nor write in MSA, French was still widely used and
Algerian Arabic was the lingua franca. In disregarding the ethno-linguistic
diversity of Algeria, several problems quickly emerged.
In the public sphere, there was a rise of pro-Berber sentiments against what
was perceived as encroaching Arab influence at the expense of Berber identity
and the Tamazight language. In education, pedagogical shortfalls, a shortage of
resources and poor standardization resulted in low educational attainment rates.
Arabization was initially driven by ideological convictions, but it was ultimately
impaired by a widespread failure to address pedagogical issues related to teaching
an archaic, literary version of Arabic that Algerians would only encounter if they
read the Holy
Qur’an and abstract Islamic literature. Even the first Algerian Education Minister,
Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, admitted the unpreparedness of administrations in meeting
the basic requirements of a task as intrinsically complex as Arabization, “The
[Arabization process] will not work, but it must be done in any case.” The forced
conversion to MSA from French and colloquial Algerian Arabic thus explains the
subconscious aversion to this literary form of Arabic.
However, can we unequivocally assume that this somewhat subconscious
allergy to MSA is entirely rooted in the failures of the Arabization process? A
second integral aspect of Algerian society that must be drawn upon goes beyond
the French colonial era, and is rooted in ancient historical ideas about Algerian
society that are tied to modern conceptions of Algerian identity and nationalism.
AZIZ 66
Historically, Algeria is a pluralistic country in language, ethnic origin and religion,
absorbing influences from Berber, Roman, Phoenician, Jewish, Byzantine,
Arab, Ottoman, Turkish and French cultures. “Algerian” is a blanket term
denoting geographical origin dating back to the Ottoman Empire, and has only
been recently associated with nationality in the 1920s during the emergence of
nascent expressions of Algerian nationalism. As such, Algerians understand that
the term is not necessarily associated with ethnic origin, and that an “Algerian”
may be, for example, Jewish, Arab, Armenian, Circassian, French, Berber or
Turkish in ethnic character.
It is therefore necessary to understand that an Algerian who recognizes his
Arab historical ancestry from the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent may
identify himself differently from an Algerian who recognizes his ethnic North
African Berber origin but who has been Arabized through historical encounters
with universalist Arabo-Islamic culture.
While there is a minority of Arab-Algerians in Algeria who are indeed of
ethnic Arab descent, the majority of Algerians today are of ethnic Berber descent
who can be more accurately described as Arabized Berbers rather than ethnic
Arabs. Failure to make this distinction may lead to the erroneous assumption that
religion and language define ethnic origin, in that Islam is synonymous with
Arabs and that Muslims who speak Arabic are undoubtedly Arabs, which ignore
the cultural and linguistic diversity of Muslims who come from different ethnic
origins.
AZIZ 67
In recognizing the multi-ethnic nature of Algerian origins, each Algerian’s
notion of how MSA fits into their notion of Algerian historical memory may
therefore vary according to how Arab ethnicity and the Arab question fit into his
conception of Algerian identity. Therefore, it is possible that the 23.1% of
respondents who selected MSA as the language that represents a painful historical
past with colonization may be recognizing their Berber identity and linking MSA,
in a non-religious context, with a broader belief in the egregious effects of the
Arab dispossesion of Berber identity starting with the Arab conquest of North
Africa in the seventh century.
This also demonstrates the element of multiplicity and elasticity inherent
within the very notion of historical memory, in particular due to the semantic
ambiguity of the question. The phrase “painful historical memories” can therefore
be interpreted in a number of ways depending of the respondent’s unobjective
formation of Algerian national identity and history. In addition, the fact that 0% of
respondents chose Algerian Arabic suggests the continuing socio-linguistic
importance of the dialect in everyday life and its isolation from associations with
a painful history.
3.6 Analysis of Section 3: Bilingualism, social empowerment, employment
and science
Section 3 of the questionnaire analyzes how respondents react to broader
implications of the usage of Arabic and French in Algerian public life. The
questions are divided into four sub-categories, with each consisting of two
AZIZ 68
questions. The four sub-categories are: “Attitudes towards bilingualism in
schools,” “Knowledge capital and social empowerment,” “Employment and labor
markets” and “Science, technology and modernity.” Table 7, provided in the
following page, displays the results of these question.
