Women, Gender and Language in Morocco (Women and Gender: The Middle East and the Islamic World, 1) (Women and Gender, 1)

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WOMEN, GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN MOROCCO

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WOMAN AND GENDER THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD

VOLUME 1

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WOMEN, GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN MOROCCO BY

FATIMA SADIQI

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Women, Gender and Language in Morocco / by Fatima Sadiqi. – Leiden ; Boston :Brill, 2003 (Woman and Gender. The Middle East and the Islamic World ; v. 1) ISBN 90–04–12853–0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available

ISSN 1570-7628 ISBN 90 04 12853 0 © Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

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To the two men who gave me the opportunity to reflect on my experience as a woman: My father, who took me to school and believed in me My husband, who never ceased to encourage and support me

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Facts are theory laden Theories are value laden Values are history laden Dona Haraway

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CONTENTS Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Note on Transliterations ............................................................ General Introduction ..................................................................

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Chapter 1 Gender and Language in Morocco: Theoretical and Political Issues ..........................

1

Chapter 2

Grammatical, Semantic, and Pragmatic Androcentricity in Moroccan Languages ............

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Chapter 3

Social Differences ..................................................

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Chapter 4

Contextual Differences ..........................................

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Chapter 5

Differences Within the Self ..................................

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General Conclusion ....................................................................

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Bibliographical References ........................................................ Index ..........................................................................................

315 333

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the help of the many people and institutions who have contributed to make this book a reality. I owe an immense intellectual debt to Mary Bucholtz, Margot Badran, Keith Walters, and John Shoup for very insightful and eye-opening comments on earlier versions of this text, as well as for their genuine concern with my work. I have been inspired and encouraged by the attitude and comments of these scholars who, in different ways, helped me (re)formulate or sharpen ideas. I also register with gratitude the help of Sherifa Zuhur, Linda Stump Rashidi, and Moha Ennaji who read and discussed parts of this text. I record with gratitude very warm thanks to all the women who have so graciously welcomed me into their lives and permitted me to observe their behaviors, shared with me their most intimate concerns, and responded kindly to my endless questions about why things were the way they were. Special thanks go to my mother Fadma Ahmed for valuable information on Moroccan rituals and to my mother-inlaw Hadda N’Ait Hsain for providing me with hitherto unpublished Berber oral texts. On the other hand, I cannot help having a thought for the memory of my husband’s paternal grandmother Late Rabha Moha whose personality and creative use of lyrics first drew my attention to illiterate women’s extraordinary use of language. Thanks are also extended to my syntax and gender studies undergraduate and graduate students at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fes whose ideas and enthusiasm fueled my interest in women, gender, and language. Since this work is a product of several years’ research, I want to acknowledge the financial and moral help of the Moroccan-American Commission who accorded me a second Fullbright Post-Doctoral Grant to conduct research on language and gender at the University of Illinois in the Summer of 1999. I particularly thank Daoud Casewit for his friendship and support. Thanks also go to the Faculty of Letters Dhar El Mehraz and the Rectorate of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fes for helping me to participate in various national and international conferences and workshops on gender and women issues.

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Acknowledgments are due to Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane and the Amercian Language Center in Fes for creating an ideal atmosphere to present and discuss aspects of Moroccan gender issues with undergraduate and graduate Moroccan and American students. Special heartfelt thanks go to Trudy Kamperveen for her support and patience during the technical preparation of the manuscript for publication. I also acknowledge the help of two anonymous readers for the Brill Women and Gender Series who provided me with much appreciated and highly professional comments which greatly improved this work. I take full responsibility for the remaining drawbacks. Finally, my deep and lasting gratitude goes to my husband Moha Ennaji for his care and support ever since this book was an idea, and to my children Tariq, Rachid, and Yassine for their generous and unconditional love.

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NOTE ON TRANSLITERATIONS The transliterations used in this book are broadly based on IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). Transliterations of Moroccan Arabic are based on pronunciation and those of Standard Arabic on spelling. Consonants b: b t: t r: r z: z th: j: j k: k g: q –h: \ ?: A

d: f: s: ∫: dh: g: x: w: h :

d f s = ] “ ' e H

Pharyngealization is shown by capitalizing the consonant: D: w S: v T: : Vowels (vowels in Arabic are superscripts which appear above or below consonants) a: ´ u: ’ i: ´ e is used for the schwa Gemination and vowel length are shown by consonant or vowel doubling

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  

GENERAL INTRODUCTION This book is a product of more than a decade of reflection and research on the complex and fascinating link between women, gender, and language in Morocco. Being a theoretical syntactician who is deeply impregnated by the generative view that the grammar of a language is in the speaker’s mind, I have always been intrigued by the paradoxical fact that while speakers (men and women) acquire the same linguistic ‘competence’ in their mother tongue, they seldom use it in the same way in their everyday ‘performances’. I gradually became convinced that gender, itself a complex concept, may be used as an analytical tool in deconstructing linguistic performances. This, in turn, made me realize that such a deconstruction carries little meaning outside a specific culture. In an endavor to reconcile my linguistic background with my status as a Moroccan woman, I chose to locate some of my research in the area of the intersection of language, gender, and women in Morocco, a multilingual, multicultural, and Muslim country. As a starting point, I asked myself a number of questions such as: what do the terms ‘gender’ and ‘feminism’ mean to Moroccans, and to Arabs and Muslims in general, as opposed to people from Western cultures where these terms were first used? What is the impact of history, geography, Islam, orality, and traditions on gender perception and gender performance in Morocco? What is the appropriate theoretical framework within which these questions may be raised and discussed, granting that reflection never grows in a theoretical vacuum? Could this particular theory be separated from power relations in the Moroccan socio-cultural context where power not only regulates, but significantly influences, men-women relationships in everyday life? How can one highlight women’s agency through language within the overall structure of power in Morocco? These questions are not trivial and possible answers to them are inevitably entangled in deep-rooted personal and cultural beliefs that I felt I had to understand before embarking on writing this text. This book partly grew out of years of teaching linguistics, and partly from my own experience as a multilingual Moroccan woman. When I started to teach linguistics, I was in a comfortable situation

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where I was conscious that I was bringing in concepts that were new to my students and that I needed to explain within established theoretical frameworks. But since I have started to lecture and write on women, gender and language in the late 1980s, I have always had the feeling that I was dealing with issues that my audiences had established ideas about. I am now convinced that finding out about these ‘established’ and ‘taken for granted’ ideas is as necessary a step to take as actually carrying academic research on women, gender, and language. The theoretical hypothesis of this book is that an understanding of gender perception and women’s agency can be achieved only within the structures of power in a specific culture and that language is an important vehicle of this power. In the case of Morocco, there exist cultural components that interact and constitute superstructures of power. These are history, geography, Islam, orality, multilingualism, social organization, economic status, and political system. Within this power framework, factors such as social differences, contextual differences, and identity differences enter into play in the daily performances of gender. Moroccan women’s agency is portrayed in this book through their creative use of language, itself a strong site of resistance. Gender performances through language are linked to the choices available to particular women; these choices not only empower women but ‘widen’ the spectrum of the concept of gender, and make it flexible. This book is a mixture of theory and facts. The nature of the topics dealt with necessitate both a question-oriented approach to gender construction and gender negotiation in Morocco and a wider concern with how the socio-cultural superstructures influence understanding gender roles in Morocco. One of the aims of this book is to draw the attention of Western feminist scholars1 and sociolinguists to the challenge that non-Western speech communities present to their theories. The specific areas involved are the language and gender literature and the case of Morocco. With respect to Morocco, the issue is not only assuming that Morocco is like the West but also acknowledging the variation within Morocco and between Morocco and other Arab-Muslim countries. Morocco is crucially different from 1 The term ‘Western’ is used as a unitary concept to refer to mainstream European and North American feminist scholarship. This by no means implies that the West constitutes one homogeneous culture.

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other Arab-Muslim countries, including its neighbors Algeria, Tunisia, and Mauritania in many ways, and these differences have direct consequences for gender perception in Moroccan culture. Up to now, mainstream upper class Western feminist scholars have viewed not only Moroccan, but all women who live in the Arab-Muslim world, as a singular, monolithic, undifferentiated, subordinate and powerless group which basically constitutes the opposite ‘Eastern’ pole of Western women. Western texts have generally promoted fixed universal images of Muslim women and have presented them as poor, veiled, illiterate, victimized, sexually constrained, and docile housewives. In lacking a polyvalent and dynamic approach to the real workings and functioning of concepts like monolingualism, multilingualism, code-switching, Islam, and illiteracy in real social everyday life, the Western image often remains too general and too simplistic, as it hides the wide disparities that exist between Moroccan women and that deeply affect the way they perform2 gender. Throughout the book, isolated and contextualized data are provided. Perhaps the main contribution of this book to the field of women/ gender studies in general, and women/gender studies in the ArabMuslim world in particular, is the portrayal of women’s agency through two sections of specialized discussion of Moroccan women’s language patterns: code-switching and introductions, as well as through first-hand (up to now unpublished) oral poetry by illiterate Moroccan women. This book is addressed to a large audience including scholars and students of language and gender, feminists of language, specialists of women and gender in various cultures, as well as interested readers.

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I use the term ‘perform’ in a broad sense (cf. Butler 1990, Bergvall et al. 1996).

CHAPTER ONE

GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN MOROCCO: THEORETICAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES I The purpose of this chapter is to set up the theoretical and political issues for the discipline of gender and language in Morocco and to provide an overview of the argument made in the rest of the book, namely that an understanding of gender perception, gender subversion, and language use can be achieved only within a given socio-cultural context. The interaction of gender and language cannot be treated as sui-generis in the abstract; it needs to be grounded in real life conditionings and experiences so that it can be deconstructed analytically. Gender performances and women’s agency in the Moroccan socio-cultural context need to be examined in relation to four sets of factors: (i) the larger power structures that constitute Moroccan culture: history, geography, Islam, multilingualism, orality, social organization, economic status, and political system, (ii) social variables (geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, language skills, and marital status), (iii) contextual variables (physical setting, interlocutor, topic, and purpose of conversation), and (iv) identity variables (motives, saliency, and immediate interest). These factors interact in a dialectic way and deeply influence the system of viewing the world conceptually, the ideology, beliefs, values, and ways of meaning for Moroccan men and women. It is in this interaction that individual and collective identities, as well as gender roles, are continuously constructed, negotiated, and subverted. The interaction of the three factors which influence gender perception, gender subversion and language use show that the social and individual differences of Moroccan women can be understood only within the Moroccan socio-cultural context. In dealing with the issue of multiple identities in conversations, this book is an extension of current language and gender scholarship which has recently focused considerable attention on the diversity of women’s identities. Moroccan women’s complexity is a product of the significant differences in

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their everyday experiences as individuals, as well as in the degree of consciousness they have of these experiences. The multiple, often paradoxical, and always complex conditions of Moroccan women’s individual experiences in specific contexts are generally created by motives and immediate self-interest, which are the most important tokens of identity. Gender and identity are indeed interlocked, as one cannot avoid involving gender identity in daily life. Starting from a theoretical perspective where gender is viewed as a construction, and not as a given, this chapter relates the concepts of gender and language to the first set of factors, the overall superstructures of Moroccan culture, and underlines the way gender is constructed and perceived within Moroccan culture. T  L  G: R   L Reviews of the literature on language and gender are found in many salient works in the field: Key (1975), Philips et al. (1987), Cameron (1992), Bergvall et al. (1996), Coates (1998), to cite but a few. While the review in this section is largely based on these and similar standard works, it differs from them in keeping an eye on aspects where challenges from the Moroccan context may be considered. Likewise, in highlighting the most salient differences between the theories, this review aims at maximum comprehensiveness, and may be seen as part of ongoing discussions on the importance of language analysis in understanding cross-cultural, gender, and identity issues. The term ‘gender’ was first used in linguistics and other areas of social sciences. In linguistics, the term referred to the grammatical categories that indexed sex in the structure of human languages. Feminist theorists of the 1960s and 1970s used the term ‘gender’ to refer to the construction of the categories ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in society. This construction was related to biological sex in contested ways. There have been two influential views in theorizing about language and gender: the essentialist view and the constructionist view. The terms ‘essentialist’ and ‘constructionist’ have been used as ‘qualifying’ terms to refer to ways in which particular works in language and gender may be ‘evaluated’. From a historical point of view, the essentialist view preceded the constructionist one. Within the essentialist view, gender was based

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on biological sex and was, thus, regarded as essentially dichotomous. Consequently, individuals were categorized as either male or female, and individuals who did not fit in this rigid dichotomy were described as ‘deviant specimen’ or ‘gender outlaws’ (Chapkis 1993), ‘social failures’ with no gender identity (Kessler and McKenna 1978, Devor 1989), ‘gender blendors’ (Devor 1989), or ‘gender benders’ (Bornstein 1992). Everything within the essentialist view was explained on the basis of biological sex to the extent that gender collapsed into sex. Gender within the essentialist view was defined by three major clusters of characteristics: innateness, strict binarism, and bipolarization. Gender was qualified as innate because biological endowments were innate; it was binary given the strict binary opposition between men and women as two undifferentiated groups; and it was bipolar because human beings pertain to one of the two bipolar categories: male or female. Of the three characteristics of gender within the essentialist view, it was bipolarization which was most pervasive. The categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ were tacitly assumed to be homogeneous, opposite, fixed, unchangeable, and in strict complementary distribution. A human being was either fully male or fully female, but not ‘partly male’, ‘partly female’, or ‘both male and female’. Individuals with ambiguous or mixed sex manifestations were automatically categorized as ‘deviant’ or ‘abnormal’. The dichotomy was assumed to function at an unconscious level, and as with all dichotomies, it inevitably resulted in one category being unmarked and the other marked. In most human cultures, the male category was commonly taken to be the unmarked, universal, primary, superior, and bigger category, of which the female was the marked, particular, secondary, inferior, and smaller version. Another fundamental aspect of the bipolarization of gender was that it assumed that the latter was a generic and global category, and all the other social categories (class, ethnicity, race, age, etc.) were not only viewed as working independently of gender, but also, with rare exceptions, weighed equally. Labov, for example, now concedes that these variables interact, a position that he didn’t hold in 1972, though he is surely an essentialist. In the constructionist view, everything about gender has been seen as ‘constructed’ because gender has been conceptualized as a fluid, not a static notion. This view has been based on the assumption that there is a wide variation in the spectrum of ‘human sex’. For example, what is the gender of a fetus? Another characteristic of the

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constructionist view which clearly distinguishes it from the essentialist view is that whereas the latter considered gender as a separate category from other social categories such as ethnicity, age, and class, the former regards gender as intertwined with these categories. It is the interaction of gender with other social categories which explains its multiple meanings and continuous creation given that individuals constantly present themselves the way they want to be responded to in specific situations. Many researchers have argued for the constructed nature of gender. Among these are Kessler and McKenna (1978), Bem (1987), Flax (1987), Deaux and Major (1990), who considered gender as relational, Unger (1990), who regarded it as a ‘verb’, Taylor and Miller (1994) who viewed it as a continuum, and Schwictenberg (1991), who took gender to be a process of negotiation with culture. On the basis of an essentialist, a constructionist, or a combination of both views, a number of theories on the relationship between language and gender have been advanced. The major ones are: (i) the Deficit theory, (ii) the Dominance theory, (iii) the Difference theory, (iv) the Reformist theory, (v) the Radical theory, (vi) the Community of Practice theory, (vii) the Semiologist theory, and (viii) the Postmodernist theory. Some of these theories were chronologically related and some overlapped in time. T D T As its name indicates, the Deficit theory considered women’s language as an essentially ‘deficient’ version of men’s language. This theory was based on an essentialist view of the relationship between language and gender. It can be said to have its roots in ‘medieval’ notions of the ‘Chain of Being’: God above men, above women, above beasts, although many, including those who framed deficit theories, might reject this view. In this theory, given that the vital force of language was with men, women were but a diminished copy of the original man: Adam. Consequently, women’s language was an imperfect, deviant, and deficient gloss of men’s. In portraying women as ‘the second sex’, De Beauvoir (1949) is an example of the Deficit theory in the field of literature. In the field of modern linguistics, the Deficit theory first materialized in the work of the Danish grammarian Jespersen (1922).

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According to this author, women’s speech was a deviant form from the average male speaking patterns. Women used ‘insipid’ and ‘ladylike’ language in an attempt to shrink from the ‘coarse’, but ‘virile’, usage of men. In the fourth chapter, entitled ‘The Woman’, of his much-cited book The Grammar of English (1922), Jespersen dealt with four aspects of language that he contended were related to women: verbal taboo, competing language, conversational language, and conservative language, which he presented as ‘problems’ with women’s language. Further, Jespersen attributed genius and greater variability to men. He stated that women used limited and less extensive vocabulary and exaggerated the use of adverbs like ‘pretty’, ‘nice’, ‘just’, ‘very’ and ‘sweet’, but paradoxically, he granted that women ‘invented’ language. Women were further pictured by Jespersen as ‘more conservative’ than men, given their relatively greater use of euphemisms and polite forms, as well as their systematic avoidance of swearing. Finally, Jespersen qualified women as ‘linguistically quicker’ on the assumption that being ‘linguistically slower’ was better. Overall, Jespersen’s book fell within the Deficit theory of language and gender. Another author who was responding to and reflecting the same Western cultural assumptions Jespersen did is the American linguist Robin Lakoff, who published her landmark and pioneer work Language and Women’s Place in 1973 as an article and in 1975 as a book. This book launched a new era in the study of language and gender. The chief significance of Lakoff ’s work was that it, unlike Jespersen’s, was an outcome of second-wave feminist thinking, and was, therefore, an example of feminist linguistics. In fact, the Women’s Liberation Movement started in the early 1970s in the United States. Lakoff ’s views, thus, enhanced the already existing debates about the determining role of gender in the issues of power and dominance, as well as the language behavior of men and women. According to Lakoff, gender inequity in women’s use of language stemmed from their marginalization in society. This inequity was reflected in the way women were expected to speak and the way they were spoken of. In other words, women’s language was deficient because their social position was so. Lakoff ’s book had three major goals: (i) to answer the question ‘what can language tell us about the gender inequity that exists in language?’, (ii) to reflect on whether linguists could correct social inequity by changing language, and (iii) to enhance research on language and gender. Although Lakoff ’s book has not fully achieved

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the first two goals, it has largely achieved the third one. In spite of the fact that Lakoff ’s book was based on the sorts of evidence she, as a syntactician, had been trained to use, and, as such, was not based on ‘sociolinguistic’ empirical evidence (conversational interactions), it ignited a flurry of empirical research in the domain of language and gender. In fact, Lakoff ’s findings were very influential in subsequent research in language and gender. Her assumptions were both questioned and supported by various studies. For example, Dubois and Crouch’s (1975) study found out that the claim that women used more tag-questions than men was wrong. Moreover, Holmes’ later work on hedges and boosters shows how vastly more complex the issues are than Lakoff imagined. On the other hand, Eakins & Eakins (1978) found out that the use of linguistic devices such as hedges, polite forms and tag-question subordinate women in academic settings. Lakoff ’s work also stirred research on languages other than English. For example, Shibamoto (1985) worked on Japanese and Holmes (1984, 1985) worked on New Zealand English, to name but two authors. Overall, Lakoff ’s findings were tested in studies that went far beyond Lakoff ’s area of interest to range over disciplines like sociology, psychology, anthropology, rhetoric, and speech communication. T D T According to the Dominance theory, linguistic differences between men and women were triggered by inequitable power relations between the two sexes. The male dominance in language was attributable to the political and cultural dominance of men over women in society. The way men and women spoke (women work hard in conversation, men don’t or don’t have to) reflected social reality. Power as dominance and control was established by the socially ‘appropriate’ use of language by men and women. The Dominance model differed from Lakoff ’s approach in the sense that it was based on empirical evidence (analysis of conversations in natural settings and laboratories), whereas Lakoff ’s work relied almost exclusively on introspection. However, the findings of these studies were in many ways no less contested (or contestable) than Lakoff ’s because these often quantitaive studies made what now seem like simplisic assumptions about dis-

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course and language use (for example, overlap always means interruption). Power was a central feature in language and gender relationship, according to O’Barr and Atkins (1980). Men ‘cornered’ women in smaller and less significant space on the linguistic floor by: (i) interruptions and overlaps (Zimmerman and West 1975), (ii) failing to take up women’s conversational gambits (Fishman 1983), (iii) the sheer number of words (Swacker 1975, Spender 1980), and (iv) the semantic derogation of women (Shultz 1990). However, there are problems with the Dominance theory. In this theory, the notion of power is oversimplified. Instead of asking ‘who is exerting his or her power over whom?’, an alternative question to ask is ‘can social power be removed from conversations?’ If men talk more, they are dominant; if women talk more, they are too talkative. According to Holmes (1985), the expression ‘y’ know’ can express both uncertainty and certainty: women use the uncertainty dimension and men use the certainty dimension. Further, interruptions have many meanings: they can signal aggression, support, or familiarity according to the person who interrupts. Likewise, linguistic variables do not have unified functions in language use. According to O’Barr and Atkins (1982), women’s language is far from being powerless in courtrooms where women act as judges, lawyers, or witnesses. In addition, women’s language is neither characteristic of all women nor is it limited to them: the use of intensifiers or hedges by female lawyers or witnesses is not the same as their use by patients or victims. Experience and social status often are more important than the sex of the participant in a conversation: female black medical doctors interrupt less in the presence of a white male patient, for example. A real problem with this literature is that it, like so much research relying on ‘power’ as a crucial variable, offers an undertheorized account of what power is or how it works. Indeed, the notion of power should not be taken as static; it is not only multi-functional but it also materializes in many forms. Another point is that the choice of features and feature counts are presented as lists in the Dominance theory and not as clusters or systems of features, they make gender more salient than other variables such as class and race. Finally, the Dominance theory does not differ from the Deficient theory in considering males as the norm.

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  T R T

The Radical theory was an extreme version of the Dominance theory. It has its roots in the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis and Orwell’s views on the nature of language: human beings see the world through the linguistic expressions that they use; thus, reality is androcentric and misogynistic because it is constructed and perpetually reproduced by a language that is controlled by men. Linguistic determinism and male control constituted the bedrock of the Radical theory. Women are silenced, alienated, and oppressed because language determines reality and men control language as they control other resources in patriarchal societies. As a result, women were alienated if they used language because in doing so they only ‘falsified’ their experiences and perceptions, and they were silenced if they did not because they lacked the linguistic means to express their own experiences. The best known exemplar of radical feminist theorists of language is Spender’s (1980) ‘man made language’ theory which stipulated that language was literally ‘man made’. Spender explained the gaps in the lexical paradigms of English by the absence of lexical items that expressed women’s experiences. In other words, women found it difficult to talk and write about their own experiences because their language did not contain the words they needed. This presupposed the existence of a ‘women’s language’. Spender’s views were preceded and influenced by the views of another radical feminist: Daly (1978) who suggested creating/coining new forms of expression or even new women-made languages, an idea which was echoed in Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue. On the other hand, the Radical theory greatly influenced the ‘Dominant and Muted’ theory which originated with views that dominant (men) and dominated (women) groups within society had different orders of perception. The ‘dominant’ group established a complete control over the channels of communication, and although the ‘muted’ group generated an underlying reality, it was incapable of generating a surface ‘mode of specification’ to express it. Radical feminist theorists of language should not be confused with radical feminists. The latter originated in the United States during the social turmoil of the late 1960s and then quickly spread to Great Britain and Australia. These feminists considered power to be a conscious activity and capitalized on militant action to counter male power. This militant aspect of radical feminists often materialized in

    

9

small-scale organizations which specialized in Consciousness-Raising techniques that focused on gender and excluded men. Radicalism may also be defined as how any kind of feminism is seen by many conservatives; feminism is perceived precisely as a radical philosophy and that has been a problem for feminism and even the use of the term. Such radical feminism has always existed in Morocco and the presence of Islam in this country has never predicated that there can be no radical feminism. However, a type of radical feminism where women want to exit the world of men and invent their own women-only spaces, for example, or that women always possess distinct language patterns and forms of usage such as fillers and qualifications that stem supposedly from their greater interest in interpersonal dynamics and sensitivity to others will surely have a positive impact on the Moroccan socio-cultural context, but an ‘extreme’ version of radical feminism which totally excludes men would be unlikely to fit the Moroccan context because on the one hand, both men and women created Moroccan feminism, and on the other hand, Moroccan society is organized around the family nucleus and the collective self. T D T The Difference theory was largely based on the work of Maltz and Borker (1982); however, Tannen’s (1990) book You Just Don’t Understand is its best known and most influential proponent. This work was ethnographic in essence as it heavily drew on the work of Gumperz (1982) and Maltz and Borker (1982), as well as on video reported conversations where home settings were used for observation. In the Difference theory, women’s language was not a defective copy of men’s; it was simply different from it. The Deficit, Dominance and Difference theories differed in the following way: whereas explanation was power-based in the first one and psychology-based in the second one, it was inter-ethnic and cross-culture-based in the third one. The Difference theory was also called the ‘two-cultures’ model given its focus on the notion of sociolinguistic subcultures. This notion was based on the assumption that as they were not socialized in the same way, boys and girls ended up by acquiring two different sociolinguistic subcultures: the male subculture and the female subculture. Difference presupposed neither dominance nor subordination and de-emphasized power. Supporters of this theory claimed that the dominance theory

10

 

transformed into the Deficit theory in some way as women’s behavior and style were depicted as being subordinate to men’s. In the Difference theory, women’s behavior and style were celebrated and highlighted as positive and cooperative. Without condemning men’s style, women were not characterized as losers in conversation. Within the Difference theory, which flourished in the 1980s, feminists sought to reclaim women’s place in conversations as different but equal to men’s. They held the view that women’s patterns of speech were simply different from men’s. They even advanced arguments of women’s superiority in certain linguistic domains. Hence, women were said to be better conversationalists for a number of reasons: (i) their elicitory strategies aimed at raising the level of conversation for all participants, (ii) they sought support in language, a strategy that was basically different from men’s upmanship (cf. Tannen 1990), and (iii) they learned different behaviors from men as part of their social differentiation from playgroups onwards (Maltz and Borker 1982, Tannen 1990, Thorne 1993). Given these characteristics of women’s conversations, each sex needed to value the style of the other sex and women needed not be blamed for expressing their social roles (Tannen 1990). In spite of its great popularity, the Difference theory has been criticized. According to Henley and Kramarae (1991), Troemel-Ploetz (1991), Freed (1992), and Uchida (1992), the Difference theory was both a ‘separate-but-equal’ and an ‘assign-no-blame’ approach which valorized women’s contributions but downplayed social reality where men and women were not equal. The difference explanation effectively masked the disruption of equality in everyday situations. Some of the most insightful critiques of Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand noted that whereas ethnography offers ‘thick description’ (Ryle via Geertz) and some of Tannen’s more academic papers can be said to do the same, You Just Don’t Understand is far from ethnographic because the examples used are often created and certainly generalized to the status of everyman and everywoman (who just happen to be heterosexual and romantically involved with one another and most often of the Western middle class, white, etc.) and did not apply cross-culturally. Whereas Maltz and Borker draw more widely, Tannen takes the heterosexual couple as the defining case or unit of analysis for understanding language and gender—an assumption not without problems. Likewise, the assumption that ‘women are

    

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better conversationalists’ implies that men should learn to behave like women, an assumption that seems to characterize later Tannen work on other topics. A further criticism of the Difference theory materialized in the fact that the difference model, just like, if not more than, the deficit and the dominance models, centered on the search for differences and was rigidly dichotomous in not allowing for overlap between the groups of males and those of females. In fact, if one looked for differences by asking questions, s/he would always end up by finding them. Why not ask questions about the similarities between the two sexes? (cf. Bergvall 1996, Bing 1996, and Freed 1996). For example, verbal dueling is not a characteristic of male language; it depends on a number of variables, such as the context, the topic being discussed, and the relationship between participants. For example, in Moroccan culture, women often try to outsmart each other in conversations about their family affiliation through a type of verbal dueling where each participant brings an argument to show her family is older, richer, more learned, etc. T R T The Reformist theory was an offshoot of the Difference theory. Its roots go back to the debate on sexist language within feminist linguistics in general and within the Difference theory in particular. The Reformist theory differed from the Radical theory in considering language a symptom, and not a cause of oppression. The debate in the Reformist theory revolved around finding answers to two questions: (i) why is sexist language a problem? and (ii) are there any procedures to approach this problem? As an answer to the first question, reformist feminists strongly condemned sexist language as a biased representation of the world. As an answer to the second question, these feminists argued for ‘reforming’ language by freeing it from harmful sexist words and expressions. To achieve this goal, they geared their efforts to providing a set of neutral and inoffensive alternatives to sexist usages, such as ‘chairperson’ instead of ‘chairman’, ‘Ms’ instead of ‘Missus’ or ‘Miss’, ‘men and women’ instead of ‘men’, ‘humanity’ instead of ‘mankind’, as well as a more equitable use of the pronouns such as ‘he or she’

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 

or ‘s/he’. The Reformist theory stressed accuracy, neutrality, truth and fairness in language with respect to both masculine and feminine words and expressions. Accordingly, during the past three decades or so, reformist feminists have succeeded to make their demands for concrete changes in speech and writing heard. Many conventions in both formal speech and publications have been changed to respond to these demands. The languages that benefited most from such endeavors were English and French. Indeed, professional stylesheets like those of the APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA, and publishers’ stylesheets have been the real forces for change. In spite of its popularity, reformism in feminist linguistics has been heavily criticized and discredited as a theory of language and gender. According to Cameron (1992), reform measures remain ‘ineffectual’ as they cannot root out prejudice because what people say and mean cannot be controlled. More importantly, reformists of language make Whorfian assumptions in the way all language reform efforts do; however, even those who believe in some weak version of Whorfianism, however complex, as all sociolinguists do, Whorfianism as a hypothesis is necessarily flawed. T C  P F The Community of Practice is more of a framework for analysis than a ‘predictive’ theory. It was introduced in language and gender research by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992). Compared to the aforementioned theories, the Community of Practice theory was more comprehensive as it drew its roots from psychology, sociology, anthropology and women studies. This theory stressed five aspects of analysis: (i) no presupposition of gender differences as a starting point, (ii) a focus on the constructive practices of a group, especially mutual active engagement of learning a jointly negotiated practice of gender, (iii) an emphasis on learning and mutability in gendered linguistic displays across groups, (iv) a naturalization of intra-group variation, and (v) a focus on the fact that the social construction of gender is local and cross-culturally variable. In the Community of Practice theory, evidence was usually provided by examining activities and interactions, not differences. A ‘community of practice’ was defined by three elements: (i) mutual engagement, (ii) a common goal, and (iii) a sharing of routine such as gestures. Communities of practice are

    

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different from speech communities: albeit a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to age, power, etc. within each community, communities of practice share a common goal in some sense, whereas speech communities do not necessarily share a common goal and, thus, are heterogeneous in the strong sense of the word. Examples of communities of practice are a police force and public vendors. Each of these communities of practice is characterized by a salient specific practice: police reporting and public selling, and it is these practices that make the police force and the public vendors somehow ‘homogeneous’ communities. The bottom line is that in communities of practice, the way gender interacts with other variables such as class, age, ethnicity, relationships, or saliency need to be highlighted. The Community of Practice theory gave priority to the local and practical on the assumption that these influenced the variability of gendered practices and identities. As such, this theory challenged the dualized differences between putatively homogeneous groups of males versus females. It emphasized the acts of becoming gendered, of moving from peripheral or novice participation in linguistic action to a central or more experienced enactment with a shared repertoire of linguistic resources (cf. Wenger 1998). The Community of Practice theory capitalized on the nuances within the categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’, ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, etc. An example of the latter case is Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s (1995) analysis of the language of ‘jocks’ and ‘burnouts’ which revealed, among other things, significant unconscious phonological variants which explained the students’ allegiances and alliances. These variants were shown to be at the root of the construction of students’ relative positions within a complex of gender and social class. T S T The Semiologist theory was largely based on Lacan’s version of psychoanalysis according to which human behavior is deeply shaped by language at the level of the unconscious referred to as the ‘symbolic order’ and represented as the ‘semiotic’ level of discourse. Unlike the previous theories, this theory regarded language as basically abstract and made its abstract laws so powerful that if its users failed to enter the symbolic order created by language, they would be rejected by society as psychopaths. It is interesting to note that while

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 

Lacan has had great influence in some disciplinary discourse, his work has been paid little attention in the Anglo-American research literature on language and gender. The Semiologist theory was also influenced by Black and Coward’s (1990) views on power and meaning. Power was seen by these authors as inherently multiple, and gender was not its only dimension in a society; class and race were other such dimensions. Further, men did not ‘actively’ exercise power over women by ‘forcing’ them to keep to their position; power was disseminated through ideology and discourse in the sense of Althusser and Foucault’s views. According to Foucault (1972), language use and the organization of information are constrained by large-scale discourse rules and regulations which constitute part and parcel of continuously changing discursive formations and structures. Users of language (speakers or authors) necessarily abide by what is appropriate in their society and culture; otherwise, they will be classified as ‘deviant’. Further, the grammar and vocabulary of a language at a given time provide strong conventional rules which constrain the ways in which language is used. Users play and experiment with these conventions only within the available parameters. The Semiologist theory was important to feminist linguists in the sense that it described how the subordination of women to men was so deeply ingrained in individual personalities that it was reproduced even after women acceded to independent economic and legal statuses. However, this theory did not answer sociolinguists’ queries as it was more based on psychological processes than on actual linguistic practices in everyday interactional situations. For example, the question for sociolinguists is always what is the relationship between Foucault’s Discourse (which may be written with a capital ‘D’) and the ‘discourse’ analyzed by sociolinguists. T P T The term ‘postmodern’ was first used to describe a world profoundly changed by World War II. This trend was influential in a variety of disciplines, including history, literature, sociology, sciences, economy, and psychoanalysis. It focused on diversity within both society and the individual. Accordingly, themes like plurality, polyvocality, instability of gender divisions, differences between women, and mar-

    

15

ginality were highlighted in this theory. Postmodernism became a strong philosophical trend in the 1980s. This trend had a great impact on linguists. Although like semiology, linguistic postmodernism was based on psychoanalysis, it was less influenced by Lacan than the semiologist model and focused less on the deterministic and abstract force of language. In fact, postmodernist scholars regarded the Semiologist theory as too ‘authoritarian’ and ‘ahistoric’ as it did not take into account the diversity in society and in individuals. Unlike semiologists, postmodernists rejected any type of language (style, etc.) which was claimed to be ‘typically female’ and taxed it as ‘totalizing’ and ‘imperialistic’. They rejected the semiologists’ notion of a ‘common’ or ‘authentic’ women’s language as they did not acknowledge universalizing theories of whatever kind. Postmodernists also thought that new social roles for women across the world induced new relations to reproduction and the body. For example, biotechnology and information technology made possible a global economy where female force was dispersed, isolated and deskilled, and where men and women became machines. Women in the Postmodernist theory needed to claim the potential of the world before somebody else defined it for them. The Postmodernist theory greatly influenced what is referred to as ‘postcolonial’ feminism. According to Harding (1992), Postcolonial feminism was not a monolithic frame as different resources and different struggles were reflected in the feminisms they developed. In other words, as women’s oppression and activism took diverse forms, and as social divisions could have equal, but often cross-cutting, patterns of gender oppression, postmodernist feminists reformulated their conceptual and epistemic tools and developed a new understanding of gender. In the field of language and gender, there is a growing body of work that would consider itself postmodern, for example the papers in Bucholtz (1999). Thinking about language and gender within the postmodern framework would assume that rather than investigating how women use language in a specific conversation to negotiate complex, multiple identities or to subvert culturally assigned gender roles, women are said to ‘do’ these things. Likewise, Cameron (1997) and Walters (1999) have attempted to apply postmodern constructs to the analysis of actual data.

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  Synthesis

A survey of the language and gender research carried out in the past three decades allows us to draw the following general picture: in the 1960s and 1970s, this research was mainly based on an essentialist paradigm and used quantitative methods of analysis; in the 1980s, gender, like other categories, was considered a ‘culturally constructed’ concept, a fact which resulted in a predominant use of more qualitative and ethnographic approaches; and in the relatively recent work following the 1980s, there is an emergence of a more dynamic social constructionist approach which combines quantitative and qualitative methods. A general assessment of the language and gender theories given above shows that in comparison with the first six theories, the last two ones, namely the Semiologist and the Postmodernist theories, are not fully articulated within the language and gender discipline. Another conclusion that may be drawn in this respect is that the essentialist and constructionist views are not easily demarcated; they are themselves ‘gradable’ as they may be strict, flexible, or a mixture of both. Although language and gender theories may not be qualified as exclusively essentialist or exclusively constructionist, the ones that consider gender as a construct fare much better than the essentialist theories in the sense that they allow better explanations of real facts in real contexts. In order to grasp the ways in which gender is perceived and performed, as well as the linguistic means that index this performance in everyday interactions in Moroccan culture, we need first to adopt a constructionist and anti-essentialist approach to gender and take women’s lives and experiences in a specific culture as the starting point. Gender relationships in the Moroccan context are more complex, more nuanced, and less teleological than a binary linear and progressive model of gender relations offers. It is only by taking into account the social and material conditions within which the lives of women are articulated that we can historicize women-related cultural practices and foreground the family, the community and perhaps religion as equally significant foci for struggle against patriarchal oppression. Four types of contexts are considered: the broad socio-cultural context, the social context, the situational context, and the identity context. These types of contexts range from more comprehensive to less comprehensive and allow the analysis to proceed from general to specific. This top-bottom approach is deemed more efficient than

    

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a bottom-up approach in the Moroccan context, where hardly any significant work on the topic of language and gender has been produced. This approach also allows a better understanding of the nature of gender negotiation and gender subversion in real situations. G P W  M S-C C Culture may be broadly defined as a system of practices, rituals, beliefs, values, and ways of meaning of a community. All cultures control their members, but they differ in the degree of the control they impose on the individual and social behaviors of their members, as well as the parameters within which the members exercise control over their destiny and their environment. Moroccan culture is of a type that strongly constrains the behavior of men and women. The strength of this control comes from the fact that it is channelled through powerful cultural components that strongly regulate the lives of Moroccan men and women through powerful social institutions. Eight such components have a direct impact on gender perception, gender subversion and language use: (i) history, (ii) geography, (iii) Islam, (iv) orality, (v) multilingualism, (vi) social organization, (vii) economic status, and (viii) political system. In the following sections, each of these components is dealt with in relation to gender and language. H1 The history of Morocco shows that the country has never been totally ‘homogenized’, ‘Arabized’ or ‘Islamized’. Morocco is a Berber, Arab, Muslim, Mediterranean and African country. The period that extends from antiquity to the French colonization witnessed the invasions of the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs. The coming of the Arabs resulted in the quasi-complete Islamization of Morocco by the end of the 13th century. Some Jewish and Christian sections of the population remained faithful to their religions. The French Protectorate was installed in Morocco in 1912 and continued until 1 This section is not meant to be a ‘historicist’ account of gender relations in Morocco. Historicism is not relevant to the theme of this book as it imposes a linear, evolutionary approach that predicts the same trajectory for the world’s cultures.

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1956, the year in which Morocco obtained its independence. Moroccan women’s present condition is the result of the various types of patriarchy that accompanied Morocco’s historical evolution. Although Moroccan national history is still in the process of creation and is as much a product of oral tradition as anything else, it is considered by the State and the Moroccan educational system as part of al-wilm (written knowledge/science). al-wilm represents a framework which is strongly associated with the Arab-Muslim framework and perspective on Morocco. As such, al-wilm fulfils two functions: (i) it acts as a site where gender and class relations are justified and reinforced by the power-holding elite, and (ii) it perpetuates the myth of the neutrality of al-wilm (knowledge/science) and its ability to read and even transform social reality across cultures. Both of these functions are clearly linked to and derive from Islam. However, the view adopted in this section is that both history and science are sociopolitical constructions as scientific knowledge is closely linked to the political and cultural development of countries and is, thus, the product of specific political economies (cf. Bourdieu 1990). Moroccan national history has been officially recorded by men. The images of women in it are predominantly created from male points of view. Accordingly, gender, class, and regional differences and variation have been blurred, at least in official accounts. In these accounts, women’s roles are either ignored or made secondary to men’s, and as such, Moroccan women’s subordination has been constructed and transmitted over the years. These views justify women’s subordination in the postcolonial societies (cf. Kandiyoti 1991, Cooke 1996, Badran 1995). Given the quasi-absence of female interpretations of events in the Moroccan recorded history, a rigid gender dichotomy was assumed along the years and has been inherited by present time generations. This historical legacy has deepened the gap between the two sexes and its impact has been accentuated by the status of written history as a ‘venerated’ institution in Moroccan culture. The close association between Moroccan national history and written languages 2 distances it even further from women, the overwhelming majority of whom are still illiterate, and, thus, largely ignorant of Morocco’s written history. However, it should be noted that illiterate Moroccan women have had access to the constructions of 2 Among the languages used in Morocco, Standard Arabic and French are written, and Moroccan Arabic and Berber are spoken.

    

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Moroccan (and Arab-Muslim) history they get through radios and TV, including, increasingly, satellite dishes. The Moroccan pre-independence anti-colonialist protest gave way to a collective awareness that the country needed to create its own identity after independence. This shift was occasioned by the confusion and disillusionment that Moroccans experienced as they realized that the modern West would not go away after independence. In fact, long into the postcolonial era, Moroccans have continued to struggle with the impact of colonization. This materialized at the intellectual level in a spectacular flourishing of social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, economy, law, political science, and linguistics. Many Moroccan intellectuals, most of them men, started to pay attention to the status, role, and expectations of Moroccan women in this transitional phase. It is also during this period that the first Moroccan women journalists and writers appeared on the public scene. Further, genres other than the usual written literary ones, emerged. Folklore and oral histories attracted not only writers, but anthropologists and filmmakers. This period, which roughly corresponds to the 1960s and 1970s, witnessed the birth of Moroccan feminism. Moroccan Feminism3 It is difficult to give a comprehensive and accurate definition of the term ‘feminism’ because there are many types of feminisms. Indeed, although all feminisms are basically ways of deconstructing the power relations between men and women and share the political edge of ‘struggle’ for more rights and better conditions for women, the reading, import, and evaluation of this struggle is deeply culture-bound as women are deeply heterogeneous. Consequently, the term ‘feminism’ needs to be understood within the overall Moroccan sociocultural context. 3 The English term ‘feminism’ is sometimes equated with the Arabic term tah–riir or tah–arrur or both. The free usage of these latter terms is misleading as they do not mean the same thing. According to Zriouel (1996), tah–riir basically means reflecting on ways of ‘liberating’ women from the heavy weight of traditions and improving their condition by providing them with ‘necessities’ such as education. As for tah–arrur, it is a consequence of tah–riir, that is, a stage where women start to consciously reflect on their condition and try by various means to improve it. As such, tah–riir necessarily precedes tah–arrur. These two terms map onto feminism in the sense that on the one hand, education gives women access to ‘powerful’ languages, and on the other hand, literate women have the choice to reflect critically on their experience as women, and militate to secure rights.

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 

Morocco is crucially different from other Arab-Muslim countries or even neighboring countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, and Mauritania. Indeed, each of the Arab-Muslim countries has its tradition of feminism (or at least struggle for women’s rights). People struggling for women’s rights in Egypt are aware of the work of Qasim Amin (1899, 1900), and those in Tunisia of the work of Tahar Haddad (published in French in 1978). The major similarity between struggles for women’s rights across the Arab-Muslim world is that these struggles ó originated in al-ISlah ‘Reformism’ which, among other things, preached more flexibility in men-women relations and education for girls. In fact, according to recorded history, it was only in the 19th and the 20th centuries, and as a result of worldwide industrialization, international trade exchanges, and rapid urbanization, that deep reforms in Islamic legislation were brought about and argued for by prominent reformers of Islam such as Jamal-Eddine Al-Afghani, Mohamed Abdu, and Rachid Ridha. As for the differences between the various types of Arab-Muslim feminisms, they mainly reside in the fact that each country related to colonialism in a specific way. The length and nature of colonialism in Algeria is very different from the one in Morocco, for example. Likewise, there are historical and other differences between the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (cf. Taarji 1991, Walters 1991, Elarbi 1997, Haeri 1997). Moroccan feminism has affinities with Middle Eastern/Third World and Western feminisms, but its own historical, cultural, and social conditionings make it different from both. Unlike mainstream Western (Euro-American) feminisms, Moroccan feminism did not grow from militant feminist movements, and unlike Middle Eastern feminisms, it did not emerge from nationalism. Middle Eastern feminisms constituted part of nationalistic movements, except for Turkey, which has not been colonized (cf. Arat 1989, Ahmed 1992, Badran 1995, among many others). In Morocco, feminism is a result of the encounter of the Moroccan indigenous culture/civilization with Western culture/ civilization. This encounter is often referred to as ‘modernism’,4 itself a complex concept. As such, Moroccan feminism is largely an urban phenomenon. The first tangible token of Moroccan feminism is a recognition of women’s public ‘utility’ by encouraging the education

4 Modernism is understood in this book as a construct whereby the French colonizers imposed new ways of life on the indigenous Moroccan population.

    

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of girls. The first schools for women were started in the late 1930s in Rabat, Fes, and Casablanca. Being a product of Moroccan historical, social, and cultural events, Moroccan feminism has made its own journey from the late 1950s to the present day. It was mainly instigated by the State, political parties, and civil society (associations). From the late 1950s onward, Moroccan feminism has had to establish its agenda vis-à-vis five strong prevailing forces, namely (i) Islam, (ii) local political authority, (iii) local civil society, (iv) Western feminism, and (v) international nongovernmental organizations. In its inception, and given the general political atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, Moroccan feminism was liberal (i.e. secular), but from the 1980s to the present times, and due to the changing political atmosphere locally and internationally, this liberal feminism has co-existed with religious (conservative) feminism, which has mainly stemmed from conservative political parties and associations. The two feminist trends differ in their readings of modernity. Liberal feminists associate modernity with an opening on universal values such as gender equality and human rights and use both Arabic and European languages to express their thoughts,5 and religious feminists read modernity as a return to ‘authenticity’ and stress a∫-∫hariwa ‘Islamic law’ and Arabic as fixed icons of this authenticity. Although both trends condemn customary practices, only the liberal one condemns the prevailing discourse as reinforcing the status quo. Within each of these two trends, there are ‘sub-trends’ of varying degrees of ‘feminist intensity’. Each trend has its own discourse and uses specific means of communicating ideas through language and dress. However, the hotly debated 1999–2000 Plan for the Integration of Women in Development 6 seems to have gradually blurred the boundaries between the two feminist trends and made them more complex. Significantly, each trend has started to use the other’s jargon. The rapprochement between the two trends coincided with the fact that dress, especially the veil, is loosing its political and religious edge.

