Doctoral Dissertation Research: The impact of social factors on the syntactic patterns of code-switching among young adults

本研究考察了摩洛哥年轻人的口语和书面语数据，探讨社会因素对摩洛哥阿拉伯语-法语语码转换的影响。由于其殖民历史，法语仍然是摩洛哥的一种重要语言，但今天它在口语中的使用主要是通过与阿拉伯语方言的代码转换。本研究将从语言学的角度探讨说话者如何整合这两种语法上不同的语言。虽然阿拉伯语-法语语码转换一直是以前研究的主题，但目前的项目将量化不同背景的年轻人使用法语的比率，以确定社会因素如何与观察到的语码转换语法模式的差异相关。争论的焦点是双语者如何在不同的媒体中利用他们的语言库，以及是否可以识别出常规的语码转换形式。40名摩洛哥阿拉伯语母语者将参与两种任务类型：1）口语会话任务和2）通过互联网进行基于文本的聊天。在每种任务类型中，参与者可以自由地用他们想要的任何语言讨论他们选择的任何主题。包括口头和书面生产的同一个人允许识别新兴的语言习俗，在这个传统的口语dialecton.The研究的重点是量化的程度，法国渗透到阿拉伯语的话语，是否有可识别的模式与社会预测，如性别和阶级的法国使用。这样的分析将允许与其他地理区域的未来研究进行比较。此外，这项调查将有助于双语语言形式的研究更广泛地通过创建口语和书面混合摩洛哥阿拉伯语-法语话语，将与其他研究人员分享语料库，并增加在后殖民背景下的语言使用的理解。

This study examines spoken and written data among young adults in Morocco to probe the effects of social factors on Moroccan Arabic-French code-switching, the use of two languages in a single conversation. Due to its colonial history, French remains an important language in Morocco but its use today in spoken discourse occurs mainly through code-switching with the vernacular dialect of Arabic. This study will examine, from a linguistic perspective, how speakers integrate these two grammatically diverse languages. While Arabic-French code-switching has been the topic of previous studies, the current project will quantify the rates of French usage among young adults of varied backgrounds to determine how social factors correlate with differences in observed code-switching grammatical patterns. At issue is how bilinguals utilize their linguistic repertoires in varied media and whether conventionalized forms of code-switching can be identified.40 native speakers of Moroccan Arabic will participate in two task types: 1) spoken conversational tasks and 2) text-based chat via internet. In each task type, participants will be free to discuss any topic(s) of their choice in any language(s) they desire. The inclusion of both oral and written production of the same individuals allows for the identification of emerging linguistic conventions in this traditionally spoken dialect.The focus of this study is to quantify the extent to which French permeates Arabic discourse and whether or not there are identifiable patterns of French use that correlate with social predictors, such as gender and class. Such an analysis will allow comparison with future research in other geographic areas. Additionally, this investigation will contribute to the study of bilingual language forms more broadly by creating a corpus of spoken and written mixed Moroccan Arabic-French discourse that will be shared with other researchers and adding to an understanding of language use in a post-colonial context.