Each sub-category corresponds to a usage of Arabic and French in a particular
domain of public life. The combination of responses offered is slightly different:
1) Arabic only, 2) French only and 3) Arabic and French. The term “Arabic”
encompasses both MSA and Algerian Arabic. The methodological rationale in
presenting responses in exclusive and inclusive combinations is to identify
attitudinal alterity in respondents. Attitudinal alterity in this context refers to when
the respondent expresses alterity by selecting one particular language as the only
variable they would be willing to accept, while rejecting the other.
The exclusivist responses “Arabic only” and “French only” indicate the
presence of attitudinal alterity, in which the respondent believes that one language
cannot exist in the presence of the other. On the other hand, the inclusive response
“Arabic and French,” while not necessarily implying a complete absence of
attitudinal alterity, indicates a certain willingness on the part of the respondent to
accommodate and accept the prevalence of both languages in a particular domain
of Algerian public life.
AZIZ 75
AZIZ 71
Attitudes towards bilingualism in schools Arabic only French Arabic and Total
Arabic is currently the sole language of instruction in primary and secondary
schools, while French is taught starting from Grade 4 of primary school as an
optional subject. Statements (1) – (2) test attitudes towards bilingualism in
education. Results from both statements clearly indicate an overwhelming
preference for the inclusive response (bilingualism), indicating compliance in
accepting both languages as important aspects of the Algerian education system:
73.5% of respondents favor being taught in both MSA and French in core
academic subjects while 82.6% believe that speaking both languages fluently
constitutes an important communication skill. Attitudinal alterity through the
exclusivist responses (monolingualism) is much lesser. 8.3% wanted MSA as the
sole language of academic instruction in schools, while 18.2% preferred only
French. 9.9% believed that Algerian students should be fluent only in MSA, while
7.5% favored monolingual fluency in French.
This statistical distribution conveys a clear message: that three out of four
respondents favor a strong bilingual education system where Arabic and French
merit equal attention and that will allow Algerian students to become fluent in
(% ) only
(% )
French (%)
(1) I believe the main language(s) of
instruction used to teach core subjects in all
levels of Algerian schools should be:
8.3
18.2
73.5
100
(2) I believe that Algerian students should be
able to speak the following language(s)
fluently:
9.9
7.5
82.6
100
AZIZ 72
both, while one out of four favor a monolingual education. These statistics once
again underscore the endurance of French in Algeria despite its marginalization
during the Arabization era, with a majority favoring a bilingual education and a
small minority preferring an all-French monolingual education. These
respondents likely view French in isolation from its colonial origins and, having
already accepted Arabic as an immutable, sacrosanct ingredient of Algerian life,
perceive
bilingualism as a utilitarian necessity.
The other minority in favor of a monolingual Arabic education, however,
possibly reflects a minor undercurrent of exclusivist pro-Arab sentiment and an
expressed desire to tie Algerian identity to the Arabic-speaking world.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that support for a strong Arabic-French bilingual
education system exists among respondents, which could signify a broader
sentiment of dissatisfaction with the shortfalls of the current monolingual Arabic
system or indicate an awareness of the potential benefits of Arabic-French
bilingualism.
Knowledge and social empowerment Arabic French Arabic and Tota
only (%) only French (%) l
(%)
(3) The language(s) that will provide me access to
knowledge and information in a wide variety of 10.7 33.1 56.2 100 disciplines
is/are:
(4) The language(s) that give(s) me a sense of 29.7 33.1 37.2 100 empowerment and will
help me achieve social mobility is/are:
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Statements (3) – (4) test attitudes towards social empowerment, which is the
process of acquiring knowledge and harnessing it to achieve social mobility. Each
respondent will undoubtedly have different notions on what constitutes social
empowerment and the means to achieve it. Nevertheless, the term in its most
generic sense provokes the respondent to envision the process of making positive
changes to improve the overall quality of life.