5 While the use of Standard Arabic guaranteed Morocco’s national identity, French has always been used as a window on the West. This function of French is reinforced by the geographical position of Morocco. Being waSri ‘modern’ continues to partly mean ‘speaking French’. 6 This Plan was officially proposed in 1999 by former Secretary of State for the Family and Childhood, Mohamed Said Saadi.

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Liberal Feminism Liberal feminism first appeared on the public scene of Morocco in the late 1950s, and preceded religious feminism. Right after independence, the State, political parties and intellectuals supported liberal feminism, albeit in different forms and for different reasons. The historical precedence of liberal feminism over religious feminism consolidated its position over the years and gave it more autonomy from the State and political parties. Liberal feminists have sought to improve the situation of women by adapting the ‘universal’ values of equality and human rights to the Moroccan socio-cultural context. When it first appeared, liberal feminism was a ‘class’ phenomenon. It was the new post-independence bourgeois class that produced the first women pharmacists, jurists, medical doctors, university professors, etc. This interest in educating women was not motivated by a genuine interest in the liberation of women as individuals, but by social prestige, because the level of education of women was important for the personal status of their fathers and husbands. This feminism is broadly similar to the liberal feminisms of neighboring Algeria and Tunisia. For example, Walters (1999) argues that girl’s education in Tunisia was partly geared towards producing more marriageable daughters, thereby, increasing the status of the family. Although political parties and the State played a crucial role in inducing women to seek regular remunerated work outside home, this initiative did not emanate from a clear and active policy to integrate women in the job market; women’s work was part of unplanned consequences of State policies, as well as of development requirements. On a wider scale, Moroccan post-colonial discourses and readings of participation in the national liberation movements have a clear gendered dimension and produced gendered ideologies where women were relegated to the second position after men. However, evaluated against the preceding state of affairs, Moroccan women’s access to education, and through it, to the written word, made their voices heard for the first time in the history of Morocco. Both men and women were involved in the birth of liberal feminism in Morocco. For example, Allal Al-Fassi, a nationalist figure, wrote al-Naqd al-Dhaati ‘Self-Criticism’, a book in which he made several criticisms of the Moroccan family law and in which he called for the abolition of polygamy, judicial regulation of repudiation and divorce, and the equivalent of a set of alimony for repudiated women.

    

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The men who were involved in liberal feminism were mostly highlyeducated with legal training and exposure to Western thought, and the women belonged to upper and middle classes, where educated daughters had illiterate mothers. It is important to note that men’s feminist views were different from women’s: while the latter’s views aimed at improving women’s lives, the former’s were more abstract as they formed part of men’s ‘remedies’ to the ‘backwardness’ of Morocco and their plan to produce future good Moroccan citizens. Men endeavored to prove that Morocco could not progress without educating and training women. However, for both men and women, some form of feminism was a means to revitalize and empower women and, thus, the country. Liberal feminism was accompanied by changes in dress and other social practices. The modern European style became fashionable in urban areas, although it never succeeded in replacing traditional Moroccan dress. Liberal feminism was manifested in journalistic and academic feminist writings (mainly sociological and literary). Journalistic writings included newspaper reports and magazine articles. These writings circulated widely among the educated population. The Moroccan feminist writer Leila Abouzeid started her career as a journalist in the early 1970s and wrote her first articles under a man’s name. Zakia Daoud has continued the trend by expressing fervent feminist ideas through journalistic articles. Journalistic discourse evolved around two major issues: (i) a cult of domesticity and (ii) feminist ideology. The cult of domesticity included topics that were meant to improve women’s health, productivity, education, nurturing skills, household management, childrearing, and ‘how to’ be a better, more effective wife and mother. As for feminist ideology, it included selected biographies of national and international feminist female figures. These writings aimed at stressing the development of women through the development of their gifts. Similarly, although the public achievements of famous Arab and Western women were portrayed, the domestic roles of these women were also highlighted. In a sort of feminist hagiography, biographies were used as a means of publicly exposing feminist ideas without directly implicating the writer. Authors did not just expose readers to feminist ideas, but they indirectly espoused such ideas. Both types of journalistic writings were meant to promote the rights of women to remain in the work force. However, journalistic

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language lacked a critical approach to patriarchy; patriarchy was challenged, but not displaced or dismantled. In recent years, more outspoken journalistic writings have been exposing feminist ideas in magazines like Kalima (Word) and 8 Mars (March 8), and from 1995 onwards, more and more feminist magazines have appeared: Citadine (City Woman), Femmes du Maroc (Morocco’s Women), Femme Actuelle (Contemporary Woman), Parade (Parade), Usra (Family), as well as Nisaa? al-Maghrib (Morocco’s Women). The choice of words for the titles of feminist magazines has never been innocent. As for academic feminist writings such as Fatima Mernissi’s and Leila Abouzeid’s works, they have aimed, albeit in different ways, to show how gender differences were created by humans and constructed within specific socio-cultural contexts. By questioning the sexual division and the ideology on which it was based, the discourse of academic liberal feminists has questioned patriarchy and has emphasized the fact that gender roles, sexuality, and even the division of labor are neither divinely prescribed nor ordained by nature; but have historical origins. These feminists also see women’s work as production, and not mere reproduction. As such, the discourse of liberal academic feminists has tackled issues that, up to a decade or so, were taboo, such as female sexuality and the various forms of violence against women. This discourse has sought to politicize women’s collective consciousness of their oppression and has denounced the indifference of political parties which often use women’s issues to enforce their political agendas and demarcate themselves from the fundamentalist rhetoric on women. The main argument that academic liberal feminists have advanced is that secularization, which was steadily spreading in Morocco after independence, could not be successful without securing women’s civil rights. Secularization has been adopted in the daily lives of Moroccans, as well as in Morocco’s economy, and State policies. The secular practices in these domains were well established, and nobody has questioned them except the most radical Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal feminists have sought to assert themselves and affirm their own identity and the existence of their own history. They have done this through anthropological, sociological, and political studies, as well as through narratives, poems, and planned actions. The females among liberal feminists supported men when resisting national oppression or asserting religious identities, but they opposed them when

    

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resisting patriarchy.7 These feminists are conscious that if they reject Islamic precepts, they will face a double sanction: in Morocco, they will fail to connect with the vast majority of women who are poor, illiterate and deeply religious, and outside Morocco, they will be accused of not representing their own culture. Throughout its journey, liberal feminism in Morocco has always more or less been supported by the State. In the late 1990s, this feminism has been greatly enhanced by the creation of centers for research on women, as well as graduate programs on gender/women studies at the university levels in Rabat, Fes, and Ifrane. It is important to note that the first two are public universities and the last one is private. This is different from the situation in the Middle East where academic women/gender centres appeared in private universities only (cf. Badran 2002). Liberal feminism in Morocco was also channelled by political parties and civil society. While the feminism enhanced by political parties was meant to reinforce the parties’ political lines and gain female voices, feminist associations were more independent and active. Indeed, the emerging civil society materialized in a spectacular expansion of feminist and pro-feminist associations and groups. Civil society played an important role in transforming the socio-political and economic positions of women in Morocco by allowing them to massively enter the public scene and also by officially legitimizing female leadership in a heavily patriarchal society. The languages that are used by these associations are Standard Arabic, French, Moroccan Arabic, and sometimes Berber. In fact, with the advent of mass education, women have created intellectual and philanthropic associations, most of which instigated by an awareness of human rights. These associations are both governmental and non-governmental and benefit from national and international financial aid. Most of these associations work for secular feminism and civil rights. They are mainly controlled by intellectual women from upper and middle classes, and it is thanks to these associations that new networks inside and outside Morocco have started to be forged. This has had both symbolic and practical importance for the Moroccan liberal feminist movement. The 7 Nelson (1974), Youssef (1974, 1977), Mernissi (1975), Sayigh (1981), Esposito (1982), Fernea (1985), Davis (1986) considered Muslim women over long periods as well as in the remote Islamic-era past.

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origin of the Moroccan associative movement may be traced to 1944 (cf. Belarbi 2001). In this year L’Union des Femmes du Maroc was created. In 1946, two other associations followed: Commission des Femmes and Axawatu al-Safaa ‘Sisters of Purity’, based on the name of the ‘medieval’ learned circle in Baghdad Ixwan al-Safaa? ‘Brothers of Purity’ (Shoup, personal communication). Axawatu al-Safaa was a section of the Istiqlal ‘Independence’ party. In spite of their pioneering role, these three associations never problematized Moroccan women’s participation in politics. In 1962, the UPFM (Union Progressive des Femmes Marocaines) was created, and in 1969, the UNFM (Union Nationale des Femmes Marocaines) was created. In present-day Morocco, a considerable number of women rights organizations have been very active: L’Union des Femmes Marocaines, L’Union des Femmes Démocrates, Maghreb-Egalité, Jusur ‘Bridges’, L’Union des Femmes, the UAF (Union Action Femmes), and Le Printemps de l’Egalité. All these are professional, and not political, organizations. In these associations, women’s civil rights are constantly foregrounded and women are constantly made aware of their social importance. Such associations have given Moroccan women the opportunity to become skilled in the public organization of their demands and the public articulation of their resources; they have also given them a good opportunity to gain credibility on the public scene. Moroccan liberal feminism in all its forms has always been closely ó associated with Mudawwanat al-Ahwaal a∫-∫axSiyyah ‘Code of Personal Status’, known as al-Mudawwanah which was instituted in 1957, that is, one year after Morocco’s independence. In that year, King Mohamed V created a commission to work with the Minister of Justice to codify the family law in Morocco. This commission consisted of ten Ulemas ‘Islamic scholars’ and three leaders of Moroccan Salafism ‘religious reformism’ among whom Allal Al-Fassi. al-Mudawwanah may be defined as a set of laws which regulate family ‘matters’ such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody. al-Mudawwanah was based on both a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’, more specifically the Sunni Maliki madhab ‘school’, and the French Napoleonic Code, a legacy of the colonial era. al-Mudawwanah is not, thus, exclusively Muslim (cf. Moulay R’Chid 1981, 1987). al-Mudawwanah defined women as minor by limiting their rights and by institutionalizing polygamy (cf. Daoud 1993). For example, women could not contract their own marriage without a male tutor, divorce and repudiation were in the hands of the husband, a minimum marriage age was not fixed, etc.

    

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The reason for the association of liberal feminism with al-Mudawwanah is that the latter constitutes the locus of the legal and civil discrimination against women. In bringing together all proponents of Moroccan liberal feminism, al-Mudawwanah is not only a legal document, but a strong political tool. Since independence, and especially in the last two decades, al-Mudawwanah has gradually become the major barometer of women’s status in Morocco and a symbol of their position in society. The fact that al-Mudawwanah was masterminded by men only and was based on religious law was meant to make it ‘sacred’ and not open to public debate. For this reason, liberal feminists have always been disappointed with al-Mudawwanah. The disappointment of pioneer liberal feminists was mainly due to the fact that Allal Al-Fassi’s liberal ideas were not incorporated in alMudawwanah although the man was called upon for the writing of this document. Another aspect of liberal feminists’ disappointment is the fact that al-Mudawwanah was based on the religious Sunni Maliki school, at a time when other Moroccan codes, such as the Penal Code and the Constitution, were based on civil law. For example, many Moroccan laws, such as the ones relative to bank interest and the sale of alcohol, bypass the precept of religion, although the Quran is very clear on these issues. al-Mudawwanah was seen by liberal feminists as a ‘betrayal’ and a way of distancing women from the public sphere (cf. Mernissi 1984/ 1985, 1987, 1989, Daoud 1993, Woodhull 1993). Mernissi (1989) denounced the undemocratic practices of the former national male leaders who suffered from torture at the hands of the French colonizers in order to achieve democracy and equity but who then treated half of their societies unfairly by institutionalizing al-Mudawwanah which denied them basic rights. Mernissi underlined the inconsistency between the conservative nature of al-Mudawwanah and the promotion of a liberal economic system. While the Moroccan Constitution granted women equal political rights with those of men, al-Mudawwanah inscribed them as essentially domestic beings with limited rights. According to Mernissi, postcolonial Morocco designated male supremacy and female subordination as symbols of cultural specificity and political legitimacy. It is important at this juncture to note that the details of feminist struggles and conditionings differ for each Muslim country. For example, Tunisia’s political elite positioned Tunisian women very differently by capitalizing on their civil rights. This does not mean that Tunisia is a panacea for women, but its history contrasts in

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critical ways with Morocco’s. Indeed, national differences indicate that the ‘Arab Muslim’ world is not an undifferentiated whole. In addition to academic liberal feminism, civil society feminism was also concerned with al-Mudawwanah. Feminist associations were very articulate and direct in asking for changes in al-Mudawwanah. For example, Axawaatu al-Safaa wrote to the Minister of Justice to make reforms in social practices in the writing of al-Mudawwana: end of polygamy, minimum age of marriage 16 and make divorce judicial. These demands were unsuccessful. More recently UAF (Union Action Femmes) launched a huge campaign on Women’s International Day in March 1992 to establish equality between women and men. This association sent a letter to the Parliament calling for changes in alMudawwanah and secured a million signatures to support its demand. The demand was strongly opposed by the Islamists and King Hassan II, in his capacity as Amir al-Muminin ‘Commander of the Faithful’, created a commission of Ulemas ‘religious scholars’ and judges to review the proposed changes and suggest recommendations. Again, none of the member of this commission was a woman (cf. Taoufik 1993). On May 1, 1993, the king declared changes in articles 5, 12, 30, 32, 48, and 148 of al-Mudawwanah. The main changes are: (i) the male tutor’s control in marriage is limited as the woman needs to give her consent and sign the marriage contract, (ii) women over 21 who do not have a father are allowed to contract their own marriage without a tutor, (iii) before taking a second wife, a husband needs to inform his first wife, (iv) a women can ask for a clause in her marriage contract that her husband will give her a divorce if he takes a second wife, but a judge is required to do this and can still deny the divorce, (v) a man’s application to repudiate his wife must be addressed to two notaries and the wife should be summoned to court, (vi) the mother is given the right to legally represent her children if their father dies (but according to article 142 the mother still cannot dispose of the children’s property) and in cases of divorce, child custody is given first to the mother and secondly to the father. Finally, (vii) a family counseling institution has been created to help judges with family disputes. Although most Moroccan feminists have not been satisfied with the changes in al-Mudawwanah, as the latter did not really change the oppressive rules of marriage age, polygamy and custody, they have considered the overall debate a positive action. These changes have been seen as big gains because they have made the debate on

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al-Mudawwanah public for the first time in the history of Morocco and, hence, lifted the ‘sacredness’ of the code, a sign that Moroccan women’s rights movements are making headway. al-Mudawwanah has not only been examined, but criticized and even changed. This means that women’s rights and position in society are finally open to public discussion and debate. With the coming of the new king Mohamed VI, and Morocco’s democratization process, the debate on al-Mudawwanah has emerged again. In October 2002, the new king appointed another commission of modernists and conservatives to reflect on al-Mudawwanah and consider ways of improving it. Three women are participating in the amendments for the first time in the history of Morocco. The results of the review are due for the end of 2002. Moroccan liberal feminism is also associated with postcolonial thinking. Postcolonial dilemmas, characterized by skepticism about modernity which resulted from an imposed encounter of Morocco with the West, greatly affected liberal feminists. Feminism and postcolonialism are not separate poles; they are two interdependent and enabling ways of thinking: while feminism did not have to fit specific political situations, the politics of the postcolonial period could not be democratic without a feminist dimension. As such, Moroccan feminism is bound to be at the same time rooted in its socio-cultural context and open to other types of feminisms. It is within postcolonial feminism that the dominant versions of Moroccan national history are being challenged for the first time by the rewriting of this history from the perspective of hitherto marginalized voices. An excellent example in this respect is wam al-Fiil (1983) (translated into English as The Year of the Elephant) by Leila Abouzeid. In this book, the author narrates a woman’s journey towards independence, a meaningful event in Moroccan history and Moroccan culture at large. The book brilliantly depicts Moroccan women’s agency in the making of Morocco’s national history. These women struggled for national liberation and for self-assertion in the face of both communal and individual challenges. The expression ‘year of the elephant’ is an allusion to a famous period in the history of Islam during which riding elephants marched on the sanctuary at Mecca. Elizabeth Fernea (1985) explains the title by stating that the battle was not won by arms and superior numbers of warriors but by ‘flocks of birds which miraculously appeared and bombarded the elephants with clay pellets’. The birds were like ordinary men and women who brought about Morocco’s independence. Leila Abouzeid’s message in the book is that Moroccan

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women who participated in the fight for independence were fulfilled and had an identity during the nationalist fight, but after independence, they felt discarded and useless. The national leaders often remarried younger wives and adopted French-style ways and manners in which indigenous ways of life and illiteracy hardly had any place. The initial burst of Moroccan postcolonial liberal feminism coincided with a growing interest in the psychodynamics of orality, literacy and civil rights. More and more re-readings of Moroccan history from a class and gender perspectives have appeared. In these rereadings, oral testimonies are used to challenge the dominant written discourse, making the language and culture argument more articulate and prominent. The proponents of postcolonial feminism argue that although feminism can easily be rejected in the name of religious and ideological conservatism, it cannot not easily be rejected in the name of cultural authenticity. Indeed, sociological studies have relied heavily on fieldwork where illiterate women have been interviewed, and where women’s daily lives and experiences have been highlighted. However, this type of feminist writings can be problematized in the following terms: while it is empowering and acknowledges women’s power and agency in both the public and private spheres, it forces educated women to appropriate the voices of illiterate women. This appropriation runs the risk of representing illiterate women as passive, a position which ‘echoes’ the position of standard national history. Apart from internal challenges, liberal feminists have been taken to and fro by powerful global movements, of which women’s efforts to improve their lot is universal. The capitalist growth strategies which have been borrowed from the West and which have been policed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other monetary institutions have brought about a new social awareness and other challenging problems for Moroccan women. Post-independence Moroccan society has entered into the era of paid labor which has engendered changes in family dynamics and has clashed with the indigenous solid patriarchal social and cultural orders. These changes have given rise to the burst of feminist groups and associations from within civil society. On the other hand, Moroccan liberal feminism has also been greatly enhanced by the work and help of international organizations. Liberal feminists and proponents of women’s rights across the world have launched worldwide pressures to stop gender-based discrimination

    

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and promote women’s rights. These advocates have used powerful organizations like the United Nations. The government of Morocco is constantly being asked to send official delegations and address women’s issues in worldwide events like the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985) and specific United Nations meetings (Mexico City, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; Nairobi, 1985; Beijing, 1995, etc.). Likewise, Morocco ratified the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on August 26, 1993. CEDAW was ratified with reservations to articles 2 and 16, which concern marriage and its dissolution, in an attempt by Moroccan officials to reconcile Western views with the Moroccan legal system; they thought that the two articles that were opposed conflicted with al-Mudawwanah. It is worth noting that participation in international events promoting women’s rights carries an importance and a cachet in Morocco, as well as in North Africa and other Muslim countries, that it doesn’t in the United States at least, perhaps because though the United States government may send delegations, the active and engaged participants are mainly from groups having nothing to do with the government, especially for women’s issues. On the whole, official politics in Morocco have been including debates on women’s rights and gender-based discrimination. Through encouraging the work of associations and civil society in general, the Moroccan government has begun since the 1980s to sponsor liberal feminism as an official policy for promoting women’s rights in family and workplace. Likewise, the paradigms of Moroccan liberal feminist research prone a reconciliation between particularism and universalism. These paradigms are viable as they both seek equality in specificity and recognize the local/global interaction which is required to live in a just world of communication. Religious Feminism Religious feminism in Morocco was not conceived as a reaction to liberal feminism. This type of feminism was the result of important events that have greatly affected both international and local politics from the end of the 1970s onward. Two such events are salient: the success of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union. These two events have been reinforced by the increasing power of the United States and globalization. These dramatic changes resulted, among other things, in a spectacular return to conservatism and debates centering on women and gender politics. Religious feminism appeared first in Morocco in the late 1970s.

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Religious feminists are a blend of ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamic’ feminists. The difference between the two terms is relevant in present-day rapidly changing conditions of women in Morocco. Islamist feminists are politically oriented and use Islam as a political tool to reach power. The two mouthpieces of Islamist feminism are the Islamist ó political association al-wadl wa l-?ihsan ( Justice and Charity) which appeared on the Moroccan public scene in the 1980s, and the political party al-wadl wa t-tanmiyyah ( Justice and Development) which was constituted in 1998. The two Islamist mouthpieces do not have the ó same political agenda: while al-wadl wa l-?ihsan is radical and has never participated in the government, al-wadl wa t-tanmiyyah is more moderate and has accepted to participate in the government. As for Islamic feminists, they are more religious than liberal feminists but aren’t Islamists. The two trends are referred to in this book as ‘religious feminists’. Religious feminism targets women, especially, though not exclusively, of lower classes. Special durus (lessons) are used as a means to disseminate religious ideology. These durus may take place in all-male, all-female, or mixed-sex regular meetings. Although religious feminism sometimes uses French, it is mainly disseminated in Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic. The most outward eloquent tokens of religious ideology are manifested in appearance and vesture: the ‘religious’ beard for men and the ‘religious’ scarf for women. However, the meanings of the two religious tokens, especially the scarf, have become so versatile that it is difficult to generalize in this respect (cf. Rafea, 2000 for the various meanings of the veil in the Egyptian society). Religious feminists have always been aware that the success of their project depends on a clear definition of the roles of women and men in society. They have always used the religious sanction of a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’ to pass on their messages. On a broader level, the success of the Iranian Revolution oriented the themes of scholarship on women to questions of gender-segregation and male-female ‘spheres’ in religious trends. The religious ‘revivalist’ movements, which have been flourishing throughout the Arab-Muslim world since the mid-1980s, have ignited debate over the role of women in contemporary Muslim societies. The Islamist/Islamic ideology reflects a rigid gendered dichotomy of space which facilitated the spread of Islamist/Islamic messages through preaching and practices. The social agendas of the revivalist religious movements are heavily politicized and male-oriented (cf. Armstrong’s book Battle for God,

    

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in which the author considers the historical roots of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish fundamentalisms, beginning with the Spanish Inquisition). These agendas propagate ostensibly ‘authentic’ religious practices, although there has always been lack of consensus on the content of those practices. Religious trends encourage the most conservative practices, especially in the domain of private and social behavior. These movements do not question patriarchy, they have spread on an ideological ground, largely prepared by the deep cultural roots of gender discrimination against women. From the mainstream Western point of view, the religious terms ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamic’ on the one hand, and ‘feminist’ on the other hand, are not compatible as mainstream Western scholars in general consider the religious discourse anti-feminist because of the particular history that the West went through and its often antagonistic relation with the East. However, within the Moroccan socio-cultural context, the use of religion by women in public space is revolutionary in itself as ‘public’ religion has never constituted a woman’s domain in the recorded history of Morocco. Religious feminism has become a reality in present-day Morocco; its voices ask for women’s rights within a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’. Religious discourse has started to be seen by some women as a site of contestation and self-assertion. Moroccan women claim rights within Islamic law for the first time and this is a ‘feminist act’ within the Moroccan context as it allows women’s entry into what has historically been a male domain in Morocco. For many contemporary male conservatives in Morocco, discussing Islam from a feminist point of view removes its male social power and, thus, needs to be resisted. Recent Developments in Moroccan Feminism: A Rapprochement between the Two Trends? The fact that religious feminism in Morocco was not conceived as a reaction to liberal feminism made the rapprochement between the two possible. The most recent developments in Moroccan feminism are a direct result of the 1999 Plan for the Integration of Women in Development. In 1998, under Morocco’s first Gouvernement d’Alternance, the Ministry of Social Protection, Family and Childhood was created and Mohamed Said Saadi was appointed Secretary of State in charge of it. The Plan contains 52 pages and includes 215 propositions divided into four main categories: education in rural areas, reproductive health, economic development for women, and improvement of

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women’s judicial status. Several of the propositions recommend changes in al-Mudawwanah, such as raising the marriage age from 15 to 18, ending of a mandatory marriage tutor for adult women, abolishing polygamy, making divorce judicial, ending unilateral repudiation, allowing a woman to keep custody of her children if she remarries, and in case of divorce, the goods obtained during marriage are to be divided equally between the man and the woman. In its conception, the Plan is ‘global’ and touchs on all aspects that involve women and development; however, it is the fact that the Plan bans polygamy, raises the legal age for marriage from 15 to 18, and reforms divorce that triggered heated debates between modernists and conservatives and took gender issues to the forefront of the political scene. On March 12, 2000 the modernists (male and female intellectuals, politicians, etc.) marched in mixed groups and the Islamists (veiled women and bearded men) marched in separate rows. The modernists’ march took place in Rabat and the conservatives’ in Casablanca. The modernist supported the Plan and considered it revolutionary as it banned violence against women, poverty and subordination in public spheres, and the conservatives opposed it and considered it West-inspired and alien to a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’. By publicly opposing the liberal and religious groups, the Plan took the debate on Moroccan women’s issues to the national public arena for the first time in the history of Morocco. Proponents of each trend from all walks of life voiced their views in meetings, on radios, TV, daily newspapers, as well in mosques, street conversations and at home. A particularly significant token of the rapprochement between liberal and religious feminists in Morocco is the highlighting of al-Ijtihad. The Use of al-Ijtihad al-Ijtihad may be defined as the interpretation or reading of the Quran and al-Hadiith (the Prophet Moammad’s sayings). The notion of alIjtihad is based on progressive change and is justified on the grounds that the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet deal with the broad, universal, and timeless matters, such as justice and dignity, but do not cover the specificities that emerge from changing and evolving historical, social, and economic circumstances. The latter constitute the target of al-Ijtihad. Liberal feminists argue that al-Ijtihad is not limited to men, as a number of passages in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet recommend al-Ijtihad without referring to the sex of the one engaging in interpretation. Further, Aisha, one of the

    

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Prophet’s wives, was a great muftiya ‘female counsellor on religious matters’. In present-day Morocco, the use of al-Ijtihad by liberal feminists is an empowering strategy within a patriarchal environment where traditionalizing is a means of being active and visible. Contrary to Western feminists, many of whom were already secularized or had little attachment to religion, feminists who identify as Muslims are not interested in giving up their faith or in changing the foundational assumptions of their faith (as Western religious feminists are often willing and happy to do). Rather, feminists who are Muslim generally agree that one must look to the basic texts in a way religious Western feminists do not. The adoption of al-Ijtihad is a reaction to the spectacular spread of the threat of Islamist fundamentalism in recent years. Liberal feminists regard the marginalization of women in present-day ArabMuslim societies as a result of Muslims’ conscious segregation between the sexes through selective readings of Quranic texts. These feminists call for a return to the original texts without the heavily documented intermediary fiqh (overwhelmingly male) religious accretions because of the latter’s gender-biased ‘additions’ to the texts. It is felt that the source of bias comes from women’s absence in the interpretation of the texts. Bennani and Maadi (2000) argue that from the beginning of the Fourth Century of the Hegira ‘Muslim year’, al-Ijtihad was distanced from the original sacred texts and depended more on the interpretations of the powerful Imams ‘male religious leaders’. Four of these Imams initiated their own Islamic madahibs ‘religious schools’ which came to be known as Maliki, Hanafi, ∫afiwi, and Hanbali (after the names of the Imams). As a result, imitation of what the Imams said replaced genuine al-Ijtihad and many issues relating to the conditions of women were deliberately falsified or simply ignored. Liberal feminists also argue that, situated within their overall historical context, the original sacred texts constituted a project to build a new society, and as in all pioneering projects, the question of women was crucial for the success of the project. The Quranic texts which dealt with women were indeed revolutionary in their time. When it first appeared, the Quran was a project to improve women’s position in society and fight men’s conceptualizations of women. In fact, before Islam, girls used to be buried alive in time of famine and women were inherited like goods. By abolishing these practices, Islam highlighted women’s ‘humanity’, limited the number of wives a man could have (men married as many as they could), etc. It is only by

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understanding these facts within their historical context that we can understand why in most cases men are addressed in the Quran. Indeed, the discourse of Islam was mainly geared towards men when dealing with matters like divorce, custody, etc. not because men were ‘preferred’ to women, but because men were the ones that wronged women and, thus, needed to change their views and practices. At a deeper level, Moroccan liberal feminists problematize women’s situation vis-à-vis Islam in the following terms: the social situation of women in Morocco, and the Arab-Muslim world at large, raises questions from the perspective of human rights, the most important of which concerns the type of relation between, on the one hand, women’s position in society and the extent to which women benefit from the rights agreed upon in the international conventions that Morocco has signed, and on the other hand, a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’. This is an exceedingly complex question where issues of ‘identity’ and a growing awareness of human rights intermingle and often clash. The biggest hurdle when dealing with women’s human rights is the way Muslims have traditionally conceptualized women’s position within their overall conceptualization of an Islamic society. In such a situation, the use of al-Ijtihad offers a smooth transition between the universal and the local. al-Ijtihad is a clear statement that Islamic practices are culture and time-bound. In Bennani and Maadi (2000), the selected verses (ayaat) from the Quran and from the sayings of the Prophet (al-Hadiith) that were given as cornerstones of establishing a new Islamic society are verses where equality between men and women so far as dignity (al-karamah), origin (al-aSl ), and cognitive power are clearly stated. In these verses, the only means of differentiating between people is faith (at-taqwaa). Many of these texts accord women political rights and active participation in the establishment of Islam, as well as in public decision-making. Women’s cultural and economic rights, as well as the right to be educated and to produce knowledge, to work, and to organize society according to new developments and changing times, places, and circumstances, have also been cited. Liberal feminists call for a re-reading of the messages of Islam, especially those that have been either forgotten or deliberately ignored in the male-biased interpretations of the Quran. Moroccan liberal feminists and human rights associations have been deeply concerned with women’s place in society and have denounced the fact that in the name of Islam, many conservative groups are showing resistance to change and improvement. It is in

    

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the name of Islam that changes of clauses in al-Mudawwanah that are no longer valid in present-day Morocco are suggested. These clauses treat women as second class citizens and stand in contradiction to both the spirit of a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’ and to reality. The major concerns of Moroccan liberal feminists in the last few years have been to denounce the heavily male-biased images of women in the fundamentalist discourse and to change al-Mudawwanah with an aim of securing more social, political, and legal rights for women. Liberal feminists call for a return to the core universal messages of the Quran to counterbalance the arguments of the Islamists and pass on the message that all Moroccans are Muslim. These feminists also pass on the message that they, like the male ‘religious legislators’, can use religious argumentation in support of their position. Indeed, liberal feminists have demonstrated that history contributed to the establishment of women as essentially domestic beings by erasing the historical records of the glorious eras of Islam when women had real political power. In this way, liberal feminists have appropriated parts of the religious discourse and infused it with new meanings without erasing the strong religiosity with which the term al-Ijtihad is imbued. They seek the authorial voice of religion (which is here feminine), and this constitutes a shift whereby women re-author religious discourse by stripping it from the monologic metonymy (al-Ijtihad has always been male) and turning it into dialogic plurality (both men and women can interpret the Quran). In this way, liberal feminists challenge the moral and political canons that associate religious judgements (al-fatawi ) with men only. Although it requires alignment with the dominant discourse, such a feminine revoicing of sacred texts inscribes a feminine presence in a male domain by expanding it. However, a question remains without a clear answer in the current debates on Moroccan liberal feminism: who sets the limits of text interpretation? knowing that the four major schools of interpretation (al-madahib) do not always agree. As the schools of Quranic interpretation belong to Islamic jurisprudence, the difference between Islamic thought and Islamic jurisprudence is still blurred when dealing with women’s issues. The first is universal and fair to women whereas the second is subject to patriarchal dictates. Even if women interpret the Quranic texts, the power of their word, that is, their ‘religious language’, is still weaker than that of men. For example, the Quranic interpretations of the Egyptian feminist writer Nawal Saadaawi have been recently discredited by the official national mufti

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(religious legislator) in Egypt as ‘illegitimate’. This raises the issue of who is qualified to interpret Quranic texts. The history of Islam tells us that women did participate in the interpretation of the Quranic texts at the time of the Prophet, but in today’s Moroccan situation, such a practice has not been publicly attested yet. Present-day Moroccan liberal feminists underline the necessity to read Quranic texts from a universal human rights’ perspective. The aim of such a reading is to adopt the Quranic texts to the presentday historical circumstances and create, in addition to the adoption of universal laws, another socially and culturally viable reference. The viability of this reference is guaranteed by the fact that it emanates from the deep-rooted components of Moroccan culture. In fact, the various interpretations of Quranic texts, have always answered the specific social needs of particular historical phases. The interpretation of Quranic texts, as well as the use of Standard Arabic, in such contexts, should not constitute an exclusively male domain. It is indeed inevitable to reconcile feminism with religious text interpretation in the Moroccan socio-cultural context because this context makes any discussion, let alone promotion, of ‘laicity’ non-viable in the present phase of Moroccan history. On the other hand, more and more liberal and religious feminists in Morocco think that even if al-Mudawwanah is changed, there are too many other areas of law and society that still await change to achieve equality between men and women. Women can be imprisoned for 6 months for having a child out of wedlock; they cannot work after 10 p.m., and there is very little recourse for female victims of rape. al-Mudawwanah cannot save women from domestic abuse and it will not help rape victims. Education, however, can do all these things. Although the debate on al-Mudawwanah is crucial in Moroccan women’s struggle for more rights and equal status with men in society, law, economics, and politics, the teaching of girls and women to read and write will facilitate their entry into the economic sector of society and, thus, change their position in society. At the present phase in Moroccan history, the targets of both liberal and religious feminists is to ‘gain’ the sympathy of the larger non-politicized Islamic portions of the Moroccan population. This process is still in the making and it will surely be deeply influenced by both the internal changes (the new king, the irreversible process of modernization) and the extremely important and dramatic events that are taking place in the world (September 11th, Afghanistan,

    

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Palestine, and Iraq). Both internal and external events will affect the future of feminism in Morocco. Whatever the outcome of these events, it is important to always remember that the themes, genres, and modes that Moroccan liberal and religious feminists use, as well as the ways they practice self and use languages, have emerged at the contested margins of patriarchy, religion, class, and modernism. G The geographical position of Morocco is important in understanding Moroccan ‘plural’ culture (cf. Khatibi 1983). Morocco is the Westernmost of the North African countries; it is situated at the crossroads between Africa and Europe, a fact which provides it with both African and European characteristics. Although Morocco has always been considered part of the East by Westerners, it is the most accessible to the West; it is the first stop for many Western European travelers who often consider it the prototypical African, Arab, and Muslim country. Morocco’s geographical position explains three gender-related facts: religious tolerance, cultural heterogeneity and linguistic complexity. Compared to some Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco is more open to cross-cultural exchanges, including a European mainstream perception of gender roles. Morocco is marginal to both the Arab-Muslim world and the other countries of North Africa, namely Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. Morocco’s appellation al-Maghrib al-AqSaa ‘farthest west’ refers mainly to its geographical position. Morocco is farther west than any country in Western Europe except Ireland. Many of the customs and foods that are known in all the Eastern countries that fell under the Ottoman empire, are not known in Morocco which resisted Turkish rule. Consequently, Morocco’s culture is more influenced by African and European ways of life than with Middle Eastern cultures. Although Morocco is not home to any holy places of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism, and although it has not produced the grand art and literature of the ancient Arab-Muslim era, Moroccan art and literature are recognized as a special ‘genre’ which is different from Arabic literature, broadly speaking, and even from the Francophone literature of North Africa. The permeability of Morocco’s geographical borders and its diverse population have allowed a flexible view of gender roles and a more

 

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favorable attitude towards change in these roles. This is linked to Moroccans’ tolerant use of European languages. This flexibility counterbalances the rigid patriarchal views and correlates with modernistic ones. It also explains the fact that Morocco has not experienced severe versions of Islamic extremism and fanaticism as has neighboring Algeria, for example. Compared to some Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco has always been characterized and blessed by tolerance towards public religious practices. I Like history and geography, Islam is a pillar of Moroccan culture. Islam was introduced in Morocco in the year 712 A.D. and it has ever since been the official State religion.8 Morocco is defined in the Constitution as an Islamic monarchy. This is symbolized by the King’s status as the head of the executive power and Amir al-Muminin ‘Commander of the Faithful’. The official Islamic school in Morocco is the Sunni Maliki 9 school (madhab), itself based on a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’. Islam as Culture Morocco’s proximity to Europe has promoted a spirit of tolerance in the way Islam is conceived and practiced in Morocco. For example, of all Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco has always been the most tolerant towards its Jewish population, even during the most critical moments of the tension between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East. This may be due to the fact that in the Moroccan context, Islam has never been daily threatened by the presence of Christianity or Judaism, as has been the case in the Middle East, where Islam coexists and even ‘competes’ with these two religions.10 This might explain the fact that veiling, for example, appeared in the Middle East before it appeared in the Maghreb, as a means of protecting a ‘threatened’ identity. When dealing with Islam and modernity, it is crucial to differentiate between Islam as ‘faith’ and Islam as ‘culture’. Islam as faith is per8

Islam was the official religion of both Arab and Berber ruling dynasties. The Sunni Maliki school is relatively moderate. According to Maier (1996: 15), Sunni Muslims make up officially 99.97% of the Moroccan population. 10 It is true, however, that there are Jewish and Christian Moroccans, but these are relatively much smaller in number than Muslims. 9

    

41

ceived as a personal relationship between an individual and God, and Islam as culture is perceived as part and parcel of Moroccans’ overall identity (whether they practice Islam or not). The strong cultural identity aspect of Islam is apparent in many strong icons of Moroccan social life. For example, almost all aspects of Moroccan social behavior are religious in origin and nature, such as greetings and leave-takings, as well as rituals that accompany the celebration of marriage, birth, circumcision, funerals, etc. Islam interacts with other aspects of Moroccan culture (cf. Eickelman 1976, Geertz 1979). It is perceived and practiced in a way that is peculiar to the Moroccan socio-cultural context in the sense that Islamic principles are ‘translated’ into the Moroccan local culture and have become impregnated by it. This is attested in the ‘classical style’ of Moroccan Islam, as opposed to the ‘national style’ of Indonesian Islam (cf. Geertz 1971), for example. As Geertz notes, these differences are exhibited in the shape of mosques, dress, and ritual practices, and are due to the fact Morocco and Indonesia constitute the farthest geographical limits of the Muslim area. Thus, although Islam is basically the same throughout the Muslim world, it is lived and manifested differently in different cultures. As a religion in a patriarchal society, Moroccan Islam is closely linked to Standard Arabic, rather than Moroccan Arabic or Berber. The relationship between ‘gender’, as a modern analytical tool, and Islam is tightly linked to the relationship between feminism and Islam. As was stated earlier, liberal feminists prone feminism with Islam as Islam is part and parcel of Moroccan culture and is, thus, embodied in the feminists’ secular orientation. Islam is also present in the feminists’ use of ‘nation’ and ‘State’ when framing their agendas. Nation and State are inherent in the concept of Umma ‘nation’ which is based on religion as a linking thread and which identifies Moroccan women as belonging to a specific Arab-Muslim Umma. As such, the ‘Ummatic’ space is used by liberal feminists as an analytical category. O Orality is an important component of Moroccan culture which deeply differentiates it from mainstream Western culture. In Moroccan culture, speech carries greater significance than writing in regulating everyday life, as communication is mainly channelled through unwritten languages. As Moroccan culture is deeply based on collective self,

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the views of others count and carry social meaning. For example, oral blessings, profanity, curses, insults, etc. are more consequential in Moroccan culture than in Western culture. These oral ways of expressing the self are not mere words; they carry genuine positive or negative values and regulate behavior in no trivial way. The importance of speech in Moroccan culture is also attested in the fact that conversation is perceived as a means of bonding between people. Speech in Moroccan culture is inherently dependent on the private and public dichotomy. Public and private speeches are two distinct acts: whereas the former is geared towards keeping appearances and, thus, is far from reflecting facts, the latter is more personal and direct. The unique place of orality in Morocco is largely due to the fact that the two mother tongues used in this country (Moroccan Arabic and Berber) are oral. The tight link between non-written mother tongues and orality positions the latter at the center of the Moroccan speech community’s sensory experience. As such, orality becomes a powerful system of communication that deeply shapes the way visual and non-visual representations of cultural roles, among which gender roles, are constructed, maintained and perpetuated in Moroccan culture. Being related to seeing and hearing, orality is a valuable source of information and constitutes a strong vehicle of cultural values. Orality is also closely related to illiteracy and to women as the vast majority of the latter are illiterate and do not have access to print and electronic texts. These women express their inner self, transmit various types of knowledge to their children, and communicate with the world outside home exclusively through the oral medium. The written medium is generally perceived by these women as alien; and even when the written languages (Standard Arabic and French) are used orally in the audio-visual media, these women do not readily identify with these languages because they generally do not understand movie broadcasts on TV and television programs. Most of them identify with Egyptian films because the latter are channelled through the typically oral Egyptian dialect. Orality has a dual status in Morocco: it is simultaneously both a ‘degenerate’, ‘vulgar’, ‘lower class’ medium of expression, and a powerful symbol of identity and authenticity. The negative attitude to orality resides in the fact that it is transmitted by non-prestigious mother tongues. The positive attitude to orality emanates from the fact that it distinguishes Moroccan culture from Western literate cultures and is seen as an identity aspect in cross-cultural encounters.

    

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The power of lkelma ‘the oral word’ is attested in many deep aspects of Moroccan culture, such as marriage contracts, business contracts, and even legacies after death. These contracts were, up to relatively recent times, based exclusively on the oral medium. In present-day Moroccan society, lkelma, more precisely lkelma d rrajel ‘the oral word of a man’, still has authority, especially in rural areas. The dual status of orality in the Moroccan socio-cultural context is deeply related to the ambiguous status of women in Moroccan culture. Oral Literature Oral literature is strong and alive in Morocco. Oral storytellers are seen in the market places and cafes, as well as in homes, the Quran is learned by rote, the call to prayer is publicly announced five times a day orally, and centuries-old poetry is recited even among illiterate people. Oral literature is seen as the most authentic and unWesternized type of literature in Morocco although up to recent times, written literature was considered the only prestigious ‘literary’ form. In present times, oral literature is receiving more and more attention within the trend of the new historicism, which is closely linked to realism and which is supported by psychological and sociological accounts of everyday facts. Oral literature, such as oral histories and folktales, covers a broad range of social writings. A growing number of Moroccan intellectuals are re-claiming oral literature as a typically Moroccan medium of expression. Moroccan Arabic and Berber are more and more used in public spaces such as the media. The place of Berber in Moroccan oral literature is central given the historicity of this language. Efforts are being made at the highest official level to preserve the Berber oral literature. The symbolic formations and the systems of representations that are transmitted by oral literature are so authentic and revealing that they may be qualified as a new subversive genre. Oral literature is full of the mysteries that are dismissed by Western modernism: demons and other supernatural agents intervening in the lives of humans, ecstatic dreams, miracle cures, and ‘superstition’.11 Oral literature is continually presented, represented, and exhibited in a recursive way as the images and symbols constituting the core system of Moroccan cultural themes tend to recur in an infinite number of distinct and 11

Westerners tend to offer psychological or sociological accounts of such phenomena.

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original expressions, exhibitions, and texts. The representations in oral literature are often combinations of these cultural themes. Oral literature is generally associated with women in Morocco. Moroccan society assigns the role of guarding oral literature to women and expects them to carry out this role in the process of raising their children by keeping and transmitting the traditions that characterize Moroccan culture, and by maintaining and symbolizing these traditions. Moroccan women are conscious of the significance of this role and they use oral literature to express their inner selves. Oral literature falls outside the ‘official’ literature of Morocco and is both more complex and less accessible than it. This literature is in most cases produced by poor illiterate men and women who do not have an official voice. This literature is marginalized because it does not meet the needs of Moroccan society, among which using the written medium stands out. From a feminist point of view, women’s oral literature highlights the tension between the written and the oral discourses in Morocco and makes ordinary ‘trivial’ texts problematize canonical texts by claiming that just as women have a specific way of writing (in Cixous’ sense), they have a specific way of ‘speaking’ and ‘telling’. This female way of speaking displaces the laws of both gender and genre (cf. Kapchan 1996). Critical assumptions, historical circumstances, and ideologies are not sympathetic to women’s oral literature. This fact has deeply affected the ability of men and women to appreciate female oral literature. The way Moroccan women express themselves (orally or in writing) needs to be seen against the general socio-cultural context in which they live. Many women were and are misunderstood and, hence, distanced from the canon-building; these women emerged at the margin of Moroccan society and were/are doubly ‘other’: as women and as individuals who live a peculiar tension between the oral and the written mediums. M Like orality, multilingualism is a defining component of Moroccan culture. An understanding of gender role conception in Moroccan culture necessitates a prior understanding of the overall linguistic situation in this country, as well as the way languages are used by men and women. The linguistic situation in Morocco is complex as

    

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it not only involves a variety of languages but also highlights the social meanings of oppositions such as mother tongue/learned languages, oral/written languages, prestigious/non-prestigious languages, etc. The complexity of this linguistic situation is a result of Morocco’s historical background and geographical position. The languages used in Morocco neither have the same status nor the same symbolic value in the local linguistic market (cf. Elbiad 1985, Boukous 1995, and Ennaji 1991). The Status of the Main Languages in Morocco Four main languages are used in Morocco: Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Berber, and French. In addition to these, Spanish is used in the north of Morocco and English is gaining ground especially in large cities (cf. Sadiqi 1991). Two of the main languages used in Morocco are written: Standard Arabic and French, and two are oral: Berber and Moroccan Arabic. In contrast with the written medium, which is basically monologic, the oral medium is essentially dialogic. Both mediums have their approved styles, vocabularies, organizing conventions, patterns and length of turns or texts. Whereas the written medium is often characterized by formal style, sophisticated vocabulary, longer and complete sentences, and absence of repetition, the oral medium is characterized by informal or casual style, everyday vocabulary, shorter and sometimes unfinished sentences, as well as repetition. Each of the languages used in Morocco has specific functions which are largely determined by its status as oral or written. An overview of each of the main languages, as well as the various situations in which they are used, helps explain gender perception in Morocco. Berber Berber is the oldest language in Morocco and indeed in North Africa. Historians agree that Moroccans have a predominantly Berber origin (cf. Ayache 1964, Laroui 1977, Chafik 1987, among others). Berber is a Hamito-Semitic language (cf. Cohen 1947, Basset 1952, Galand 1966).12 It used to be written, but in present times, it is oral in the sense that it does not have its own alphabet.13 Berber may, 12 13

Berber is genetically related to Ancient Egyptian, Kushistic, Chadic, and Semitic. This alphabet was called ‘Tifinagh’, but it is not widely known or used.