Results from Statements (3) – (4) mirror that of Statements (1) – (2), in that a
significant percentage of respondents favor mastery of both Arabic and French.
This reinforces the deduction made previously: that respondents recognize the
potential benefits of Arabic-French bilingualism in the process of self-
improvement and self-empowerment.
Firstly, for Statement (3), the majority of respondents at 56.2% favor both
languages. This in itself makes utilitarian sense as the combination of both Arabic
and French does indeed provide access to a wider variety of sources of
knowledge, considering the prevalence of both languages in Algeria. This
acknowledgement of the utilitarian value of both languages where the provision
of knowledge and information is needed is visible in various spheres of Algerian
public life.
For example, Algerian governmental websites are offered in both MSA and
French translations, and in some cases, such as in the website for the Algerian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, three languages are offered: MSA, French and
English. Most informational and geographical signs in Algeria’s major cities are also
presented in both Arabic and French, and in certain regions where pro-Berber
AZIZ 74
nationalism is active, such as in the northern region of Kabylie, in an additional
language, Tamazight. That MSA and French exist visibly side-by-side in many public
domains of Algerian life attests to this subliminal recognition of the utility of both
languages in providing the widest breadth of access to information for the general
Algerian public.
Secondly, only 37.2% of respondents favor both Arabic and French in helping them
achieve a sense of empowerment and social mobility. In turn, 29.7% prefer
“Arabic only” in that same regard, compared to a smaller 10.7% for Statement
(3). Why is it that 56.2% agree that the combination of Arabic and French best
provides access to knowledge and information, while a lesser majority at 37.2%, a
statistical difference of almost 20% from the former, believe that the same
combination best empowers them and enables social mobility? Why do more
respondents prefer the response “Arabic only” for Statement (4) than in Statement
(3)?
A possible explanation can be attributed to the lingering effects of Arabization
laws that mandated for the maintenance of MSA in schools, employment and
various domains of public life. In this context, some respondents may firmly
believe that the singular utility of Arabic - MSA and Algerian Arabic - is sufficient
in achieving social mobility and that French is relegated to an extraneous,
auxiliary status secondary to Arabic in utilitarian importance.
AZIZ 75
Employment and labor markets Arabic only French Arabic and Total
(%) only French (%)
(%)
(5) The language(s) that will allow me to gain
a competitive edge in the Algerian labor 33.1 27.3 39.7 100 market when searching
for employment
(6) The language(s) that will allow me to gain 10.8 47.9 41.3 100 a competitive
edge in the global labor market
when searching for employment
Statements (5) - (6) test attitudes towards the economic issue of employment in
domestic and global labor markets. In Statement (5), the majority of respondents at
39.7% believe that Arabic and French provide them a competitive edge in the
Algerian employment sector. This could reflect a desire for a more even-handed
bilingual policy in determining job competency, as opposed to having a single
language predominate in the labor market, and could possibly have its roots in the
poor standardization of Arabization in the Algerian education system.
In the 1980s, the disproportionate effects of Arabization had led to a stark
discrepancy between official language policy and actual socio-linguistic realities
in Algeria. When graduates from Arabic-speaking public institutions searched for
employment in the private sector, they encountered difficulties as there was a tacit
industrial preference for graduates from French-speaking institutions. French was
seen as more presitigious and desirable in private sector employees, due to the
large number of French companies operating in Algeria that had predominantly
Frenchspeaking managements. On the other hand, graduates from French-
speaking institutions found it difficult to find jobs in the public sector, due to
AZIZ 76
Arabization laws banning the usage of French in government jobs and strict entry
requirements demanding high profiency levels in Arabic for employment. This
discordance could explain why 39.7% respondents in Statement (5) consider
having proficiencies in both Arabic and French in their linguistic arsenal as
beneficial in conferring them a competitive edge in the domestic labor market.
In Statement (6), the majority of respondents at 47.9% favor “French only” as
the language that will singularly confer to them a more competitive edge in the
global labor market, with both “Arabic and French” close behind at 41.3% of
respondents. These results suggest, once again, that French is perceived as a
language firmly connected to Europe and the economies of the non-Algerian
world. That the French language is able to hold its own and garner the favor of
47.9% of respondents in this question attests to the recognition of its economic
importance and its appeal in global labor markets, despite its continued
marginalization in Algeria.