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however, be written by means of Arabic or Latin characters. Three major varieties of Berber are found in Morocco: Tashelhit in the south, Tamazight in the center, and Tarifit in the north. The three Berber varieties have, roughly speaking, the same morpho-syntactic structure but more or less different lexicons and phonologies, a fact which hinders their inter-comprehensibility. The variety of Berber that is used in this book is spoken in the region of Azilal. It combines characteristics of both Tashelhit and Tamazight (cf. Sadiqi 1986, 1997a). Berber is the mother tongue of almost half of the Moroccan population (cf. Boukous 1995, Ennaji 1997, Sadiqi 1997a). It is not, up to now, a language of education or commerce.14 However, although Berber has neither a written form nor a strong written parent language, it has survived from ancient times because of its historicity, as well as its dynamism and vitality. Berber is more used in rural than in urban areas. In towns and cities, Berber is mainly used in informal and intimate situations such as the family and among close friends. It is also allocated limited space in the audio-visual media, namely the radio and television. On a wider level, Berber functions as a symbol of Moroccan identity and difference from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries. Being a typical indigenous language, Berber embodies a huge oral culture where women have an important place. This culture comprises poems, folktales, songs, etc. The way in which the components ‘Berber’ and ‘Arab’ intermingled throughout the history of Morocco is very complex. Although many Berber dynasties ruled Morocco (for example the Barghwatas, the Almohads, and the Almoravids), Morocco’s Berber affiliation has never been made official; the official language of Islamic courts has always been Standard Arabic. Starting from the mid-1990s, Morocco’s official policy on the Berber issue has been positive. On August 21, 1994, late King Hassan II officially advocated the teaching of Berber in primary schools. This was followed by TV broadcasting of news in the three Berber dialects. On October 17, 2001, King Mohamed VI created the Royal Institute for Berber culture. However, there are many factors which do not encourage a rapid growth of Berber in Morocco, such as the Arabization of scientific subjects (mathematics and sciences) in primary and secondary schools. This Arabization was first fervent in the 1970s and 1980s and started to cool off as more and more voices rose to condemn it as a political means of 14

Except in the south of Morocco where it is widely used in commerce.

    

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distancing the lower classes from powerful French. This Arabization proceeded with varying and debatable success (cf. Grandguillaume 1983). Indeed, many fervent supporters of Arabization have been and are still sending their children to prestigious French-style schools. Further, the Berbers, who used French before Independence and whose knowledge of Standard Arabic is barely sufficient, have not profited from Arabization. Given its overall status, Berber has the lowest share in the linguistic market in Morocco at the symbolic level although it has always been a strong component of Moroccan culture. Berber has been preserved in Morocco mainly as a strong icon of local identity. The cultural strength of Berber is attested in the fact that during the colonization of Morocco, the French issued the so-called ‘Berber Decree’ (Dahir Berbère) in 1935 in an attempt to break the cultural and linguistic solidarity between Berbers and Arabs during the French Protectorate. The decree was an effort to buy off the Berbers with a divide-and-conquer strategy, offering them far more than just a way to avoid Arabic-medium schools. At the same time, it required more of them—a willingness to live under the French legal system (rather than the Islamic one). According to this decree, Berbers would attend schools where only Berber and French, but not Arabic, would be used. This decree was strongly opposed by Moroccan nationalists, who reacted by establishing private Muslim schools, based on an ArabMuslim education, in which French was taught as a foreign language. Standard Arabic Standard Arabic is a relatively ‘modern’ version of what is usually referred to as ‘Classical Arabic’, the language of the Holy Quran, as well as a very ancient body of venerated poetry. Classical Arabic, which later developed into Standard Arabic, was introduced in Morocco at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth centuries from the East and Islamic Iberia. At the present time, Standard Arabic is the official language of Morocco. It is used in the key formal and powerful domains, namely religion, government, education, and the media. It has great prestige as the ‘language of God’ and as the unifying language at the levels of the Arab world (al-Umma al-warabiyyah) and the Muslim world (al-Umma al-Islaamiyyah). It is also a symbol of identity, especially outside Morocco and the Arab world. Given its status in Morocco, Standard Arabic has the greatest share of prestige in the linguistic market in Morocco (cf. Boukous 1995, Ennaji 1997).

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Moroccan Arabic Moroccan Arabic or darija15 shares many linguistic aspects with Standard Arabic. However, most linguistic work about the history of Arabic dialects does not derive them from even Classical Arabic; rather, it sees Classical Arabic and the dialects as having a common ancestor. Indeed, much of this work doubts that Classical Arabic was ever really spoken as a language of daily life (Walters, personal communication). In its present-day form, Moroccan Arabic has lost much of its morpho-syntactic, lexical, and phonological resemblance to Standard Arabic (cf. Ennaji and Sadiqi, forthcoming). Like Berber, Moroccan Arabic is not a homogeneous language in form, as various Moroccan Arabic dialects are spoken in various geographical areas of Morocco. However, given the fact that unlike Berber, Moroccan Arabic is the lingua franca in Morocco, its wider use reduced the inter-dialect differences and allowed inter-comprehensibility between the Moroccan Arabic dialects. Thus, the major varieties of Moroccan Arabic, namely the Shamali variety in the north, the Fassi variety in the center, the Rabat/Casablanca variety around these two cities, the Marrakshi/Agadiri variety in the south, and the Hassaniya variety in the Sahara, are more or less mutually intelligible. Compared to Middle Eastern and even Maghrebi dialectal Arabics, Moroccan Arabic is considered the most deviant version of Standard Arabic, as it is the farthest west from the Middle Eastern ‘pure’ Arabic. Linguistically, this ‘deviance’ is attested in the remarkable compression of vowels, the great phonological variation, and the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order, as opposed to the typical VSO word order of Standard Arabic. The great influence of Berber on Moroccan Arabic at the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels are largely responsible for this ‘deviance’. Nowadays, Moroccan Arabic is the mother tongue of the dominant majority of Moroccans, except those living in remote mountainous areas where only Berber is used. Being a mother tongue, Moroccan Arabic is characterized by the vitality and dynamism of languages that are used in everyday interaction. Although Moroccan Arabic is not used in education, it is used in family circles, among friends, in commerce, on television, in the theatre, and in the cinema. As for the relation of Moroccan Arabic to Berber, it is based 15 darija is derived from the Standard Arabic verb daraja which means ‘be spread among’ or ‘proceed gradually’.

    

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on heavy symmetrical inter-influence. Moroccan cities and villages cannot be categorized as exclusively Berberphone or Arabophone as both Berber and Moroccan Arabic are used in them. Inter-marriages between Berbers and Arabs made of Morocco a linguistically and culturally complex speech community. However, the public urban culture is predominantly Arabic and not Berber although there are cities whose overall cultural (and linguistic) outlook is predominantly Berber such as Agadir, Azrou, Ouarzazate, Khenifra, and Nador. Although both Moroccan Arabic and Berber are considered dialects in Morocco, the lingua franca status of Moroccan Arabic, as well as its affiliation to Standard Arabic, make the general attitude towards it more positive than the attitude towards Berber. French In 1912, France established a Protectorate in Morocco in the name of spreading civilization among the indigenous inhabitants of this part of the world. At that time, French was imposed in Morocco as the official language in administration, commerce, and the media, and it is mainly through this language that France channelled its cultural and educational lasting impact and established its overall sovereignty in Morocco. In present times, after almost half a century of Morocco’s independence, French is still very powerful in Morocco. Whether explicitly stated or implicitly understood, French is considered Morocco’s window on the West. Five factors contributed to the maintenance of French: (i) Morocco’s economic dependence on France, (ii) social factors (the requirement of French in the job market, especially in the private sector), (iii) historical factors, (iv) migration, and (v) tourism. It is in the domain of education that French has the most prestigious place in Morocco. This language is associated with the secular educational system in Morocco. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, French has always been the language of the secularly literate, and the decision-makers. Even with the advent of Arabization after independence, French remained in the educational system, especially at the university level and in private education. French is also the language of national bureaucracy and centralization. This strong position of French in Morocco has given rise to bilingualism (Arabic/Berber and French) and to code-switching. French has now the status of a ‘second language’ in Morocco. It is heavily used in the administrative sector, business, commerce, government, the military, the police,

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and the media. Although it is the language of the colonizer, French is considered a symbol of modernism and social ascension in Morocco, and, hence, has a prestigious share in the Moroccan linguistic market. Spanish Spanish was introduced in Morocco in the Seventeenth Century. In spite of 300 years of presence in the country, Spanish has had much less impact on Moroccan culture than French. The reason for this state of affairs is that unlike French, Spanish has not been used as a means of communication, except in the North by Rifian Berbers and in the Wad al-Dhahab region where it has had some effect (the Spanish did not formally withdraw from the latter region until 1975). Nowadays, the younger generations in the north of Morocco use Spanish less and less. Further, unlike French, Spanish has never been used in the Moroccan administration and its use in the educational system has remained limited. English English was introduced in Morocco during World War II when Americans established military bases to link them to battlegrounds in Europe. The presence of English has been greatly enhanced by tourism, the movies, music, and now globalization. The international status of English as the language of science and technology, business, cyberspace, and research, even by French educated Moroccans, has also contributed to the spread of English (cf. Sadiqi 1991). Nowadays, English has supplanted Spanish in economy and education, and is competing with French in education. English is the fastest growing European language in Morocco. It is considered by most Moroccans as the language of the future as it attracts more and more young people. The new American-style University of AlAkhawayn has greatly boosted the status of English in Morocco. Language Interaction in Morocco: Diglossia The languages used in Morocco interact in an interesting way. Berber, Moroccan Arabic, Spanish and English are in competition with French and Standard Arabic. Among the salient characteristics of this interaction is diglossia. The notion of diglossia was first introduced in the field of linguistics by Marçais (1930) and elaborated by Ferguson (1959). Diglossia roughly means that two varieties of the

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same language are used in two mutually exclusive sets of domains: a ‘High’ set and a ‘Low’ set.16 Diglossia is, thus, based on the premise that various functions of languages in a given socio-cultural context determine their social meanings, as well as the social attitudes to these meanings. Morocco, a multilingual country, provides a good example of diglossia where a High variety (Standard Arabic) and a Low one (Moroccan Arabic) are used in different domains. Whereas the former is used in prestigious domains like the mosque, government, and the media, the latter is used in informal and less prestigious domains like the family, work, and the street. Ennaji (1991) and Youssi (1995) argue that the Moroccan linguistic situation is so complex that one might speak of ‘triglossia’ (use of three varieties) instead of diglossia (use of two varieties). They suggest that there are at least three varieties of Arabic: Classical Arabic, Standard Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic. The first is the ‘High’ variety, the second the ‘intermediate or middle’ variety, and the third the ‘Low’ variety. Classical Arabic is high because it vehicles a long history of literacy and scholarship, in addition to the fact that the Quran was revealed in it. Standard Arabic, the intermediate variety, is both codified and standardized and is used in education, the media and administration. The main distinction between Classical and Standard Arabic stems from the fact that the latter is less rigid and more flexible on the phonological, morphological and syntactic levels. Moroccan Arabic is the low variety in the sense that it is neither codified nor standardized; it is the variety spoken by the vast majority of the Moroccan population. Berbers learn it as a first or second language. Moroccans who are not Berber learn it as a first language. For both the masses and the intelligentsia, Moroccan Arabic is a ‘debased’ form of Classical/Standard Arabic. However, the lexicon of Moroccan Arabic is quite distinct from that of Standard Arabic—it has been adapted to the needs of contemporary life. Although Berber has more or less the same general status as Moroccan Arabic, it does not enter the diglossic or triglossic use of language varieties in Morocco as it has no codified or ‘high’ distinct variety. The above overview of the present-day linguistic situation in Morocco is interesting from a gender point of view: it disempowers 16 The terms ‘High’ and ‘Low’ are technical terms which roughly refer to ‘prestigious’ and ‘non-prestigious’, respectively.

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women in two ways: (i) Berber, as an oral language of home and family will be more and more restricted to these private spheres if Berber is not written and taught at school, and (ii) Standard Arabic, the official language, puts French, a language that women use more than men in urban areas, to a disadvantage. As a result, Moroccan women are doubly disempowered in the sense that to be educated necessitates proficiency in Standard Arabic, and to be uneducated means total exclusion from public power. The Status of Multilingualism in the Moroccan Socio-Cultural Context Unlike in the Middle Eastern cultures where multilingualism is often considered a threat to Arab unity and identity, multilingualism is perceived in Moroccan culture as a positive identity-builder. It is highly valued and generally perceived as a way of increasing the individual’s potential for communication and a way of opening up horizons for him/her so far as jobs and social ascension are concerned. Indeed, the mastery and use of more than one language brings social power to language users in Morocco. In the private sector, knowledge of French and/or English is an absolutely necessary requirement. Intellectuals perceive multilingualism as a means of knowing better oneself, as well as one’s own language(s) and culture, and as a source of social capital and a basis of tolerance toward others. Being a power-related factor in Morocco, multilingualism has social meaning and is important in gender perception and construction. Its importance stems from its correlation with class and level of education: the more economically privileged and educated a person is the more likely s/he is to be multilingual, and the poorer and uneducated one is, the less likely s/he is to be multilingual (cf. Elbiad 1985, Lahlou 1991, Boukous 1995, and Ennaji 1997). If Moroccan women are taken as a group, then the most economically privileged sections are likely to be bi-, if not multi-, lingual as they use the spoken and written varieties of Standard Arabic, French and/or English in addition to Berber and/or Moroccan Arabic. Women who speak only Berber and/or Moroccan Arabic usually belong to the lower classes and are at a disadvantage at the level of communication in comparison to middle and upper class women. Monolingual women who speak either Berber or Moroccan Arabic are illiterate in the majority of cases; these women usually live in remote rural villages. Within the overall Moroccan social context,

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monolingual women are socially perceived as constituting the most disadvantaged portion of the population (cf. Sadiqi and Ennaji, forthcoming). However, these women may be empowered in the local communities where they live: they work inside their homes and in the fields, they support their families and travel from village to village. Given this overall state of affairs, Moroccan women are fully aware that mastering more than one language is a means of improving their personal and social condition. Educated women are conscious that it is only through knowledge of written languages that they can compare their condition with that of other men and women, reflect critically upon their situation within society, and extend their cognitive and functional knowledge. They know that multilingualism broadens women’s horizons and allows collective emancipatory action. They also know that literacy and social ascencion in Morocco depend greatly on the knowledge and use of prestigious languages. As a result, Moroccan women make specific empowering choices of language according to circumstances and situations: if they are illiterate, they use an oral language and may express themselves through poetry, folktales, or songs, and if they are educated, they use the strategy of code-switching to score gains in conversation and force positive attitude. These uses are conceived of as strategies of communication which aim at valorizing women and making them gain social prestige. S O Of all the components of Moroccan culture, it is social organization that has the strongest impact on gender perception and gender construction. Men and women in Morocco evolve within the same social and cultural context and cultural discourses are constantly circulating and affect their speech and behavior. These discourses are not internalized and reproduced mechanically; they filter through an ‘active’ reproduction mechanism where social organization plays a key role. Moroccan society is built on clear role assignment for men and women. These roles are meant to guarantee the structure and functioning of society. Control over men’s and women’s behavior is ensured through a set of three substantive designata: (i) rituals, (ii) the codes of honor and morality, and (iii) the concept of ‘collective self ’. These three designata are ‘created’, ‘fostered’ and ‘perpetuated’

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in the unit of the Moroccan social organization: family. Family in Morocco is in most cases agnatic and patriarchal, but it is nowadays becoming more complex. Moroccan family structure is generally headed by the father and the father’s male lineage and is legally founded on blood relations; ‘natural’ affiliation (that is, cases where women, usually very young, give birth to a child whose father is not known) and adoption are strictly prohibited by law through exclusion from inheritance. However, society is more lenient toward adoption, as there are adoptions within extended families at least, where a barren couple will raise a niece (or more likely a nephew) as their own. The patriarchal system is built on the exclusion of women from spaces of public power and by the sanction of all forms of physical and moral violence against them in these spaces. Women’s freedom is seen as a challenge to the patriarchal social fabric and men’s status quo. It is in the family that women are initiated into their role of guardians of social organization. This initiation is channelled through a rigid system of kinship relations, a battery of traditions and rituals, and taboo. This channelling is largely achieved through the use of language. Given this state of affairs, it is only within the Moroccan social organization framework that gender role assignment and subversion can be understood. Rituals Rituals may be defined as the sum of patterned actions and utterances that characterize meaningful cultural events. They are usually remnants of past practices or symbols of socially significant acts and words. Being relatively fixed and less resistant to change than everyday interactions, rituals often explain the historical and actual meanings of social practices. Rituals are inherently oral and culture-bound. As culture is the sum of values, symbols, and norms which differentiate one society from another, rituals are a means to preserve these values, symbols, and norms and transmit them from generation to generation (cf. Westermarck 1921, Jamous 1981). As such, rituals have an integrating role, and because they are often surrounded by superstition, they have power on the individual. Schneider (1993) qualifies the rituals that accompany significant cultural events as ‘enchanting’ not only for anthropologists, but also for the members of the commu-

    

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nity which produce them. They operate profoundly through gestures, words, and exchanged icons in special events. These rituals are crystallized in the rites around which social life and life cycles are articulated. Rituals are usually celebrated in family and social feasts which both enchant people and generate meanings. The power of these meanings resides in the fact that they carry a practical ideology which operates through daily activities. For example, in ritualized settings, the way one dresses, eats, celebrates an event, etc. is part of culture and constitutes a channel through which the fundamental norms regulating the status of each sex are rigidly respected. They dictate ways of being man or woman on the body, on the memory, and in the imagination of individuals. The most significant rituals in Moroccan culture are the ones that accompany three important family events: marriage, birth, and circumcision of male children. Marriage Rituals Marriage rituals in Morocco are based on ancestral traditions and Islamic practices (cf. Westrmarck 1921, Justinard 1948, Alahyane 1987). Two elements are indispensable for the validity of a Muslim marriage: the pronouncement of the appropriate linguistic formula in the presence of lewdul ‘the marriage contractors’ and the SSdaq/mahr ‘the sum of money that the future groom pays to the family of the future bride’. Of these two requirements, it is the linguistic formula that is more important. The marriage formula is made up of the groom’s offer and the bride’s father’s (or male tutor’s) acceptance. The words of the offer must use a term implying marriage, such as jewwejt-ak lbent wla sunnati llahi wa rasulih ‘I married my daughter to you according to God’s and the Prophet’s Sunnah’, or alternatively a form of words implying the transfer of ownership, such as wTet-ek lbent wla sunnati llahi wa rasulih ‘I gave you the girl according to God’s and the Prophet’s Sunnah’. The implications in the latter case are more than a simple metaphor. The linguistic formula has the power of the law: lkelma bhal lwe∫ma 17 (literally ‘a word is like a tattoo’, but meaning ‘a marriage promise is definite’). No marriage contract may be valid without the ritual marriage formula. Although present and visible, women are often silent and not heard in the marriage ritual. 17 When a girl is ‘promised’ for marriage in Moroccan society, she is said to be mu∫uma ‘tattooed’ or mmelka ‘appropriated’.

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The bride’s father or, in his absence, a male close kin, speaks for ó her. In most Moroccan rituals such as l henna ‘the ceremony of hand and feet decoration of the bride and her girl friends and family with ó hhenna’ that precedes the wedding feast, men speak, women are spoó ken for. In some parts of Morocco, the groom and his friends henna the right hand. The legal status of the marriage formula is an example of the power of words in such an important social and culturally-loaded event as marriage, and the fact that it is a man who pronounces the formula reflects men’s real and symbolic ‘leading’ role. This role is reinforced by the fact that as marriage is contracted on the pronouncement of the required formula, it can be broken by the pronouncement of another formula, again pronounced by a man: the husband. In Islamic law, to repudiate a wife, the husband has only to pronounce three times the formula ?anti Taliq, nti mTelqa or llefg-am, which all mean ‘you are divorced’ in Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, respectively. The triple pronouncement of this formula is taken to have the legal power of the act of divorce, that is, it is a speech act in the sense of Austin (1962). Thus, the legal power of the marriage and divorce formulas is effective only when used by men. Indeed, being male is a precondition for the felicity of these speech acts. Accordingly, language is used in marriage contraction and divorce as a powerful channel through which male power is perpetuated. Paradoxically, a woman’s consent to marriage is necessary but need not be verbal. The bride’s oral consent (her word) is not a requirement in the marriage ritual. A woman’s silence or her crying is often considered as consent in a context where maiden bashfulness is socially favored. A further perpetuation of male power through marriage resides in the fact that the meaning of marriage in Islamic law is to protect an-nasab ‘descent’, which is in the male line. Indeed, the main function of the laws of marriage in the Islamic legal system is the protection of genealogy and property. A wife is her husband’s melk ‘property’. The Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic expressions ?imra?ah fi wuniqih/mra f wenqu, and the Berber expression TamTut g umeggerd nnes (literally ‘a woman in his neck’, but meaning ‘the husband is responsible for his wife’) are never used in the case of wives: rajul fi wuniqiha/rajel f wenqha/argaz g umeggerd nns ‘a man in her neck’ are not acceptable expressions. The husband’s ‘responsibility’ for his wife originates in the fact that in a Moroccan marriage, the idea of

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‘exchanging property’ is always present. There are two such exchanges of property: SSdaq ‘the sum of money that the future groom gives to the future bride’s family’ and nnafaqa ‘the husband’s allowance for the household maintenance’. Marriage rituals are sacred in Moroccan culture and differ greatly from rural to urban areas. In rural areas, these rituals are closer to the indigenous culture, whereas in urban areas they have been relatively ‘modernized’, that is, influenced by Western practices such as the wearing of the Western type white dress. However, in both cases, Moroccan marriage rituals are loaded with meanings in which gender roles are strictly dichotomized. In a context of happiness, excitement and joy, the groom and bride go through a ‘staged’ experience where a meaningful contrast prevails from start to end: the apparent passivity of the bride and the activity of the groom. It is also interesting to note that the Arabic and Berber words for ‘bride’, namely lawrusa and tasliyt, respectively are used for ‘doll’. There is indeed a clear association between these words and the ‘doll-like’ behavior of Moroccan brides during the marriage reception. The contrast between the groom and the bride is attested to in both words and actions and is meant to initiate the bride and groom into their roles in life. Thus, during the conclusion of the marriage contract (Drib SSdaq), which precedes the marriage ceremony, the future groom does not need to be accompanied, whereas the future bride has to be accompanied by her father, elder brother or a male relative. Even the bride’s own mother cannot act as a witness to her marriage. This may be linked to the fact that one woman cannot act as a witness in Muslim courts of law; two women are needed. Paradoxically, in scientific fields, such as medicine and engineering, a single woman’s testimony (a certificate signed by her) is valid. This is an area where the changing economic and social status of Moroccan women need to be paralleled by a change in the implementation of the law. Further, while preparing for the marriage ceremony, the groom is seen as the ‘provider’; he makes frequent visits to the bride’s house, especially to inquire about her financial needs for the ceremony. In these encounters, the talking is in most cases done between men: the groom and the bride’s father and male kin. The groom provides the SSdaq, the gifts, and the ceremony’s cost. He also traditionally moves to bring his wife from her father’s house to his. As for the bride, it is her body that is highlighted: it becomes subject to washing, making up, dressing, hand and feet-decorating, etc.

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The terminology used to refer to the groom and bride during the marriage ceremony is also revealing: the groom is called mulay SSelTan ‘Master King’; he is surrounded by wuzara ‘ministers’. The appellation mulay SSelTan recurs in most songs that are sung during the marriage ceremony. The groom is, thus, the master and king of the ceremony (cf. Combs-Schilling, 1989). As for the bride, it is her beauty that is highlighted in wedding songs and the wish that she gives her husband boys (for example, the Berber song that starts with a ttig rbbi d m irban ‘may God make her a mother of boys’). The groom’s appellation mulay SSelTan places him in a controlling position from the start; whereas emphasis on the bride’s beauty relegates her to the sole ‘reproduction’ function. In some Berber villages, the groom hits the bride with a tisila ‘traditional Moroccan male shoe’ upon her first entrance to her new home as a symbol of the wife’s submission and obedience to her husband. This again perpetuates the stereotype of male power in marriage, especially since marriage is seen in Moroccan culture as a typical ritual perpetuation of the social order. The gender roles that marriage rituals celebrate in words and acts are maintained, reinforced, and reproduced in the symbolic system of Moroccan society and culture. Once marriage is contracted, it is usually women who make every effort to protect it by invoking the baraka ‘the power/grace of God and His saints’ because they use the institution of marriage to acquire social identity and social power, especially if the husband is wealthy. The newly married woman, lawrusa (Arabic) or tasliyt (Berber), may use her new status to impose her views on her in-laws. Her power is usually measured by the amount of gold jewelry that she displays. In fact, gold in Moroccan culture is deeply associated with femininity and feminine power. Birth Rituals Another event where rituals are meant to perpetuate gender roles is the birth ceremony. In Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic, the verbs waladat and weldat ‘she gave birth’ are morphologically related to the nouns walad and weld ‘boy’, hence the linguistic (and abstract) association of birth with boys. There is also ambiguity of walad/weld as ‘child’/’son’, a fact which associates marriage and birth with boys. According to the Moroccan tradition, if a woman gives birth to a boy, the baby is welcomed by women’s ‘yu-yu’s’ ‘cries of joy’ to express the family’s happiness: three ‘yu-yu’s’ for a boy and only one

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or, preferably none, for a girl. This immediately establishes a gender hierarchy: boys are welcomed to this world; girls are not. If a woman gives birth to a boy, she is verbally praised (tbark llah wliha! ‘may God bless her!’), but if she gives birth to a girl, she is usually referred to as meskina ‘poor her!’, especially if she has already given birth to other girls. Men are seldom blamed for the absence of boys or even for sterility. Some of the names that are given to newborns are also revealó ing. The girl’s names hadda, which is used by both Berbers and ó Arabs, derive from the root hed ‘limit’ and, thus, carries the implication that the girl is hoped to be the ‘last’ one in the family. This name is usually given to the third or fourth girl in the hope of ó ó ‘limiting’ the number of girls. A variant of hadda is hadhum (literally: ‘limit them!’); this variant is more used by Arabophones. Another similar name that Arabophones use is Talia, which is derived from tali ‘last’. In some Moroccan villages, a woman who gives birth to a girl is ‘punished’ or ‘humiliated’ by putting a dead sheep’s hide at her door. Giving birth to girls may also be grounds for repudiation—or at least the taking of a second wife. Boys are socially perceived as a source of ‘public’ pride and utility; they are frequently introduced to guests, the first boy is usually referred to as waliy lwahd ‘Crown Prince’, that is, the one who will perpetuate the family’s name. As for girls, they are generally welcome only after two or three boys. Their main attributed functions within the family are to keep the brothers ‘united’, to provide affection, and help the mother at home. In Berber culture, girls are likened to the tifiyyi da i-smunun igSan ‘the meat that unites the bones in the human body’. Girls, except very young ones, are not traditionally introduced to guests, lest this is understood as an ‘offer for marriage’. Good girls do not mix with guests, and the honor of the family greatly depends on their behavior and what outsiders think of them. In some Berber villages, girls without a brother are called tilkmayyin ‘vipers’. A brother of girls is perceived as the ‘guardian of honor’ inside and outside the household. These biases against girls are reinforced by sayings which constitute a meaningful discourse: boys are said to ‘fill the house’ ‘ka wammru ddar’, whereas girls are said to ‘empty the house’ ‘ka jxwiw ddar’ by marrying into other families. Boys are, hence, associated with abundance and girls emptiness. In Berber, boys are identified as tigenjawin n ddheb ‘golden spoons’, a symbol of wealth.

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Circumcision Rituals The third ritual-dependent event in Moroccan society is the circumcision of boys. Unlike in Egypt and the Sudan, only boys are circumcised in Morocco. According to Islam, all Muslim men need to be circumcised and Muslim women are forbidden to marry men that are not circumcised. The event of circumcision usually takes place between one and seven or eight years of age, often around the age of three or four. Circumcision is a sacred and public event in Moroccan culture. It is celebrated by a procession where the circumcised boy and his father or a male relative sit on the back of a horse with a band of musicians walking and singing behind. The little boy is treated like a prince: he is dressed in the traditional Moroccan garment (djellaba), receives gifts and money, and is made to understand that he is ‘a man’. During the circumcision celebration, the boy’s sisters usually act like ‘domestics’ to him. It is important to note at this juncture that the girls’ passage to womanhood, usually instantiated by the appearance of menstruation, is far from being a source of private, let alone public pride. Menstruation is taboo in Moroccan culture and girls usually experience it as a difficult phase. The three types of rituals that are salient in Moroccan culture, namely marriage, birth, and circumcision rituals, are largely celebrated through the use of language.18 The language of rituals carries strong cultural power and highlights the pervasive power of language in establishing and maintaining a rigid dichotomy between men and women in Moroccan culture. The Codes of Honor and Morality Gender-related customs and traditions in Moroccan and Arab-Muslim society are based on the two codes of honor and morality (Bourdieu 1966, Peristinay 1966, Abu-Lughod 1986, Naamane-Guessous 1990). The code of honor consists in preserving the public reputation of a family, and the code of morality consists in preserving a socially accepted public conduct. Both codes rest on girls’ and women’s good conduct: good upbringing, chastity, hard work, obedience, and modesty. The codes of honor and morality have been institutionalized by recorded history and religion and are inculcated in the family 18 Other rituals accompany saints visitations. These are gendered in complex ways (cf. Fernea 1980), but they are not directly related to the topic of this section.

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through everyday verbal ‘teaching’ and behavior. This explains the close relation between family honor and the behavior of girls and women. A woman’s sexual purity is related to the honor of her family, especially her male kin, whereas a man’s sexual purity is related to his own honor, not to that of his family or his female kin (cf. Ait Sabbah 1986, Mernissi 1987). Consequently, in the Moroccan collective perception, a woman’s ‘mistake’ affects the whole family ó ó whereas a man’s does not: huta wahda katxannaz ∫∫wari (one filthy fish ó ó spoils a whole bag), lbent bhal lhlib, lli darti fih iban (girls are like milk, anything you put in it bulges out). This collective view of the codes of honor and morality puts great psychological and social pressure on girls and women, has a negative impact on them, and creates gender inequity in society. Both the structure of the family and the socialization of Moroccan boys and girls are, thus, clearly crucial in gender construction. This construction is largely conducted through language. The terminology used to refer to girls and women is ó ó significant. Adjectives like mahkuma ‘governed’, mziyra ‘controlled’, taht ó lehkam ‘under control’, mrat rrajel ‘woman of a man’, as opposed to bent zzenqa ‘girl of the street’, and the Berber expression ddaw ufus ‘under the hand, controlled’, acquire very positive connotations when associated with girls and women. These adjectives become very funny and ridiculous when associated with boys and men. It is ingrained in the Moroccan collective imagination that women need to be controlled. Controlling girls and women has always been considered a way of controlling society and making the application of political decisions easy because the values that apply to women are socially sacred and have political authority. Moroccan culture is deeply dualist as it is based on a rigid gender dichotomy, and personal relationships in the family and other institutions like school contain a strong hierarchical element. In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, the laws that dictate the roles inside the family codify the relationships between the two sexes and reinforce social norms that make a clear difference between the two sexes through the establishment of a hierarchy where women are kept in a lower position. Women give their tacit consent to the power of the husband because this power is legitimized: the husband is the provider for the family (wife and children), whereas the wife is the nurturer. This power is also supported by the law, which gives the husband legal authority in the family, and by culture, which welcomes this legitimization and uses religion to maintain it. Religion

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sanctions this through adapting male interpretations of the Quranic texts, as noted earlier. Further, expressions, proverbs, sayings, attitudes, and behaviors, reinforce cultural values. Thus, the notion of Sbbara ‘enduring, patient’ which is associated with the wife’s success in marriage prepares girls to endure their lot, however harsh it may be, armed with patience. A very derogatory proverb expresses this ó idea: lmra w lhmara ma kayDDayfu∫ ‘literally ‘women and donkeys should not be treated as guests’, meaning that women, like donkeys, need to be kept busy all the time’. This ‘virtue’ is transmitted from mother to daughter and is often used indirectly by women to secure gains in the family. Patient wives may ‘get away’ with things more easily that non-patient ones. The same is true of the notion of lmaktub, literally ‘fate’ which is strong in Moroccan culture and which precludes women from questioning their lot. These cultural values ensure men’s superiority over women; they are so powerful that women often strive to make the male dominance visible to others ó in order to justify actions: makandir∫ lhijab hit rajli maxalani∫ ‘I don’t wear the hijab because my husband does not let me wear it’. Sometimes, women consciously invoke the authority of the husband to justify an act or gain credibility in a specific public context even if the husband has not issued a judgement. The public authority of men, like their loud voice in public settings, and the submission of women, like their ‘hushed’ voice in such settings, are behaviors that society and family reinforce and perpetuate. According to Ait Sabbah (1986), women are silent in the Islamic unconscious; they are more trained for self-sacrifice and altruism, they don’t have ‘the right to be sure’, they lack authority, they are considered ‘irrational’ and ‘gullible’, and are more associated with superstition and unscientific beliefs than men. Family is where these views and values are both accepted as natural and may be subverted. Everyday linguistic interaction inside the family both reflects and affects the power structure in society. The Moroccan family is based on a strong hierarchy along the lines of sex and age. This hierarchy is established and maintained through the use of language: only adult males have access to the strong types of discourse which verbally set the rules of behavior in the family. It is the father or, in his absence, the eldest son, who gives orders, rebukes, and admonishes. He exercises power over the other members of the family, especially girls, through the use of language. Only elderly women, that is, post-menopausal, may have particular kinds of power and speak their peace in certain contexts. Even in this

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case, women’s power is sanctioned by the male word; a dying husband would often advise his son in the following words: matxalli∫ mmek l-n-nsab! ‘Don’t leave your mother to the (male) in-laws!’, meaning ‘It is your responsibility to take care of your mother after my death’. In general, men dominate the ‘official’ discourse in the Moroccan family; they openly discuss serious matters like politics, and they are the ‘publicly recognized’ voices of the family. In the presence of outsiders, it is natural for men or male children to initiate conversation, hold the floor, and interrupt interacts. Women and girls are ‘given’ the right to speak and this happens, for example, immediately after they have deposited a delicious dish on the table in front of starving males; but even then, their words are carefully watched; they should not go off topic. As a linguistic group, males in the family constitute the dominant group which exercises power over women as a subordinate group by preventing them from reaching the powerful discourse in the family. In society, the topics that women generally discuss, that is, children and household matters, are not given public importance and are perceived as ‘trivial’. Further, people in general do not have a positive attitude towards households run by women without men (spinsters, widows, or divorced women). The fact that women as a group have a subordinate status in the family explains the other fact that they tend to depend on men at home and in society at large. Consequently, women’s chances of engaging in powerful types of discourse in and outside the family is very small, if not non-existent. Moroccan women do not contribute in the same way as men in mixed-sex conversations because they are not given the same right to speak about the same topics as men: they are more easily interrupted and silenced in the family and in society. Men have the lion’s share of speech in family and social mixed-sex contexts, and they tend to deprive women from their share of speech in these settings. This means that in many social contexts, women are not given an opportunity to express their thoughts and succeed in attracting attention to them. The fact that women are relegated to less powerful types of discourse in the family and in society may appear in the small, or micro, level of interaction as simple silence on the part of women, but at the macro level of interaction, it reflects the weak position of women in the family and in society. Overall, the power structure inside the family and society are heavily male-biased as the male voice is privileged over the female one in both settings.

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The roles for which women are socialized are closely linked to the private space. Women’s association with private space is not only exhibited in their appearance (the way they dress) but also reproduced in the architectural organization of the traditional family compound: the high (often unpainted and undecorated) walls are meant to shield the private space, home and the inner rooms, from the public gaze. This is congruent with the cultural association of women with property: both need to be protected from the public gaze. Even inside the household, a private domain, men are associated with the ‘public’ and women with the ‘private’. A woman may be the chief decision-maker in the household, but usually this power is hidden and seldom displayed in front of children, let alone strangers. Because children evolve in society, they generally accept this state of affairs as ‘natural’. The gender hierarchy within the family unit creates gender bias. Girls are praised more on appearance than on intellectual achievement, and even when the latter is invoked, their housework and domestic functions are generally invoked along with the praise. Children acquire gender roles through gender-biased language by their parents, then their teachers and peers, as well as by the non-verbal communication. This acquisition is slow and cumulative. The way parents, teachers, and peers talk and behave inevitably sends long-lasting messages to growing children. The sacred position of family relations in Morocco consolidates the impact of these messages. These relations exercise great and far-reaching power in the Moroccan social organization. The social force of family relations stems from religious precepts and strong emotional links which often help members of the family surmount material and psychological problems. On the basis of the socialization factors in the Moroccan family, females move directly from girlhood to motherhood, whereas males go through a phase between youth and adulthood where society accepts that they ‘experience’ their manhood by having sexual relations with females. There is a sense in which males complete their social male identity by becoming sexually active, and females complete theirs by becoming mothers. This is linked to the great social value given to fertility which deeply shapes women’s perceptions of their roles, social worth, and well-being. Even the canons of beauty are socially constructed on the unique value attributed to fertility: a plump body is positively viewed in Moroccan culture as it is asso-

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ciated with fertility, happiness, beauty and sexual appeal. Within the Moroccan family, biological differences are perceived and represented in terms of biological reproduction, hence, the socially venerated status of mother. Accordingly, as parenthood and attached responsibilities structure relations between men and women, kinship is related to social reproduction. Indeed, gender asymmetries in the Moroccan context are rooted in the fact that women are responsible for domestic reproduction (child rearing and domestic labor). The impact of family in gender perception is also attested in the social ‘protective’ function that it attributes to males. In Moroccan culture, female decency is largely defined by male control inside and outside family. The ‘harsh but protective’ presence of a father, a brother, a husband, a son, or a male close kin, is socially perceived as a ‘shield’ for girls and women. This presence is generally perceived as a ‘guarantee’ for girls’ and women’s good upbringing in the eyes of society. Indeed, men and women pride themselves on the ‘harshness’ and ‘notorious severity’ of a male in the family (bbaha wawer ‘her father is harsh’ is positively perceived as a credit for the girl). The availability of these male attributes boosts a girl’s reputation before marriage and greatly enhances her chances of finding a husband. The Concept of Collective Self The concept of self (or personhood) is constructed in the Moroccan socio-cultural context in a way that is different from the way it is constructed in Western cultures. Whereas the Western concept of ‘self ’ is based on the individual, the Moroccan concept of self is based on the Islamic notion of jamawah ‘community/group’ and is, thus, inherently plural. C. Geertz (1971: 59) defines the Western concept of personhood as an ‘atomistic individual’: [The person is] a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgement and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background.

By contrast, in Moroccan culture, the notion of self is not an easily ‘delineatable’ or autonomous concept; it is deeply embedded in and defined by society. In this culture, individuality as a concept is not freely expressed and when it is, it is generally shunned and automatically

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categorized as ‘lack of modesty’. The fact that linguistically, the Arabic term al-huwiyyah ‘identity’ is linked to the pronoun huwa ‘he’ and not ana ‘I’ at the level of form is revealing; it is as if one’s identity is expressed ‘in the third person’. This vision of the self is epitomized in the popular expression ?ana wa ?awudu billah min qawlat ?ana (I and may God forgive me for saying ‘I’). It is also revealed in expressions such as wabdu rabbih ‘God’s slave’ and had lwabd DDawif ‘this weak slave’ which speakers often use to refer to themselves in public. Interestingly, the feminine counterparts of these expressions (that is, wabdatu rabbiha and had lwabda DDawifa) are not used. The reason is that women use public discourse less than men. Another token of collective self in Moroccan culture is the difficulty that people in Morocco, and probably in the Arab-Muslim world, find in introducing and talking about themselves and their own experiences in public. Introducing and talking about oneself in public is often accompanied by a feeling of embarrassment. The reason for this is mainly due to the fact that talking about oneself in public is generally considered in Moroccan culture as ‘lack of modesty’. These facts show the strong way in which Moroccan culture ‘shuns’ anything related to ‘self ’ and, by implication, explains the fact that privacy is not publicly emphasized in this culture. Instead of the self, the notion of nasab ‘kinship’ and l?aSl ‘root’ are far more important than the individual, as these terms invoke relationship to others and connections which ‘confortably’ situate the individual in the overall social network. In fact, Moroccans are linguistically identified by reference to contexts such as region, tribes, religion, sects, etc. According to Geertz (1979), nisba ‘family’ adjectives are used as terms ó ó of reference and address in Morocco. Terms like uhssan/uthssan, ‘a ó man or a woman coming from the Berber tribe Ait hssan, ubuzid/utbuzid ‘a man or a woman coming from the Berber tribe Ait Buzid ’, and lukili/lukilia, ‘a man or a woman coming from the Bni Wkil tribe’ are examples in this respect. Given these facts, the concept of ‘collective self ’ is more appropriate in Moroccan culture than the concept of ‘self ’. The collective self is so deeply knitted and pervasive in the Moroccan social fabric that it continuously materializes in language use, behavior, daily actions, and ways of thinking and perceiving reality. Dweyer (1978) studied Moroccan folktales and found out that the concept of personhood or self in these folktales is typically relational, interactional and socially embedded. As such, the concept of collective self is cru-

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cial in defining and explaining gender relations in Moroccan culture. For example, it explains the deep-rooted notion of complementarity of the sexes instead of the Western notion of equality of the sexes. It also explains the fact that more than men, and because of social pressure, Moroccan women are made to feel more accountable to the standard codes of honor and morality of their community than men. Indeed, the concept of collective self is so deep in the Moroccan psyche that it regulates family, in-group and out-group relations. An individual’s self-image is not cultivated internally, but derives from others’ opinions and attitudes. For example, an individual’s honor and dignity are not disassociated from the honor and dignity of his or her family. This is manifested clearly in the concept of leh∫uma ‘shame’19 which may be defined as the ‘fear of loosing face in front of others’. This loss of face may be occasioned behavior that contravenes social norms, breaks Islamic precepts, or abrogates personal obligations inside or outside the family. In such contexts, the protection of one’s honor, name, and dignity becomes the most cherished possession, and social censure becomes the worst punishment. This explains the heavy pressure within the Moroccan family to protect all its members because misbehavior from one member jeopardizes the reputation of all. The concept of leh∫uma is fundamentally different from the Western notion of ‘guilt’. Whereas guilt is related to one’s conscience telling him/her that something is wrong, the conó cept of leh∫uma is related to one’s awareness that others know that ó something is wrong (cf. Hargraves 2000). To avoid leh∫uma, Moroccan men and women may refrain from admitting blatant realities in public if these involve a loss of face. Thus, whereas mainstream Western ó culture is guilt-oriented, Moroccan culture is leh∫uma—oriented (cf. Hargraves 2000). In Moroccan culture, an individual’s private views may be embarrassing or even socially damaging if divulged in public. This view of the self explains the excessive aggressiveness that characterizes public behavior in Moroccan culture. In fact, by emphasizing the role of the community to the detriment of the individual, Moroccan culture is different from mainstream Western culture: whereas the latter is monochromic as it emphasizes the role of individuals, the former is inherently polychronic in the sense that focus is never put on individuals as individuals, but on individuals as inherent parts of a community to which they are accountable. 19

This concept is different from the concept of taboo.

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The three components of social organization in Moroccan culture, namely rituals, the codes of honor and morality and the concept of collective self are deeply inter-wined. They all emphasize individuals’ accountability to the community within a strictly hierarchical gender system and put strong pressure on women as the custodians of the culture’s values. Moroccan Women’s Subversion of Gender Roles in the Family In spite of the socially powerful role of rituals, the codes of honor and morality, and the collective self, Moroccan women have never ceased to subvert gender roles in the family (including the nuclear family, the extended family and the in-laws). There are many ways in which Moroccan women control and manipulate resources, influence community relations, save, deal with misfortunes, etc. Women’s negotiation of power within the family may be attested in (i) their ability to monitor female power tension inside the family, (ii) their role in decision-making, (iii) their use of gold, (iv) their cunning, and (v) their use of ‘supernatural’ powers (fortune-telling, witchcraft and black magic). Women’s Monitoring of Household Female Power Relations Moroccan women do not constitute a homogeneous and undifferentiated group inside families. Important power struggles characterize female relations in households. Two important ways in which women negotiate power in the household are tensions between mothers-inlaw and their daughters-in-law and between older women and younger women. The relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law are never simple in Moroccan culture. In the past, the mother-in-law ó used to have notorious power in the house. The term lehma, ‘motheró in-law’ in Moroccan Arabic, is related to the Standard Arabic lhima ó ‘protection’. lehma is, thus, socially perceived as a ‘shield’ which protects and unites the family. Her age bestows great power on her as the source of family wisdom and cohesion. The mother’s-in-law relationship to her daughter-in-law has a twin function: to secure the obedience of the daughter-in-law to her husband and his family, and to ‘curb’ her daughter-in-law’s sexual drive. According to LacosteDujardin (1985), the mother-in-law in Moroccan culture is responsible for perpetuating the role she endured as a bride. The mother-inlaw/daughter-in-law tension is more attested in large extended family

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units where grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and their children live together. The major characteristic of this type of family is that the bride is in the great majority of cases illiterate as is her mother-in-law. In this traditional type of family unit, the main female power structure involves the mother-in-law and her daughter(s)in-law. The strength of this power structure is still alive nowadays, especially in rural areas. The use of language to regulate and maintain the power tension between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law is revealing. Apart ó from lehma, the terms referring to ‘mother-in-law’ in Moroccan Arabic and Berber are lewguza and tamgart ‘the old woman’, both of which ó carrying negative connotation. While the term lehma valorizes the mother-in-law and highlights her power, the terms lewguza and tamgart neutralize this power. In fact, in its everyday use, even the term ó lehma ‘protection’ is not generally understood in its positive sense, but is more associated with the negative connotation of lewguza and tamgart. The rather negative connotation of these terms reflects the authoritarian and ‘notorious’ position of the mother-in-law in traditional and modern Moroccan society. In urban areas, one of the usual ‘conditions’ of the future bride’s family is that the bride lives in a nuclear family arrangement and not with her in-laws. This ‘condition’ is sometimes recorded in the marriage contract as a legal weapon to protect the new bride. Starting from the 1960s onward, the spectacular clash between tradition and modernity in Moroccan society has progressively resulted in a mutation in the structure of the family. The Moroccan large family unit is shifting to the nuclear family unit where only parents and children live together. In some cases, a grandparent, usually the paternal grandmother, lives with the nuclear family. A major characteristic of the nuclear type of family is that the bride may be literate. In this new family structure, the status of the mother-in-law is still powerful, especially if she is wealthy and has only one son. In such cases, intelligent wives often secure the trust and complicity of the mother-in-law as a way of negotiating power in their couple. However, generally speaking the actual authority of the mother-inlaw in household decision-making is less and less concretely felt although her symbolic power is still strong. A further result of the clash between tradition and modernity in Morocco is that the power struggle that used to characterize the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relation is now shifting to the relation

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between wives of the professional class and their domestics. As Moroccan women started to have jobs outside their homes, important changes occurred in the Moroccan family structure. The emergence of two-career couples enhanced the proliferation of service jobs (domestics). As a result, power relations inside the family have been reorganized. The dominance relation between the mother-inlaw and the daughter-in-law shifted to the dominance relation between homemakers and domestics. Torn between their careers and their homes, working women are reclaiming the status that the motherin-law used to have at the expense of the domestics. Domestics have become the ‘other’, the ‘low’ and the ‘shameful’, attributes that the daughter-in-law used to be associated with. The terms used for domestic/servant are xeddama ‘worker’, sexxara ‘servant’, lbent dyali ‘my girl’, and the French term la bonne ‘the domestic’. Although the translations of these terms seem neutral in English, the Moroccan terms carry very negative connotations and may be used as insult terms. Domestics are excluded psychologically and are made to represent the transgressive roles Moroccan women cannot take on: exotic, free, and outlaw. The homemaker/domestic relation permeates Moroccan social imagination and reflects division of social classes. Wives of the professional class are obsessed, fascinated, and disgusted by domestics. This is reflected in their gossip which greatly centers on domestics. These wives justify their stigmatizing of their domestics by the fact that the latter know the secrets of the family and sometimes divulge them publicly. Like the newly wed, the young domestic is subject to physical abuse. In Moroccan culture, the corporal punishment of children, wives, and young domestics is not shocking (cf. Salahdine 1987). Overall, in the traditional and modern types of family structure in Morocco, mothers-in-law and homemakers are ‘harsh’ on daughtersin-law and domestics because they consider them a threat to the household’s social balance. Both the daughters-in-law and domestics are perceived as both insiders and outsiders. They threaten the already existing dominance relations in the family because they may impose their rules on the family or seduce the husband or sons. As such, these women need to be ‘appropriated’ and their appropriation is carried out mainly through language: they receive verbal orders, need to address their mothers-in-law/employers as lalla ‘my mistress’ as a means of subordination and control. These appellations are often required; they are not used as mere forms of respect, but function to maintain the power relations in the family.

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The homemaker/domestic relationship is further complicated by the fact that a domestic is in some cases a distant relative (a ‘country cousin’ for example) and, in all cases, much poorer (even if she is an older woman). Hence some of what is being negotiated between women in this case is matters of social class (and often rural/urban background), as well as age (whether the domestic is younger, the same age, or older than the housewife). Each situation sets up challenges for the ‘woman of the house’ as she seeks to create authority and impose her will. The second type of female power struggle inside the family involves elder women and younger ones. Although this type of tension may be included in the previous one, it is different from it: the tension between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law involves a clear element of age, and the tension between homemakers and their domestics may involve this element, but whereas these two relationships ‘oppose’ women in terms of personal interest, age involves other kinship relations which do not oppose women in this way, such as the grandmother/mother, grandmother/granddaughter, aunt/niece, mother/daughter, or sister/sister. This power tension is related to the broader opposition where tradition, orality and illiteracy are opposed to modernity, writing, and literacy, and, hence, indicates a shift of power from the elder to the younger generation and a clash between tradition and modernity. In modern Moroccan society, younger educated women ‘speak for’ their (female) illiterate elders. The oral voice of the elders is not as strong as it used to be now that the literate voice of the younger is available. This process of ‘speaking for’ takes place in key contexts such courts of law, civil offices, or banks. This particular use of language reflects the shift of power from the elder and less educated females to the younger and more educated ones in the family structure. The younger women’s ‘speaking for’ older ones in the family may be extended to the literate women ‘writing for’ the illiterate ones and, thus, appropriating their voices. Women’s Role in Household Decision-Making In order to understand Moroccan women’s agency in decision-making inside the family, we need to distinguish between the elaboration and the implementation of decision-making in this particular context. The nature of women’s participation in decision-making depends on the their status as urban or rural, rich or poor, etc. It also depends on the following factors: first, the nature of the decision:

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in rural areas, a decision that is related to agriculture is considered important and in urban areas the type of education children are to receive is considered important; second, the level at which women contribute to in the household income: they may interfere at either a symbolic or a material level; third, the age and status of a woman (her family situation, professional identity, etc.); fourth, women’s access to resources (salary in urban areas, land and livestock in rural areas); fifth, a woman’s image of herself and the way others see her. Rural women who stay in the countryside after their husbands migrate to the city subvert traditional gender roles in a different way. They assume new roles that were previously fulfilled by their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons. They take care of the household and take on roles requiring their presence in the public space. They even participate in the decisions taken at the local level. Further, they consciously perpetuate Berber local culture. This is more apparent in the case of monolingual Berber women who perpetuate the culture through songs, dances, etc. These women are not inert and powerless. Through continuous, conscious or unconscious gender negotiation, they gain power through the education of their children. They transmit the culture as well as the domestic functions which give them power inside the home. Further, they manage the domestic economy (annual renewal of food) and have a role in family planning such as birth control and the everyday running of the household. In addition, in traditional settings, multiple wives of a polygamous husband often support each other when confronting the husband’s authority.20 Finally, the mother has real and symbolic power over her children and husband. These types of power are diffuse and latent, as they are neither expressed openly nor claimed. Women’s Use of Gold Women may use the ownership of gold to create or destroy family bonds. In the Moroccan context, gold is a gender-associated commodity. It is a symbol of feminine power and status. Gold necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, etc. constitute a female financial asset and indicates women’s value in the marriage market (cf. Kapchan 1996). It is a female asset in the sense that it is considered a woman’s own 20 I was told by a rural woman that when she was ill, she obtained care and help from her ‘co-wife’, and not from her husband.

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investment. Indeed, it is usually the first thing that a woman would buy once she has secured some savings. As such, gold is regarded as insurance against difficult times. Women’s ‘Cunning’ Moroccan women often resist symbolic or physical male dominance while respecting the laws of the social game: they use different strategies from men, and cunning is one such strategy. Cunning is often used by women to avoid exclusion. Most women negotiate power through two channels in which they play a vital role in the family: procreation and making food. These functions are based on the cultural premise that women are ontologically females only when they give birth to children, especially sons. However, Moroccan women’s strategies are changing in parallel with social change: whereas nonworking and rural women use procreation and cooking to negotiate their status in the family, educated women use their salaries for the same purpose. Both types of women resist power without directly contesting it. Fortune Telling, Witchcraft, and Black Magic Other types of gender-role subversion that bestow some power on women (in the sense of making others dependent on them) are fortune-telling, witchcraft, and black magic. These have a ‘mystical’ power and are sometimes used as medicine (cf. Akhmisse 1985). They are also used as tools by some women to threaten men and impose power over them (cf. Favret-Saada 1977, Stroller and Olkes, 1987). This power is built on men’s obsession and fear of becoming impotent through a woman’s use of black magic. Some women, usually illiterate, but also literate, use black magic to exercise power and, thus, subvert the gender roles assigned to them. Although they are considered negatively, the three practices are very real in Moroccan culture as they are believed to offer ‘solutions’ and ‘remedies’ to weak, problem-stricken literate and illiterate men and women that are victims of social stress that they cannot handle. Overall, women’s various ways of subverting the gender roles that society assigns them shows that gender hierarchy is actively produced and reproduced by specific circumstances and, thus, may be subverted. The family and society constitute the contexts within which power is negotiated and change is gradually initiated.

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  Ambiguity

The twin facts that, on the one hand, Moroccan women are deeply involved in the making of culture and, on the other hand, these women are culturally invisible, make their overall status ambiguous. This section is about the ‘ambiguity of the female’ or ‘ambiguity of women’ in Moroccan culture. This ambiguity is often a result of the contradiction between tradition and modernity, presence and absence, and marginalization and participation. The ambiguous status of Moroccan women is attested in relation to four major domains: (i) authority, (ii) social attitude, (iii) public discourse, and (iv) the implementation of the law. Authority Authority means possession and use of power and, thus, clearly involves a strong hierarchical element. The relationship of women to this type of authority is very ambiguous. While they have authority in the household, this authority is ‘indirect’ and ‘unseen’. It is an authority that women themselves endeavor to hide in order to preserve. In fact, women exercise direct authority only over children and domestics, hence the expression mulat ddar ‘the owner of the house’ which is used to refer to the mother/wife status. This appellation means that women are overtly recognized as responsible for the daily management of the household and have direct authority in this capacity only. This authority is ambiguous and may be ‘fragilized’ because it falls within the ‘wider’ authority of husbands, fathers, and sons. Outside the household, the status of being a woman culturally clashes with public male authority. Thus, older women’s voice may be taken to express authoritative social wisdom or sheer gossip; married women hesitate between having their behavior and ‘honor’ publicly defined and controlled by them or by their husbands. Even if women manage to achieve some public power, this power is not culturally viewed as such: it is generally attributed to their fathers, husbands, family positions, or even the job they hold, rather than to them as women. Further, even when women have public power, their main function in society, that is, catering for children and the household, are never disassociated from them and it is often the case that the latter function is foregrounded to enhance their public position.

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Social Attitude Women’s ambiguity in Moroccan culture is also attested at the level of social attitudes. Generally speaking, women in Moroccan culture are perceived as both good and bad. They are both the guardians of values and family unity and the personifications of social disruption and chaos. It is this dual attitude that explains the strict way in which girls are brought up and women controlled. The social ambiguous attitude towards women in the Moroccan context is epitomized in the popular saying: lxir mra u ∫∫er mra ‘a woman is goodness and evil’. Women’s ambiguous social image is constructed through socialization: in raising children, ‘what to say and do’ is stressed more when dealing with boys and ‘what not to say and not do’ is stressed more when dealing with girls. What one says or does is obvious; but one does not say or do may be ambiguous. Ambiguity is also attested at the level of the words used to refer to the typically female activity, housework, which is considered both necessary and ‘trivial’. Because it is not remunerated, housework is devalued on the social level: a housewife is stigmatized as galsa f ddar (literally ‘sitting in the house’ and meaning ‘not working’). ‘Non-working’ women in Morocco are, thus, defined in passive terms ( just sitting) because culture does not see their ‘unpaid’ toil, hour after hour, as ‘worthwhile’. Public Discourse Female ambiguity is also attested at the public discourse level where in spite of lip service to the ‘important’ role and ‘utility’ of women in public domains, women are still considered second-class citizens. The official political discourse, mainly targeted to international instances and the elite, is that women are equal to men on all levels. Parallel to this is another discourse, mainly directed to the local population, which is more theological and ambiguous and where women’s primary function is to take care of their household and raise their children. Likewise, the official media in Morocco reinforce the public discourse ambiguity. It offers a most diminishing image of femininity. The best image of women in the media is that of the mother and the obedient wife who takes care of her home and pushes for her husband’s public success. Single and independent women are generally represented as responsible for social chaos and family instability. Women’s relation to work is also ambiguous. Educated women are both inhibited and induced to seek regular remunerated work.

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Women from middle and lower classes are induced to work for economic reasons and women from upper classes seek social prestige in the modern world. Implementation of the Law Finally, an important area where ambiguity surrounds women is the area of law implementation: there is blunt discrepancy between the wording of legal texts and the way these texts are implemented in real life situations. Law implementation necessitates frequent visits to the courts, interviews, that is, public procedures for which Moroccan women are not socially prepared and to which the general social attitude is very negative. This renders single women, divorced women, and widows (and to a certain extent childless women) extremely vulnerable before the law. Although al-Mudawwanah (Code of Personal Status) has a dual reference, paternal and marital authority is strongly maintained and reinforced by social practices. These practices render Moroccan law ambivalent and pluralist. There is a difference between official law (enactment of the law) and lived law (law implementation) in matters relating to women’s rights (cf. Moulay R’chid 1987, Berjaoui 2000). For example, a divorced woman would often be reluctant to make her demand for legal action against her former husband known because this would trigger gossip and harm her family. It may, for instance, seriously jeopardize her other sisters’ chances of getting married because divorce is still taboo in Morocco. On the other hand, if a woman breaks the law, she is punished in exactly the same way as a man. One reason for this discrepancy is that whereas society is rather favorable to punishing women (because they are seen to be the source of chaos), it is ambiguous so far as allocating them rights (women are both good and bad). The discordance between what the law states and reality in Moroccan culture is due to the fact that change in the socio-economic situation of Moroccan women is faster than change in their legal and political statuses. Another reason is that the social values and norms which regulate Moroccan society and influence the behavior of men and women are conceived within a larger pluralist ArabMuslim culture which is strongly patriarchal. Another example of the ambiguity of law implementation is the fact that the legal text about the status of a married woman is clear,

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but this status is full of contradictions at the level of facts: whereas the law states that the husband should satisfy all the needs of the wife and children, reality is otherwise, as working women generally participate financially in the household running. Women’s participation in the household’s income is a way of negotiating more gender equity in the family in the sense that their doing so lessens the authority, power, influence, and prestige of the husband. Further, the law states that children remain with their mother if she is divorced, but the role of the mother is secondary because being the one who provides food and shelter, the father remains the head of the family, and, hence, the guardian of the children and their property. He is also, among other things, responsible for the source of children’s Moroccan citizenship (i.e., one gains Moroccan citizenship by having a Moroccan biological father). To a certain extent, the father is responsible for the social behavior of his children, as well as for their socialization as citizens of the nation-State. This gender inequality before the law is contested by many political associations and parties in Morocco. The root of the problem is that customary law is made by men; women have not traditionally participated in it and as a result, even when the law is implemented, morals, stereotypes, and customs remain outside the spirit of the law. Given that Moroccan law does not treat women as equal to, or even partners with, their husbands, Moroccan women do not have an independent legal identity. Moroccan women’s ambiguous status at the levels of authority, social attitude, public discourse, and law, is a result of the clash between tradition and modernity. Women are torn between the desire to maintain a publicly acknowledged ‘protective’ traditional superstructure and the necessity to be part of a production system which is monitored by a logic that clashes with the traditional mode. This dilemma is often accompanied by serious psycho-sociological conflicts: family disintegration, dislocation, explosion, decrease in mechanisms of family solidarity, increase in female celibacy, increase in womenheaded families, dissatisfaction with the economic power of husbands, increase in the rate of divorce, loosening in moral standards, exploitation of girls in the craft industries (rugs) and as domestics, etc. These are facts that make the status of women ambiguous in a society where male authority prevails in all power-related structured hierarchies. At a deeper level, Moroccan women’s ambiguity is mainly due to the fact that their lives and experiences have always been appropriated,

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used and controlled by powerful social, cultural, and political forces that constructed their legitimacy on the appropriation, use, and control of women. Taboo Taboo is the unspeakable, the silence. It is the expected reaction to women’s ambiguity. The general meaning of taboo, ‘that which is ó forbidden’, correlates with the Arabic term for taboo haram. A behavior (linguistic or otherwise) is considered taboo when societal opinion either inhibits or prohibits it in a rational or irrational manner. Linguistic taboo is characterized by the irrational rejection of a specific set of words. Although taboo words are appropriate in specific contexts, they are socially forbidden in some communicative contexts. These words are not banned on the basis of their meanings, but on the basis of their forms, as meanings can be rendered by other lexical expressions. In Moroccan culture, taboo is mainly determined by reactions aroused by given words, that is, by the connotative, rather than the denotative, meaning of the words. In studies in the psychology of language, taboos are defined by the reactions and affective responses that words trigger, and not their denotative meaning. Given the strong reactions that these words arouse in Morocco, the usual response to linguistic taboos is avoidance in speech. This explains the low frequency of taboo words, as well as the bias that naturally results in their suppression. Some of the strongest linguistic taboos apply to words associated with women. The words for ‘taboo’ in Berber and Moroccan Arabic ó ó ó are h∫uma and hram, and in Standard Arabic haram. Of significance is the close morphological relation between these three words and ó ó ó hariim/hurma/haram (‘women/harem/wife of ’ in Standard Arabic), ó ó ó tahramt/tah∫hmiyt (‘girl’ in Rifian Berber), as well as haram ‘sacred place’ ó as in al-masjid al-haraam ‘the Holy Mosque in Mecca’ in Standard ó Arabic. Many women use haram as-sayyid X ‘wife of Mr X’ next to their names on personal cards or in front of their offices and businesses to attract clients, especially if the husband’s name is prestigious. Both women and sacred places are ‘forbidden’ to outsiders’ gaze and both are believed to need strong male protection, albeit in different ways: whereas holy places are a symbol of collective and public identity, women are more of private property and are associated with men’s social identity. The use of taboo to protect collective and public identities, as well as property and social identity, is a peaceful,

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but very powerful means of keeping women invisible and legitimizing their exclusion from what culture considers ‘serious’ domains. Another example of linguistic taboo resides in the fact that women in Morocco avoid the word jenn ‘ghost’ or jnun ‘ghosts’ and always ó ó add bismillah rrahman rrahim ‘in the name of Allah the Almighty, the Merciful’ after the utterance of these words. Women are also very favorable to uttering the number five (and its multiples) on the premise that it ‘drives evil away’. A mother who, asked about the state of her pregnant daughter, would be likely to say wandha xams ∫hur ‘she is in her fifth month’ even when that is very approximate or untrue, in order to ‘protect’ her daughter from ‘miscarrying’. Likewise, if asked about the date of her trip, a woman would be likely to answer baqi li xems yyam ‘in five days’, with the intent of ‘securing’ a safe journey. Things that are ‘very dear’ to women are ‘protected’ in speech by linguistic formulas that contain xamsa ‘five’. For example the expression xamsa u xmis ‘five and five’ is often uttered by women to seek divine or supernatural protection for themselves, their children, or their property. Interestingly, in Tunisia, women avoid the number five and its multiples saying ‘count your fingers’, as older, rural Tunisian women—and occasionally men—do (Walters, personal communication). ó Women in Morocco also use formulas like ha∫ek ‘save your face’, a stronger version of ‘I beg your pardon’ before mentioning things that might be offensive such as dogs, donkeys, toilets, etc. In some rural parts of Morocco, this word is uttered before mentioning the ó word lemra ‘the wife, woman’: lemra ha∫ek! In Moroccan society, taboo is a means of social control and a sanctioning device. It is strongly reacted to by men and women. Some of the strongest taboos apply to words associated to women and are strongly excluded from use in mixed company and public space. These reactions are social reflexes of social divisions and social attitudes, which, in turn, are reflected in language use. This is an area where language and society interact significantly. Recations to taboo reflect shared expectations that members of a specific society have as to what men and women are like and what is expected of them. The proliferation of taboos associated with women in Morocco is linked to the ‘silence’ that surrounds them at a more general level. In the overall Moroccan culture, female voices lack discursive authority because of the burden of the taboo which characterizes women as listeners, rather than speakers; their voice is wawra ‘taboo’.

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The strongest linguistic taboos in Moroccan society are closely linked to the female body and its changes. Moroccan girls socialize in an environment where sexual discrimination is sanctioned by society. This explains the spread of taboos related to sexuality. The female body is taken to be the ideal site of reproducing patriarchy. Three major female body-linked experiences are surrounded by taboo: virginity, menstruation, and menopause. Virginity Virginity symbolizes the honor of both the girl/woman and her family. Just as motherhood is venerated after marriage, virginity is venerated before marriage (cf. Naamane Guessous 1990). The great value attributed to virginity in Moroccan culture is attested in the fact that girls are more ‘watched’ than boys before marriage. This value is also attested in the wedding songs that celebrate virginity and that are sung on the bride’s first morning in her new family. In these songs, it is not the bride’s beauty that is celebrated but her good upbringing and the fact that she was closely ‘watched over’ by her male kin that are highlighted: (1) hakka ykunu bnat rjal lmahdiya! This is how watched over daughters of men should be!

The value of virginity is also attested in customs and practices: the dowry of a virgin bride is often more expensive than that of a widow or a divorced woman. Likewise, more festivities are involved in the wedding ceremony of a (supposedly) virgin girl than those of a widow or a divorced woman. However, in present-day Moroccan society, progress in medicine has allowed a number of girls who lost their virginity to acquire an artificial hymen. Of course, the social class of the girl is important in both the possibility of securing an artificial hymen and the possibility of remarrying and organizing a ‘proper’ wedding ceremony. The veneration of virginity in Moroccan culture explains the extreme forms that virginity-related violence against girls and women takes in this culture. In rural and poor urban areas, ‘suspected’ girls are often married against their will. This is reinforced by the full authority over girls that their legal guardians (fathers, brothers, or close male kin) have. A girl who refuses to be married against her will and leaves the house faces extremely severe sanctions by her

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family as well as by society. That girls but not boys are required to be virgin before marriage establishes a strong gender hierarchy at the threshold of marriage, that is, at the inception of the family cell. Virginity is so ‘sacred’ that it is not talked about in mixed groups. The taboo that surrounds virginity dramatizes its impact on girls and intensifies family and social control over girls and women. Mothers are held responsible for the ‘purity’ of their daughters and this is often used as a weapon by the husband to put pressure on his wife and make her as obedient as her daughters. Mothers are accountable to their husbands and the latter are accountable to society. Within this context, girls are continuously ‘hammered’ with the importance of virginity since a very young age and they grow up in the fear of loosing it. This phobia often creates psychological traumas that deeply affect girls’ and women’s lives. Menstruation Like virginity, menstruation is surrounded by taboo. The taboo surrounding menstruation is related to the ‘unclean’ state—postpartum—of women. This taboo is mainly due to the negative attitude of the family and society towards the female body. Menstruation signals female puberty and marks female social identity. Young girls are often advised not to tell anyone except their mothers about the first time they menstruate, lest they loose their virginity. In addition to rituals such as burning the first ‘smeared’ cloth, which used to be practiced in some Berber rural areas, menstruation is referred to by special terms that are not taboo out of context, but become so when associated with menstruation: lbulug ‘puberty’ and ddem ‘blood’. The usual sense of lbulug, for example, is not taboo when it used to explain the puberty of boys, and its taboo sense becomes clear when it refers to menstruation. The same is true of ddem which is used in a neutral sense to refer to ‘blood’ and becomes taboo when it is used to refer to menstruation. Menstruation coincides with adolescence and marks a phase in the life of girls which is psychologically and culturally loaded. Girls avoid talking about menstruation because they do not easily accept their puberty, let alone be proud of it. It is true that puberty is considered a starting phase in a woman’s life and, hence, would, in principle, bestow value on her, but talking about menstruation in mixed company or in public space is feared to arouse a girl’s sexual

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desire and create uncontrollable ‘chaos’. A girl or a woman who menstruates without anybody noticing it in the family is considered ó hadga ‘clever’. Another reason for the taboo status of menstruation is that in Islam, women are forbidden from praying, entering the mosque, ó touching the Quran, or fulfilling the requirements of haj ‘pilgrimage’ during their menstruation period. Taboo in such contexts has relió gious force; damu lhayD, ‘menstruation’ in Standard Arabic, is understood to be najasa ‘dirty, soiled’ or ‘ritually unclean’ and is often cited in religious prescriptions as a reason for impurity. This explains the fact that more elderly women (who have stopped menstruating) ó perform the haj (pilgrimage to Mecca) than younger ones. In modern times, and with the availability of pills which momentarily ‘block’ ó menstruation, more and more younger women perform haj. In Moroccan society, many linguistic strategies are used amongst ó women as euphemisms and metaphors to refer to menstruation: haq ∫∫har ‘the right of the month’, lwsax ‘dirt’, lmarD ‘illness’, or simply hadik ‘that one’. These euphemisms generally carry negative connotations. In fact, many Moroccan men and women react strongly to the relatively ‘modern’ advertisements of sanitary towels as these expose a ‘taboo’ area in Moroccan society. It is often the case that TV channels are changed to avoid ‘exposure’ to these advertisements in the presence of older family members or outsiders. The negative conception of menstruation generates negative self-images for girls at a young age where self-image is a determinant factor in personalitybuilding. This is even more significant if we compare menstruation to circumcision, which is celebrated in a grand way in Moroccan culture. Menopause Another experience in the lives of women which is associated with taboo in Moroccan culture is menopause. Menopause is perceived in this culture as ‘old age’, ‘uselessness’, ‘failure’, and the ‘beginning of the end’. People do not talk about menopause because it is considered a phase in the life of women which does not deserve to be mentioned. People in general, and women in particular, feel more ashamed to talk about menopause than to talk about menstruation or virginity. This is mainly due to the fact that this attitude is basically male, and as male views prevail in Moroccan culture, women readily adopt them. Thus, a woman knows that old age may lessen her prestige in the eyes of her husband, who may start thinking of

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re-marrying a younger wife. Menopause is experienced in so an uncomfortable way by Moroccan women that it sometimes constitutes a genuine crisis in their lives. The Standard Arabic term for menopause is sinnu lja?s ‘the age of despair’ which carries a clear negative connotation. Significantly, there is no Moroccan Arabic or Berber term for menopause. This natural and everyday event in Moroccan women’s lives is not legitimized by naming in these two languages. The absence of a word is a symptom of a wider problem, as Mills (1995: 122) states: The problem of lexical gaps in the language is part of a greater linguistic problem—the problem of not being able to express yourself within the discourse structures available to you.

The lack of a Moroccan Arabic or Berber word to describe a specific phase in a woman’s life is a good example that the larger views and discourses on women in Moroccan culture are given from a typically male perspective. Women in Moroccan culture generally avoid speaking about their menopause and this silence is in itself a psychological burden. They avoid speaking about their menopause to their husbands lest this diminshes their ‘private’ image of a ‘desirable’ women’, and they shun speaking about it in public lest this harms their ‘public’ image as ‘productive’ women, in spite of the fact that old age bestows some power on women inside their families. The three experiences in the lives of women, namely virginity, menstruation and menopause, are natural biological phases which belong to the world of taboo in Moroccan society. The common denominator among these phases is that they are associated with blood. Blood as ‘sacrifice’ is a feature of traditional Moroccan mythologies, some remnants of which are still perpetuated in present-day religious or Sufi rituals such as Gnawa ‘belonging to the Gnawis or ó ‘Black Africans’, and hmat∫a ‘name of a religious sect’. Blood is also involved in the ritual of sheep slaughtering (during wiid al-aDh- a ‘Feast of Sacrifice’). The experiences relating to a woman’s body and the cycles of her life are generally talked about in public from a male viewpoint. This explains the fact women’s lives are surrounded by powerful taboos. As a reaction, women resort to euphemisms or foreign languages to express concepts that are ‘illicit’ if said in one of the Moroccan languages, such as the use of the French word embrasser ‘kiss’ instead of bus ‘kiss’ in Moroccan Arabic or ssudem ‘kiss’ in Berber.

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The gendered relationship to taboo arises in the family; for example, during the socialization process of children, boys are allowed to utter taboo words, whereas girls are strictly forbidden from doing so. A well-brought-up girl is one who would show reticence, or even strong revulsion, when a taboo word or expression is uttered in her presence. A girl who would leave the room immediately in such a case would be seen as a girl of good upbringing. The attributes he∫∫umiya ‘timid’ and bekku∫a ‘dumb’ in the sense of ‘silent’, are conó nected to the notion of leh∫uma ‘shame’ as they denote honor and good upbringing and are, hence, highly sought after adjectives to qualify girls and women in Moroccan culture. The equivalents of these terms for boys are very negative. Indeed, when a boy utters a taboo word, the family, sometimes in an exaggerated way, displays some pride (a boy who would not fear anything). Boldness is appreciated in boys, but not in girls. As a result of this, teenager girls often look calmer and more timid in the presence of their elder brothers or in the presence of outsiders. This behavior is generally maintained and perpetuated in adulthood. Women usually compensate this sanction on their linguistic performance by using taboo words in all-female groups such as gatherings in sport centers and ó the hammam ‘public bath’. The gendered reactions to taboo that are constructed in the family are extended to jobs, some of which are considered taboo in Moroccan culture. Of importance is the fact that although both men and women may hold these jobs, their taboo status is more associated with women than with men. Examples of such jobs are beggars, domestics, cleaners, cinema ushers, bus drivers, waitresses, shopkeepers, nurses, and hairdressers. Although Westerners in general do not think of ‘begging’ as a job, it is sometimes conceived as such in the Moroccan context. As for domestics, only girls and women generally work as domestics, but servers in a restaurant may be males or females. With respect to hairdressers, it is their ‘salons’ that are negatively viewed as places where ‘prostitutes’ and ‘fortune tellers’ often meet to ‘recruit’ potential clients. The historical reasons that these jobs are taboo are that women come into contact with unrelated men in these service sectors or domestic service positions. Cinema ushers and nurses are not ‘decent’ jobs because they require work at night, a practice which is still taboo in Moroccan culture as it is still difficult for Moroccan husbands to explain to guests (who

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may visit at any moment of the day or night) that their wives are absent at night, even if the reason is their jobs. On the other hand, intellectual women are respected but not really considered potentially good wives; a ‘too intelligent’ wife may jeopardize the status quo of her husband and his family. E S Morocco’s developing economic status is another component of its culture. Before and during the colonization by France (1912 to 1956), Morocco’s economy was typically rural and traditional and relied mainly on agriculture. After Morocco’s independence, the country started a steady process of modernization which materialized in the emergence of ‘modern’-type cities, as opposed to Medinas (Arab-Muslim cities), and sustained rural exodus to urban areas. This dramatic transition deeply upset traditional social organization and resulted in relatively ‘abrupt’ gender-related transformations. Two aspects of these transformations are relevant from the perspective of this book: a reorganization, if not reinvention, of space and a problematization of illiteracy. Reorganization of Space The dichotomy public space/private space has received considerable attention from feminist scholars working in various disciplines. Thompson (1994) retraces the public/private dichotomy to a Greek legend in which human actions take place in a space that is divided into two: public space, the visible male world called ‘Hermean’ (the Greek God of Communication), and private space, the invisible feminine world called ‘Hestian’ (the Greek Goddess of Home). In Morocco, public space is the street and the market place where men evolve and private space is the home where women live. This view associates public space with the outside/exterior and private space with the inside/interior. Public space is the place of power where social constraints are produced and private space is the place where this power is exercised. The two spaces interact in a dynamic way; one does not exist without the other. It is true that women can be in some public spaces—for example, on the street, but they cannot stay there the way men are encouraged to. Also, men do not generally

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spend any time in the kitchen, for example, so the taboo works for them, too, though with very different consequences. The strict public space/private space dichotomy has been significantly disrupted ever since women started to take jobs outside home from the 1960s onward. This significant change in women’s lives was the result of poverty and education: poor women worked as domestics or in low-paid sectors of industry and educated women secured jobs that their education allowed them. As a consequence of women’s salaried work, the public space/private space dichotomy started to be reorganized (cf. Barkallil 1990, Filali Meknassi 2000). The largescale family which included grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other members of kin shrank to a nucleus of parents and children, especially in urban areas. The Moroccan Arabic expression for women working outside the home is xerjat txdam ‘she went out to work’ (cf. Belarbi 1997). ‘Going out’ expresses ‘going’ from one space to another. The verb xerjat ‘she went out’ further marks the ‘going out’ as a movement from the private/interior to the public/exterior. In the West, it is true that much has been made of World War II and Rosie the Riveter, the representative of women who worked in factories since men, in the military, were unable to do so, many women— especially those of modest means—were already working in factories, and the overwhelming majority of teachers (in elementary and secondary education) were women, as were all nurses, haidressers, steamstresses, etc. However, Western women took jobs and became visible in public space as a result of militant action. In Morocco, the first women who took paid jobs were either rural women who emigrated to urban areas or women who lived in the suburbs of large cities. Most of these women were poor (divorced or widows) and were not proud of their jobs. Although upper and middle social classes encouraged the education of girls, they generally considered the work of women, and hence their money, as a dishonor to the family. For these, women’s education aimed at producing ‘good’ housekeepers and child rearers, not money-earners. In the reorganized space, working women have had to accommodate two types of work: domestic work and work of agents of production. The former is learnt in childhood and the latter is acquired through education and training. This accommodation has imposed new habits and new time management on Moroccan women. Not only do these women have to be at their jobs at specific times of the day, but they also have to mix with male colleagues. This

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has engendered new social representations of women in society, as well as new behaviors and attitudes. Outside the home, women fulfill themselves as individuals, as Moroccan citizens with rights and responsibilities; inside the home, they fulfill themselves as housekeepers and rearers of children. A type of dialectical relationship has been established between the two spaces. Women talk about their ‘private space’ worries (domestics, marriage problems, children, cooking, etc.) in public spaces and about their ‘public space’ worries (promotion, politics, etc.) in private spaces. Women have, thus, started to constantly reinvent public space in private settings and private space in public settings. Migration from rural to urban areas and from Morocco to Europe enhanced this space reinvention. For example, migrants from rural to urban centers associate the countryside with private space and urban areas with public space. Likewise, Moroccan migrants living in Europe consider Morocco a private space because it is a space where the self is expressed and where culture and traditions are kept alive (cf. Belarbi 1997). Given these facts, the dichotomy public/private spheres has ceased to be static in Morocco. Women’s work outside the home and migration have created deep social mutations that problematize the rigid dichotomization of space and render it too reductionist and unable to account for reality. The interaction between public and private spaces and the ‘re-insertion’ of men and women as two agents of social dynamics in a common space has created a continuum and a dialectic relationship between public and private spaces, giving rise to a number of intermediate spaces. This has given women an active role and a greater insertion in society. In Doing Daily Battle, Mernissi opposes the male urban official construction of women’s activities as subaltern to the vecu ‘lived experiences’ of the grassroots, namely rural and lower class women. The author highlights the fact that although the latter are doubly marginalized by class and gender, they are active economic agents who are conscious of their economic exploitation. The experiences of these women deconstruct the essentialism of official discourse and institutionalized division of labor which relegates women to domesticity and reproduction. The struggle of Moroccan women to secure a place in the overall economic structure of Morocco is most appreciated if we realize that Moroccan women are the first victims in economic hardships. Like most developing countries, Morocco has been hit by repeated severe economic crises since the late 1970s. From that period onward,

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the country has adopted ‘structural adjustment’ policies to restore the country’s economic and financial balance. These policies were imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. As champions of liberalism, these two institutions have hardly been concerned with the fate of the poorest. Poor women are the victims of the decrease in employment prospects and the drastic cuts in social budgets. In Morocco, the social sectors of health and education are the hardest hit by budget cuts. Education expenditure per capita decreased at a rate of 11% from 1983 to 1989, resulting in a general decline of 8.7% in school enrolment rates between 1985 and 1990. In a society where female education is considered less important than that of males, it is girls who are most directly affected by this decline: the school enrolment rate declined at 7.8% for boys and 10% for girls. Peasant girls are the worst hit with a 13.6% decline rate (these statistics are taken from Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité, 1999). Female job opportunities are more directly hit by economic crises than male opportunities. In times of crisis, women are excluded from stable and high-paying jobs and, instead, are encouraged to take up precarious and low-paying jobs in the informal sector. Starting from the mid-1990s onward, poverty has become more and more feminized. In cities, it is in the lower classes that one finds the largest number of female heads of households. Consequently, poverty typically affects the families supported by a woman’s salary. Likewise, women benefit less than men from economic and social progress in periods of growth, and they are the first victims in periods of crisis. Poor women constitute the most vulnerable social group and the least protected one. This situation is due neither to fate nor chance, it is the result of a systematic depreciation of women’s work and status in all fields. In the various aspects of Moroccan society, women are not treated on an equal footing with men in the world of work. Women have to fight for many considerations that are taken for granted by men. The Problematization of Illiteracy The meaning of illiteracy needs to be understood within the overall educational system in Morocco. If various systems of education produce culturally specific socio-pedagogical practices, these systems, then, influence the process of knowledge production, as well as the relations between individuals and groups in a culture. The for-

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mal/informal structure of Moroccan education maintains an elitist delivery system of learning and scientific practice in terms of class and gender. As a result, women suffer from culture and class positions in education and scientific practice. According to United Nations data, illiteracy among women (and men) is decreasing. In Morocco, women have had access to schooling since immediately after Independence in 1956, and significant progress has been made to narrow the gender gap in education. However, Moroccan society is still faced with the problem of illiteracy. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is attested statistically and sociologically. Statistically, women constitute the largest illiterate portion of the Moroccan population. The illiteracy rate among Moroccan women in general is 60%21 (48% in urban areas and 95.5.9% in rural areas). The rural population represents around 48.6% of the Moroccan population according to the latest 1999 official statistics. The majority of illiterate women are young (between 12 and 40 years of age). This age span constitutes the most active age span. As for women aged 40 up, most of them are illiterate. The overall picture is, thus, that the great majority of illiterates in Morocco are women, and the pools of women that are still illiterate are older and frequently rural. This creates gender division, as Cameron (1992: 203) states: The higher a country’s overall illiteracy rate, the wider the gap between women and men.

The gender aspect of illiteracy is also manifested in the fact that a number of wealthy rural illiterate Moroccan men have until very recently had access to the Parliament, but no illiterate woman, regardless of class, could ever aspire to this position. Compared to Western women, Moroccan women are ‘doubly’ illiterate: historically, they have not had the chance to become literate in Standard Arabic, and today they miss literacy in their mother tongues. Sociologically, women’s illiteracy is basically due to their lowincome socio-economic status. It is also the result of a trans-cultural inequality whereby men’s educational achievement is privileged over women’s. Moroccan illiterate women are aware of this condition of subordination and resent it, but the patriarchy has offered them few alternatives. 21

Cf. Agnaou (2002) for the statistics in this section.

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Female illiteracy in Morocco has many causes, including poverty, socio-cultural beliefs and traditions, lack of infrastructure in rural areas, parents’ attitude, and the nature of the educational system. Consequently, girls’ dropping out of school is very frequent in rural areas. Having to repeat grades, failure, non-adaptation, distance, socio-economic reasons, etc. explain this frequent dropping out. As primary school education does not give immediate access to the workforce (no economic return), drop-outs are able to do unskilled jobs or remain unemployed, a state which encourages these dropouts to relapse into illiteracy.22 The major reasons which push parents to oppose their daughters education in rural areas may be summarized as follows. First, rural parents tend to prefer to keep their daughters in the duars ‘villages’ because girls contribute much to the family’s upkeep at this young age: they supply the household with water and wood, they take care of the smaller children, and they become a source of revenue by working as domestics in urban areas, sometimes as early as four or five. Second, schools in rural areas are often very far from homes, and parents are more concerned with the security of girls than with the security of boys, not because girls are preferred to boys, but because the sexual purity of girls is a matter of family honor. Third, teachers in rural schools are almost exclusively male, another source of anguish for parents. Fourth, the fact that classes include boys and girls is another discouraging factor for parents, as people in rural areas are much more conservative than people in towns and cities. The obvious result of all this is more and more disparity between the two sexes in rural areas and, consequently, between women in rural areas and women in urban areas. The picture becomes alarming if we add early marriages (the average marriage age in rural areas is 20 as opposed to 27 in urban areas) and poor life expectancy (63 in rural areas as opposed to 72 in urban areas), multiple pregnancies, polygamy, and lack of hygiene—all factors that do not favor development, hinder access to school, and drastically reduce the possibility of rural women leading a decent life, let alone finding a job. Another important factor which enhances women’s illiteracy is men’s attitude: men are generally reticent to encourage women’s lit22 According to the UNESCO Report of 1998, primary schooling rate in Morocco has decreased by 20%.

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eracy as the latter is synonymous to ‘emancipation’, which is believed to make women more independent and less compliant. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is ‘tolerated’, it is even sometimes consciously or unconsciously discouraged in Moroccan culture. On the premise that the illiterate mind is a construct (cf. Ramdas 1989, Stromsquist 1990, Carmack 1992), illiteracy is a powerful means of perpetuating the gender gap between women and men, as well as a means of subduing women. Illiterate women are associated with the primitive for the West where universal education is written in the very idea of intelligence, but not in Moroccan culture where women’s intelligence is not always valued. The relationship between Moroccan women and literacy raises many important issues such as women’s relation to their daily environment and the issue of the collective (masculine) representation of women. Raising such issues leads to the fundamental question: how can a Muslim society represent women in the Umma ‘nation’ and in civil society (in human rights terms) when what determines the relationship (education, reading, writing) is considered unnecessary for women? The debate is promising only if it starts from this contradiction. Illiteracy is ‘played off ’ differently by liberal and religious feminists in Morocco. For religious feminists, offering literacy is a type of ‘charity’ that constitutes part and parcel of what the entire Islamist movement is supposed to provide (the wealthy need to help the poor). For liberal feminists, women’s education is the key to emancipation, especially rural women’s, whom they see as easy prey for fundamentalists. The concept of illiteracy and the status of literacy texts in general in Morocco needs, thus, to be put within larger political contexts. From a postmodernist perspective, illiteracy problematizes the issue of literate women speaking for the illiterate ones, thus, appropriating the latter’s voices. Pushed a little further, this view would advocate that both literate and illiterate women are creative, albeit in different ways. Literate women have more choices than illiterate women and illiteracy does not exclude practical knowledge and wisdom. P S The Moroccan political system is another important component of Moroccan culture. Morocco’s political system is based on a constitutional monarchy and several political parties. The king holds the

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supreme executive power, as well as the supreme religious power (he is Amir al-Muminin ‘Commander of the Faithful’). The Moroccan Constitution has a double reference: it is based on both a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’ and the international (human rights) conventions. The centrality of politics at the larger or ‘macro’ level of analysis is mainly due to the fact that political systems are inherently overall systems where decisions come from ‘the top’ and directly influence attitudes and subsequent practices in the community and in the family. As such, the political dimension of gender issues constitutes a crucial site of evolution and change. The Moroccan political system is relevant to the understanding of two major aspects of gender and women issues in Morocco: the rigid dichotomization of gender in the public sphere and the role of monarchy in promoting women at the political level. Political Structure and Gender Dichotomization in the Public Sphere The domain of politics is a strong site of public power which is closely linked to men in Moroccan society; the same is true in the entire Arab-Muslim world (cf. Arat 1989). Men are the ones who make politics and discuss political issues inside and outside the family. The association of politics with men has its roots in Moroccan culture where the notion of al-jamaawah ‘community, group’, which constitutes the basis of the Arab-Muslim tradition of ruling, is perceived as containing men only. By implication, citizenship is culturally assumed to be first and foremost male because in the Moroccan cultural imagery, men are the ones who are supposed to rule over women and children. The cumulative effect of this state of affairs has created a ‘political culture’ where the hierarchical superiority of men over women is primarily inscribed in the public sphere. Women have been quasi-absent from the political sphere of decision-making as the history of Morocco shows. Before Morocco’s independence, the conservative ideology of the French Protectorate blocked women’s entrance to politics. Even nationalists have never encouraged women to enter the political scene in spite of the presence of some ‘prestigious’ women in the Moroccan national liberation movement. A few nationalist male leaders such as Allal Al-Fassi, did express positive attitudes towards women’s emancipation, but they remained an isolated minority as their ideas did not correspond to the immediate goals of the newly independent political elite whose priorities

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did not include women’s emancipation. This elite capitalized on the preservation of ‘Moroccan identity’ and the appointment of women as its guardians. The first female political figures who played a political role during the French Protectorate, such as Touria Seqqat, Rqia Lamrania, Zhor Zarqa, and Malika Al-Fassi (who was the only woman to sign the Independence Manifesto on January 11th, 1944), were trapped in the nationalist propaganda. This was intensified by the fact that almost all Moroccan women were illiterate, a fact which precluded any real demand for emancipation by women. After independence, the transition from the ideology of liberation to the ideology of State-building and maintenance of an Arab-Muslim identity pushed the issue of women’s participation in politics to the background. In fact, until the end of the 1970s, all Moroccan women’s problems were treated under the socio-cultural rubric. Their status was not considered an important political priority in spite of the fact that the issue of ‘Moroccan women and politics’ was not ignored (cf. Chambergat 1961 and 1962 in which the variable ‘women’ was included in the analysis of communal elections of May 1960 and the constitutional reforms of December 1962, and where a disparity between women’s rate of voting in rural and urban areas was noticed). At the beginning of the 1980s, literacy, the increassing importance of the job-market, and the emergence of democratic values in Moroccan politics, made women more visible on the public scene. In the 1990s, the democratization process brought the issue of women to the limelight. Islamism, the Beijing Conference, civil society, and feminist research were factors that further enhanced public attention to women’s issues. But it is only very recently that a handful of women appeared on the public scene of decision-making. It should be stated here that Moroccan women’s emancipation owes a great deal to the ‘largesse’ of politically and intellectually influential men. Even with the advent of modernity and women’s salaried jobs, the patriarchal hold is still strong and is reflected in the structure and ruling system of almost all the political parties although political science has firmly established the concepts of citizenship and participation for all the members of a society. The Moroccan electoral system does not facilitate women’s mobility in politics; women’s eligibility depends on specific parties, and women’s issues are discussed within the political platform of each political party. Women are mainly ‘used’ by political parties as a ‘token’ of democracy and as potential or real voters; their voices are bought, their illiteracy is

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used, an their poverty is manipulated. In rural and some urban areas, men vote on behalf of their women. Another factor which distances women from politics in Morocco is women’s negative attitude towards politics. Moroccan women do not generally see politics as a ‘woman’s issue’ because the majority of them are not acquainted with public affairs and the way in which authority is structured. This ignorance of how authority is constructed makes politics alien to women and serves the status quo of men. There is an absence of political will to really integrate women in decision making. As a result, there is a weak representation of women at all elected offices. This situation is mainly due to political parties, the majority of whose members are conservative, and rarely appoint female candidates for local and regional elections. In 1972, 1086 women were candidates to the regional elections out of a total of 93.773, that is, 1.1%, and only 75 were elected. Only two women reached the vice-president position in local and regional committees (cf. Belarbi 2001). In spite of the fact that the Moroccan party system is plural, and in spite of the fact that some of the Moroccan political parties are progressive, women do not hold decision-making roles in the political pyramid; very few of them sit on the executives committees of the parties. In fact, almost all parties have created ‘subordinate’ organizations dealing with female issues, but these do not have a say in decision-making apart from making recommendations to executive committees. Although four women were appointed ministers in the so-called Gouvernement d’Alternance in 1997 when Morocco ‘transitted’ from right wing politics to left wing politics, few women were candidates in local ‘communes’, very few were elected, and only two reached the Parliament. In March 1998, a regression in women’s political representation was noted as two women only were in the government. This number shrank to one in 2000. What do these facts mean? The obvious meaning is that there is strong resistance and negative attitude to the presence of women in representative institutions and a shy claim of women for this representation. The facts also show that there is a long path for Moroccan women to cross before they can have an impact on Morocco’s public affairs. Paradoxically, women’s agency in civil society is growing steadily and this is having a great impact on the Moroccan political landscape by: (i) allowing women greater access to public discourse and leadership and (ii) by enhancing public activism/action.