Science, technology and modernity
Arabic only
(%)
French
only
(%)
Arabic and
French (%)
Total
Statements (7) – (8) test attitudes towards the position of Arabic and French in
science, technology and modernity. For both statements, clear attitudinal alterity
is present in the overwhelming preference for French: 70.2% of respondents favor
“French only” as the language of scientific and technological subjects in
universities, while 78.5% believe French as the only language of the two that best
represents scientific progress and modernity.
(7) Scientific and technological subjects in
universities should be taught in:
3.4
70.2
26.4
100
(8 ) I believe the language(s) of science and
modernity is/are:
16.5
78.5
5.0
100
AZIZ 77
Again, this explicit preference for French demonstrates a clear recognition of
the utilitarian value of the language in expressing modern scientific and
technological terms. It explains why French is still maintained as the premier
language of scientific instruction in many Algerian universities, resulting in the
split between scientific and technological fields taught exclusively in French and
all others in Arabic. Indeed, the current Algerian public university system still
maintains this irregular, hybridized system of producing “monolingual” graduates
in selected areas of expertise, with marginal political efforts to reconcile the
linguistic dichotomy and practically no legislation in place to protect graduates
from employment discrimination. This hybridized system produces generations of
monolingual young Algerians with limited opportunities in pursuing
interdisciplinary career paths in a labor market torn between two divergent
languages. The pedagogical shortfalls and the poor standardization of Algerian
language-in-planning policies thus led to a drop in the quality of teaching, poor
scholastic achievement rates and employment discrimination post-graduation.
3.7 Analysis of language-in-planning policies in re-making Algerian national
identity
Successive Algerian governments had, for various socio-cultural reasons,
attempted to re-make Algerian identity through strict Arabization policies,
intending for the entrenchment of Arabic and the dispossession of French.
However, as seen from the results of the questionnaire, there is no clear winner, as
neither Arabic nor French are interchangeable. Part of this is attributed, as
discussed before, to the lingering effects of French due to colonization, and part of
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it is due to the failure of the Arabization process to properly standardize language
policies in the education system. To better understand how this came about, it is
therefore necessary to return back to the manner in which successive Algerian
governments implemented language-in-planning policies to re-make Algerian
national identity. Upon Algerian independence in 1962, embracing Arabic as
the national language of Algeria was seen by the FLN leadership as an essential
nation-building step that Algeria could not compromise on. President Houari
Boumediène underlined this when he declared in 1965: “Without the recovery of
this essential, important element that is our national language, our efforts will
remain in vain, our personality incomplete and our entity a body without a soul.”
It is essential to emphasize that Arabization in the Algerian socio-cultural context
does not mean political Islamization, which refers to the imposition of
Islamic dogma as a basis for concrete political governance. From the onset of
Arabization in 1963, Arabic and Islam were promoted by the FLN as linguistic and
cultural variables that existed independently from the religious and political domain.
They were largely presented as anti-colonialist, national symbols of unity that would
allow Algeria to distance itself from France and re-define itself in a postcolonial world.
In June 1962, a month before Algerian independence, the FLN declared: “The
Algerian Revolution is above all to return to Arabic – the very expression of the
cultural values of our country – its dignity and its efficacy as a language of
civilization.” Arabic was presented by the Algerian leadership from the beginning
as a language of culture, resistance, independence, liberation and emancipation.
By embracing Arabic, Algeria would not necessarily become an Islamic
AZIZ 79
theocracy; rather, it symbolized an act of moral and cultural triumph against
French cultural values and a valiant rejection of assimilationist colonial policies -
a singular act of national unity necessary in a time of political volatility and civil
strife.