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The Role of the Monarchy in Promoting Women at the Political Level Monarchy is very popular in Morocco. It is associated with both religious sanction and modernity. Monarchy has had a real and symbolic impact on the political status of women in Morocco. It was not political parties or civil society which foregrounded women on the political scene, but monarchs. The last three kings openly encouraged the integration of women in the social and economic development of Morocco by adopting a view that reconciles ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. King Mohamed V, who ruled from 1927 to 1961, was the first king in the history of Morocco to ‘unveil’ his own daughter in public and make her Ambassador to Great Britain. King Hassan II, who ruled from 1961 to 1999, nominated the first four women Secretaries of State. King Mohamed VI, who became king in 1999, is the first Moroccan monarch to nominate a female king’s Counceller. He also announced the inclusion of no less than 30 women in the next Parliament. King Mohamed VI is also the first king in the history of Morocco to publicly announce his marriage, to nominate his wife ‘Princess’, and make her name known. The symbolic meanings of these acts are very significant for the promotion of Moroccan women in the public sphere in general. Monarchy has also played a leading role in ‘cooling off ’ the tension between the liberal and religious feminists. The status of the King as Amir al-Muminin ‘Commander of the Faithful’ bestows upon him the power to mediate between the views of liberal secularists and rigid Islamists on sensitive issues relating to the legal status of women.

CHAPTER TWO

ANDROCENTRICITY IN MOROCCAN LANGUAGES I This chapter focuses on the grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic androcentric (male-biased) reflexes of the larger Moroccan patriarchal superstructures in the three Moroccan languages: Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber. Both the structure and use of these languages are deeply androcentric. At the structural level, androcentricity is attested in the grammatical (formal) encoding of gender at the four linguistic levels of analysis: phonology (the study of language sound systems), morphology (the study of meaningful forms), syntax (the study of word distribution in sentences), and semantics (the study of meaning). This type of androcentricity does not usually depend on the context of speech, but is part and parcel of the languages themselves. At the level of language use, androcentricity is attested in the sense-making of gender-related expressions and sentences. This type of androcentricity is largely context-dependent. The importance of both types of androcentricity resides in the fact that they deeply influence the language users’ perception and attitudes to gender role assignment and performance. Formal androcentricity in Moroccan languages may seem surprising given the availability of various gender markers in these languages; however, seen as a consequence of a heavily-gendered socio-cultural context, formal androcentricity often appears as a ‘natural’ phenomenon and is seldom invoked as ‘genuine’ androcentricity. It is important to note that although the languages of Morocco are all androcentric, the claims made in this chapter should not be understood in strong Whorfian terms: language determines thought/culture, culture determines language. Such claims would be too strong and at best unrealistic. In a recent survey of these issues, Hudson (1996) makes clear that meaningful claims in Whorfian terms have to be carefully qualified and empirically established, a fact which is not easily feasable. The observations and claims made about the androcentric nature of Moroccan languages are not related to Moroc-

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can culture in a direct way. Whatever links exist in this respect must be mediated and indirect. Various factors are involved in this mediation such as the speaker’s personal judgement and the general context of language use. G A Grammatical androcentricity is the linguistic indexing of male-biased concepts in specific languages. Grammar covers phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. In linguistics, these are the four levels of analysis which allow an understanding of language as an ‘object of study’. Whereas morphology and syntax relate to form and constitute the ‘internal’ systems of languages, phonology and semantics relate more to the outside world; the internal system of a language is related to the outside world through sound and meaning. P Gender-related phonological aspects of human languages have always attracted the attention of linguists. The first views on this topic were formulated within the pioneer theories of language and gender, that is, the Deficit, the Dominance, and the Difference theories. These views were predominantly based on articulatory assumptions which stipulated that men’s and women’s speeches exhibited significant pitch differences (cf. Jespersen 1922, Lakoff 1975): whereas men’s intonational pitch was said to be low, women’s intonational pitch was said to be high in the sense that women’s range with respect to intonational curves was higher than men’s. Intonation was, thus, considered the major phonological trait that distinguished women’s speech from men’s. These and similar studies (cf. Gaudio 1994, for example) were largely based on the view that gender differences were based on biological factors. These studies were dismissed as ‘universalizing’ and ‘essentialist’ as they naturalized and operationalized pitch differences. Recent studies in the field have highlighted three crucially significant facts about human language: (i) women do not uniformly use specific intonation patterns to achieve the same types of meanings; their semantic purposes vary greatly from context to context. In addition, intonation may, in principle, constitute a highly complex system of meanings, even for one single individual, man or woman. (ii) Pitch

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varies greatly from woman to woman. (iii) Gender pitch is not implemented in the same way across cultures. On the basis of these facts about human languages, pitch differences were shown not to depend solely on biological factors. Such a view would render gender a binary categorical entity and would oversimplify gender identity by putting all women in the same category. However, more specialized studies have related the phonological aspect of languages to gender in multidimensional ways that transcend the biological to the cultural and the individual (cf. MendozaDenton and Strand 1998, Strand 1998, Simpson 1998, among others). Some of these studies have particularly highlighted the difference of pitch across cultures (cf. Simpson 1998, for example). The bulkiest body of these studies has gone beyond the articulatory to the acoustic and auditory properties of women’s and men’s speeches. In parallel to these findings, research in phonology has witnessed new trends of theorizing gender behavior, and significant headway has been made in improving this theorizing. Innateness theories have slowly been replaced by theoretical assumptions that only thorough analyses of specific cultural systems allow a full understanding of phonological behaviors, and that phonological behaviors never form coherent entities outside cultural systems. A significant finding of these newer trends is that pitch has two properties: (i) it is a meaningmaking system only inside the boundaries of the discourse structure which constitutes its context, and (ii) it is mediated culturally by personal judgements and information that are often rendered by facial expressions and acoustic frequency information. In Moroccan culture, the concept of voice quality (pitch) is associated with rigidly gendered expectations. For instance, a ‘creaky’ voice, which is characterized by a very low pitch, is stereotypically associated with ‘male’, ‘serious’, ‘authoritative’, ‘credible’, ‘trustworthy’, etc., and a shrill voice, which is characterized by high audible friction, is stereotypically associated with ‘female’, ‘talkative’, ‘stupid’, ‘naïve’, ‘simple-minded’, ‘annoying’, etc. In order to go beyond these stereotypes, a clear distinction needs to be made between the selection of pitch and pitch range by men and women in specific contexts, and gendered expectations that stem from the wider socio-cultural background of the speakers. The former should not be interpreted in the light of the latter because the way gender is perceived in Moroccan culture has a great impact on the way it is processed: it is because the low-pitched voice is perceived in this culture as ‘strong’,

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‘authoritative’, and ‘serious’, and the shrill and high-pitched voice as ‘weak’, ‘frivolous’, and ‘not serious’, that Moroccan men’s and women’s expectations are heavily gender-coded and reflected in the production and perception of voice quality. In Moroccan culture, females (young and old) may choose a low pitch to achieve a specific purpose, and the interpretation of this pitch needs to be stripped from folk expectations in order for it to be fully understood. For example, Moroccan women may use low pitch in the classroom, in courts, and on TV to secure respect, and high pitch in other less formal settings. This choice is sometimes deliberate, sometimes not. Thus, although low pitch is associated with males and high pitch with females in Moroccan culture, low pitch may be used by females in formal settings, although high pitch is not deliberately used by men. Consequently, women seem to allow a wider spectrum of pitch variation than men. In addition to voice quality, the human face conveys significant information about the way sounds are perceived. This has been attested by the fact that articulatory information affects speech perception in a significant way. For example, visual articulatory information about the articulated segments greatly affects the perception of the place of articulation of consonants, especially in the case of bilabials and inter-dentals, as well as in the case of vowels. This has been proved by the well-known ‘McGurk Effect’ according to which participants are presented with an audiovisual test token in which a face says ‘ga’ while a synchronized voice says ‘ba’ and where the majority of participants perceive a fusion of the two modes of information ‘ga’ and ‘ba’, and comprehend it as ‘da’. Likewise, both the voice and the face yield information about the gender of the speaker. In fact, like articulatory information, gender information strongly affects speech perception (cf. Strand 1998). This state of affairs creates audiovisual gender stereotypes which affect speech processing. It has been recorded in recent theoretical literature in language and gender that on the basis of implicit prejudice, participants formulate prototypical gender judgements on the sole basis of appearance (cf. Banaji 1998). Appearance allows perceivers to have access to stereotypes about speakers. These are referred to as ‘face gender effects’ on speech perception (cf. Strand 1998). It is important to note that such stereotypes are used by perceivers when they process speech perception. The more the perceiver conforms to the prototypical gender stereotypes, the easier the processing is,

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and the more they distance themselves from these prototypical stereotypes, the more difficult the processing becomes. Perceptual processing is rendered difficult by a mismatch between the talker’s voice and face, on the one hand, and expectation in gender prototypicality, on the other hand. This is attested by the fact that more time is needed to recognize or repeat words. In the absence of matching between gender expectation and the talker’s voice and face, other gender ‘prototypicalities’ take over. Experiments (cf. Strand 1998) have shown that when a listener whose gender expectations are based on stereotypes which do not match those s/he is exposed to, difficulty in processing speech perception arises. This is validated by techniques which show this gender expectation/voice and face mismatch audiovisually (cf. Strand 1998). A significant implication of this is that from an auditory point of view, audiovisual gender stereotypes have a direct impact on the way words are processed. In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, stereotyping attached to phonological perception is flagrant. Women’s face and voice gender effects carry strong cultural meanings. G  G In most human languages, special grammatical forms are used to refer to males and others to females; grammarians call these forms ‘gender’. The interface between gender and grammatical form has its roots in the assumption that there are compelling formal (or grammatical) factors that are related to the concept of gender. Being realized as a ‘morpheme’1 in most human languages, gender has been considered a grammatical reflex of the formal relationship between the shape of a word and the innate or assumed biological differences of the entities it refers to. Grammatical gender may or may not have a morphological shape but it always has a grammatical function. Being heavily inflected (that is, containing an abundant number of grammatical morphemes), Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber exhibit strong characteristics of morphological gender in the sense that not only are gender morphemes abundantly available in these languages, but they are also very productive (cf. Sadiqi and Ennaji 1992). 1 A morpheme is the smallest form (a word or part of a word) which has meaning (lexical or grammatical).

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Gender Categories in Moroccan Languages Human languages fall into two major classes so far as gender categorization is concerned: grammatical gender systems, like Semitic and Romance languages, and natural gender systems, like English. Likewise, words across languages fall in one of the two major categories: lexical or grammatical. Lexical categories include substantives or content words, and grammatical categories include inflectional entities. The major difference between lexical and grammatical categories is that whereas the former usually contain free (independent) morphemes, the latter may contain free or bound (dependent) morphemes. In the three Moroccan languages, the grammatical categories that correlate with gender are: agreement forms, pronominal elements, determiners, and quantifiers. Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber exhibit two types of gender: masculine and feminine; the neuter (neither masculine nor feminine) is not morphologically encoded in these languages. As with person and number, gender belongs to the agreement systems of these languages. Gender specification is important in the morphosyntactic structures of the three Moroccan languages. This specification may be strong or weak. Strong forms are independent and free, whereas weak forms are dependent and bound.2 Apart from verbs, agreement gender markers in Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber appear morphologically on nouns, adjectives, determiners, and quantifiers. Adjectives in the three languages agree with the noun they modify in person, number, and gender as the examples below show: Standard Arabic (1) muwallimat-un ?aniiqt-un school teacher-SF-Nom elegant-SF-Nom3 An elegant school teacher 2 In the case of Standard Arabic, number includes the dual in the second and third persons. The feature specification of number and gender varies from morpheme to morpheme, but the feature person is omnipresent in all agreement morphemes. The third person singular seems to be the most complete class so far as agreement feature specification in the three languages is concerned. The third person plural does not include gender in Moroccan Arabic. So far as the first person is concerned, it is specified only for number. As for the second person (singular and plural), it is specified for gender and number in Standard Arabic and Berber, but not in Moroccan Arabic. Moroccan Arabic exhibits the greatest number of unfilled feature slots in its agreement paradigm. 3 S = Singular, P = Plural, M = Masculine, F = Feminine, D = Dual, 1 = First

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Moroccan Arabic (2) qeTT-a kbir-a cat-SF big-SF A big cat Berber (3) t-asrdun-t t-axatar-t SF-mule-SF SF-big-SF A big mule

The masculine counterparts of muwallimat-un ‘school teacher’, qeTTa ‘cat’, and t-asrdun-t ‘mule’ are muwallim-un, qeTT, and asrdun, respectively. However, in Standard Arabic, some adjectives may not show feminine gender agreement with the noun they modify: (4) ?imra?at-un waa∫iq-un/atun woman-SF-Nom lover-SM/SF-Nom A female lover ó (5) baqarat-un haluub-un/atun cow-SF-Nom milk-SM/SF-Nom A milk cow

Morphological androcentricity is attested in the fact that although the adjectives in examples like (4) and (5) may, in principle, be used in the feminine form, it is their masculine form which is more commonly used. The preference of the masculine form over the feminine form in these examples is attributed by traditional Arab grammarians to the fact that when qualities like ‘intensity’ or ‘abundance’ are involved, the masculine form is used because these qualities are more associated with men and male attributes than with women and female attributes. Another explanation for the non-use of the feminine gender morpheme in (5) above is the assumption that ‘being in love’, which is closely related to ‘courting’, is considered a typical male state, as only men are supposed to ‘show’ or ‘express’ love in the Arab-Muslim culture. However, such stereotypical and sexist views and claims need to be separated from linguistic facts. It is relevant to note here that traditional Arab grammarians made comments that can be read only as a particular kind of language ideology. For example, Ibn Al-

Person, 2 = Second Person, 3 = Third Person, Nom = Nominative Case, Acc = Accusative Case, Def = Definite, and Indef = Indefinite. These conventions are used throughout the rest of this book.

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Anbaari (4th Century of the Hegira), cited in Abu-Risha (1996: 31–32) states the following (the translation is mine): The proof that the masculine precedes the feminine is that when you say: qaa?im ‘standing-3MS’ and qaa?imah ‘standing-3FS’ and qaawid ‘sitting-3MS’ and qaawidah ‘sitting-3FS’ and jaalis ‘sitting-3MS’ and jaalisah ‘sitting-3FS’, you find that the feminine contains additional material and what is added to is the root. And when you see something from a distance and you do not know what it is you say: a woman, an animal or something like that.

Ibn Al-Anbaari’s ‘ready’ association of women with animals and ‘unknown’ entities is reminiscent of the folk ideology in the everyó day speech of Moroccan speakers: lemra u lehmara ma kayDayfu∫ ‘A woman and a donkey should not be treated as guests’, meaning ‘should not be treated the way guests should’. Grammatical androcentricity is also attested in the Derivation Hypothesis on which the standard analyses of the three Moroccan languages are based (cf. Sibawahye [1984], Harrell 1965, Basset 1952, among others). The fact that in these languages, the feminine gender morphemes contain one sound/letter more than the masculine gender forms has been interpreted by traditional, as well as modern, grammarians as evidence that the feminine gender is morphologically, and hence historically, derived from the masculine gender. Grammar books on Standard Arabic, the most studied of the Moroccan languages, are full of grammatical rules that formalize the Derivation Hypothesis (cf. Sibawayhe [1984], Ibn al-Anbari, Ibn Ginni [1985], etc.). The Derivation Hypothesis is, however, questionable. In fact, history has shown that human languages are naturally subject to economy (reduction at the level of form) as a result of speaking these languages. For example, the so-called ‘Modern English’ lost its inflection which characterized its ancestors: ‘Old English’ and ‘Middle English’. Further, the formalists’ accounts of Arabic agreement data are different from those of the traditional grammarians’; some transformational generative accounts begin with the feminine form and derive the masculine form by a rule of deletion because it is more predictable than starting with the masculine and deriving the feminine form (cf. Chomsky 1965, Lightfoot 1979). Likewise, as languages naturally move toward economy, it is more logical to assume that the original form in the three Moroccan languages is the feminine, and the masculine is obtained by the ‘shrinking’ process which languages undergo. The Derivation Hypothesis is

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maintained mainly because it serves socio-cultural purposes and has social meaning that fits within the overall patriarchal socio-cultural context. The fact that the generic usually doubles as the masculine in grammatical form or word choice makes it the social norm from which the feminine derives. This view excludes the feminine from the generic. Thus, the word ?imra?ah ‘woman’ in Standard Arabic is said to derive from mar? ‘person’, but only mar? is used generically. Likewise, words like al-lmuwaaTin ‘citizen-SM’, al-waamil ‘worker-SM’, or even al-?ustaad ‘teacher-SM’ are used generically although most citizens and most workers are women, and in spite of the fact that Standard Arabic contains gender morphemes even in the dual form. Androcentrictiy resides in the fact that masculine inflections have more social symbolic value than feminine ones in Moroccan languages. Grammatical androcentricity is a mirror of the socio-cultural malebiased hierarchization of gender and is intrinsically related to power relations in society: just as females are a dependent subpart of the male social entity in Moroccan culture, the feminine is apriori supposed to ‘naturally’ derive from the masculine in language. Social and linguistic powers are inter-dependent and interact dialectically: women are socially and linguistically relegated to home and hearth (domestic spheres) where they, and the children they are supposed to rear, can be protected and provided for, and men go to public spheres where they can cater for women and children. This protection strategy and the way it is coded linguistically are, thus, natural results of power relations between men and women in society. Another aspect of the protection strategy is that women in Moroccan culture are socially assigned the role of preserving language and traditions. For example, it is often stated that Berber, a language which is facing decay, is preserved in remote mountains by women whose husbands either died or emigrated to the cities in search for jobs. The assumption that women preserve Berber ‘feminizes’ this language and engenders heavy androcentricism when referring to it. Although it is true that Moroccan women are preservers of Berber, the preservation process is often imposed on them as women do not always preserve culture in a conscious and willing way. Grammatical androcentricity is also attested in the way morphological categories are associated with semantic content. Granting that the notion of grammatical category is abstract and serves mainly as a tool in grammatical analysis, grammatical categories are basically arbitrary when abstracted from whatever ‘content’ that goes into them. It is the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are based

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on the notions of maleness and femaleness, which make these categories ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. Although the arbitrary aspect of grammatical categories has not been capitalized on in traditional Arabic and Western grammatical analyses, it has become a central issue in modern schools of linguistics, especially the generative paradigm (cf. Saussure 1916, Bloomfield 1933, Chomsky 1957, Chomsky 1965, Chomsky 1981, Chomsky 1995). In fact, all along the line of inquiry starting with Saussurian linguistics, through structuralist linguistics, to generativist linguistics, the sign (or its subsequent equivalents), which is inherently related to the abstract notion of grammatical category, has consistently been qualified as typically arbitrary, in contrast with the signifier (or its equivalents), which is not. Thus, it is the content of grammatical categories which determines the classification of the latter as ‘lexical’ or ‘functional’, and, subsequently, as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. When the content, lexical or grammatical, fills an abstract category, it neutralizes its arbitrariness and relates it to gender, a specific category. Evidence for this comes from the following facts: Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber are root languages and roots are by definition gender-neutral. It is only in the process of the root/stem association, that is, in the process of ‘amalgamating’ roots with verbal, nominal, adjectival, etc. stem patterns, that roots cease to be neutral and acquire gender values that nominalization, verbalization, and adjectivisation processes involve. For example, the root form k t b in Standard Arabic does not contain any gender feature at the outset; this feature appears later in the derivation process, precisely at the level of nominal stemformation, resulting in kaatibun ‘male writer’ vs kaatibatun ‘female writer’. Of importance is that the gender feature appears on adjectives because these usually modify nouns: kaatibun ma∫huurun ‘a famous male writer’ vs kaatibatun ma∫huuratun ‘a famous female writer’. Significantly, the gender category does not appear on adverbs: laylan ‘by night’, gadan ‘tomorrow’, because these do not need to be categorized as male or female. It is, thus, at the level of stem-formation that gender categorization becomes relevant in the grammar of a language. As such, not all stems are sensitive to gender categorization: nouns and adjectives are, but adverbs are not.4 These facts about Standard Arabic are equally true for Moroccan Arabic 4 Although some Standard Arabic adverbs such as taara-t-an ‘sometimes’ contain the feminine morpheme a, it is difficult to consider this morpheme an expression of feminine gender as it does not contrast with a corresponding masculine form.

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and Berber: xeddam ‘a male worker’/xeddama ‘a female worker’ are derived from the neutral root x d m ‘work’ and are modified by ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ adjectives: xddam qSir ‘a short male worker’/xeddama qSira ‘a short female worker’. Likewise, in Berber amksa ‘shepherd’ and tamksawt ‘shepherdess’ are derived from the gender-neutral root k s ‘guard sheep/livestock’ and are modified by ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ adjectives: amksa amzzan ‘a small male shepherd’ and tamksawt tamzzant ‘a small shepherdess’. Grammatical androcentricity is literally ‘built’ in the grammar of Moroccan languages as these are made to represent the world in which speakers evolve. Grammatical androcentricity materializes in these languages when their grammatical forms are associated with the notions of male or female. As roots are a tool in the linguistic analysis of Moroccan languages and not in the analysis of language in social contexts, androcentricity becomes so basic and pervasive that it literally blurs the difference between the arbitrary nature of categories and the non-arbitrary nature of the contents that go into them. Abstract categories become bearers of significantly meaningful gender information and automatically result in bipolarity, a device of hierarchization whereby one category, usually the male one, becomes hierarchically higher and more unmarked than another, the female category. This grammatical androcentricity is indeed a feature of Arabic and Berber grammatical theorizing. In the grammatical hierarchization process, the masculine category is commonly taken to be the bigger, unmarked, and higher category because the social category ‘male’ has a bigger and higher status in Moroccan society and culture. As a result, the feminine category becomes the smaller, marked, and ‘degenerate’ version of the male category because the social category ‘female’ has a lower status in Moroccan society and culture. This view is reinforced and perpetuated through powerful institutions like the family, religion, history, education, and politics. This overall androcentricity is so deeply ingrained in Moroccan culture and its languages that it is prevalent even in cases which seem to be neutral. For example, in Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, the terms al-?insaan ‘Man/person’ and bnadem ‘person’ are not apparently sex-specific; however, it is interesting to note that although these terms may take both the masculine and the feminine gender in the singular, only the masculine appears when these terms are pluralized: ?insaana-tun ‘person FS’ but ?unaas-un ‘people MP’ and not *?unaasaa-tun ‘plural

   

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FP’.5 Furthermore, although the term ?insaan-un ‘Man/person’ is used generically, it cannot be used with feminine agreement markers: *qara?a-t l-?insaanu (literally ‘read-3SF Man/person’, but meaning ‘the person read) is ungrammatical. Likewise, although ?insaan-un has a feminine counterpart ‘?insaana-tun’, the term fardun ‘individual’ does not: *farda-tun-SF. Indeed, the grammatical expression of individuality is predominantly male in Moroccan culture. Grammatical androcentricity is further attested in Berber where the feminine gender morpheme t . . . . . . t is used to express the diminutive as in the examples below: (6) S/M afus ‘hand’ anu ‘well’ ayyur ‘full moon’ aZru ‘stone’

F/D tafust ‘little hand’ tanut ‘little well’ tayyurt ‘little moon’ taZrut ‘little stone’

Diminutives and augmentatives cross-linguistically carry affective meanings in addition to a literal notion of ‘small size’. Denotative affective meanings and smallness are considered more ‘appropriately’ feminine than masculine in Moroccan culture. Accordingly, female narrators, for example, tend to use diminutives when narrating the background for a story or giving details that are not on the ‘main story line’ for affect: xdit lebbiliza dyali w ∫wikke∫i w xrejt degya ‘I took my little suitcase and my little bag and went out quickly’, while men would be more likely to use diminutives in more or less their literal sense, that is something small. S L Syntax is another grammatical level where androcentricity is attested in the three Moroccan languages. In sentences, gender morphemes are often accompanied by gender-related syntactic patterns that are language-specific. These patterns are often loosely called ‘agreement patterns’ and act as formal means of ensuring syntactic matching between given constituents (words) in a language. Agreement patterns include person, number, and gender and involve pairs of constituents

5 The mark ‘ * ’ stands for ‘ungrammatical’ or ‘not allowed by the grammar of a language’.

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such as subjects and their predicates, nouns and their modifying adjectives, determiners, and quantifiers as the following examples show: Standard Arabic (7) qara?-a l-waladu l-kitaaba. read-3SM Def-boy Def-book The boy read the book. (8) qara?a-ti l-bintu l-kitaaba. read-3SF Def-girl Def-book The girl read the book. (9) al-bint-aani jamiil-ataani Def-girl-3FD-Nom beautiful-3FD-Nom The two girls are beautiful (10) al-bint-aani tu-raajiw-aani d-duruus-a fii d-daari. Def-girl-3FD they-revise-FD the-lessons-Acc in the-house The two girls are revising their lessons at home. Moroccan Arabic (11) qra lweld lktab. read-3SM boy book The boy read the book. (12) qra-t lbent lktab. read-3SF girl book The girl read the book. Berber (13) i-gra uwyyal lktab. 3SM-read boy book The boy read the book. (14) t-gra twayyalt lktab. 3SF-read girl book The girl read the book.

The examples in (7–14) illustrate the grammatical gender morphemes that mark the agreement between the verbs and their subjects. In the Standard Arabic data, the morpheme -a in (7) stands for the masculine and in (8) the morpheme -at stands for the feminine. In (9), the modifying adjective jamiilataani ‘beautiful-FD-Nom’ agrees with its the noun it modifies albintaani ‘the girls-FD-Nom’ in gender, number and case (attested by the presence of the inflectional ending -aani ) and in (10), the verb turaajiwaani ‘they are revising-FD’ agrees with its subject albintaani ‘the girls-FD’ in person, gender, and number. In (11), the Moroccan Arabic morpheme -a stands for the masculine and in (12) the morpheme -t stands for the feminine. In (13), the Berber prefix morpheme i- stands for the masculine and the prefix t- in (14) for the feminine.

   

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In the three Moroccan languages, full agreement between the subject and the verb obtains in both VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) and SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) sentences, and even in the dual form of nouns and verbs as well in Standard Arabic. However, when the subject is plural, Standard Arabic exhibits an interesting idiosyncrasy: agreement ceases to be symmetrical in this context: (15) jaa?-a al-awlaad-u wa l-banaat-u. came-3SM Def-boys-Nom and Def-girls-Nom The boys and the girls came. (16) jaa?-at l-banaat-u wa l-?awlaad-u. came-3SF Def-girls-Nom and Def-boys-Nom The girls and the boys came.

(15) and (16) are characterized by the fact that the subject is formed of two coordinated nouns: a masculine noun and a feminine one. In (15), the masculine gender agreement obtains between the verb and the subject because the nearest noun to the verb is masculine, and in (16) gender agreement is feminine because the closest noun to the verb is feminine. Grammatical gender in Standard Arabic can be much more complex (cf. Harrell et al. 1965, Wright 1981). In fact, the appearance of the gender feature in this language does not always depend on the bipolar opposition male/female as the following example illustrates: (17) qaala-t-i l?anbiyaa?u . . . said-3SF Prophets Prophets said . . . In (17), the verb is in the singular form, whereas the subject is in the plural masculine form, and interestingly, the agreement on the verb is feminine and singular. This type of agreement is referred to in the literature as ‘deflected agreement’ and appears on the verb only when the latter is initial in the sentence and when the subject is plural. If the subject precedes the verb, the feminine gender feature disappears and is replaced by the features masculine plural: al?anbiyaa?u qaal-uu ‘Prophets said’, where the morpheme –uu ‘they-MP’ refers to l?anbiyaa?u ‘Prophets’. The appearance of the feminine gender –at (3SF) in (17) is, thus, due to the syntax of the words qaala-t-i ‘said3SF’ and l?anbiyaa?u ‘Prophets’, that is, their specific distribution in the sentence in (17). As it does not match the gender of the agreeing constituents, this type of agreement may be termed ‘functional’ in the sense that it belongs to the internal grammatical distribution

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of verbs and their subjects, rather than to the relation of words with the outside world. Functional gender marking is not based on the notions ‘male vs female’: in (17) above, the masculine noun l?anbiyaa?u ‘Prophets’ is functionally feminine because it agrees with a feminine verb and not grammatically feminine because its agreement is not based on the male/female opposition by virtue of the fact that all Prophets were unequivocally male. Arab grammarians hypothesized that in instances such (17) above, the gender morpheme -t refers to majmuuwah ‘group’, that is, to majmuuwah mina l?anbijya? ‘a group of Prophets’, where agreement takes place with majmuwah which is feminine (ah is a feminine morpheme). However, here again, majmuuwah is arbitrarily feminine because it may be all-male or mixed-sex, and majmuuwah mina l?anbiyaa? can never refer to a group of females, or even to a mixed-sex group of Prophets because, again, all Prophets were male. As a result, gender in Standard Arabic may be purely functional. Functional gender marking is not an isolated phenomenon in the grammar of Standard Arabic. It is attested in other types of sentences, such as the following examples which I owe to Late Professor Mohamed Abu-Talib who handed them to me in March 1999: ó (18) ?inna rahmat-a rabb-ii la-qariib-un. that mercy-SF God-my is-near-SM God’s mercy is close. (19) a-ssamaa?-u munfaTir-un. Def-sky-SF split-SM The sky is split. (20) wa laa yuqbalu min-haa ∫afaawat-un. and not be accepted-SM from-her advocacy-SF No advocacy will be accepted from her. (21) wa ?in tu-kaddibuu faqad kaddaba ?umam-un min qabli-kum. (Quran) and if you-disbelieve then disbelieve-SM nations-PF from before-you If you charge with falsehood, then other nations did it before you. (22) wa maa hiya min-a DDaalim-ina bi bawiid-in. (Quran) and not she-SF of-it unjust-Acc of far-SM-Acc She is not far from the unjust. (23) fa-ya-wma?idin laa ya-nfawu lladdiina aaman-uu mawdiratu hum. (Quran) andImp-then not Imp-is useful-SM who-SM had faith excuse-SF-their Then the faithfuls’ excuse won’t help them. (24) al-malaa?ikat-u qaal-uu . . . Def-angels-SF-Nom said-PM The angels said . . .

   

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(25) ka-?anna-hum ?awjaazu naxli-in xaawiya-tun. (Quran) as-that-them branches-PM palm trees-Acc empty-SF-Acc. They are like dead palm trees. (26) ?awjaazu naxli-in munqawir-in (Quran) branches-PM palm-PM-Acc concave-SM Concave palm trees (27) fa?in kaddabuu-ka faqad kuddiba-t rusulu-un min qabli-ka. (Quran) if don’t believe-you then was not believed-SF Prophets-PM from beforeyou-SM If you are not believed, other Prophets were so before you. (28) wa laqad kaddab-at rusul-un min qabli-ka. (Quran) and not believed-SF Prophets-PM from before-you-SM Other Prophets did not believe before you. (29) walaakin yanaalu-hu ttaqwaa min-kum. (Quran) but get-him-SM faith-SF from-you-PM He will get faith from you.

Although most of the nouns given in the examples (18–29) above do not refer to humans, rusulun (Prophets) does. In (18), there is no ó syntactic agreement between rahmatu ‘mercy’ which is feminine and qariibun ‘close’ which is masculine. In (19), there is no syntactic agreement between assamaa?u ‘sky’ which is feminine in Standard Arabic and munfaTirun ‘split’ which is masculine. In (20), there is no syntactic agreement between ∫afaawatun ‘advocacy’ which is feminine and the verb yuqbalu ‘is accepted-MS’ which is masculine. In (21), ?umamun ‘nations’ is feminine in Standard Arabic, but the verb bears the masculine morphological form. (22) is an interesting case: hiya ‘she’ is feminine but the adjective bawiidin is masculine. In (23), again, mawdiratuhum is feminine and the verb yuqbalu is masculine. In (24), lmalaa?ikatu is feminine and the verb qaaluu is masculine. In (25) ?awjaazu is masculine plural but the adjective xaawijatun is feminine singular. In (26), ?awjaazu naxlin is feminine plural, but the adjective munqawirin is singular masculine. In (27) and (28), rusulun is masculine plural but the verb is feminine singular. Finally, in (29) ttaqwaa is feminine and the verb yanaaluhu is masculine. Functional gender marking is also attested in the numeral system of Standard Arabic. Numbers from 3 to 10 in this language do not agree in gender with the noun they modify: (30) jaa?a xams-at-u (*xams-u) muhandis-iin-a. came five-SF-Nom five-SM-Nom engineers-MP-Acc Five male engineers came.

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(31) jaa?a xams-u (*xams-at-u) muhandis-aat-in. came five-SM-Nom five-SF-Nom engineers-FP-Acc Five female engineers came.

In (30), xams-at-u ‘five-SF’ is used instead of the expected xams-u ‘five SM’ and in (31b), xams-u ‘five-SM’ is used instead of the expected xams-at-u ‘five-FS’. This type of asymmetrical agreement is very regular in Standard Arabic. Thus, there is a systematic mismatch in gender agreement in the case of nouns and their numeral modifiers in Standard Arabic. This type of functional gender may not be a sign of gender equity in Standard Arabic; but rather a reflex of the internal structure of the language. Agreement data are significant with respect to androcentricity; they imply that although feminine gender is abundant in Moroccan languages, it is more used to encode male attributes and experiences than female ones. Inanimate plurals take feminine singular agreement in Standard Arabic but not in Moroccan Arabic. Standard Arabic (32) a. ?al-kutubu l-mutarjam-ah the books Def-translated-FP The translated books b. al-manaazilu l-muhaddam-ah the-houses Def-destructed-FP The destroyed houses Moroccan Arabic (33) a. lktub lmtarjm-in the books translated-MP The translated books b. ddyur lmhadm-in houses destroyed-MP The destroyed houses

The singular nouns kitaab ‘book’ and manzil ‘house’ are masculine in Standard Arabic but when in the plural, they take feminine agreement. According to Walters (personal communication), a strong Whorfian reading of this fact would be that whereas Standard Arabic is more sexist, the dialect and contemporary society is less so. The Berber counterparts of (32) and (33) above involve a gender neutral participial form:

   

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Berber (34) a. lktub i-tyatrjam-n the books be translated The translated books b. tigumma i-Der-n houses fallen The destroyed houses

S L In principle, lexical words, phrases and sentences carry semantic meanings, but in this section, only lexical meaning is dealt with as it carries content that clearly exhibits semantic gender-marking. The relationship between words and the outside world is generally mediated by reference, as words are basically defined on the basis of the meanings they convey in relation to some referent (concrete or abstract). Among these meanings, there is the expression of the relationship between a word and the sex, apparent or assumed, of the referent(s) of this word. This type of meaning-matching relationship between the apparent or assumed sex and the content of lexical items is often referred to as ‘nominal’, ‘lexical’, ‘natural’ or ‘logical’ gender-marking in human languages. As languages are used to express the daily events in the lives of men and women, all languages inherently carry nominal gender-marking of some type. Nominal Gender-Marking in Moroccan Languages Nominal gender-marking is the most commonly known and the best studied type of gender-marking in linguistic literature. This marking has an easily attested relationship with the bipolar categories male/ female. In Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, nominal gender-marking is manifested in the fact that nouns and their modifiers carry explicit and obligatory gender markings. For example, Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber family names are based on the gender of the referent: the words ?um, lumm, and imma refer to ‘mother’, ?ab, lbu, and baba to ‘father’, ?ax, lxu, and gma to ‘brother’, and ?uxt, luxt, and ultma to ‘sister’. Likewise, when a speaker of Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, or Berber selects a pronoun

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to refer to a noun, s/he is obliged to use the masculine to request a knife (muusaa in Standard Arabic and mus in Moroccan Arabic and Berber, and the feminine to request a spoon (miwlaqah in Standard Arabic and mwilqa/wa∫eq in Moroccan Arabic, and tagenjawt in Berber). Gender-neuter nouns do not exist in these languages as every single noun needs to be conceptually categorized as masculine or feminine. As pronouns substitute for nouns in human languages, the grammatical information that pronouns encode is a type of nominal gender-marking. Thus, personal pronouns such as huwa (‘he’ in Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic) and ntta (‘he’ in Berber) replace masculine nouns; whereas hiyya (‘she’ in Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic) and nttat (‘she’ in Berber) replace feminine nouns. These and similar pronouns are nominal and inherently gender-marked. Nominal gender-marking may be realized somewhat differently in Berber. In this language, the initial vowels i, u, and especially a, indicate both the grammatical category ‘masculine’ and the grammatical category ‘singular’ in words such as ixf ‘a head’, igil ‘a mountain’, imi ‘a mouth’, igir ‘a shoulder’, ul ‘a heart’, utm ‘a handful’, argaz ‘a man’, asafu ‘an amber’, ayydi ‘a dog’, and agulid ‘a rock’. Words starting with one of these vowels but referring to feminine gender are rather pejorative: akaws ‘a spinster’ as opposed to takawst ‘a young girl’, amTTu ‘a solid woman’, but also ‘a feminized man’ as opposed to TamTTuT ‘woman’. Interestingly, whereas the feminine gender morpheme in Berber, t . . . . . . t, denotes ‘smallness’ as mentioned before, the masculine gender-marker a denotes ‘bigness’ (contrast adaw ‘big back’ with tadawt ‘back’). Another dimension of nominal gender-marking is that it is neither fixed nor unified as words do not often fall into specific semantic slots in an automatic and predictable way. A typology of lexical items based on natural gender reveals that words differ as to whether they express the notions of ‘masculine only’, ‘feminine only’ or ‘both masculine and feminine’. For example, the following Moroccan Arabic words are invariably masculine no matter whether the referent is male or female: bnadem ‘human being’, lxelq ‘humans’, DDahiya ‘victim’, and ttilad ‘newborn’. It is interesting to note that such words never take the feminine gender-marker in Moroccan Arabic: a. Further, in the same language, a number of words have an invariant form and refer to both sexes, but are invariably feminine at the level of form: xliqa ‘human shape’, kemmara ‘bad face’, and wquba ‘stupid’.

   

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In Moroccan Arabic and Berber, some frequently used paired words favor one gender over the other; the favored gender is usually masculine: rrays ‘boss’, ∫∫af ‘boss/chief-3 SM’, ∫∫ifur ‘driver-3SM’, and lwzir ‘minister-3-SM’. The feminine counterparts of these words are either occasional (lwzira/talwzirt) or awkward (∫∫ifura/ta∫∫ifurt). Such terms are discriminatory in the sense that they are not used with equal force when referring to men and women. Thus, although the masculine words rrays ‘boss’, ∫∫af ‘boss/chief ’, and ∫∫ifur ‘driver-3-SM’ are very frequent in both Moroccan Arabic and Berber, their feminine counterparts rrajsa, ∫∫afa, ∫∫ifura are rather avoided by most speakers. Likewise, words denoting exclusively feminine professions are socially devalorized: neggafa ‘a woman who dresses and makes up brides’, Teyyaba/gallasa ‘public bathhouse assistant’, xeddama ‘domestic’, Terraza ‘embroider’, and even kwaffira ‘hairdresser’, or hannaya ‘hand and/or feet henna decorator’. The first two ones may even be used as insults. This lexico-semantic discrimination against the use of feminine forms is attested even in words referring to animals and objects: kelb ó ‘dog’ and hmar ‘donkey’ in Moroccan Arabic and ayydi ‘dog’ and ageyyul ‘donkey’ in Berber carry less negative connotations than their ó feminine counterparts kelba, hmara, tayydit, and tageyyult. Likewise, in Moroccan Arabic, sbaw ‘lion’ and nmer ‘tiger’ are more likely to be used in their masculine forms. However, in the absence of a systematic survey of the gender system of any of the Moroccan languages, it is difficult to evaluate the absence of the feminine counterparts of sbaw ‘lion’ and nmer ‘tiger’ in Moroccan Arabic. Accordingly, the reason might be that the male is the generic (as in most languages, although ‘cow’, not ‘bull’, is the English generic in this case) or because there are few female lions and tigers in the environment to get noticed, or because of something connoted by ‘male’ lions and tigers. Even neutral entities such as ljaw ‘weather’, ddmir ‘hard work’, akerraz ‘laboring’ are masculine in the unmarked case in Moroccan Arabic and Berber. Note, however, that the feminine tagayyumat ‘clouding’ and maSa?ib ‘catastrophes’ are feminine and carry negative connotations. Further, the expletive pronoun (that is, a pronoun that does not have a referent such as it in ‘it is raining’) is always masculine in the grammars of the three Moroccan languages: ?inna-hu/*ha ya/*ta-nbagii ‘it is obligatory that . . .’ (where hu and ya are masculine as opposed to the feminine ha and ta).