The following example serves to highlight why respondents of the
questionnaire appear indecisive over the role of Arabic and French in Algerian
society: Over the course of Arabization between 1963 – 2001, the Algerian
government itself seemed to be trapped within a cycle of political indecisiveness,
caught between trying to appease hardline pro-Arabization advocates and
introducing occasional reforms aimed at maintaining some form of link to an
increasingly influential Francophone market economy. In the late 1980s, due to
pressure from Algerians who desired more frequent contact with the French
language, laws limiting the importation of French publications were laxed. Within
a span of two years between 1988 – 1990, the consumption of French publications
by the Algerian public increased by as much as 50% and publications of French
newspapers had to be increased two-fold to meet with the growing demand.
However, large demonstrations erupted in 1990 at the Université des Sciences et
de la Technologie at Bab Ezzouar, where pro-Arabization students demanded for
the removal of French and the immediate Arabization of all university
curriculum.145 The Algerian government amended the law the same year and once
again restricted the distribution of French publications to pacify the protesters.
Despite these whimsical reforms and the economic impracticality of a purely
MSA-speaking workforce in a region surrounded by Europe and Francophone
AZIZ 80
African countries, Algerian governments had nonetheless remained, in principle,
committed to Arabization. Therein lies the issue with Algerian language planning
in general: The Algerian approach to language policy is purely and strictly
ideological, propelled more by capricious populist sentiments than by pragmatic
concerns. More broadly, it is driven primarily by an ideological need to cultivate
an Arabo-Algerian identity to realize a pre-conceived vision of a united,
monolingual Algeria, as opposed to the need to address socio-economic realities.
As such, the dichotomy between Arabic and French as seen in the results of the
questionnaire clearly demonstrates how poor language planning policies may affect
attitudes towards language by youths generations later.
3.8 Conclusion
In summary, the theoretical framework discussed in Section 1.1 established
three components that make up Algerian national identity. The first component is
the presence of a political community, as proposed by Benedict Anderson, and the
first section of the questionnaire, Political governance, public administration and
statehood, employs Anderson’s theory to investigate how Arabic and French fit
into notions of a united Algerian political community. The second component is
the presence of invented traditions and a constructed common culture, as
proposed by Eric Hobsbawm. The second section of the questionnaire, Culture,
religion and memory, utilizes Hobsbawm’s theory to examine how Arabic and
French fit into invented Algerian traditions and folklore and issues of religion and
memory. The third component is the presence of exclusivist alterity, the process
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of preserving a particular characteristic and excluding all others as foreign in
order to create a particular form of identity, which is a philosophical theory
proposed by Emmanuel Lévinas. The third section of the questionnaire,
Bilingualism, social empowerment, employment and science, uses Lévinas’ theory
to analyze how respondents exhibit alterity in fitting Arabic and French in various
spheres of Algerian public life. The results of the questionnaire, based on this
comprehensive theoretical framework, make clear that transmitting a uniform
vision of national identity through language policies is a complex task, especially
when French, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Algerian Arabic each hold
different utilitarian importance and evoke different visions of an Algerian national
identity.
The French language scores poorly in issues of culture, religion and memory in
Section 2 of the questionnaire. In particular, French is the dominant language that
brings up painful memories of Algeria’s historical past, suggesting a still lingering
effect of the trauma of French colonization. However, the resurgence of French in
political life, issues of bilingualism in education, economic affairs, science and
technology in Sections 1 and 3 of the questionnaire reveals that respondents tend
to imagine French within non-religious, non-cultural domains when confronted
with issues involving Algeria’s potential for future success, which constitute
important aspects of Algerian identity. 73.5% of respondents wanted a bilingual
ArabicFrench language policy in schools, with both used concurrently as main
languages of academic instruction, and there is also an overwhelming preference
for the inclusion of French as a language of the Algerian political leadership.
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There is an interesting dichotomy here: French is likely to be associated with
politics, science, technology, modernity and educational progress, and it could
hold potential in unlocking Algeria’s future economic success. Yet, behind this
façade it conceals the trauma of colonization and a tendency to perceive French as
something foreign that has been imposed onto Algerians, incompatible with
Algerian culture and Islam.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the literary, formal register of Arabic, and
Algerian Arabic, the non-standardized, colloquial dialect of Arabic spoken in
Algeria, both fare poorly in issues of bilingualism, social empowerment, economic
progress, science and technology in Section 3 of the questionnaire, and rather
conventionally in Section 1 with issues of political leadership. However, their resurgence
in Section 2 of the questionnaire reveals where respondents prize MSA and Algerian
Arabic the most: in matters of culture, religion and memory that also constitute an
inseparable part of Algerian identity.