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Given the highly inflectional nature of Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, the appearance of gender in lexical terms is not straightforwardly natural in these languages as words tend to carry strong masculine bias. This bias has the consequence of representing the feminine as the marked form which acquires different or additional connotations to those of the normative masculine forms. Markedness in both grammar and meaning has always been associated with exceptionality and deviance. This fact renders the grammatical (and referential) space of feminine words narrower than that of the masculine ones. Such linguistic practices perpetuate the concept of the dominance of men over women in Moroccan culture. Another interesting aspect of gender-marking in the three Moroccan languages is that the same noun may carry different gender markers in one language and no gender-marker in another. For example, Standard Arabic marks the ‘ear’ ‘?udun’, and ‘foot’ ‘rijl’ as feminine and ‘boy’ ‘walad ’ as masculine, whereas Berber marks the three as masculine (amzzug, aDar, and awyyal, respectively). In addition, Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic mark ‘star’ (najmah, nejma) as feminine, whereas Berber marks it as masculine (?itri ). On the other hand, whereas Berber marks ‘back’ (tadawt) as feminine, Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic mark it as masculine (Dahr, Dher). Furthermore, in Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic lbab ‘door’ is masculine, but in Berber, it is feminine (tiflut). Unlike in English or French, nouns in the three Moroccan languages are never gender neutral as they need to be categorized as either masculine or feminine. This is another aspect of the strong androcentricity of Moroccan languages which is related to the heavily gendered socio-cultural framework of Moroccan superstructure powers. Generic Masculine in Moroccan Languages The generic use of grammatical or lexical forms in a language means the use of these forms in an unmarked way to refer to both males and females. The generic use of masculine forms is a very common feature of human languages as these evolve in predominantly patriarchal societies. In the realm of grammar, the category that is most used generically to refer to both masculine and feminine human and non-human entities is the third person singular masculine: he in English or il in French. The overuse of this category generically across languages has rendered it gender-specific and not gender-free

   

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in the sense that the third person singular masculine is usually associated with males in the minds of the users of languages (cf. Robertson 1990 who associates the use of the male generic to the male visualization by language users). According to the literature in this domain, the use of masculine forms as unmarked forms may result from one of the following two options: (i) a bias to the effect that all people are male (cf. Silveira 1980), and (ii) the foregrounding of males and the backgrounding of females, a fact which eliminates the latter by making it gradually invisible. These two options have been extensively discussed in Korsmeyer (1977), McConnell-Ginet (1979), Blaubergs (1980), and MacKay (1983). So far as the Moroccan context is concerned, in addition to the free (independent) forms huwa in Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic and ntta in Berber, which both mean ‘he’, the bound inflectional masculine forms ya- ‘he’ in Standard Arabic, y- ‘he’ in Moroccan Arabic and i- ‘he’ in Berber are used generically to refer to all humans (males and females): ya-Dunnu l?insaanu ?annahu xaalidun ‘a person thinks that he is eternal’ in Standard Arabic, ka-y-idmer bnaó dem htta i-mut ‘a person works until he dies’, and i-ygal bnadem izd ma idder abda ‘a person thinks that he will live forever’. Likewise, the term lewlad ‘boys’ in Moroccan Arabic is commonly used to refer to ‘children’; this is another case where the masculine often wins out over a false generic. The fact that the three Moroccan languages are highly inflected and that masculine and feminine gender necessarily appear on verbs, reduces the possibility of confusion between masculine and feminine forms in sentences and, consequently, increases the gender-specificity of the generic masculine. In this way, generics in Moroccan languages are more restrictively masculine than in English and French, given that the singular third person pronouns in these languages, as well as plural third person, are gendered. On a larger scale, the use of the masculine generic in Moroccan languages is a reflection of the androcentricity which is deeply ingrained in Moroccan culture. The androcentric use of grammatical generics in Moroccan languages is extended to lexical nouns in these languages. The words that are relevant here are the ones that refer to humans. These words are generally marked for gender on the basis of biological sex: masculine nouns refer to males and feminine nouns refer to females. Thus, a male is mudir ‘director’, ?ustad ‘teacher’, or muhendis ‘engineer’, and a female is mudira, ?ustada or muhendisa in Standard Arabic. In

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Moroccan Arabic, a male is lmudir ‘director’, lmuwellim ‘school teacher’, and lmuhendis ‘engineer’, whereas the female counterparts are lmudira, lmuwellima and lmuhendisa, respectively. In Berber, a male is ameksa ‘shepherd’, asli ‘groom’, and anegbi ‘guest’, whereas the female counterparts of these lexical items are tameksawt, tasliyt and tanegbiwt, respectively. Such alternations between masculine and feminine endings in the three Moroccan languages are fairly productive and attest to the natural-gender aspect of these languages. However, in spite of the apparent symmetry between masculine and feminine forms in the three Moroccan languages, masculine nouns are often used generically when they are used in the plural. For example, lmudirin ‘directors’, lmuwellimin ‘teachers’, and lmuhendisin ‘engineers’ refer to both males and females in Moroccan Arabic and the same is true for the plural forms of Standard Arabic and Berber: al-mudara? ‘directors’, al-muwallimun ‘teachers’, and al-muhadisun ‘engineers’ in Standard Arabic, and imeksawn ‘teachers’, islan ‘peasants’, and inegbiwn ‘guests’ in Berber all refer to both males and females. The feminine counterparts of these words refer to females only. Semantic asymmetries between words in the three Moroccan languages are also attested in the fact that masculine forms are usually used as unmarked forms not only for generic reference, but also to refer to mixed-sex groups. For example, boys and girls are referred to as drari ‘boys’ in Moroccan Arabic and iweyyaln ‘boys’ in Berber although both the terms ddriyat ‘girls’ and tiweyyalin ‘girls’, as well as the neutral Berber words lqqum and lwa?un, which both mean ‘children’, exist in Berber. Likewise, although indefinite pronouns are expressed by the means of no less than four forms in Moroccan Arabic: ∫i ó ó wahhed ‘some male’, ∫i wahda ‘some female’, flan ‘some man’ and ó flana ‘some woman’, it is the masculine ∫i wahhed and flan which are more general and are used to refer to both males and females, ó whereas ∫i wahda and flana refer exclusively to females. Thus, although masculine generics are said to include both males and females, they are in fact generally interpreted as masculine, rather than generic. Consequently, masculine generics have a wider referential scope than feminine nouns and pronouns in the three Moroccan languages. This creates a strong bias against the use of feminine gender in the three Moroccan languages and has the further implication that the majority of lexical rules in these languages are sexist. For example, the masculine agreement is used even when the female referents largely outnumber the masculine referents: a thousand adult women and

   

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one male child are referred to grammatically as masculine: ?alfu mra?atin wa Sabiyun ?ataw, not *?atajna ‘came 3PF’ (a thousand women and a boy came-3PM). Such grammatical rules perpetuate a monolithic view of gender which foregrounds the male and backgrounds the female, creating, thus, a bias right from early childhood where children are first exposed to languages at home (Moroccan Arabic and Berber) and at school (Standard Arabic). Indeed, discrepancy in dealing with gender forms is bound to have repercussions on attitude formation. Boys often feel that they are stronger and better than girls and develop attitudes accordingly. Likewise, whereas girls readily join male playgroups, boys are usually very reluctant to be involved in girls’ playgroups. Indeed, more social value is given to boys than girls, and children socialize in this general environment and learn how to behave according to the gender role assignments available to them. Such attitudes are bound to last a whole lifetime and to be transmitted from generation to generation. Generic lexical nouns in Moroccan languages have the further function of foregrounding male-oriented experiences as universal and normative and backgrounding female-oriented experiences as dependent and marginal. For example, the words rujuulah, rrejla, and rrjelt, which all denote ‘courage’ in Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, respectively, derive from the root r j l from which rajul ‘man’ is derived and which is strongly associated with the concept of man. It is interesting to note that the meaning of ‘courage’ is also denoted by the Standard Arabic word muruu?ah, which is derived from mar? ‘person’, but although muruu?ah is formally related to ?imara?ah ‘woman’, it does not apply to women. Both rujulah and muru?ah are male-oriented and, hence, gender-specific although they may appear to be gender-free on the level of form. Further, the generic use of rajul ‘man’ extends to the derivation of verb forms such as: tarajjala ‘he pulled himself up’ and ?istarjala ‘he acts like a man’ which are both strongly gender-specific. Male-biased androcentricity in lexical items of Moroccan languages is extended to the world of animals. When referring to the plural of animal terms, the generic seems to be coded as male: it is the masculine plural which is used even when reference is made to female animals: the word djaj ‘hens’ is commonly used in Moroccan Arabic although the feminine form djajat ‘hens’ exists in this language, leqTuT ‘cats-3MP’, and lklab ‘dogs-3MP’ refer to both male and female cats and dogs in spite of the availability of the lexical words lqeTaT ‘cats-

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3PF’ and lkelbat ‘bitches’. Even the word begra ‘cow’ is often pluralized as bger ‘cows’ instead of begrat ‘cows’ which contains the relevant feminine plural marker –at. Likewise, in Standard Arabic, the lexió cal item haamil ‘pregnant’ is always masculine though the beings it is predicated of are necessarily female. A reason may be that being pregnant is so valued in the Arab-Muslim culture that it is ‘appropriated’ by the male language ideology. Apart from lexical items, some generic masculine phrases and expressions have a fixed nature and are used in a proverb-like fashion: lkelma d rrajel ‘a man’s word’, lwaqfa d rrajel ‘a man’s support’, lhemma d rrajel ‘a man’s charisma’, rijalu ttawliim ‘men of education’, ó rijalu lgad ‘men of tomorrow’, rijalu SSahafah ‘men of the media’, etc. The neutral terms l?insan ‘person’ or usratu ‘family of ’ or unaasu ‘people of ’ instead of rrajel or rijalu in such phrases are not used in spite of their availability: lkelma d l?insan ‘a person’s word’, lwaqfa d l?insaan ‘a person’s support’, lhemma d l?insan ‘a person’s charisma’, usratu/unaasu ttawliim ‘family/people of education’, usratu/unaasu lgad ‘family of/peoó ple of tomorrow’, usratu/unaasu SSahafah ‘family of/people of the media’. The latter expressions are not used because the strong element of hierarchy which is clearly involved in rijalu ‘men of ’ is missing from them. The generic masculine use of phrases is also attested in the fact that although women are the ones who raise children, the expression ttrabi d rrjal ‘men’s upbringing’ in Moroccan Arabic is more positively perceived than ttrabi d lwyalat ‘women’s upbringing’. The latter expression presupposes the absence of a man in the process of upbringing children and automatically neutralizes hierarchy and lifts ‘authority’ (a much sought after element in raising children), in a typically female domain in Moroccan culture. Indeed, the expression tterbiyya d lwyalat ‘women’s upbringing’ carries a clear connotation of ‘lack of discipline’ and ‘deviance’ and is, thus, negatively perceived. The fact that the semantic space is heavily gendered in the three Moroccan languages cannot be explained on the sole basis of the meanings of given nouns and pronouns. There are social and psychological explanations that may be added because gender-marking carries communicative, social, and psychological significance for speakers and hearers.6 For example, MacKay (1998) states that the way children unconsciously formulate ideas about people and objects 6 Investigation in this field started with Freud who explained nominal gender marking by reference to psychological phenomena.

   

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around them in the process of language acquisition is significantly influenced by the way gender is marked in the language they acquire. This marking, according to this author, is a ‘subtle’, ‘pervasive’, and ‘covert’ way of conventionalizing everlasting stereotypes not only in the case of bilingual, but also in the case of monolingual speakers. These stereotypes creep into the way these individuals perceive language and the way they write in that language. McKay (1998) likens nominal gender-marking to the overt metaphor referred to as ‘disguised personification’ whereby stereotypic human male and female characteristics are projected onto masculine and feminine gender markers. Hence, an object or a nominal concept that carries the masculine or the feminine gender marker is ‘endowed’ with male or female attributes. This type of metaphor that nominal gender-marking carries is comprehended and learnt just like other overt metaphors during the process of comprehension and learning. In the words of MacKay (1998: 16), users of a language: map aspects of the nominal concept onto selected aspects of the corresponding human stereotypes. For example, French marks ‘time’ and ‘the sun’ as male (le temps and le soleil) but marks ‘old age’ and ‘the moon’ as female (la viellesse and la lune), so that learners and comprehenders of French unconsciously view (map) the (male) ‘sun’ as powerful, like the stereotypical man, whereas the (female) ‘moon’ is weak, a mere reflection of the sun, like the stereotypical woman who reflects or derives power from men. Similarly, learners and comprehenders of French unconsciously view (map) ‘old age’ as passive and submissive to ‘time’, which holds the power or control over ‘aging’ (like the stereotypical male with respect to females).

The disguised personification hypothesis is further supported by a great number of personifications from English literature where ‘old age’ and ‘the moon’ are personified as female and ‘time’ and ‘the sun’ as male. On the basis of this hypothesis, the fact that various languages exhibit various gender markers and, accordingly, various mapping conventions for the same concepts, attests to the fact that human stereotypes and nominal concepts are related. For example, unlike French, Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber mark (personify) ‘the sun’ as female and ‘the moon’ as male (or both male and female in the case of Berber) and, along with the disguised personification hypothesis, this pattern conveys to young speakers of Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber that ‘the sun’, like the stereotypical female, is a source of nourishment and life, whereas ‘the moon’, like the stereotypical male, is associated with holiness

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(the appearance of the new moon announces the beginning of a new month and the beginning and end of the holy month of fasting, Ramadan). Within MacKay’s theory, nominal gender-marking performs many important and multi-dimensional psychological functions: it serves to perpetuate traditional gender stereotypes, and serves as a vehicle which subtly and unconsciously transmits culture-specific attitudes, and allows comprehenders and learners of a language to project their interpersonal attitudes on the new ideas, concepts, objects, and things that they encounter. By implication, in their everyday lives, people learn, comprehend, and think on the basis of the nominal gender-marking of concepts.7 However, McKay’s account seems to be too Whorfian; it is hard to maintain that culture generates psychological conditioning. For example, if non-native speakers of French mapped ‘old age’ onto females/femininity, etc., it might be a purely subconscious act. It is very unlikely that all male non-native speakers of French fear death because the word is feminine in French, and what about those of them who then learn Arabic where it is masculine? Cultural environment does have an impact on psychological phenomena that accompany gender perception, but it does not ‘determine’ such a perception. In the case of Moroccan culture, it is unlikely that the presence of many languages, two of which being mother tongues, results in ‘multiple’ psychological conditionings. A conclusion to be drawn from this section on the use of the masculine as both a grammatical and a lexical generic form in the three Moroccan languages would be that androcentricity and male-bias are not inherent in human languages; they are rather gradually built in the structure of languages and reinforced through everyday language use. The deeply ingrained hierarchization in language and language use in the Moroccan context is a result of millennia of accumulation of androcentric views and beliefs that the culture has perpetuated through powerful institutions. Grammatical and lexical androcentricity in the three Moroccan languages is so pervasive that it prevails in spite of the heavy inflectional nature of the languages in question. In the case of Standard Arabic, this androcentricity is backed by centuries-old male-biased grammar books and linguistic norms. Androcentricity becomes even more operational in actual everyday use of language. 7 The theory of disguised personification is supported by experimental and observational data (cf. MacKay 1998).

   

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P A: S M  G  L G The pragmatic level of analysis is a level where language use is related to the wider social context which includes the speaker, the hearer, their relationship, the intended meanings of their utterances, etc. In language use, the grammatical and lexical aspects of gender acquire polyvalent social and pragmatic meanings. In the Moroccan context, the social meanings of gender-related words, phrases, and sentences are reflected in two areas that have constituted the target of feminist linguists: (i) stereotyping and (ii) sexism. Both areas are domains where gender, language and language use intermingle in a significant way. Stereotyping Stereotypes may be defined as the sum of taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs about human behavior and actions in a given socio-cultural context. Stereotypes variably apply to social categories, among which gender. For example, women in Moroccan culture are generally believed to be ‘too emotional’, ‘too weak’, ‘too wicked’, ‘hardworking’, ‘patient’, and ‘obedient’. These stereotypes are created and perpetuated by the social meanings they are given in the Moroccan socio-cultural context: women are socially defined as more emotional, weaker, more wicked, more hard-working, more patient, and more obedient than men. These constructed, sometimes paradoxical, social definitions of Moroccan women are highly valued and readily adopted and transmitted by both men and women to their children. Failure to adapt to the socially constructed ideals of how women are expected to be and to behave is strongly resisted from within society and leads to rejection and marginalization. The actual process of stereotyping is cumulative and largely unconscious, a fact which explains its tenacity and pervasiveness in a social system. This tenacity and pervasiveness stem from the ‘taken-for-granted’ nature of stereotypes and sanctions their validity and their close association with the prevailing social wisdom in a society. Gender stereotypes in Moroccan culture present a number of characteristics. First, they are mainly channelled through language. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the way speakers of Moroccan languages use gender nuances in their everyday speech and these speakers’ knowledge or stereotypes of the way sex-roles are distributed

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in Moroccan society. A host of paradoxical expressions in Moroccan Arabic such lmra gir wliya ‘a woman is weak’, lwyalat lefwat ‘women are vipers’ reflect the stereotype that women are at the same time weak, unreliable, and wicked by nature. Other expressions which invoke ‘social utility’ such as being a good wife and a good mother ó ó are more positive: mra Salha hsan men myat rajel ‘a good woman is better that a hundred men’. The mere utterance of such a stereotypical expression has a great force of persuasion in conversation. In fact, expressions that reinforce stereotypes function as social reminders of how women need to behave and how men need to treat them. Second, gender stereotypes in Moroccan culture may be explicit or implicit. Explicit stereotypes include explicit gender identity and are attested in areas relating to home and work. These stereotypes highlight the ambivalent attitude of society in general, and men in particular, toward women. For example, men exhibit a positive attitude towards mothers and ‘good’ wives, but negative attitude towards a ‘female leader’ because the latter jeopardizes their status quo. Explicit stereotypes reinforce the close relationship between women and their homes and ‘fight’ any association of women with the public sphere (the street for example) by featuring women as victims, alien beings, transgressing invaders, in public domains. This type of stereotypes is exemplified in two popular sayings: ∫awr lmra w la ddir brayha ‘consult a woman but do not take her opinion into consideration’ and lmra wqalha Sgir ‘a woman’s mind is small’. As for implicit stereotypes, they constitute the sum of internalized attitudes and beliefs about gender as a social category. This internalization is largely unconscious and results from socialization and everyday cumulative behavior at home, at school, at work, etc. As such, implicit stereotypes operate in a way which often escapes conscious control and end up by constituting some kind of symbolic law for the members of a community. For example, women in Moroccan culture are implicitly assumed to be poor public leaders, poor interlocutors in religious matters, weak advisers in serious matters, etc. Such implicit stereotypes are attested in the behavior and speech of even people who do not espouse such stereotypes in an explicit way. Compared to explicit stereotypes, implicit stereotypes are particularly pernicious and tenacious. Third, gender stereotypes in Moroccan culture may, in principle, be positive or negative. While positive stereotypes are not problematic, negative ones create prejudice and shape a powerful and lasting male-biased group mentality. Most of the stereotypes about women

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in Moroccan culture are negative. In general, female talk, attributes, actions, and habits are more negatively depicted in the three Moroccan languages than male talk, attributes, actions, and habits. Women and their language are systematically subject to biased, pejorative, and reductive stereotyping that is reflected in some most common expressions in everyday speech such as suq nnsa (literally ‘women’s market’, but meaning ‘trivial’ and ‘unworthy’), ∫gul lwyalat (literally ‘women’s work’, but meaning ‘something badly done’), and klam lewyalat (literally ‘women’s talk’, but meaning ‘unreliable’ and ‘childish’). These and similar expressions are often used as derogatory terms or even as insults. The fact that women’s voice in Moroccan culture is wawra ‘taboo’ is at the root of the strong stereotypes surrounding their language. In fact, there is a stereotype in Moroccan culture which strongly disfavors women’s language in general. The fact of differentiating Moroccan women’s language from men’s is a result of the ‘duality’ (men-leader/women-subordinate) stereotype that is deeply rooted in Moroccan culture. It is on the basis of this stereotype that what is understood as ‘women’s language’ is often associated with a distinctive pronunciation (e.g. high pitch), distinctive word choices (e.g. diminutives), and distinctive performance styles (e.g. euphemisms) although Moroccan women exhibit a wide range of variety in their intonation patterns, do not always use diminutives and are often taxed as lacking ‘nuanced’ ways of expression that are attested in specific constructions like euphemisms. The social attitude to ‘women’s language’ is an attitude to a monolithic image of women that Moroccan society has constructed and wants to preserve. It is this constructed image that freely produces stereotypes according to which women talk too much or too loudly, gossip, lie, limit their conversation to trivialities, pronounce words incorrectly or with too much precision, hesitate, and are too raucous or too polite. ‘Women’s language’ is also stereotyped as domestic and subservient in Moroccan culture. Another stereotype about Moroccan women is that they bring about the ‘evil eye’ through their presence and/or speech. The evil eye refers to ‘evil’ (illness, misfortune, or even death in this case) that a person’s presence or language is believed to causes. If, for example, a person gets hurt, looses something, or hears bad news after having met or spoken to a woman, this person would readily attribute the mishap to the woman. Women that are particularly considered a source of evil eye are usually old, divorced, or widows. In the presence of this category of women, newborns, brides, and

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even businesses are usually ‘protected’ by ‘amulets’ that are inserted in clothes or put in hidden places. In the absence of these, the muttering (or even thinking of ) ‘protective’ expressions such besm llah ó rrahman rrahim! ‘in God’s name, the Almighty, the Merciful!’ or lla iwTik lewma! ‘May God make you blind!’ are believed to drive away the evil eye. The evil eye stereotype neutralizes the power that old, divorced women, and widows have in Moroccan culture, a power which resides in the fact that they have more public freedom and are more likely to subvert conventional gender roles and, thus, need to be ‘socially tamed’ through stereotyping. Interestingly, old and divorced men, as well as widowers are positively viewed in Moroccan culture as they constitute potential husbands and do not jeopardize the male status quo. Some stereotypes are not straightforwardly negative, but are nonetheless ‘harmful’ to women in the sense that they put much social pressure on them. For example, in Moroccan society, women are expected to work very hard to the extent of sacrificing all their time to the welfare of their husbands and children. The harder a woman works the better she is socially judged. This stereotype is epitomized in the ó two concepts of Sbbara ‘enduring’ and hadga ‘hard-working’, both being two highly valued attributes according to which women are primarily judged inside and outside their families. Girls are trained to be hard-working and enduring from a young age, and the more girls show an eagerness to do housework, the better their chances are in finding a husband. Even if they have a job outside home, women are expected to be hard-working and enduring. A career urban woman who does not have a domestic is said to be mra w rajel ‘both a woman and a man’ or lalla w mulati ‘mistress of the house’; both expressions refer to ‘do-it-all’ career women. The latter stereotypes are as unliberating as the previous ones; they often make women feel the need to continuously work hard and justify each of their actions in order to achieve recognition in the family and in society. Paradoxically, the category of ‘do-it-all’ career women does not fit in the positively viewed shy, submissive and ‘feminine’ category of women8 and it is up to women to accommodate the two.

8 The various stereotypes that surround women and their speech are reinforced in textbooks and the media (cf. Belarbi 1987).

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Sexist Language 9 A widely accepted definition of sexist language is the one given by Vetterling-Braggin (1981: 3) and quoted in Mills (1995: 83). According to this definition, a statement is sexist if: its use constitutes, promotes or exploits an unfair or irrelevant or impertinent distinction between the sexes.

Examples of sexist language in English are the use of ‘he’ instead of ‘s/he’ and the use of ‘chairman’ instead of ‘chairperson’. However, sexist language is more commonly defined by feminist linguists as the expression of a socially constructed system of beliefs and practices which establish and reinforce men’s dominance over women. Although sexist language is not limited to language use, it is mainly through language that the male-biased beliefs and attitudes are commonly perceived, propelled, and perpetuated. Many scholars have dealt with sexism in various languages and cultures (cf., for example, Lakoff 1975, Nilsen et al. 1977, Shute 1981, Frye 1981, Sunderland 1994, Mills 1995, and Aburisha 1996). These works show that sexist language is an extremely complex issue as it is much more than a question of choice of sexist or gender-specific lexis. For Lakoff (1975), sexist language is more of a symptom of women’s subordination to men than a cause of it, as it only reflects sexism in society. For this author, change needs to occur first in society, not in language. Other feminists, such as Mills (1995), refute this view on the grounds that it reduces language to mere ‘talk’ and strips it from its ‘action’ aspect. Mills bases her argument on Brown and Yule’s (1983) definition of communication as ‘action-performing’. This view is further supported by other feminist linguists who, on the basis of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, stipulate that rather than simply ‘reflecting’ society, language is a crucial element in forming a person’s worldview and shaping his/her thoughts (cf. Cameron 1990 for more details on this point). For the latter group of scholars, change in the way language is used may bring about change in the way language users see, perceive, and think. This view is also shared by Frye (1981) who stipulates that sexist language is more a matter of attitude and belief than a matter of simple language use. Shute elaborates on this view by highlighting the fact that actions, 9

The expression ‘sexist language’ entered the English language during the 1960s.

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customs, rules, practices, and laws are channels through which sexist language is implemented. On the basis of these views, analyzing sexist language does not only involve an analysis of the male/female differences in language use that parallel differences in social roles, but transcends this level of analysis to a consideration of the language differences which result in significant gender effects, as well as the meanings of these effects in a given socio-cultural context. As such, an analysis of sexist language is located at the heart of feminist action to uproot and deconstruct male-biased language, beliefs, and attitudes in a given culture. Types of Sexism in Moroccan Languages Sexism in the Moroccan languages is attested at three linguistic levels: lexical, structural, and discursive. Lexical Sexism In Moroccan society, lexical sexism is manifested in the use and attitude towards a great number of everyday vocabulary. For example, vocabulary items expressing male professions are culturally valorized, whereas the ones expressing female professions are not. The connotations of words referring to male professions are often associated with notions of leadership. For example, terms such as idari (‘administrator’ which is derived from ?idara ‘to control administratively’), ó qaDi ‘judge’, siyasi ‘politician’, sahafi ‘journalist’, munassiq ‘coordinator’, musiqar ‘musician’, mugenni ‘male singer’, katib ‘writer’, and ∫awir ‘poet’. While these masculine terms carry a positive connotation, their corresponding female lexical terms, namely, idaria, qaDia, siyasiya, ó sahafia, munassiqa, musiqara, mugennia, katiba, and ∫awira do not, as they often carry an air of amateurism and lack of seriousness. The terms idaria, siyasiya, and musiqara are rarely used. As for names of professions where women are not usually present, they are derogatory and trivializing in most cases (bulisia ‘policewoman’) or invoke mockery (∫ifura ‘woman driver’). Likewise, religious professions such as imam ‘leader of prayers in a mosque’, mufti ‘religious legislator’, and muqri? ‘Quran reciter’ have female counterparts but people consider the male imam, mufti, and muqi? to be the norm. The sexist asymmetry between the above masculine and feminine words expresses social reticence to ‘accept’ the presence of women in powerful public spheres, and results in distancing women even farther from these spheres.

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Lexical sexism in Moroccan languages is also attested in the fact that there are more terms describing, insulting, an referring to females (girls and women) in Moroccan languages than terms describing, insulting or referring to males (boys and men). Females are usually described and referred to in relation to their physical characteristics: zwina ‘beautiful’, biDa ‘white’, wamra ‘plump’, whereas men are less so. Physical beauty and plumpness are socially promoting attributes so far as women, not men, are concerned and are, thus, highlighted in everyday interactions. Likewise, physical negative attributes are often used to describe or refer to women more than to men: xayba ‘ugly’’, wewja ‘crooked’, mwewwda ‘too thin’, etc. Such attributes are often used pejoratively to demean women and diminish their value in social interactions, and are more derogatory when said of women than when said of men. The sexist use of lexical terms referring to physical traits puts a great social pressure on women to accommodate to the standard accepted image of the ideal woman in society, and inhibits their potential to thrive in domains that transcend their physical appearance. Women, more than men, are also described with respect to their behavior and family standing, as these count more for girls and women than for boys and men. Sexism is also manifested in insult words. The bulk of insult words in the Moroccan context relate more to women’s sexual availability than to men’s: bent zanqa (literally ‘daughter of the street’, but meaning ‘prostitute’), bent zzna (literally ‘daughter of prostitution’, but meaning ‘prostitute’), etc. Insult words also include jobs that only women perform: Teyyaba ‘bathhouse assistant’, Tebbaxa ‘cook’, xeddama ‘domestic’, neggafa ‘the woman in charge of brides’ makeup, dressing, etc.’ Typically female states are also freely used as insults: hejjala ‘widow, divorced’, bayra ‘spinster’, weld/bent lhejjala ‘son/daughter of a widow or a divorced woman’, weld/bent lxeddama ‘son/daughter of a domestic’, and the Berber yus/illis n tadgalt ‘son/daughter of a widow or a divorced woman’. In addition, the use of expressions such as lxedma d lawyalat ‘women’s work’ as an insult for a badly done job does not have a male counterpart. The male counterpart of this expression is indeed a tribute: lxedma d rrjal ‘men’s work’, which denotes seriousness and reliability and is, hence, very positive. Insult terms are very strong culturally in the Moroccan context as they usually achieve a great and lasting impact on individuals, especially women, given the overall male-biased environment in which they evolve. Women are more sensitive to insults than men because of their greater accountability to society.

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Sexism is similarly attested in the presence of gaps in some lexical paradigms relating to women. A case in point is the absence of a lexical term referring to the menopause in Berber and Moroccan Arabic. This form of lexical sexism linguistically denies the existence of a particular female experience and denotes a social reticence to legitimizing a specific phase in women’s lives by naming it. Another meaning of this lexical gap is that fertility and youth are socially taken to be the unmarked category, whereas old age and sterility are considered deviation from the marked category, and are, hence, stigmatized. Likewise, expressions such as beddel lfra∫ (literally ‘change the bed’, but meaning ‘remarry’) are never used by or in relation to women as the latter do not generally associate marriage with ‘bed’ (sexual act), but with family-building. This expression, like the absence of a term for menopause, clearly expresses a males’, not a female’s, way of linguistically encoding reality. It is interesting to note that the terms that refer to pregnancy and delivery, two closely related and typically female experiences, are used in a sexist way in the sense that they reflect a male’s, and not a female’s perspective on things. Words and expessions relating to these two typically female states exhibit two contradictory sets of meanings: whereas the meanings of pregnancy terms and expressions are rather negative, the meanings of delivery terms and expressions are positive. For example, the terms and expressions referring to ó ó pregnancy are: muhula (literally ‘trapped’), hamla/hazza (literally ‘carrying something’ but used in a pejorative way), and the Berber expression tlla sifadn (literally ‘she has big knees’, which is clearly pejorative). These terms and expressions inscribe a male’s perspective of pregnancy and are taboo in mixed settings. They depict Moroccan women as passive creatures who do not really control their own bodies. A ó Moroccan woman would say ?ana muhula ‘I am trapped’ or llig sudis (literally ‘I am with a belly’), both of which containing either verbs in the passive form or verbs denoting a state, not an action. The negative connotation associated with pregnancy terms and expressions is closely linked to the ‘sexual’ element involved in them, a view which is more male than female in the Moroccan context. By contrast, there is a proliferation of terms expressing delivery: fekk llah ó whaylha (literally ‘God disentangled her ties’), tfekkat (literally ‘she is disentangled’), weldat ‘she gave birth, turu (Berber ‘she gave birth’, a term which is related to tarwa ‘offspring’), etc. The last two verbs are active verbs. These terms and expressions have positive meanings because they are conceived within the larger patriarchal framework

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as representing the true function of women in society: reproduction of the species. As ‘reproducers’ of human beings, women are highly viewed in Moroccan culture. Thus, the contrast between two sets of meanings that both refer to very close concepts: pregnancy and delivery, clearly shows that meanings are often created and imposed on events with the aim of creating ‘knowledge’ that is in accordance with particular myths in particular socio-cultural contexts. Being pregnant and giving birth transform women’s status from ‘individuals’ to ‘mothers’, and as ‘mothers’, women gain social prestige and cease to be ‘tabooed’ in spite of the fact that their sexual organs are involved in both experiences. The relative absence of the expression of Moroccan women’s own experiences from their own per-spective is at the root of the existence of lexical gaps in specific domains in Moroccan languages. The male perspective renders talking from typically female perspectives very hard, and the creation of appropriate terms that denote these experiences even harder. Another type of lexical sexism in Moroccan culture is attested in the absence of some lexical collocations (word groupings in sentences). ó For example, the expression mra d dar naj ha ‘a successful housewife’ ó does not collocate with mawgaza ‘lazy’; it can do so only with hadga ‘hard-working’ or fayqa ‘intelligent’. Accordingly, unmarried women ó who think that they are hadgas and fayqas are led to regard their ‘single’ status experience as deviant. This type of lexical sexism may be extended to cases where masculine and feminine connotations of specific words are semantically asymmetrical. For example, the adjective zawem ‘bold’ has the meaning ‘courageous’ when applied to a male and ‘too daring’ when applied to a female. Lexical sexism sometimes gives rise to incorrect derivations or false etymologies in folk Moroccan literature. For example, the lexical item nisa? ‘women’ in Standard Arabic is sometimes believed to derive from nisyaan ‘forgetfulness’, with the underlying assumption that God created women and then ‘forgot’ about them. Such incorrect derivations reinforce the stereotype that women are better unseen and unheard, and underline the invisibility of women in Moroccan culture. Analysis of Lexical Sexism in Moroccan Culture: Sexist Language and Meaning The various types of lexical sexism that are attested in Moroccan society are based on the commonly held assumption that the behavior of Moroccan women is both natural and unitary. This essentialist

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view stems from the stereotype that women, as a group, behave in a certain way that is generally perceived as negative or childish: they talk too much, they talk nonsense, they drive badly, they do not understand quickly, they tell poor jokes, they seek to harm other women, etc. Lexical sexism in Moroccan culture is closely related to meaning. An aspect of this relationship which is of interest to feminists is that meaning, like gender, identity, power, and ideology, is fluid, nonstatic, and negotiable. Within this view, the meanings of words are not established by a fact or an opinion; they constitute some type of ‘agreements’ created by people and institutions in a given society. By implication, words and expressions do not have fixed and static meanings; they may have ‘dominant’ or ‘official’ meanings which are ‘dictated’ by large-scale culture-specific superstructures and these are liable to change. These meanings significantly influence ways of perceiving gender and gender role assignment. As people living in a society are men and women, the exclusion of women from social power relations often results in meanings being created by males in the majority, if not the totality, of cases. In this sense, meanings are not ideologically neutral (cf. Mills 1995); they carry strong visions of pre-established male ‘norms’ of social behavior, in which gender is crucial. This overall ideology of gender-making in a society is basically ‘disseminated’ and perpetuated through language use in everyday social interacions. It is also symbolically maintained by language. Given the complex nature of meaning, its relationship to sexist language may not be easily qualified as ‘sexism’ in language because these meanings operate in very subtle ways within specific cultures. At the level of language use, meanings are readily taken to be neutral; however, at a deeper level, meanings are often created within cultures; they are the result of sometimes very complex processes (cf. Mills 1995). These complex processes are deeply ingrained in the power structures of a society. As such, meanings do not work in the same way for males and females given the deeply ingrained asymmetrical power relations between the two sexes. Meanings are in fact influenced, and sometimes regulated, by gender-specific conventions within family, taboo, etc., as well as collocation and metaphor in language use. The creation of meanings within Moroccan culture is attested in naming and the semantic derogation of women.

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Naming Naming is a linguistic way of representing and legitimizing reality. The act of naming, in the sense of ‘giving proper names’ to newborns or ‘referring’ to individuals, things, concepts, by attributing ‘names’ to them), derives its power from the fact that it both defines individuals, objects, and concepts, and makes them abide by that definition. As a result, the conduct of individuals is greatly influenced by the ascribed characteristics and the social expectations that go with naming. Feminist scholars have forcefully demonstrated that language representations, which are largely propelled by naming, are commonly given from a male perspective (cf. Spender 1980, Cameron 1990, Mills 1995, among many others). For these feminists, naming does not reflect reality in an arbitrary way; it is rather a process by which cultures select and fix what they consider reality. Spender (1980) goes to the extent of claiming that language is ‘man-made’, implying that it is men who have been creating meanings and women have simply been experiencing the world through men’s meanings. According to these views, human languages are deeply, maybe exclusively, sexist in the sense that they represent the world on the sole basis of male-biased stereotypes. In the Moroccan context, men and women are named by using different codes that relate either to family affiliation or to various attributes. Of the two codes of affiliation, it is family affiliation which carries the stronger cultural meaning given its relation to the collective self. Moroccan women keep their fathers’ family affiliation names after marriage in rural and urban areas, as family affiliation is an identifying factor in Moroccan culture. In the case of women who have salaried jobs, pre-marriage family names are kept because they are administratively convenient as they do not necessitate a change of name which would involve more paper work. However, in situations which do not necessitate administrative ‘reshuffling’, such as everyday interactions, urban women may be defined in relation to their husbands’ names. In introductions, for example, a relatively recent urban phenomenon, it is usually the case that women are introduced as Madame/Mademoiselle X ‘Mrs/Miss X’ where X is in principle the husband’s name if it follows Madame and the father’s name if it follows Mademoiselle. In both cases, naming does not interfere with the strong patrilineal laws which ensure that wealth and property (including women) pass through the male line, whichever

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names women are given. Further, women, not men, need to reveal their marital status: sseyyida ‘Mrs/lady’, ∫∫rifa ‘holy woman, Madam, Mrs’, and l?anisa/madmuzil ‘Miss’. It is also the case that many widows and divorced women in urban areas keep their husbands’ names in order to hide their ‘women without men’ status, as Jansen (1987) would call them; they often use their deceased husbands’ names to maintain social recognition and social protection. In fact, in cases where the prestige associated with particular names is sought, women in general define themselves in relation to these names and endeavor to be named accordingly as bent flan ‘daughter of so and so’, mrat flan ‘wife of so and so’, xut flan ‘sister of so and so’, etc. It also happens that a married woman may define herself as Madame X where X is her father’s family name if the latter carries social prestige. Sometimes, women are named mmalin ddar ‘owners of the house’ in public social interactions. As it is taboo in Moroccan culture to ask someone how his wife is (as Western people might to make polite small talk, especially if the speaker knows the wife), Moroccans would say kidayr-in mmalin ddar? ‘How are the owners of the house?’ The plural here ‘blurs’ the concept of woman (and veils it?). This may be thought of in terms of Brown and Levinson’s Face Threatening Act, as for men to mention their wife’s name or call her by the label mrati ‘my wife’ and redressive politeness. Another practice which may be associated with this is the fact that Moroccan educated men in places like Embassy receptions introduce their wives as Madame ‘Madam’ (and, of course, seldom as mrati ‘my wife’ and never by her family name). Further, in Morocco, a bent ‘girl’ is a bent until she marries and becomes a mra ‘woman’, whereas sooner or later, a male becomes a rajel ‘man’, whether or not he marries. Another expression is bent darhum ‘daughter of their house’ for a girl or a woman of socially good upbringing. The expression weld darhum ‘son of their house’ is exceedingly pejorative. On the other hand, the expression weld lblad ‘son of the country’ is very similar to the US Southern ‘good old boy’, but the expression bent lbled ‘daughter of the country’ is neutral; it means ‘a fellow citizen’. This is congruent with Gardener’s (1984) view that women (among others) are open categories, whose very presence ‘invites’ comments in public. There are also cases where women use either their father’s or husband’s family name according to specific situations and according to the type of prestige they seek. They may, for example, use their fathers’ family name with their in-laws if the latter are of a lower

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social status in order to demarcate themselves as belonging to a higher social class. By opposition, men seldom have recourse to their mothers’ or wives’ prestigious family names in conversation to gain social prestige. As for personal names, Moroccan women, like children, tend to be called by their first name in public places such as administrations and in formal settings. Bosses and directors, for example, tend to call female secretaries or even women in higher administrative positions by their first, instead of family, name. Such a behavior in public, a heavily gendered sphere, is a means by which men treat women as subordinates, intimates, or both. In addition to first names for women, there is a wide range of endearment terms and expressions, as well as diminutives, that are used by men when addressing women in public. Although not negative in the same way that insults are, these words are often used to demean women. For example, lgzala dyali ‘my beauty’, zzin dyali ‘my beauty’, and even benti ‘my daughter’ are expressions that immediately place men in a comfortable ‘higher’ and ‘protective’ position vis-à-vis women. The term benti ‘my daughter’ is sometimes used in mixed groups by older men to younger women, or by bosses to secretaries to ‘hide’ men’s intentions. The true function of the endearment terms used by men to and about women is to establish a hierarchical power relation between interactants in a setting and, thus, reproduce asymmetric patriarchal relations. Men’s use of endearment terms is in the same line as men’s assumption that they may stare at women, touch them and invade their space. Women are treated like children in this respect: as children’s space and autonomy are routinely violated in Moroccan culture, women are assumed to be open to casual comments on their appearance and behavior. It is true that women, too, use the masculine equivalents of the aforementioned endearment terms but they do so less frequently and most often within the general framework of parent-child relationship or in contexts where they address younger men. In informal mixed groups or when addressing relatively older ó women, the vocatives used for women are: lhaja ‘pilgrim’, ∫∫rifa ‘holy woman’, and lalla ‘mistress/lady’. The latter terms do not carry the same hierarchy element as the former ones because older women are not commonly supposed to constitute ‘sex objects’. Furthermore, in speech, females are commonly cited after males, as the following examples illustrate:

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136 (35) M A rajel w mra lbu w lumm weld w bent lxu w luxt

B argaz d TmeTuT baba d imma awyyal d tawyyalt gma d ultma

E  man and woman father and mother a boy and a girl brother and sister

Systematically citing males before females has the effect of foregrounding males and giving them saliency over women in information-processing. The power of meaning-creation is best seen within the Whorfian theory of linguistic determinism. This theory claims that language does not merely reflect the world by naming entities that exist independently of language in this world, but rather, the structures of particular languages determine the various views that societies have of the world in the sense that the entities that are named by a given language become ‘more evident’ for the users of that language than the ones that are not. According to this theory, the language of a culture significantly molds the ways in which the language users of that culture perceive the world and react to it. The theory of language determinism contains two stages: first the world is named differently by different people because people prioritize specific aspects of reality according to what is relevant to their ways of life. Thus, Saharans,10 for example, have several names for the sun shades because they live in an environment of which the sun is part and parcel. Other people who do not live in the Sahara but who use the desert for some reason, such as geologists or desert car racers, may acquire these names too. It is the needs of a community which trigger the use of specific words, and consequently, cultures differ in the way they select the linguistic means that are relevant to them. Second, language influences the thought-system of its users in the sense that the linguistic forms of language unconsciously constrain what is ‘real world’ for its users. These forms actually produce the users’ perception of the world. This explains the fact that the same social reality is seldom represented in exactly the same way by two languages. Subscribers to language determinism vary from the strong extreme (which may involve racist implications as it presupposes a gradation in the adequacy of languages) to milder positions.

10

The people who live in the Moroccan Sahara.

   

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When viewing meaning-creation within Moroccan culture, it is inevitable to adopt some mild version of Whorfianism. In fact, in the Moroccan context, which is characterized by multilingualism, the daily use of more than one language favors some version of the first aspect of language determinism over the second one. As users of more than one language, Moroccan men and women interact linguistically by constantly choosing the terms and expressions that are most relevant to their overall vision and interpretation of the world, as well as to their immediate needs. Within the overall Moroccan context, meaning-creation is bound to be male-biased and Moroccan languages are bound to be androcentric. Apart from naming, another aspect of sexism in Moroccan languages is the proliferation of terms that are derogatory towards women. Gender-Specificity in Moroccan Languages and Semantic Derogation of Women Gender-specific terms and expressions in the three Moroccan languages are not used in an equal way by men and women. Such terms and expressions are often derogatory to women, but not to men. The following Moroccan Arabic pairs of words are a case in point: (36) M baTrun ∫∫af bulisi qaydum hejjal mTalleq wezri fqih ∫ifur mugenni mumettil ∫ix ytim meqTuw bbandi walim

F baTruna ∫∫afa bulisia qayduma hejjala mTelleqa bayra ∫ewwafa ∫ifura mugennia mumettila ∫ixa ytima meqTuwa bbandiya walima

E  boss boss policeman/policewoman oldest in a profession divorced or widow/widower divorced bachelor/spinster fortune-teller driver singer actor/actress popular singer orphan with no family mischievous scholar/scientist

While each pair in Table 36 above belongs to the same morphological root, shares the same literal semantic load, and is subject to the same morphological derivational processes, the masculine terms of the pairs have positive connotations, whereas their feminine counterparts have

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negative ones. The feminine forms in the examples in question are subject to what is referred to in linguistics as semantic derogation (that is, lessening of value, authority, reputation, dignity, etc.), whereas the masculine forms are neutral.11 The clearest examples are baTruna and ∫ixa, which are both synonyms of ‘prostitute’, and are often used as insult terms. mugennia and mumettila have the connotation of ‘promiscuous’ and ‘easy’; both may also be used as ‘euphemisms’ for ‘prostitute’. As for the pair of words walim/walima ‘scholar/scientist’, they are both neutral, and even positive, in isolation, but when the feminine form walima is associated with a particular woman, it carries a clear connotation of pedantism and its use may sound embarrassing or even offensive in some informal contexts. This negative connotation does not accompany the masculine form walim. This shows that it is not the meaning of words which is relevant to gender analysis, but the symbolic function they fulfill in a socio-cultural context. Interestingly, whereas the feminine word bayra ‘spinster’ carries a heavy negative connotation that may affect both the girl and her family, the masculine counterpart, that is wezri ‘bachelor’, carries a positive connotation up to a certain age (around 40) as it encodes a male’s social ‘advantage’: men, but not women, can marry at any age. This is reinforced in the saying rrajel wibu jibu (literally ‘a man’s only defect is his pocket’, but meaning ‘a man is mainly required to have money, the rest is not relevant’. As for the masculine counterpart of ∫ewwafa (literally ‘the one who sees’, but meaning ‘fortune-teller’), it is fqih ‘a teacher of the Quran to small children’, a word with a clear religious connotation’. This religious connotation lessens the negative connotation of ‘fortunetelling’. The morphological feminine counterpart of fqih, that is fqiha, is not used in this sense. Instead, the term ∫ewwafa ‘fortune-teller’, which is used in this context, is derogatory as it strongly denotes 11 According to Schultz (1990), semantic derogation designates terms that were once ‘innocent’ but which acquired sexist meanings by virtue of being associated with women. According to this author, this type of derogation is due to men’s prejudice and fear of women’s ‘natural’ power and biological superiority. For Cameron (1992), the reason of male-biased semantic derogation resides in the fact that men regard women as ‘inferior’ and basically define them by their sexual attributes. For example, insults do not only reflect cultural beliefs about inferiority and sexual behavior, or a distortion of reality, they are also a form of social control and definition in the sense that they constitute linguistic weapons in the hands of men, not women. Accordingly, insults are acts of violence which usually accompany rape assaults, for example.