There are, however, several interesting differences in preferences between
MSA and Algerian Arabic in notions of Algerian culture, religion and historical
memory. MSA possesses limited social usage, yet it is enforced in schools as the
language of academic instruction and is expected to be the sole language of daily
communication. In Section 2 of the questionnaire, MSA is the preferred language
for evoking religious unity and the expression of Islamic values, suggesting that it
transmits a universalist, pan-Islamic form of identity. As such, it may encounter
resistance from Algerians who perceive it as a foreign entity, as close to a quarter
of respondets also associate MSA with “painful historical memories,” that is only
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fit to express universal religious unity but cannot authentically represent the
distinctiveness and specificity of Algerian identity.
On the other hand, Algerian Arabic is regarded as the language that retains the
richest cultural heritage of Algeria, best capable of representing the quintessential
essence of Algerian culture, literature and folklore, as well as the language of
Algerian independence. This suggests that Algerian Arabic, more so than MSA, is
capable of expressing the more intimate, informal aspects of the Algerian day-
today experience. It suggests that Algerian Arabic, in its capacity as a
nonstandardized, colloquial dialect of Arabic, may transmit a more distinctive,
authentically Algerian culture, as it is a colloquial melange of Arabic, French,
Spanish and Berber that reflects the true socio-linguistic diversity and history of Algeria.
The dichotomy between Algerian Arabic and MSA shows that there exists an
important point of tension between MSA and Algerian Arabic with regards to the
notion of an Algerian culture, historical memory and religion: the universalist,
panIslamic identity evoked by MSA versus the more authentically Algerian
identity evoked by Algerian Arabic. This suggests that Algerians may view
themselves primarily as an Arabic-speaking society distinct and separate from the
rest of the Arabic-speaking world, and that Algerians may not identify as ethnic
Arabs but rather as Arabized Berbers who happen to be Arabic-speaking Muslims.
Perhaps more accurately, given the polycultural history of Algeria, Algerians can
be better described as a multilingual, multi-dimensional society of various
influences, such as from French, Berber, Turkish, Arab and Greek cultures. MSA
may fit into conceptions of religious unity and in formal writing, but in order to
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express the intricacies of Algerian daily life and authentic Algerian culture,
Algerian Arabic, a reflection of the diverse socio-linguistic lineage of Algeria, is
required. The indecisiveness in attitudes towards MSA, Algerian Arabic and
French suggests the perpetuity of the conflict between language politics and
Algerian identity, exacerbated further by a lack of consensus on the linguistic
character of Algerian language education policies. These conclusions are
especially telling in one regard: That respondents are unable to reconcile these
languages completely, and that MSA, Algerian Arabic and French cannot
completely replace one another.
This suggests a subconscious recognition of multiplicity in Algerian identity and a
need to acknowledge the value of these languages, particularly for an official
recognition of Algerian Arabic given its social importance, when formulating
language policies. Further research is certainly needed to build upon the work that
this thesis has established, to assess more deeply how language policies affect
attitudes of successive generations of Algerians towards national identity. This
discordance has left a noticeable impact on Algerian society today: an
asymmetrical distribution of oral and literacy rates in Arabic and French, in which
successive generations of Algerians each speak, write and read Arabic and French
with disproportionate levels of proficiency. Algerian writer Djamila
SaadiMokrane called this “the Algerian linguicide” lamenting that language
should define and strengthen, not cripple, the Algerian identity. It is a reminder
that the national identity questions that emerged in 1962, “Should Algerians be
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French, Berbers, Arabs, Middle Eastern, Francophone, African or Muslim in
character?
What language and culture should define the Algerian person?” were still relevant and
remained unresolved in Algeria today.