   

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‘evil’, ‘harm’, and ‘destruction of families’. A fqih is generally perceived as a man who uses his religious knowledge in ‘good’ ways: he reconciles husbands and wives and helps women have children, etc. The masculine counterpart of ∫ewwafa, that is ∫ewwaf, is not used. Thus, a male fortune-teller unites families (he has the power of God), whereas a woman fortune-teller can only destroy families and sow fitnah ‘chaos’ in society. The rest of the feminine terms in Table 36 above carry overtones of lower status, lack of seriousness, and sexual availability. The last pair is interesting: the masculine term hejjal ‘widower’ has positive connotations: ‘a possible spouse’, ‘a sought after man’, ‘a free man’, ‘a man who can choose’, but hejjala ‘divorced, widow’ generally carries negative connotations: ‘an experienced woman’, ‘an ugly woman’, ‘a used woman’, ‘an unwanted woman’, ‘a too old woman’, ‘a woman who failed as a wife’, ‘a too independent woman’, ‘a robber of husbands’, etc. and may be a serious insult. These connotations affect the hejjala’s larger family as well and explains the taboo surrounding her status inside her family. The different meanings that the masculine and feminine words of the pairs in Table 36 above carry reflect the strict male-biased gender hierarchization in Moroccan society. These meanings are clearly created from a male perspective and, as such, they express Moroccan society’s deliberate marginalization of women who are not ‘good’ wives and ‘good’ mothers”. The most marginalized types of women are the ones who are not supported by a man, the ones that work on their own in the public space, as these do not live up to society’s image of the ideal woman. The meanings associated with the terms in Table 36 may be seen as ‘linguistic’ punishments for women who have not kept to the traditional (purely domestic) roles that Moroccan society assigns to them. On the other hand, Moroccan Arabic terms which refer to men’s adultery are much less cruel than the ones that refer to women’s adultery. A man who betrays his wife is said to be zehwani ‘liking fun’, winu xedra ‘with a green eye’, meaning who looks at women’, xfif ‘light’ or buwyalat ‘womanizer’. These terms attest to society’s tolerance of male adultery. As for an adulterous woman, she is said to be xarja TTriq ‘gone astray’, xeTTaft rrjal ‘robber of husbands’ or heddamt ddyur ‘destroyer of homes’. Men may even boast their ‘success’ with other women, sometimes in the presence of their own wives. The expression f dar dyali brra dyal nnas ‘as long as he is in the house he

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is mine, but outside the house he is people’s’, meaning ‘other women’s, is often used by women who are forced to accept their husbands’ infidelity in marriage. Such infidelity on the part of women legitimizes their killing on the hands of their husbands or any male close family member. Although in the Quran, it is stated that adulterous men and women should be both harshly punished, adulterous women pay a far higher price than adulterous men in Arab-Muslim culture. Another type of expressions that show discrepancy in meaning when relating to men and women are words that relate to men’s and women’s gatherings. Expressions relating to men’s gatherings in the three Moroccan languages have positive connotations. For example, majmaw rrjal in Moroccan Arabic is positive as it denotes ‘seriousness’, whereas majmaw lwyalat ‘women’s gathering’ has many other ‘synonyms’ such as suq nnsa ‘women’s market’, suq tbargig ‘market of gossip’, and lhedra lxawya ‘empty language’, which are generally used pejoratively. Likewise, in Berber, the terms and expressions which refer to women’s language carry pejorative connotations: awal n umTTu ‘a woman’s language’ where amTu is the masculine form of TamTuT ‘woman’ and is used pejoratively to denote ‘misplaced boldness’. Other Berber expressions that are often used to refer to women’s language are awal ixwan ‘empty language’, awal n tmgarin ‘old women’s language’, and tinegmisin ‘gibberish’. Another type of gender-specific expressions is mulat ddar ‘mistress of the house’. This expression is gender-specific in the sense that it carries the connotation that a woman is responsible for the running of the house in terms of cleanness, food and raising children whereas its masculine counterpart mul dar ‘the master of the house’ has the connotation that the man actually owns the house. Further, although both the expression bent wa?ila (literally ‘daughter of a family’, but meaning ‘woman/girl of good upbringing’ and weld wa?ila (literally ‘son of a family’, but meaning ‘man/boy of good upbringing’) are positive, the former is more of a pre-requisite than the latter in serious transactions like marriage, whereas the latter is more of a prerequisite for business-doing. Furthermore, weld mmu ‘his mother’s son’, is a negative qualification of a man/boy who is ‘too close’ to his mother, and as such, is less positive than bent bbaha ‘her father’s daughter’ which denotes ‘a protected girl/woman’. Likewise, referring to a man as mra ‘woman’or mriwa ‘little woman’ is a serious insult. By contrast, referring to a woman as rajel ‘man’ may be considered positive as it denotes seriousness and hard work. In fact, the

   

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expression kun rajel bhal mmek ! ‘be a man like your mother!’ is not negatively perceived in Moroccan culture unless it is meant to undermine the husband’s authoritarian status in the family. There are gender-specific expressions which, although apparently positive, are conventionally derogatory to women. For example, the expression mrat rrajel ‘a man’s wife’ is commonly used to express social status, but rajel lmra ‘a woman’s husband’, is never used in this sense. Further, mra b ∫arafha ‘a chaste woman’ is commonly used, but rajel ba∫arafu ‘a chaste man’ is never used with the same meaning. Likewise, the common expression la zin la fiaq bekri (literally ‘neither beautiful nor getting up early’, but meaning ‘inefficient’) is used to refer to women only, and contrasts sharply with the attributes ó hadga and Sbbara which are also associated with women only. Males and females are described in Moroccan languages through the use of different linguistic terms and expressions, and even when the same words and expressions are used for the two sexes, they are often used with different connotations. Terms which refer to males often carry the supplementary connotations of ‘more serious’, ‘stronger’, ‘bigger’, and ‘more reliable’. These connotations have their roots in the overall Moroccan socio-cultural context. As for meanings of feminine terms, they are derogatory as they carry the supplementary connotations of ‘childish’, ‘immature’ and ‘weak’. The Moroccan Arabic word mra ‘woman’ or the Berber word TamTuT ‘woman’ have wide ranges of derogatory and contradictory meanings: ‘weak’, ‘easily frightened’, ‘insecure’, ‘submissive’, ‘obedient’, ‘mischievous’, ó ‘unreliable’, ‘treacherous’, and ‘sub-human’ (lemra ha∫ak! ‘a woman save your face!’), among many others. Domains of Sexist Language In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, there are five major domains where sexism in language use is attested: (i) grammar (ii) professional occupations, (iii) relationships, (iv) character stereotyping, and (v) discourse. Some of these have been mentioned above. The male saliency is indicated in grammar by the generic use of the masculine in Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber in spite of the abundant existence of feminine morphemes and pronominal forms in these languages. Sexist language is also a feature of the vocabularies of the three Moroccan languages. As a result of grammatical and lexical sexism, males are more prominent in written texts

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than females because masculine pronouns are more common than feminine ones in Standard Arabic. This use of sexism in language sanctions and reinforces male-biased gender perception in teaching materials. Concerning the second domain where sexist language is attested, namely professional occupations, men in Moroccan culture are usually defined by professional characteristics, whereas women are seldom defined in this way. Men achieve social identity by taking up a job, whereas women are socially defined as wives and mothers. This presupposes that women are expected to hold minor, menial and insignificant occupational roles in Moroccan society. As for the third domain, namely gender relationships, women are usually defined and represented in relation to men, and not viceversa. For example, the nomenclature that defines women always refers to them in relation to their fathers, husbands, brothers, bosses, or even sons: mrat flan ‘somebody’s wife’, bent flan ‘somebody’s daughter’, xut flan ‘somebody’s sister’, and lkatiba d flan ‘somebody’s secretary’. Likewise, a woman would easily define herself as mrat rrajel ‘a man’s wife’, implying a ‘respectable’ and ‘protected’ identity. The latter expression is often used as a defense mechanism in mixed-sex disputes. In texts, women are usually represented as lovers and wives of men, that is, as adjuncts, very seldom as independent and free agents. Concerning the fourth domain where sexist language is attested, that is character stereotyping, women in Moroccan culture are often represented as highly emotional and irrational human beings. Decontextualized and misunderstood religious sayings such as al mar?ath naaqisatu waqlin wa diin ‘a woman’s mind and religion are deficient’ reinforce this. This way of qualifying women weakens their image when tackling serious public or private issues. These views are also reflected in the media and in children’s textbooks (cf. Belarbi 1987). Being timid and over-emotional is considered a positive female trait in Moroccan culture. Women who are not associated with such attributes range from arrogant or shrews to nagging and sharptongued. Moreover, names and voices often represent women as silly and stupid in contrast with men who are usually depicted in more favorable terms. Derogatory terms are meant to trivialize women in areas where they challenge male political or intellectual powers. Sexist language invaded the three Moroccan languages through social relations, the media, as well as institutional practices. Sexist attitudes, conceptions, and ideology have become fossilized not only in textbooks, but also in everyday practices, creating, thus, lasting stereotypes.

   

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The fifth and last domain of sexist language is attested at the discourse level.12 This level refers to the various types of sense that words, phrases and sentences create when used in a discursive context, as opposed to being used in isolation. The level of discourse involves the factors which trigger the occurrence of specific linguistic items. These include the interlocutor, the listener, the topic, and the goal of conversation. Apart from very few cases, words, phrases, and sentences do not make sense in themselves and need to be situated in a context in order to be fully comprehended. At the discursive level, the content of language use resides in the negotiation of elements and codes outside the conversation per se. Discourse elements greatly influence the occurrence of what is said and have an effect on the ways in which concepts are constructed and deconstructed. It is important to note that this content also significantly affects both the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader. Very often, words with neutral meanings in isolation acquire completely different semantic overtones when used in discourse as hinted to before. For example, the Moroccan Arabic term lewyalat ‘women’ becomes pejorative in the expression ssogan d lewyalat ‘women’s driving’. An understanding of the meaning of this phrase can be fully grasped only within the relevant patterns of background knowledge which extends from the simple nature of the universe to the ideological framework that governs it. This background knowledge is apriori presupposed by both the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader. This type of knowledge is so pervasive and strong that users of a language are firmly convinced that they are giving and receiving accurate versions of reality. It is on the basis of this knowledge that discourse meaning is produced. For example, it is only by knowing that women’s driving is a relatively new practice in Moroccan society, that it is only in 1999 that policewomen are seen for the first time in some public places of large urban centers, that one can understand why this phrase is sometimes used by policemen as an insult to drivers of both sexes. In addition, Moroccan television advertisements often depict women as ‘simple minded’, ‘stupid’ and ‘naïve’. For example, in the ‘Tide’ advertisement, a woman says: maneqder∫ nwi∫ bla tid ‘I cannot live 12 Mills (1995: 159) adds to Foucault’s (1972) ‘discursive frameworks’ the idea that there exist ‘gendered frameworks’ which ‘function at a stereotypical level to determine the type of language which is produced’.

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without Tide’. On the discursive level, this advertisement trades on the assumption that in the Moroccan prevalent ideology, women are assumed to be naive and simple-minded; it also uses a dicourse that is congruent with the common view that women are easily convinced by the utility of advertised products, and would, thus, buy them. Further, the literal use of the Moroccan Arabic word wliya (which derives from the Standard Arabic word waliyyah ‘holy woman’, but which means ‘inoffensive’) sounds very far from being ‘sexist’ and is often used to refer to women in general. However, the use of this word in an expression such as ?ana gir wliya (literally ‘I am only a holy woman’) calls for a discourse level analysis whereby the targeted meaning is ‘I am only a powerless/helpless woman’ which is sometimes used to justify acts or as a defense strategy in public disputes. Further, the plural term wliyat may also have the meaning of ‘stupid women’ at the discourse level, as in the expression lhadra d lwliyat ‘women’s language’. In both these contexts, the use of wliya is clearly sexist. Sexism here does not reside in the lexical word itself but in the use of the word in specific contexts and the discourse level at which it is interpreted. The use of sexism at the larger-scale discursive level is never attested at the lexical level per se. The importance of discourse in understanding the role of genderrelated meanings is revealed in the functions of proverbs, jokes, and the process of worldview formation. Although these constructions are apparently pre-constructed, their effect depends strongly on cultural background knowledge. In the typically oral Moroccan culture, proverbs (and by implication ready-made phrases and sayings) are particularly revealing: they serve as a strong moralizing device and, thus, carry strong force in the hands of men. Their ‘rhyming’ structure makes them easy to remember, their construction on a paradox appeals to the ear, their ideologically-laden messages cannot be easily contested by their users, and the ‘taken-for-granted’ truths they express are believed to embody the wisdom of previous generations and are, hence, considered a valuable legacy and a permanent source of advice, in a society that venerates its past. In Moroccan culture, proverbs are loaded with sexist meanings in the majority of cases. For example, ó ó ?ila hlef fik rrajel bat hani, w ila halfat fik lemra bat wassas (Literally ‘if a man swears to take revenge on you, sleep peacefully, and if a woman does so, be vigilant’, meaning ‘women’s revenge is imminent’) is a proverb which not only makes significant presuppositions that women are revengeful, wicked, and mischievous, but also presents these traits

   

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as being natural and incontestable states/truths. Such proverbs usually function on a metaphorical level which makes use of preconceived ideas about women. Like citations, proverbs are not easily contested because they are presented in a way which excludes any personal commitment or possibility of issuing a value judgement on the part of interlocutors. Furthermore, the recursive use of the Moroccan Arabic phrases lkam d lwyalat ‘women’s language’, ssogan d lewyalat ‘women’s driving’, lhadra d lewyalat ‘women’s language/gossip’, ssemm d lewyalat ‘women’s grudge’, etc. constantly convey the ideological message that anything related to lewyalat ‘women’ is negative and, by implication, anything related to rrjal ‘men’ is positive. Like proverbs, jokes have a specific function in Moroccan culture. As humor generally needs to derive its meaning from an apriori logic on the part of the listener so that the full meaning of jokes is grasped, it is this logic which ‘implicates’ the listener in the meaning-production in language. Like the use proverbs, moralizing, and fighting, humor is considered a ‘male thing’ in Moroccan culture. It is a means of solidarity among men. As for women, they are reputed to be poor joke-tellers. Indeed, there is a quasi-absence of public female joketellers in Moroccan culture. The use of humor, like the use of proverbs, is complex as it neutralizes sexism in language by positioning the language user outside any commitment and, hence, preventing him/her from challenging the jokes or proverbs. Thus, by laughing at a sexist joke, both the speaker and the hearer indirectly participate in perpetuating the sexism vehicled by the joke. Jokes are a subtle way of reinforcing sexist attitudes in Moroccan culture; they are a means of expressing the latent tensions and problems that besiege the men-women relations in this culture. In Moroccan jokes, women are more often the butt of jokes: they are often made fun of, cheated, and ridiculed. By extension, in the caricatures of the sensational written media, women often appear as larger in size than men; they are commonly shown as naggers who continuously henpeck their ‘powerless’ husbands. The cultural power of jokes and proverbs is derived from the metaphors on which they are based. Through metaphor, the language of jokes and proverbs builds a belief system where women are constructed as mischievous, cunning and develish. In addition to proverbs and jokes, the formation of a worldview in Moroccan culture is revealing. Halliday (1971), cited in Mills (1995: 143) calls this ‘transitivity’ and defines it as follows:

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  [Transitivity is] the set of options whereby the speaker encodes his [sic] experience of the process of the external world, and of the internal world of his consciousness, together with the participants in these processes and their attendant circumstances; and it embodies a very basic distinction of processes into two types, those that are required as due to an external cause, an agency other than the person or object involved, and those that are not.

In Halliday’s view, transitivity forms a coherent worldview whereby both the agent (the doer of actions or initiator of ideas) and the recipient of these actions or ideas are protagonists of representation. Within Halliday’s view of transitivity, language users produce meaning by making linguistic options as to the types of choices that are made with respect to the types of processes, participants, and the different roles that these participants play. These choices are classified into three categories: (i) material (syntactic) choices, (ii) mental choices, and (iii) relational choices. The syntactic choices that language users make are part and parcel of the way people represent others and themselves. For example, the choice between active and passive constructions is revealing in this respect: language users may choose to appear as controllers of the environment and as agents that are taking action and making decisions, or they may choose to appear as passive victims of circumstances. The choice between material and mental processes distinguishes active participants who control their decisions and actions by exhibiting a conscious and voluntary behavior from participants who listen more and participate less. In mixedsex conversations, it is often the case that women adopt the latter role and men the former in expressing their internal and external experiences through specific selections of choices in language use. Users of a language may make transitivity or intransitivity choices. Transitivity choices are associated with material processes and intransitivity choices with mental processes. An understanding of transitivity and intransitivity in language use makes sense only in contexts of larger-scale frameworks which are, in turn, constrained by ideology, presuppositions, the status of the receiver(s) of the messages, etc. Linguistic choices never take place in a vacuum; they always take place in relation to one or several listeners who interpret them. As the discourse level is the level where the process of meaning-production takes place, meaning has a strong ideological aspect. So far as Moroccan culture is concerned, the use of language is bound to be affected by the way gender is ideologically perceived in this cul-

   

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ture. Given the high rate of illiteracy in Morocco, women, much more than men, are affected by the prevalent conservative ideology and are more controlled by cultural norms. Consequently, their linguistic choices tend to be intransitive in mixed-settings, a fact which is in accordance with the prevalent overall ideology. The conservative ideology and practice of women with respect to language choice may be seen as a case of Foucault’s idea that the oppressed collude in and contribute to their own oppression. However, although Moroccan women tend to choose passive roles and mental processes which distance them from decision-making, and often make intransitive choices which do not have an effect on other people or things, it is too simplistic to qualify these language behaviors as negative and passive. It is often the case that women ‘benefit’ from what appears to be a passive role. For example, while women are more listeners/receivers than speakers/givers in everyday mixed conversations, this role allows them to secure immediate gains and make quicker progress in acceding to public spheres that have been considered typically male up to recent times. Being passive is not seen uniformly as negative by all women; many of them approve of a passive, rather than, an active role because of the social gains it offers. Thus, transitivity, like power, may have different meanings for different people according to the contexts in which language is used, as well as the assumptions of the participants (speakers/writers and listeners/readers). Indeed, attributing straightforward and outof-context sets of meanings to language items may be erroneous. Impact of Sexist Language on Moroccan Women As the use of sexist language is influenced by the social system and attitudes that constitute the larger-scale components of Moroccan culture, it has a significant impact on Moroccan women. The negative impact of sexist language on women may be attested in speech, grammar, as well as in the semantic, pragmatic, and discursive aspects13 of language use.

13 According to Mills (1995: 95), sexist language may, in principle, have three major effects: (i) alienate female interlocutors and cause them to feel that they are not being addressed, (ii) cause women to view themselves in a negative or stereotyped way, and (iii) confuse listeners, both male and female, for example, as to whether a true generic noun or pronoun is being used in a gender-specific way.

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In mixed-sex conversations, women are usually perceived as listeners rather than speakers, especially in public spheres. A woman ‘who listens’ is socially categorized as a ‘good woman/wife’ and a woman who talks too much in mixed groups or who interrupts men is negatively perceived as ‘too independent’ and ‘not a potential good wife’. Likewise, women are not allowed to walk behind a dead person lest their ‘emotivity’ causes them to ‘wail’ and ‘scream’ loudly in public. Paradoxically, women’s public screaming and wailing are tolerated, and even encouraged, in sad circumstances such as death. There is a proverb in Morocco which says lli mawandu bnat mawarfuh nnas fuqa∫ mat (literally: ‘no one will know when a man without daughters dies’, but idiomatically meaning ‘if a man does not have daughters, his death will go unnoticed because unaccompanied by wailing and screaming, the intensity of which is often taken as a social public measure of the ‘dearness’ of the deceased’). This proverb is meant to invoke the advantages of having girls, after all, as if women in Moroccan culture are good only for screaming and wailing. Even female beggars avoid begging in a loud voice and hide their faces if they are young in order to be taken seriously. It is often the case in the Moroccan socio-cultural context that fathers, brothers, husbands, or even sons ‘speak for’ their womenfolk in public transactions such as inheritance negotiations, marriage, divorce, or simple trade transactions such as buying a car, even when the women are educated and have a job. The silence of women in such contexts is commonly interpreted as consent, and is congruent with the popular saying: asukutu walamatu rriDaa ‘silence is a sign of consent’. This saying is often invoked in marriage transactions. Women’s voice is not commonly heard in formal and public events. This attitude stems from the cultural belief that a woman’s voice is wawra ‘taboo’. In traditional Moroccan households, women are forbidden from answering the door. To signal their presence, these women either clap their hands or put one finger in their mouth to make their voice sound like a man’s. In some rural and semi-rural areas, the presence of women is usually announced by the sound of their ‘feet bracelets’ (xlaxels) as they walk in the street. This sound is sometimes meant to replace women’s voice in public places. Women feel the need to ‘hush’ their voices in public lest they jeopardize their honor and that of their families. Even inside homes, women’s voices are still taboo in the presence of guests. In the socialization process, one of the first things that girls learn is to monitor

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the use of speech in front others, especially males. The impact of this is reinforced by the gendered social norms when girls become adults, and, consequently, women often avoid contexts where their voices need to be heard publicly. The deeply-ingrained cultural belief that women’s voice is taboo has gradually rendered women’s words devoid of public authority. On the semantic level, the meaning-creation process in Moroccan culture does not only have a profound effect on the men-women relations, but it also deeply affects Moroccan women’s self-image and self-confidence. The use of sexist language is very reductive and diminishing to women; it provides a male-dominated worldview and reproduces unidimensional thinking. Sexist language also portrays women as second-class citizens, sex objects, or personifications of evil. As such, sexism in language harms women at the symbolic and cognitive levels. A good case in point in this respect is the impact of sexism in education. At school, sexist language affects girls’ self-image and sometimes kills their motivation for learning. The classroom is the site where the Moroccan socio-cultural value system regulating the behavior of males and females is channelled by the educational institution. This value system is reflected in (i) the structure of the classroom, (ii) the teaching methodologies, and the (iii) the course contents. The structure of the Moroccan classroom overtly reinforces the separation of students into two categories, males and females, and hence perpetuates the rigid gender dichotomy that characterizes Moroccan culture. As a result, the classroom setting and class activities are more conducive to competition (associated with masculinity) than to cooperation (associated with femininity), as stated in Tannen (1990). This makes the classroom space alienating for many girls, especially the ones that are brought up to be hard-working, shy and submissive (three highly sought-after female attributes in Moroccan culture). On the level of teaching methodologies, the hierarchical, ‘master/apprentice’, and one-way transfer of knowledge that prevails in the Moroccan classroom at all levels of education again reflects the larger sociocultural male/female power hierarchy (cf. Bergvall 1995, Savage 1995). Competition in oral performance clashes with the way girls are socialized not only at home but in society at large. Keeping the standard normative behavior of shyness and submissiveness at school is not fruitful for girls, as only the ‘hard-work’ value pays; it not only marginalizes them but renders the classroom a ‘chilly’ space for them.

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At the level of course contents, the transmission of discourse is mainly channelled through language. Being culturally-loaded, language use in the classroom is a strong vehicle of representations of gender roles and, thus, reflects the prevailing Moroccan cultural values in theory, practice and application, and has a direct impact on attitudes (cf. Ennaji 1988, 1992). The classroom discourse is an extension of the home and street discourses since neither students nor teachers leave their gender (largely shaped by these discourses) at the door of the classroom. Indeed, course contents are strong vehicles of the values and norms of Moroccan culture. As the Moroccan educational system rewards competitive ways of knowing and doing, girls, being trained to be ‘hard-working’, readily adopt these ways. Although gender is a salient category during the high school/university years given the age spectrum of students and given that these students express their social identity (class, level of instruction, motivation, etc. in addition to sex) through gender, both boys and girls tend to act on a spontaneous willingness to resist the gender roles assigned by society. For these youngsters, the classroom needs to be different from home and the street because they themselves need to be different from the preceding generation in order to assert their individuality. Consequently, students regard the classroom as a site of gender-neutral activities. Because they are under more pressure from society, girls tend to duplicate efforts. Female students are often said to do well at school, sometimes better than boys, and the younger the girls are the more this is true as a comparison of the school achievements of Moroccan female students in primary, secondary and university levels shows (cf. Loulidi 1990). Female students’ relative ‘predisposition’ for ‘doing best’ and ‘achieving most’ at school is an attempt to resist the gender roles that Moroccan society dictates and institutional ‘gatekeepers’ reinforce. This is revealed by the twin facts that, on the one hand, both students and teachers readily state that the classroom is a gender-neutral territory which offers equal opportunities for both sexes, and, on the other hand, the fact that, when students are asked if being male or female affects their lives in the classroom, many of them, including females, would readily deny the signification of gender. However, these female students’ spectacular enthusiasm lessens as they grow up. For example, at the university level, female students generally appear to be less involved and less demanding of the teacher’s attention. They give the outward impression of being rather shy in general, having

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less self-esteem and less self-confidence. This obviously results in lower levels of achievements and less career goals (cf. Barkallil et al. 1994). Many of them, so bright and full of hope at high school, end up by being bitterly disillusioned out of school where they face the rigid gender dichotomy and the burden of traditions, and this both affects their school achievements and narrows their horizons. Consequently, the majority of female students opt for traditional, domestic and nurturing jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretarial work. The ones that opt for scientific careers seldom do research in their fields even if they happen to have done very well in their higher studies. In society at large, that is if these female students find a job, they are usually quasi-absent from the power-linked public scenes. The main reason for this is that there is little space in the cultural imagination of the average Moroccan for the plausibility that women can be as good as men and still be women. This situation creates a pernicious gender-based injustice that affects attitudes, rendering them positive towards men and negative towards women. It is true that these patterns of academic achievement among girls in Morocco occur in other, even developed, countries, but the intensity with which they seem to occur in a developing country like Morocco is alarming. The process occurs so often that we have to start wondering what is it about ALL cultures that seems to force our mothers, sisters, daughters, etc. into this position. This section on the impact of sexist language on women highlights the loaded socio-cultural support of this sexism and its institutional support base. The social pressure that sexism exercises on the language and behavior of women is indeed great and the question that arises at this juncture is: what is the reaction of Moroccan women to the impact of sexist language? M W’ S  D S Moroccan women are not linguistically passive in the face of sexist language and its impact. They use semantic and discourse strategies to assert their individuality and achieve conversational gains. These strategies are more attested in mixed-sex settings than in all-female ones and may be seen as women’s ways of consciously or unconsciously counteracting the overall impact of sexism on them by creating their own meanings and ‘passing on’ their own ideas and

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feelings. These strategies are both ‘semantic’ and ‘discursive’ in the sense that they are meant to convey meanings at various levels of language use. The strategies used by Moroccan women to convey discourse-specific meanings include: (i) ‘indirect’ language, (ii) diminutives, (iii) euphemisms, (iv) polite forms, (v) oaths, (vi) entreaties, and (vii) code-switching. These strategies are characteristic of Moroccan women’s ways of using language and as they are more likely to occur in spoken than in written languages, it is in Moroccan Arabic and Berber that they are most attested. This is congruent with the fact that the majority of Moroccan women are illiterate and, hence, use these two languages more than Standard Arabic and French. By using these strategies in mixed-sex conversations, Moroccan women indulge in using linguistic practices in contexts to which they have to accommodate and their efforts of accommodation are themselves linguistically creative acts. ‘Indirect’ Language The examples given in the following sections are real and not hypothetical. The ‘indirect’ style of speech differs from the conventional ‘direct’ style in the sense that statements are deliberately expressed in ‘nuanced’, ‘careful’, and ‘consciously controlled’ ways. Speakers usually have recourse to indirect style when they seek to make a point in a subtle way or when they want to avoid open confrontation or criticism. As such, the indirect style of speech may be seen as a ‘sophisticated’ or ‘consciously worked out’ version of the direct style. For example, although men are generally said to be ‘more direct’ in their use of language than women, education makes them more indirect, especially if they are high status. In fact, it is not only the structure of utterances, but the identities of the interlocutors and the setting which influence the degree of directness in given linguistic contexts. Moroccan women manipulate indirect style to achieve aims, communicate with powerful people in and outside the family, ‘outsmart’ other women, etc. In mixed-sex settings, Moroccan women are reluctant to be direct as this procedure is generally regarded as ‘masculine’. Another reason in this respect is that direct speech often necessitates a rather longish turn-taking in conversation (to argue for a point, for example), a procedure to which women in the Moroccan culture are not accustomed. Indirect speech may be manifested in types of mixed-sex discourse

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such as the following one where a husband and his wife interact in the presence of a male friend of the couple: (37) Husband: fin Wife:

gadi n-dawzu lwuTla dyalna? where will we-spend holidays our Where are we going to spend our holidays? ó ∫hal hadi ma-m∫i-na l-∫∫amal ! long time this not-went-we to-north It is a long time since we have been to the north!

The wife’s statement is not a direct answer to the husband’s question. A direct answer would be: (38) kan-faDDel n-dewzu lwuTla dyalna f ∫∫amal. prefer-I we-spend holidays our in north I prefer that we spend our holidays in the north.

The indirect answer in (37) leaves room for maneuver in the course of the subsequent conversation and lessens the possible tension that would probably arise upon disagreement as to the targeted place for the holidays. The wife’s use of indirect language in the presence of another male is an act which is generally motivated by women’s prior knowledge that men tend to have the last word in mixed settings. By using indirect language, the wife succeeds in avoiding a loss of face. In other words, indirect language is used by the wife as a non-committing weapon and a face-saving device. Moroccan women often have recourse to indirect language even when they initiate a conversion: (39) wa∫

ma∫i mezian n-m∫iw l-∫∫amal ? whether not good we-go to-north Isn’t is good that we go to the north?

An opening indirect sentence such as the one in (39) above functions as a request and is more likely than a direct question to secure a positive answer. Moroccan women’s use of the indirect language strategy may seem at first sight apologetic, but seen within Moroccan culture, it is not only an anticipatory response to male prejudice, but it stems from the way women become social beings, and the way they accede to their own subjectivity and the consciousness of the self (personal and public). In fact, the use of indirect language is a creative use of language in a rigid context that restricts women’s language use in public mixed-sex settings.

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Although the patterns of indirect language that are presented in this section are ‘representative’ and ‘normative’ in general, the status of the examples offered is different from the one of Lakoff ’s examples because Moroccan women’s language is not presented as a ‘deficient’ version of Moroccan men’s. Indirectness in Morocco serves meaningful social functions; it is a ‘woman’s weapon’ that carries sense in Moroccan culture. In all-female settings, indirect language constitutes a genuine way of maintaining a conversation where each woman tries to ‘outsmart’ other women by being more ‘indirect’. At a more general level, indirect language seems to be a feature of women’s language in many cultures, except for cases like Och’s (1992) discussion of Malagasy women (where women are direct and directness is stigmatized in the culture). Given this, indirect language is not a ‘powerless’ style of speech, but a creative use of linguistic resourses. Diminutives Another characteristic of Moroccan women’s language is the prolific use of diminutives. The two grammatical categories that are most subject to the process of ‘diminution’ are nouns and adjectives. Thus, in Moroccan Arabic, nominal terms like ydida, krisi, Tbila, ffiyem, rwiyyes, dwira, kbibit, and xbiyyez are diminutive forms of yedd ‘hand’ kursi ‘chair’, Tabla ‘table’, fum ‘mouth’, ras ‘head’, dar ‘house’, kabbuT ‘pullover’, and xubz ‘bread’, respectively. Although such diminutives may, in principle, appear in the speech of both men and women, they are more frequent in the speech of women. ó As for adjectives, terms like gziwwel, Sgiwwer, hlilu, kbiber, smimer, gliwweD, ftiti, and mDiwwer are diminutive forms of gzal ‘beautiful, ó cute’, Sgir ‘small’, hlu ‘sweet’, kbir ‘big’ smar ‘brown’, gliD ‘fat’, fti ‘fresh’, and mDawwer ‘circular’, respectively. As with nouns, diminutive adjectives are more attested in the speech of women than in that of men. Apart from nouns and adjectives, other categories such as the question word qedda∫ ‘how many/much’ may be used in their diminutive form by women. Attitudes to diminutives in Moroccan culture vary according to the type of the diminutives used. Nominal diminutives may be used by women and men, but adjectival diminutives are more used by women than by men. Adjectival diminutives are likely to trigger ridicule if uttered by men in public. A possible reason for women’s relatively greater use of diminutive forms is that the latter are believed

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to denote femininity in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. As such, they trigger positive attitude and ensure immediate gains in conversations. Another reason is that women naturally use such terms when speaking to their young children and, hence, sometimes use them with adults as well. Diminutives may be used as linguistic devices to exhort the audience to perform some desired act. For example, the following sentences were uttered by a female sports instructor in a Sports Center in Fes: (40) yallah, kabr-u mwa-ya ba∫ lkri∫a ddxul! come on be patient with-me so that little belly goes in Come on, bear with me to get that belly in! hezzu rrwiyyes u Telq-u rrjilat! lift the little head and spread the little legs Lift the little head and spread the little legs!

The words lkri∫a ‘little belly’ rrwiyyes ‘little head’, rrjilat ‘little legs’ are used by the female instructor instead of lker∫ ‘belly’, rras ‘head’ and rrejlin ‘legs’ which men in general would use in the same context. Sports clubs are growing private businesses where women have started to invest. The sports instructors may be the owners of the Sports clubs and, thus, use linguistic strategies that would attract clients; the use of diminutives in this context is a case in point. Euphemisms Euphemisms may be defined as conventionally ‘nice’ ways of expressing ideas. These ways are ‘nice’ in the sense that they trigger positive attitudes and make a conversation smooth, a fact which is considered a ‘gain’ in the conversational process. Given their upbringing and the overall nature of their socialization, Moroccan women tend to avoid public criticism by wrapping up meanings in socially acceptable and self-promoting forms. For example, in the presence of inlaws, a Moroccan woman would say gadi nagles ∫wiyya ‘I’d rather sit down for a very short time’ instead of ttehlekt ‘I am exhausted’, knowing apriori that it is impolite to show signs of tiredness in such a context. This attitude will also secure her husband’s esteem. Moroccan women usually prefer to be ‘on the safe side’ publicly and to keep up the Sbbara ‘patient’ image as a means of achieving other gains. Euphemisms may be seen as a reaction to taboo. They are used by Moroccan women when talking about their bodies or private lives in general. In such cases, euphemisms may be seen as a strategy

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that Moroccan women use to protect their privacy and intimate lives at home and outside home. This strategy gives women more freedom in controlling their decisions and achieving their aims without having to explain every detail to everybody around them. Polite Forms Wolfson (1989: 67) defines politeness as: the manifestation, through speech, of respect for another’s face.

Polite forms are used by Moroccan women as a linguistic device to avoid conflict, secure respect, and express parenthetical softness, all of which being highly appreciated in Moroccan culture. Linguistic politeness is a marker in the language and gender literature (cf. Holmes 1984); women are more keen not to hurt the hearer publicly and are more caring (cf. Brown and Levinson 1987). Moroccan women usually accompany their announcement of embarrassing items with a rationale for remedying it and they consider this a form of politeness. Moroccan Arabic is full of politeness formulas and parenthetical softners. However, politeness markers may not be appropriate in all contexts. For example, women’s politeness in the street may sometimes be interpreted by males as ‘invitation for conversation’ or ‘weakness’. Other forms of politeness in the speech of Moroccan women is the use of words and expressions like yak ‘isn’t it?’, iwa qul ‘say’, ha ‘and’ etc., which serve the function of the English tag questions. The expression xalik lili! ‘may God preserve you!’ is more associated with women than with men in Fes. This polite expression whose social function is to encourage linguistic cooperation is often considered ‘effeminate’ in the speech of men. Along with the use of polite forms, Moroccan women generally avoid the use of words and expressions belonging to non-standard or wrubi ‘rural’ language, as the latter is believed to carry negative connotations and is socially perceived as ‘rough’, ‘uneducated’, and ‘uncivilized’, as opposed to standard language which is generally perceived as ‘educated’ and ‘sophisticated’. Because they, more than men, are evaluated on what they say and how they behave, Moroccan women strive to give the impression that they are ‘well brought up’ and express this through polite language. Politeness as a concept is very much tied to its context of use and

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the social meaning it carries. Moroccan men may also use polite forms, but theirs does not have the same social meaning as it is often understood to express modesty and humility. Oaths In the Moroccan context, swearing carries a moral impact. An oath by God is a guarantee of sincerity, a vow of truth, and a proof against lies. Women use oaths and swearing by God as a strategy to secure gains in conversations. The following are examples: ó (41) a. waheqq llah lwaDim! by God Almighty By God the Almighty! ó b. waheqq sidna Mohamed! by our Master Mohamed By the Prophet Mohamed!

There is a clear difference between men and women in the use of oaths in Moroccan society. Even in all-female groups, women tend to make an extensive use of oaths. They use oaths in an attempt to seek public credibility that society denies them. Women often feel they need to justify themselves more than men, especially in public. This is understandable in a socio-cultural context where the word of a woman is not taken seriously. As for men, they use oaths in a special context: during bargaining that accompanies the buying and selling transactions. These oaths are meant to make clients buy goods. Entreaties Entreaties may be defined as repeated requests. Although entreaties are closely linked to self-interest and may, in principle, be used by both men and women, they are more a characteristic of women’s language than men’s in Morocco. Thus, expressions like wafak! ‘may God cure you!’, llah ixellik! ‘may God preserve you!’, dir lmajhud llah ixallik! ‘do your best; may God preserve you!’, are more found in the speech of women than in that of men. The reason for the frequent use of entreaties by Moroccan women is due to the need for women to justify themselves in a socio-cultural context where a woman’s word is fragile, especially in public and in mixed groups. Entreaties in such contexts constitute an endeavor to assert oneself and make one’s voice heard, as well as a way of fulfilling one’s self-interest.

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  Code-Switching

As its name indicates, code-switching is the mixing of two, sometimes more, codes or languages in everyday speech. According to Bakhtin (1981), code-switching is a type of hybridization which he defines as a ‘mixing’ or ‘collision’ of linguistic forms. In principle, code-switching may be intentional or unconscious. Moroccan women code-switch either between Moroccan Arabic and Berber or between French and Moroccan Arabic. Moroccan women’s code-switching is an efficient linguistic strategy in a socio-cultural context where the use of languages has significant social meaning. Women often code-switch to achieve personal satisfaction and gain social prestige and recognition. S  W’ S  D S Moroccan women’s semantic and discursive strategies to counteract the strongly pervasive sexism in Moroccan languages should not be seen as a uniform behavior among Moroccan women in all settings. These strategies are meaning-creations on the part of Moroccan women and serve an empowering and self-promoting function in a context where women need to ‘fight’ for self-assertion in mixed conversations, as well as in overall behavior in society. A number of conclusions may be drawn from a consideration of Moroccan women’s strategies in speech. At the outset, Moroccan women exhibit an overtly positive attitude towards the strategies outlined above, and regard them as a solidarity means of ‘fighting back’ exclusion, especially in public mixed groups. Through these strategies, Moroccan women often succeed in creating ‘bonds’ and ‘conspiracies’ in a heavily patriarchal context. In fact, most female linguistic devices tend to be allinclusive and function both as a defense mechanism and a means of subverting gender roles in a heavily gendered homosocial society. Being different from the Western socio-cultural context, Moroccan reality does not call for the same type of strategies as the West. Western resistance to sexist language ranges from what Cameron (1992) calls ‘guerilla raids’ on men who use sexist language in everyday life to ‘all-out war’ on institutional bastions like dictionaries and grammars. These resistance strategies include the use of positive (nonsexist) language, the visibility strategy, and the positive discrimination (exclusive use of feminine generics ‘she’/‘her’). These strategies are meant to have political utility in the mainstream Western con-

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text: they are aimed at raising consciousness, denouncing sexist language, and empowering women (cf. Cameron 1992). All efforts at language reform make Whorfian assumptions and Western-type strategies are no exception. The fact that English and French are not heavily inflected for gender grammatical marking renders reformists’ attempts meaningful. The anti-sexist language strategies in Western societies have started to bear fruit: under the pressure of feminists, a conscious effort is being made to use gender-free language. Language users, especially in the written medium and in formal settings, are more and more conscious that by using non-sexist language they recognize women’s experiences and contributions. The use of gender-free language is a statement and an attitude which oppose stereotypical views and attitudes on the roles of men and women in society. Examples where this effort is attested are: address terms, marital status, the use of s/he, and the use of plural pronouns. In the Moroccan context, no such action is being undertaken even at the theoretical level. This is due to two facts: first, unlike English and French, the three Moroccan languages exhibit abundant grammatical gender. Consequently, using the grammatical argument to fight sexist language in the Moroccan context would not have the same force as in the Western context because Moroccan languages have the necessary morphemes. One may even say that the overuse of feminine gender morphemes in Moroccan formal contexts would itself be a false attitude as it would wrongly give the impression that men and women have the same social status. Further, whereas in the English and French-speaking contexts, for example, the language that is used in formal contexts is also the mother tongue, in the Moroccan context, the language that is used in formal settings is Standard Arabic, a ‘high’ language which is not used as a mother tongue. As the users of Standard Arabic are perfectly conscious that they use a ‘high’ language that is partly removed from everyday concerns, they feel they can use all the spectrum of its gender paradigms to show that they know the language (because it is grammatically incorrect to drop or replace a gender morpheme). What is needed in the Moroccan context is a re-adaptation (instead of a change) of grammatical practices and a gradual implementation of these practices. The second reason for the inadequacy of Western practices to the Moroccan context is a follow-up of the first one: there is a quasiabsence of serious reflection on the relationship between language and gender in Morocco. As a starting point, two views on the relationship

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between language and sexism may be considered: (i) a sexist language produces a sexist society and (ii) society is sexist and language is a mere reflection of social sexist behavior. The first view implies that sexist language can be eliminated by reforming language, and the second view implies that language reform is useless as it will introduce new terms that will soon be used in accordance with society’s patterns of thought. The two views are, in fact, complementary: given that sexist meanings are reproduced because they are continuously generated by the semantic resources that a language provides, it is only by raising awareness about meaning that this reproduction through the use of language can be stopped. A potential implementation of these two views needs to be rooted in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. Moroccan women’s styles and genres of speech need to be recognized and valued. Positive attitude to women’s patterns and styles will improve females’ self-esteem and enrich males’ experiences with new perspectives of things. These attitudes may prove to have significant consequences on the way men and women perceive themselves in relation to each other and to their environment. A starting point of implementing these views is an understanding that the meanings offered within a specific culture are not fixed truths. Women, especially intellectuals, need to intervene in the construction of meaning at the institutional level by first putting the finger on the male-oriented bias in the conventional use of language and consciously admit that meanings are neither static nor fixed as new demands by speakers create new meanings. Institutions, such as schools and the media, have power to give authority to meanings and sanction terms by adopting them. Being aware of how meanings work and the range of their implications is already a step forward in the right direction. More subtle paths of research need to take into consideration the fact that attitudes towards men’s and women’s languages (if ever the distinction really exists) crystallize into attitudes toward language. Debates over language and gender need to be placed in a historical perspective and gender-related reforms need to be incorporated in the social agenda in Morocco. Although such reforms will not carry immediate force because views of grammar and gender can be easily distorted, the presence and activities of men and women will be recognized in the languages used by these men and women as language responds to historical development of men and women’s fight for equal treatment of the sexes.

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Users of Moroccan languages need to be aware of the fact that gender-specific nouns mark women as different, unusual and inferior, and that the generic masculine renders women silent and invisible. Feminine gender morphemes are often used only for stylistic accuracy, a fact which creates an imbalance in the three Moroccan languages and calls for reforms, especially in Standard Arabic, which is used in key power-related institutions like the government, education and the media. From a social meaning perspective, the point is not to damn the way women use language, or demonstrate that women use language better or worse than men, or that men’s language is similar or different from women’s language, as these questions force the researcher to look for differences, and looking for differences often leads to finding them, even by imagining them; the real question is to establish linguistic equity in language use and gradually uproot the pervasive androcentricity in Moroccan languages.

CHAPTER THREE

SOCIAL DIFFERENCES I The aim of this chapter is to highlight the social heterogeneity and diversity of Moroccan women. This heterogeneity is influenced by six major social variables: (i) geographical origin, (ii) class, (iii) education, (iv) job opportunity, (v) language skills, and (vi) marital status. These variables are obtained on the basis of social oppositions and have a direct influence on gender perception, political awareness, self awareness, independence, critical assessment, and fashioning of modes of resistance. Social variables carry significant social meanings that are linguistically indexed in speech; they highlight the fact that in Moroccan society, women are not given the same social choices. The choices given to women depend on their positioning within each social variable. Thus, urban, rich, educated, working, and married women have more social choices in Moroccan society than rural, poor, non-working, illiterate, and unmarried ones. On a more abstract level, the various social categories that divide women in Morocco widen the concept of gender by making it interact with other social categories that may prove to be more important than gender itself: an urban educated working and married woman has more social choice than a rural poor illiterate man. S O Many theories have investigated the impact of social conditionings on individuals. For example, the ‘social identity’ theory investigates the relationship between individuals and the groups they involve in and stipulates that individuals identify with various social groups and, hence, have various social identities (cf. Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986, Hogg and Abrams 1988). These identities are of two types: (i) typically social identities that relate individuals to social groups and create social networks through which social interactions between the members of given social groups are channelled, and (ii) personal identities that are more based on a one-to-one relationships of indi-

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viduals inside these social groups. Both types of identities allow the individual’s development of self and are signaled by his/her linguistic behavior. The findings of the social identity theory have been corroborated by those of the social psychology of language (cf. Giles et al. 1980, Hogg 1985, Condor 1986, Kramarae 1990, Henley and Kramarae 1991). Both the findings of the social identity theory and those of the social psychology of language have been, in turn, further investigated in the language and gender theory (cf. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992, Bergvall 1996, Bing 1996, Freed 1996, Meyerhoff 1996). It is the latter theoretical framework that is generally assumed as a background in the rest of this book. Social identities are best singled out on the basis of social oppositions. A preliminary characterization of Moroccan women’s social identities is revealed in the following social oppositions: (1) – Geographical area: urban women vs rural women – Class: rich women vs poor women – Education: educated women vs uneducated women – Job opportunity: working women vs non-working women – Language skills: multilingual women vs monolingual women – Marital status: married women vs non-married women

The use of the terms ‘urban’, ‘rural’, ‘rich’, ‘poor’, etc. is not meant to invoke any value judgement; these terms are used as analytical tools throughout this chapter. The above oppositions justify the existence of the social categories to which they belong. For example, the social category geographical area would not be socially meaningful within the Moroccan context without confronting the ‘urban status’ and the ‘rural status’ of Moroccan women and underlining the characteristics of each. Whereas the first member of each opposition has a positive socio-cultural value within the Moroccan context, the second member has a negative socio-cultural one. Thus, urban (supposedly modern) areas, higher classes, acquisition of education, careers, multilingualism and the wife/mother status are all highly viewed in Moroccan culture and are reinforced by the institutions of this culture. As such, women and men in the Moroccan socio-cultural context usually aspire to be in the first members of the above social oppositions, and it is often the case that people that are in the second members of the oppositions aspire to be in the first members, but those that are in the first members of the oppositions do not usually aspire to be in the second ones. The social oppositions given above are not homogeneous entities

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whose outer limits are clear-cut and easily discernable. These oppositions may be best qualified as loose ‘bundles’ of social ‘traits’ that may themselves be subject to further sub-categorization. In fact, the two poles of each social opposition constitute extremities of a spectrum of ‘social states’ and the area between the extremities is filled with relative ‘nuances’ of either pole. For example, the boundaries between urban and rural areas in Morocco are not always discernable in a straightforward way by virtue of the fact that semi-rural and semi-urban areas, which combine characteristics of both, exist and are operative. Further, the difference between women that qualify as ‘rich’ and the ones that qualify as ‘poor’ is relative given the existence of the categories ‘less rich than . . .’ and ‘less poor than . . .’. The same degree of flexibility is attested in the oppositions educated/non-educated, working/non-working, multilingual/monolingual, and married/non-married. It seems that that there is a continuum in each opposition and women identify themselves and are identified by others socially along this continuum. These self and social identifications within a specific position in the continuum is not static as women may ‘run up’ or ‘down’ the continuum according to their other social identities, as well as their immediate self-interest. The above social oppositions are, thus, interrelated as they interact in a dialectic way. However, granting some degree of arbitrariness, social variables and social oppositions in the Moroccan context are considered separately in the following section, and an analysis of the social variables’ interaction is provided in subsequent sections. G O Geography is important in the definition of culture (cf. Choay 1965, Gouriou and Van de Merte 1975). Geographical space does not only constrain the way people think and behave, but also the way they are perceived by themselves and by others, as well as the constructed attitudes that accompany both perceptions. The creation of Moroccan ‘modern’-type cities and towns, as opposed to Moroccan traditional urban society, started during the French Protectorate in the beginning of the twentieth century and deeply disrupted the Moroccan traditional tribal modes of living and transformed the traditional Moroccan rural society by opposing it to modern modes of living. This opposition created two big social groups of Moroccan women:

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rural and urban. Rural and urban women relate differently to language, space, traditions, household economy, and education and, hence, develop different ways of resisting patriarchy. In terms of language, there are specific phonological and lexical features which characterize the speech of rural and urban women. In terms of space, rural women do not use the public/private space dichotomy in the same way as urban women. In terms of education, rural women have much less access to schooling than urban women. In terms of household economy, rural women participate more than urban women in the actual running of the household. Finally, in terms of traditions, rural women are more operative in preserving and ‘using’ traditional skills than urban women. Thus, the choices that are offered to rural and urban women are not the same and their respective social prerogatives and attributes carry strong cultural values that create significant disparity, within-gender tension, and variation in attitude construction. For example, the social meaning of the rural/urban dichotomy is closely associated with the literate/illiterate dichotomy: while not all Moroccan urban women are literate, rural women are predominantly so. Further, while not all rural women are poor, the social meaning of poverty is closely associated with rural women. This fact is best attested in the relationship between poor rural mothers who represent an older generation that clings to its traditional value system and their daughters who represent a new generation that does not want to be ‘left out’ by the fast-moving ‘train’ of ‘modernity’, and craves to be integrated in the ‘privileged’ urban sections of society. R W Almost half of Moroccan women socialize in what may be termed the ‘rural sphere’. As a group, Moroccan rural women relate to language, space, tradition, education, and household economy, and resist patriarchy in ways that are specific to their status as rural. Rural Women and Language In Morocco, rural areas are typical sites of the mother tongues: Berber and Moroccan Arabic. Standard and Arabic and French are hardly used in these areas. Consequently, rural Moroccan women are either monolingual or bilingual, that is, speaking Berber and Moroccan

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Arabic. These two languages are not prestigious in Morocco and the general attitude towards them is rather negative. Given that multilingualism is highly viewed and constitutes a self-promoting component of Moroccan culture, the linguistic choices offered to rural women are drastically restricted, and being a rural woman in the larger Moroccan context is not a socially empowering factor. Moroccan rural women are often associated with orality and illiteracy in the wider Moroccan socio-cultural context which favors modernity, literacy, and mulilingualism. In this context, ‘ruralness’ is often paired with ‘backwardness’ even among rich Moroccan peasants. This state of affairs is indexed linguistically in the word wrubi ‘rural’ which is stigmatized as ‘backward’, ‘naïve’, and ‘uncivilized’ and does not carry positive social meaning whatever the social class of the speaker. An example of the wrubi ‘way of speaking, accent’ is the use the diphtong /aw/ instead of the vowel /u/ which is more common in urban areas. The following are some instances of this use: (2) U lkumir twu∫ira SSuf lluz

R lkawmir twaw∫ira SSawf llauz

G loaf of bread vacation wool almonds

The diphtongs in the second column of Table 2 above signals a rural, as opposed to an urban, pronunciation/accent. The reason for this sound change is unclear, and it is interesting that the same type of variation is attested in some Egyptian rural areas (Badran, personal communication). Likewise, metathesis (alternation of two adjacent consonants in some words) characterizes rural speech of the regions surrounding Casablanca: wazma for zawma ‘that is to say’, lmaksyan for lmikanisyan ‘mechanic’, and lfurmaj for lfromaj ‘cheese’. As with the use of diphtongs, the reason for such metathesis is not clear. Moroccan rural speech is also characterized by the occurrence of some lexical ó words such as lehsuwwa for SSobba ‘soup’, bu∫klit for lbisklit ‘bicycle’, and nnfula for lwerqa ‘bill’. Urban women often signal their linguistic difference from the rural ‘way of speaking’ by sarcastically referring to the way their domestics (often rural) pronounce words and their endeavor to make these domestics speak ‘properly’. These facts show that language is the first means through which Moroccan women express their geographical social identity. Depending on specific contexts, rural women may be proud of their rural identity

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or be ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘diminished’ by this identity. For example, in all-rural groups, rural women generally sound proud of their ruralness and often criticize the urban way of speaking, but in contexts where the use of other languages is required, these women pay attention to the way they speak and often try to imitate the urban ‘way of speaking’. The social tension created by the rural vs urban accent is more attested in the use of Moroccan Arabic than in the use of Berber. In the latter case, it is the rural version of Berber which is considered ‘more authentic’ and, hence, more prestigious because unlike Arabic, Berber does not have a written, supposedly more prestigious, form. Consequently, urban Berbers consider the rural Berber way of speaking as their reference. In spite of the fact that the monolingual status of Moroccan rural women distances them from selfexpression in the written medium, they use the oral medium for the same purpose. Space The notion of space and the social values attributed to the public/ private space dichotomy differ from rural to urban areas (cf. Boughali 1988). Unlike in urban areas, rural communities are often organized in simpler but bigger sizes. As a result, large families often result in everyone knowing everyone else within local communities. It is this social organization that explains the fact that women in rural areas are more ‘watched’ but, on the other hand, less subject to public sexual harassment than urban women. In fact, sexual harassment is not generally considered a serious issue in the Moroccan countryside as the code of honor often prevents males from publicly harassing females. The rural social organization is also characterized by less anonymity in public space, a fact which strengthens the grip of patriarchy as women often fall under the ‘protection’ of all adult male members of their community. The rural public organization of space in Morocco is, thus, both advantageous and crippling for women. In recent years, younger rural women who work in the fields often wear a veil which covers their face except for the eyes. This type of veil expresses these women’s ‘embarssment’ and ‘shame’ in the public scene. On the basis of this space organization, the gap between the public and the private spheres is narrower in rural areas than in urban ones. For example, Moroccan rural women do not have special attires

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for home and outside-home spaces. These women usually use the same type of dress in and outside home. By extension, the use of the veil in Moroccan rural areas does not generally have specific ideological meanings, and consequently, the usual tensions that women’s dress engenders in urban areas are not generally encountered in rural spheres. Although the dichotomy ‘public/private’ spaces is related to gender in both rural and urban areas, rural women, especially older ones, have more access to the public space than urban women in the sense that the former circulate more freely in this space, whereas the latter are more restricted so far as behavior in public space is concerned. It is true that rural women are less mobile in the social ladder than urban women given their smaller chances in having access to education, and to the fact that the weight of tradition, the code of honor, and others’ attitude have more social significance and impact on them. However, being strongly attached to the land by necessity, rural women are more visible in their community. They are often secluded only during the first years of their marriage and before they have children. Rural women, especially older ones, are more ‘mobile’ and more active in Morocco than urban women. For example, they are more likely to stand by their rights in courts as it is often the case that peasant women may leave their villages to sue or be sued in courts. Rural women’s visibility in public is reinforced by male migration to urban centers or to Europe, a fact which sometimes gives women more access to the public sphere. In fact, as a result of massive male migration, rural women often assume the responsibilities that usually fall on men and, thus, acquire ‘new’ and empowering gender roles that urban women do not easily acquire: they become heads of families and sometimes interfere in the everyday running of their communities. For many researchers, rural women constitute the pivotal center of the countryside which has maintained Morocco’s traditional structure (cf. Hajjarabi 1987, Zahid 2002). Traditions Traditions are generally perceived in Morocco as a ‘legacy of ancestors’ that needs to be protected, as tokens of authenticity, and as powerful means of social stability and cohesion. The protection of traditions and customs are generally perceived to be women’s ‘responsibility’. Being deeply geared towards serving and maintaining patri-

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archy, these traditions and customs are in most cases disempowering for women. Generally speaking, rural women in Morocco are more victims of traditional customs, rigid kinship relations, and a strong code of honor than urban women. For example, these women are more affected by early marriages, multiple pregnancies (especially in the absence of a boy), polygamy, and accountability to the larger family and community units. In spite of the negative social attitude to rural speech and manners, rural women are generally perceived in the larger Moroccan culture as more ‘responsible’ than urban women for the overall maintenance of the traditional Moroccan social structure; they are the ones who are supposed to channel these traditions and transmit them through female family networks. This aspect of rural women construction in Moroccan culture is highly viewed; a very popular Moroccan Arabic song starts as follows (the translation is mine): (3) wendi bedwiyya ó nafrah biha tDawwi wliya u wel lemkan. I have a rural woman (I am married to a rural woman) I am happy with her She spreads sunshine On and around me.

Another popular couplet says: (4) katewjebni bedwiyya u tkun labsa waSriyya I like a rural woman Dressed in modern clothes

These and many similar poems and songs express Moroccans’ constructions of rural women as ‘ideal’, ‘obedient’, ‘hard-working’ and, hence, ‘exploitable’. Rural women in Morocco relate to traditions in another way: through visiting saints. Saints and spiritual forces are attributed supernatural power that transcends humans. These powers are generally invoked in times of crises. Daily problems and social tensions are usually resolved through visits to saints. These visits usually palliate social and psychological problems, and help women survive. Visits to saints may be considered a way in which rural women resist patriarchy and create a world of their own where they interfere

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with their destiny and become agents. These visits may be considered as everyday forms of resistance or ‘weapons of the weak’ in the sense of Scott (1985). Women’s resistance is also attested in the society-banned but tolerated black magic and sorcery in which both men and women indulge, but for which women, much more than men, are blamed. Being less affected by modernity than urban women, rural women in Morocco are genuine carriers of deep Moroccan values. The relatively larger family networks within which they evolve, widespread illiteracy, as well as the central place that customs and rituals play in their everyday lives, reinforce this state of affairs. Education With the spread of modernization after Morocco’s independence, education has become a key tool in acceding to public power and moving up the social ladder. Women understood this and right after independence, masses of them sought knowledge in schools. However, rural women have not really benefited from this education. Indeed, the Moroccan educational system and the policies of education that have been adopted since independence have greatly disadvantaged rural women (cf. Baina 1982, Cousin 1982, Al-Bukhari 1991, Wagner 1993, Radi 1995, Lamrouni 1996, Taj 1998). Even in present-day Morocco, the soaring percentages of illiterate women in Morocco are in the majority of cases constituted of rural women. In spite of the considerable endeavors that are being made at the levels of the government and civil society to remedy this state of affairs, female rural illiteracy is still very real. Thus, the Moroccan educational system is another vector of discrimination against rural women. This system has not systematically favored equality between urban and rural women and between men and women. Even in urban areas, girls are generally encouraged to opt for the least prestigious branches or the ones that lead to the least available professional prospects. Household economy Moroccan rural women as a group rely less on their men’s (fathers’, husbands’, sons’) income and participate more in their household economy than urban women. In Moroccan rural areas, there is a sex-based division of labor as men and women are separated in daily tasks (cf. Khatibi and Pascon 1982, Chlebowska 1990, Belarbi et al.

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1995, Bourqia et al. 1996). Rural women’s labor includes domestic chores, work in the fields, buying and selling in the the suqs ‘local markets’, smuggling goods across frontiers, and working as domestics in urban areas. Given the lack of house facilities, daily domestic chores in rural areas are much more strenuous and time-consuming than in urban areas. For example, rural women do not usually have access to water in their homes. According to official statistics (cf. Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité 1999), only 14.3% of the Moroccan rural population has an adequate supply of drinking water. As a result, one third of the rural population needs to fetch water from places located at an average distance of 3 kilometers from their village. Fetching water is the responsibility of women and children who devote hours every day to this task. Another time-consuming activity of rural women is gathering firewood, which is the main fuel in rural areas. According to official statistics (cf. Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité 1999), annual firewood consumption reaches approximately 5 million tons, of which 90% is used in the poorest rural areas. 78% of firewood consumers do not buy wood, but collect it and, again, this is women’s responsibility. Depending on their physical condition, age and distance, rural Moroccan women carry varying quantities of wood on their backs. This task is more exhaustive in areas where forests are subject to deterioration and bad environmental conditions. The second type of labor that rural Moroccan women perform is work in the fields. Indeed, women in rural areas have a big share in agricultural labor. They usually perform manual work which is most demanding such as hoeing, weeding and harvesting. A genderbased analysis of agricultural tasks shows that mechanization has affected the tasks that males perform more than the ones that females perform (cf. Belarbi et al. 1995, Bourqia et al. 1996). Indeed, technical progress is very slow in the tasks that women perform; in the last decade, the types of female tasks have changed very little in comparison with male ones. In spite of these obstacles, rural women’s work in the fields is economically crucial for their households (cf. Hajjarabi 1987, Zahid 2002). Women’s work in agricultural production is empowering as it gives them access to decision-making and community roles. Women’s agency is strong in what may be termed the ‘tactics’, or the elaboration of projects that are carried out publicly by men (cf. Hajjarabi 1987, Zahid 2002). Although strategic decision-making is done publicly

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by men, women participate in elaborating these decisions. Even in decisions that are often made by women, such as the choice of meals, the purchase of clothes, furniture, etc., women consciously attribute the agency to men and ‘implicate’ them publicly in order to secure the success of their own transactions. In such contexts, attributing the implementation of decisions to men is perceived by men as a social obligation and by women as personal prestige. The third type of rural Moroccan women’s labor is work in the suqs ‘local public markets’. The weekly suq is a space of interaction where sexual segregation is neutralized and where oppressive traditions give way to economic and social profits. In fact, the suq is the only means of survival for the majority of rural people. This is mainly due to the geographical isolation of a great part of the rural population, especially the ones who live in remote mountainous areas and do not own land, technical tools of work, or means of communication. The suq is the most significant event of the week in rural areas as it constitutes a site where inhabitants of neighboring villages establish economic and social contacts. The suq and all the activities associated with it belong historically to men. In some Moroccan regions, women’s presence in the suqs is a recent phenomenon (cf. Kapchan 1996) and in other regions (such as Jbala in the north of Morocco) it is not (cf. Hajjarabi 1987, Vicente 1999). According to Kapchan (1996), given that women’s participation in the suq is a recent phenomenon in the Middle Atlas town of Beni Mellal, women tend to occupy areas that are ‘peripheral’ to the ‘central’ part of the suq and, consequently, become marginalized in the suq space and generally perceive their experiences negatively. On the other hand, according to Vicente (1999), given that women’s appearance in the suqs in Jbala is not a recent phenomenon, these women do not perceive their experiences as socially humiliating as women, except newly married ones, usually participate in the suq activities and mix easily with men. However, although the suq offers a mixed-sex space, men still have the opportunity to buy and sell products in the shops of their villages or in neighboring towns and cities, in addition to the neighboring suqs. Women do not have this opportunity as they need to perform domestic chores; they usually go to the nearest weekly suq only. The importance of the suq in Moroccan culture stems from the fact that it has played an important role in Moroccan rural economy which is heavily based on agriculture and livestock raising. Although

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these agricultural activities do not offer significant possibilities of development, they constitute the sole source of revenue for the rural population. As such, the suqs not only play the central role in local rural economies, but they also constitute the sites of social relations between villages, as well as between rural and urban inhabitants. Women play an active part in the suq; like men, they buy and sell goods; negotiate prices, and do business. They first sell products that they themselves make such as carpets, traditional cloths, embroidery, and pottery, and then, with the money gained, they buy commodities for their households and sometimes other goods that they resell. Women’s active part in the public space of the suq may be seen as their way of resisting exclusion from the public labor force (cf. Vicente 1999). For rural women, the suq is an ambivalent site of liberation and subordination; it is liberating in the sense that participating in the economic running of the household is self-promoting and identity-building for rural women. This activity also boosts female solidarity in the highly competitive public space. According to Troin (1975) and Vignet-Zunz (1991), there exist exclusively female suqs in the regions of the Rif in the north of Morocco and the Sous in the south of Morocco. The suq is also a site of subordination in the sense that it does not dissolve gender discrimination and it marginalizes women in the overall Moroccan context as women’s presence in the suq is still surrounded with prejudice as a result of the class and gender hostility to any type of women’s empowerment. Like all public domains, the suq is male-biased. The fourth type of labor that rural Moroccan women perform is smuggling. Smuggling goods across the Moroccan borders with Spain in the north and Algeria in the east is a widespread economic activity which is shared by both rural and urban men and women. Smuggling, like going to the suq, used to be an exclusively male activity, but in recent years, more and more women from cities on the frontiers between Spain and Algeria, as well as neighboring towns and villages, have become heavily engaged in this economic activity. The proximity of the frontiers, the variety of goods, as well as their relatively low prices are strong impetuses for many educated and non-educated, young and old, poor and less poor women for smuggling goods across the frontiers and reselling them inside Morocco. Like ‘invading’ the suq space, smuggling is women’s response to exclusion from the public areas of labor force. Rural women’s investment of traditionally male spaces is reinforced by the growing male migration either

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towards urban areas or towards Europe. This migration also resulted in the appearance of women-headed households, an important area of resistance (cf. Chant 1997, Sadiqi and Ennaji forthcoming). Apart from working in the fields, in the suqs, and in the smuggling business, poor rural women also work or send their daughters to work as domestics in towns and cities. The phenomenon of domestics problematizes the relationship of rural areas to urban ones, as well as the relationship of rural women to urban ones. In both cases, the relationship is one of ‘opposition’ and in both cases the bottom line on which value judgements are given is modernization. Like urban areas, urban women are socially considered more modern and, hence, ‘superior’ to rural women. The subordination of rural areas and rural women to urban areas and urban women is a deliberately constructed act. The subject of domestics or maids has been a taboo topic in Moroccan culture for a long time and it is only recently that domestics are ‘discussed’ as a social phenomenon (cf. Mernissi 1982a, 1982b, Belarbi 1991a, 1991b, Benabdenbi and Filali 1992, Salahdine 1987, Schneider 1999). Domestics are associated with poverty and illiteracy. They perform duties that are considered ‘dirty’: sweeping the floor, doing the dishes, washing the clothes, etc. Even when housewives or homemakers help domestics, they generally do not perform these duties. Domestics are allocated marginal space in the house: the kitchen or the hall; they seldom eat with the members of the family or sit in the main ‘guest’ room. Although they bring up children, this role is seldom acknowledged publicly. Domestics are excluded from all the spheres of power in the household, which remains the realm of the homemaker (hence the power tension between the housewife and the domestic). Although they are central in the marketplace, domestics are symbolically marginalized at home; housewives seldom praise the work that domestics do in public, especially in front of their husbands, lest this would diminish the housewife’s value in the household. According to Benabdenbi and Filali (1992), domestics in the Moroccan context absorb the contradictions and conflicts resulting from a combination of women’s salaried jobs and home duties. Domestics resist symbolic domination by deliberately mistreating the small children of their employers, lying, overspending, damaging furniture and utensils, or disappearing when most needed to make their employers realize their importance in the household (cf. Schneider 1999).

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A consideration of the types of activities that Moroccan rural women perform reveals that these women are excluded from the benefits of modernity as the latter is essentially urban. For example, investments in the health and education sectors have benefited urban women more than rural ones. The bulk of economic activities is set up in cities and it is through these activities that women have had access to paid work. Rural areas have been neglected and are still based on traditional economy. This resulted in relegating rural women to the fringes of society. Lower class rural women are doubly oppressed and exploited by a rigid gender dichotomy and poverty. The ones that are most hit are peasant women and women in densely populated poor urban districts that emerged as a result of rural exodus and constitute an extension of rural areas. Both rural areas and poor urban districts lack sanitary facilities and basic infrastructure. Women in these areas represent the majority of Moroccan women. They survive in painful conditions and suffer most from lack of means and deterioration of the environment. In spite of all these disempowering factors, rural women in Morocco are not passive; they fight exclusion by forcing their way into the male-dominated public spaces and assert themselves as breadwinners by supporting their households, sometimes single-handed. The overall status of Moroccan rural women as a group makes them negotiate gender and power relations in a way that is congruent with their socio-cultural environment. Their endeavors are indeed very courageous in a context that is characterized by widespread illiteracy, strong patriarchal dogmas, and a strict gender dichotomy. U W As a group, urban women in Morocco exhibit characteristics that are associated with their status as urban. These women relate to language, space, modernity, and household economy, and resist patriarchy in ways that are specific to their urban environment. Moroccan Urban Women and Language Urban areas in Morocco are domains where Standard Arabic and French are used, in addition to the mother tongues. Contrary to rural women, urban women have more linguistic choices and, thus,

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gain more social advantages. Everyday communication in urban areas is conducted in Moroccan Arabic which functions as the lingua franca across Morocco. This language exhibits regional varieties that are named after the cities in which they are spoken: the Casawi variety (around Casablanca), the Marrakshi variety (around Marrakesh), the Fassi variety (around Fes), the Agadiri variety (around Agadir), the Oujdi variety (around Oujda), the ∫amali ‘northern’ variety (in the north), and the Hassani variety (in Western Sahara). These appelations show the close link between the cities and the language varieties. The more the areas in which Moroccan Arabic varieties are spoken are distanced, the less they are similar; but overall, these varieties are mutually intelligible given the growing communication facilities between urban areas. The major differences that exist between these varieties are attested at the level of phonology and lexis. Thus, on the lexical level, the ∫amali variety is, for example, characterized by words such as fuyax ‘when’, lpayTa ‘egg’, lwwawel ‘children’, etc., the Marrakshi variety is characterized by words such as waTerni ‘perhaps’, bit ‘I want’, lmazgur ‘maize’, etc. The overview of the Moroccan urban women’s use of languages in this section is based on work that I conducted on this topic in the city of Fes (cf. Sadiqi 1995). This study focused on Moroccan urban women’s use of languages in their everyday interactions and, hence, does not include Standard Arabic. Given a broad similarity in Moroccan urban women’s use of languages, the above-mentioned study may be seen as fairly representative of the overall situation in Moroccan urban areas. In the study, it is stated that the language that Fassi urban women use most is Moroccan Arabic. This language is used with friends (71% of housewives and 52% of working women). The use of Moroccan Arabic is mainly due to habit, a fact which reflects the strong acceptance of this language as both a mother tongue and a lingua franca. Housewives generally use Moroccan Arabic (79%), whereas working women tend to use it less (only 57%). In mixed groups, there is a sharp difference between working and non-working women. In the former group, only 29% of women use Moroccan Arabic, whereas no less than 84% of them use the same language in the same settings. So far as Berber is concerned, 18% of working women and 19% of housewives use it at home. Berber is more used with friends than with children (16% by working women and 14% of housewives). This fact shows that when women speak to their children, they are

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primarily concerned with the future use of the language and its practical utility. Berber is more used among adults than with children, a fact which explains its retreat in urban areas. The percentage of women who speak Berber is much higher in rural areas where Berber is predominant. Berber is less and less used in urban areas (9% by working women and 11% by housewives). Berber is more used by working women in mixed groups than by housewives in similar situations. In fact, only 5% of housewives use Berber in mixed groups. As for French, more working women use it (32%), whereas only 15% of housewives do. On the other hand, 7% of Fassi urban housewives use French at home, whereas 19% of working women do; this is, of course, closely linked to women’s job opportunities. Most of Moroccan urban women use French as a strategy to make their children like it and, thus, master it. In a multilingual country like Morocco, women usually speak to their children in a language that they think is useful for them at school and in their future careers even in the presence of other languages that these women hold in esteem. On the other hand, a significant percentage of working women (34%) use French with their children, whereas only 10% of housewives do. In mixed groups, no less than 55% of working women use French, as opposed to 11% of housewives who do. In addition to Moroccan Arabic, Berber, and French, educated urban women also make use of Standard Arabic in appropriate situations (cf. the use of Standard Arabic by liberal feminists). As such, granting that differences exist between Moroccan women as individuals, urban women have more opportunities than rural women to benefit from and transmit the use of socially powerful languages. Space Space is closely related to both gender organization and architecture (cf. Boughali 1988). Urban architecture in Morocco is more complex than in rural areas. In the countryside, space tends to be open and inclusive, whereas in urban areas it tends to be closed and exclusive. The oldest Moroccan type of ‘urban areas’ is the Medina ‘town’. The word Medina is etymologically related to madaniyyah ‘civilization’ and denotes that Medinas were conceived of as ‘civilized’ versions of ‘pre-Medina’ agglomerations. The oldest Medina in Morocco is the Medina of Fes, which was founded some twelve centuries ago. Apart from Fes, Medinas are found in Marrakesh, Rabat, Tetouan,

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Casablanca, Oujda, etc. In present-day Morocco, the Medina is also called lemdina leqdima ‘the old city’. Most big, especially imperial, cities in Morocco contain walled-in Medinas which still function as space for both residence and commerce. Although situated within cities, the Medinas combine the characteristics of both the countryside and modern cities and may be seen as a type between the two. In both the Medina and the modern city, the design of space is linked to power and gender. For example, as the Medina was initially conceived as an administrative city, it was meant to be a symbol of political and religious power, and its houses, suqs ‘public markets’, msids ‘religious kindergartens’ medersas ‘schools’, zaouias ‘places for religious sects’ gatherings’, funduqs ‘hotels’, public baths, tombs, etc. were designed to serve social control. In present times, the houses of the Medina of Fes, for example, are big and sometimes circular; they are often made up of two floors, each of which containing many rooms. The houses have few exterior windows and no balconies; the only accesses to the outside are the doors and ‘openings’ in the walls of upper rooms; these openings are usually protected with iron bars. The inner and outer shapes of the houses in the Medina contrast sharply: the inner part often opens on a big courtyard with a fountain. The inside of some houses are luxurious and impressive-looking. As for the outer part of the houses, it is much less impressive-looking; the front of the houses is usually small and ‘shabby’. In the Medina of Fes, entrances are often ‘diverted’ and open on narrow and tortuous streets. These architectural specificities make the houses introvert and intimate. Inside the houses, there are places which are reserved for men and male guests, places which are reserved for women, and places which are reserved for both men and women. Women usually occupy smaller rooms in the top floor. A characteristic of the Medina houses is that they do not contain bedrooms for couples. Outside the houses, the narrow and tortuous streets give the Medina the aspect of a labyrinth. The proliferation of holy places provide an additional mystical aura which deeply appeals to the senses. This type of architecture was dictated by two contradicting forces: (i) a desire to maintain tribal (pre-Medina) power and (ii) a desire to enforce Islamic law. With regard to the first point, tribal mentality meant endogamic marriages and a protection of the patrilineal descent: girls of ‘good’ (wealthy) families married only boys of ‘good’ families to keep the integrity and coherence of tribes. Protecting patriarchal power also meant protecting the most valuable assets of men,

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among which women constituted an important part. Women were both a source of pleasure and a means of keeping the descent ‘clean’. In this respect, the architecture of the Medina, like that of most ArabMuslim cities, was first designed to ensure gender segregation. As for the second point, the architecture of the Medina was also meant to maintain Islamic law. Indeed, a town was also called daar al-Islam ‘the house of Islam’. Maintaining Islamic law depended greatly on controlling women inside and outside their families. It is true that Islamic cities produced legal human beings in the sense that women, like men, could own and transmit property, but it is also true that a paradox was created: because women did not inherit in the same way as men, they (and the wealth they may have or inherit) needed to be closely controlled. Free circulation of women in public mixed space meant cross-class marriages and, hence, was regarded as a threat to family integrity. The power of Islam was, thus, expressed symbolically in the Medina through architecture. Indeed, the circularity of the Medina is a symbol of an englobing power: the Medina is daar al-Islam (where daar is lexically derived from daara ‘be rounded, encompass’). Circularity also meant unity on the symbolic level. This unity was perceived as a solid means of ensuring law and order. Being ‘houses of Islam’, the Medinas were meant to be a refuge from non-Muslim, supposedly ‘pagan’ tribes. This may be one of the reasons for building tall walls that surrounded Medinas. Rural areas were excluded from the ‘protected’ Medinas, and by implication, rural women were excluded from heritage; they themselves constituted ‘objects’ to be inherited (cf. Mdaghri Alaoui 2001). Thus, both tribal and Islamic power forces inspired the architecture of the Moroccan Medinas. These two conflicting forces were reflected in the ‘introvert’ aspect of the houses of some Medinas like the one in Fes. On the symbolic level, introvertness contrasted sharply with extrovertness which allowed easier access by strangers. The Medina architecture has interesting social implications. According to the official figures of the Moroccan Ministry of Housing, there are 2.3 persons per room in the Medina of Fes today. This is due to interrelated factors such as unemployment, lack of lodging, rural exodus, and late marriages. A result of this is a return to larger two or more generation households. Promiscuity also means more pressure on women both inside and outside the house. It strengthens the male control over the household. In the absence of the father, the elder son or another male member becomes automatically the head of the

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family. Women, even older ones, are seldom regarded as heads of families. Promiscuity also renders the notion of ‘individual privacy’ very remote for women. Women do not seem to have space of their own as individuals. Inside the house, they have little ‘hidden’ space and outside the house they are not given enough public space. There is no prevalent individualistic view of freedom in this respect; women usually consider whatever freedom they have as a favor. Even the time allocated to women in public places is severely constrained: women do not readily venture outside the house late at night unless they are accompanied by a male member of the family. A consequence of this is that women tend to cluster, a phenomenon which is most attested in family celebrations where women usually sit in a separate room from men. The architecture of the Medina also encourages a certain type of dress. The type of garments that are appropriate in this type of space are the djellaba (a sort of overall with long sleeves). The djellaba and the veil express both a desire on the part of women to be anonymous and protected from the male gaze and trespassing, and a way of controlling women and keeping them silent. It is worth mentioning at this juncture that the veil is a typically urban phenomenon in North Africa, Maghrebian cities have produced the veil as a social necessity at two different periods in their history (cf. Taarji 1991): (i) when they were first built as a means to achieve Islamic integration and maintain traditional ideology in the face of a multiplicity of ethnic groups, and (ii) as a search for identity in a biased world where non-Western values seem archaic. The relative absence of women from urban public spheres has resulted in misogyny especially in these spheres. In fact, moralists and jurists, the two influential theoreticians of history, have often regarded women as a source of evil. Spontaneous sociology has made women directly responsible for social disorder (they failed to keep to their limits). For example, women are often considered more responsible than men for family honor and reputation. The absence of women from the public spheres also means that they stay more at home and, hence, the concept of lhadga ‘extremely hard-working woman’ has become strongly appreciated in Moroccan culture. In a sense, thus, the architecture of the Medina reinforces the stereotyping and taboo surrounding women. The relation between the organization of space in the Medina and women gives social power to men and very little power to women.

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A direct consequence of this is ambiguity so far as the status of women is concerned: they are important in society but they have to be controlled to the maximum. The overall social pressure on women is so deeply rooted in history that only accumulated heritage can explain women’s apparent ‘resignation’ in society. From a psychological perspective, the architecture of the Medina is an extension of the human body in the sense of Merleau-Ponty (1945) who assumes that the human body dictates spatial logic. The circular architecture of the houses in the Medina is based on a logic whose starting point is the human body and where the male body is attributed positive values and the female body negative ones. In fact, across cultures, what is central is generally considered pure and what is peripheric impure. As the Medina constitutes a traditional patriarchal universe, women and space have always been subject to the following classic binary logic of oppositions which are established on the male-female dichotomy: (5) M pure central clean seen straight clear

vs vs vs vs vs vs vs

F impure peripheric dirty (menstruation) unseen crooked ambiguous

This explains the fact that inside houses, space is designed and used on a sexist basis: ‘noble’ space, such as the guest rooms, coincides with the central parts of the houses, and ‘impure’ space, like lamyaDi ‘water rooms/toilets’ and stables, coincide with the peripheric areas of the houses. Likewise, outside the house, ‘noble’ activities, like holy mosques and commerce (qisariyat), are situated in the center of the Medina, and craft activities are located in the periphery (outskirts) of the Medina. The Medina-labyrinth and the modern part of the city, called ‘ville nouvelle’, may also be contrasted from a psychological perspective. In psychoanalysis, the labyrinth is often associated with the womb. Within this view, the Medina may be seen as a ‘Medinamother’ who protects her inhabitants and valuable places by means of big walls, diverted entrances, secret passages, etc. The architecture of the Medina reflects an extraordinary interplay of symbolic, social and psychological senses that are deeply related to the values attributed to women. The innocent-looking shapes of

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this magnificent legacy reflect the views and visions on women; some of which are still vividly present today in spite of the fact that Moroccan modern towns and cities contain more institutionalized space such as ministries, universities, secondary schools, etc. than old Medinas. It is this institutionalization process and the ideology behind it that has created more anonymity in more ‘modern’ urban areas. Modernity Whereas rural areas symbolize tradition in Morocco, urban areas symbolize modernity, social opportunity, and social mobility. Modernity has been concomitant with urban migration in Morocco. Urban migration is a relatively recent phenomenon in Moroccan history; it started and developed in a rapid way after Morocco obtained its independence in 1956. Although the process of urban migration brought about a new ‘modern’ social structure, it deeply disrupted the existing social order and imposed new constraints. Modernization in Morocco has not benefited all urban Moroccan women. While it allowed relatively well-off women to become educated and functional in the modern State’s institutions, poor urban women have not benefited from independence in the same way. Whereas upper and middle class women generally worked outside home as a result of years of education, and felt proud of their work, poor women worked outside home out of necessity and were not generally proud of this work. The former’s work was officially recognized and even encouraged because these women constituted part of the elite. Whatever the motives for Moroccan women’s work outside home, their work was widely instrumentalized as a token of modernity in Morocco. Modernity also allowed well-off urban women to reflect consciously on their condition and to try and improve it. It gave them self-confidence and enhanced their self-esteem. By giving them access to the public sphere, modernization made urban women more consciously aware of their civil rights. In fact, Moroccan feminist movements which appeared after the country became independent are largely urban phenomena. Furthermore, more than a 100 women’s organizations’ leadership is constituted of urban upper and middle class women. Likewise, civil society is emerging as a new paradigm on the urban public scene and often uses rural areas as a ‘field of experimentation’. In spite of its advantages, modernity harmed many Moroccan urban women in more than a way. First, compared to rural women,

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urban women are generally more victims of the contradictions created by the clash between modernity and tradition and the ambiguities this clash resulted in. The urban sphere is often perceived by Moroccan women as an alien space: it is anonymous and hostile: not only do women feel vulnerable in the face of its violence (especially sexual harassment), they are also consciously or unconsciously made to feel ‘unwanted’ in this space. To feel comfortable in public space, urban Moroccan women need a special type of dress and behavior. Furthermore, urban women are more exposed to stress than their rural counterparts. According to El-Khayat (1987), more urban women than rural women are affected by psychological problems in Morocco. The reasons, according to this author, are mainly the stress of modern life and the constant need to adapt simultaneously to both the traditional and the modern ways of life, and the desintegration of the traditional supportive family networks. Further, as a result of women’s emancipation, families became smaller in size, tensions between couples grew as career women needed to accommodate job and home duties (cf. Mernissi 1988). Likewise, divorce, and violence are generally more attested in urban than in rural areas. In spite of geographical differences, urban women, like rural women, suffer from a rigid gender dichotomy. However, urban women negotiate gender and power in ways that are different from the ways that rural women use. Some of these differences are attested in urban women’s management of household economy. Moroccan Urban Women and Household Economy Moroccan urban women started to participate in household economy in the 1930s. Their work was not an act of militantism, but a result of poverty because most of these women worked as domestics in the French or upper class Moroccan households or were recruited as low-paid workers doing menial jobs in fields or factories. However, a few Moroccan urban women managed to create their own enterprises in the 1930s and 1940s in cities (cf. Salim 2001). After Morocco’s independence, a growing number of Moroccan urban women were incorporated in the ‘official’ labor market. Women’s rate of ‘economic activity’ in urban areas increased by 5.6% in 1960, 10.8% in 1971, 14.7% in 1982, and 17.3% in 1994 according to the general statistics of the Ministry of Population and Housing. Further, the rate of the feminization of labor force (15 years of age and more) grew during independence and reached 33% in 1990 (cf. UNDP,

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1996). Women’s work in the industry greatly helped Morocco’s development. The greatest majority of salaried women has been and is still constituted of the lower and average parts of the job ladder. Very few women have managed to reach top positions in their jobs. In addition to salaried jobs, personal and domestic services have been highly feminized in urban areas. The more urban women take jobs outside the home, the more domestic services they need in households to keep the balance between outside work and daily domestic chores. According to Mernissi (1982a), in 1971, a quarter of domestics were children (under 15 of age). In 1993, this percentage went down by about 10%. Domestics receive small salaries which differ according to families. Domestics are not only economically marginalized, they are also marginalized by the law as they are neither included in the work legislation nor in social security. Most of very young domestics are not paid directly; the money they earn goes directly to their parents. It is commonly the housewife who pays the domestic (cf. Mernissi 1982b, Salahdine 1987). In this way, housework remains the responsibility of women in the first place: it is shared by women of different social classes (the housewife and the domestic) who sometimes belong to different age groups (housewives are usually older than domestics). It is as if urban women’s participation in the household economy and their integration in official development depends on the exclusion of other women who come from rural or poor urban areas to work as domestics. However, paradoxically, it is urban women in various political parties and civil society that militate to improve the social status of domestics by incorporating the domestic or ‘maid’ status in the Work Code (Code du Travail). These militants also call for a strict application of the work law which forbids recruiting children under 12 and under 14 without the consent of their parents. Indeed, as domestics are hired on the basis of ‘minimal wages for maximal service’, service relations between women is nowadays characterized by an emerging struggle for independence and identity in the labor force for both domestics and their employers. This is also a struggle for social recognition of rights in the face of gender and class prejudice (cf. Mernissi 1982a, 1982b). Given these facts, urban and rural women are not given the same choices in the economy (cf. Folbre 1994) and, hence, resist patriarchy differently. Economically well-off urban women often exploit economically weak rural women. Further, as a social group, urban

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women are offered more chances to acquire education than rural women, and hence, the former have more access to language skills and job opportunities than the latter. It is on the basis of this asymmetry in chances that rural women are socially categorized as ‘subordinate’ to urban women. The most significant arena in which urban women challenge patriarchy is through their writings, work in civil society, and activism in feminist associations. In spite of the fact that urban female feminism in Morocco managed to make its voices heard and has greatly contributed to improve women’s condition, and in spite of the fact that urban women’s literacy makes them aware of the problems and more prone to reflect intellectually on their condition, these women often speak and write in the name of ‘all’ Moroccan women and, hence, often appropriate the voices of the illiterate rural women and reread them as ‘the other’, the ‘weaker’, and the ‘subordinate’. The difference between urban and rural women’s strategies of resisting patriarchy shows that gender negotiation is sensitive to geographical environment. Generally, urban women use education and class, whereas rural women use their manual skills and family bonding. This is congruent with the fact that being more personalized and less anonymous, human relations in rural areas are more collective (group singing, group lamentation, group visitations to saints, etc.), and being more anonymous and less personalized, human relations in urban areas are more individual. C As a social category, class is based on social and personal network ties (cf. Milroy and Milroy 1992). It is through these network ties that interactants create class. Like geographical origin, class is a social variable along which Moroccan women are categorized into groups. Class is, thus, a social factor that explains the heterogeneity of Moroccan women. The modern capitalistic system created the Moroccan ‘modern’ type of class system (upper, middle, and lower classes). The impact of class varies from urban to rural areas. In the former case, class is often manifested in the quality of the houses, outward appearance, and the extensive use of French as a sign of literacy, whereas in the latter case, class is manifested in the amount of land, livestock, and land property. In the Moroccan postcolonial system,

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urban middle and upper class girls acquired education, and sometimes a profession, which they exercised more out of social prestige than out of necessity. However, although belonging to upper and middle classes gave more opportunities to women to assert themselves on the public scene, these women remained locked in the capitalistic class patriarchy as men continued to control the key institutions of power. In this patriarchal context, labor and class differences which accompanied modernization materialized in two different and incompatible worlds: the world of men and the world of women. Whereas the world of women was characterized by ‘introvertness’ as it was turned towards ‘inward’ domains such as the home, the world of men was ‘extrovert’ as it was turned towards the public domains that guaranteed prestige and power. The new order which was adopted by the Moroccan upper and middle classes was meant to serve the elite’s purposes and, by excluding the larger ‘non-elite’ portions of the Moroccan society, it re-established sexual dichotomy and pushed women, once again, to the second position. The Moroccan postcolonial new upper and middle classes capitalized on the need to educate girls. However, these classes were not really concerned with a genuine emancipation of women as human beings; their concern for women’s education was more dictated by a policy of social prestige in which men’s appropriate personal and social status images necessitated an education and a ‘high-profile’ of ‘their women’ (wives and daughters). This attitude of the newly independent elite explains the fact that the more educated women were the more they were alienated and submissive to the patriarchal superstructures of society. By maintaining a balance based on the profitoriented economy, the newly independent Moroccan elite widened the gap between individuals and created more class divisions among women. Class-based differences between women supported the patriarchal system and urban women’s education served the interests of upper class patriarchy in the first place. In Moroccan upper and middle classes, women found it easy to submit to the life prescribed for them and some of them afforded to reflect consciously on their condition. Within these classes, marriage secured social status and consolidated material well-being. Upper and middle class women generally married within their classes (hence the popular saying xirna ibqa wandna (literally ‘our wealth should remain among us’). This trend of attitude and thought continued in the decades that followed independence and is still alive in present-day Morocco.

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So far as language choice is concerned, class differences in Morocco crystallized in social dialects. Social dialects are characterized by patterns of speech that index the class of the speaker (cf. Romaine 1994). Upper and middle class women use French or code-switch between French and Arabic and easily acquire European manners and life style. Even veiled women belonging to these classes behave linguistically in the same way. Urban low classes and rural classes use Berber and/or Moroccan Arabic and retain familiar ‘indigenous’ modes, but these are by no means considered ‘pure’ and static. However, a closer look reveals that reality is much more complex: the upper and upper middle classes of Berber origin often cling to their ‘indigenous’ roots, and all classes seem to cling, albeit in an abstract way, to Standard Arabic as a national symbol. Almost half a century after Morocco’s independence, class still has a strong impact on feminism: feminists from upper classes tend to adhere to a modern Western type of feminism, whereas feminists from lower strata tend to adhere to a more religious type of feminism. Accordingly, class dictates agendas in Moroccan feminist culture which is far from being cross-class; for example, feminist widowed or divorced women often live at the intersections of classes and do not obey the conventional constructions of class. Compared to women in lower classes, women in upper and middle classes have more social choices and opportunities. They have social power and have access to the dominant discourses in society. These women often recreate women in lower positions as ‘the subordinate’ and ‘the other’. This is attested in the fact that well-off women and women who reach high positions through education gain social authority and generally use it in the same way as men. High status Moroccan women are in general conscious that financial power gives them access to male power and distances them from lower class women. In fact, the relatively few Moroccan women who are in higher positions exhibit the same patterns of interaction as men of higher positions although they usually find themselves at the margin of the dominant discourse in the overall patriarchal system. In comparison with women from lower classes, upper and middle class women generally manage to move more easily between hegemonic and alternative discourses than lower class women. As such, upper and middle classes recreate their status as power-holders and their dominance as women, and recreate women from lower classes as subordinate. As upper and middle class women may claim new roles

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in society more easily than lower class women, they can maneuver more easily within the context and culture of these classes. From the elite bourgeois class, through the middle class, and down to the barely comfortable, Moroccan women live in very different social conditions. As a result, these women do not generally bond with other women across their classes. Women belonging to the same class form a homogeneous group socially. For example, most welloff Moroccan women consider their domestics ‘low’, ‘primitive’, and ‘alien’. They commonly picture them as human beings without ethics who constitute a constant threat to the ‘purity’ of their homes. In suspecting domestics and perceiving them as physically and morally ‘dirty’, upper class women express the despise and suspicion with which they consistently portray low class women whose demands they read as affronts to the superior class. Within the Moroccan socio-cultural context, lower class women are inhibited and prevented from integrating the empowering ‘mechanics’ of social life because they are not given the same choices as upper class women. According to Wagner (1993), the poorest sectors of Moroccan society are the ones that are affected by illiteracy. This is congruent with the fact that the gender gap in educational attainment, that is, the number of years spent in schooling, is greater in low-income families than in middle-income families. Lower class status reduces women’s chances of securing education and climbing the social ladder. In the past twenty years, women have been the target of development, and education has been considered the key to this development. But while education can benefit richer urban women, it may be disastrous for urbanized rural women. The latter face problems in their professional and private lives, such as difficulty to adapt to the urban structure where they have no ties, and lack of marriage opportunities if they go back to their villages. Although in principle, class is subject to change as women from low classes may get more education or marry into wealthier families, the class system is still very strong in the Moroccan context and women are often first socially categorized as ‘rich’ or ‘poor’. The social variable of class is a strong indicator of heterogeneity among Moroccan women. Class disparities between Moroccan women influence the ways in which these women resist patriarchy and social oppression. Each group of women uses the choices that their class offers them: upper and middle class women use education and sometimes the social position of their husbands, and lower class women often use family ties and the social position of their sons.

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E Like the social variables of geographical origin and class, the social variable of education divides Moroccan women into two social groups: ‘educated’ and ‘non-educated’, and underlines the discrepancy in the choices that women belonging to either group have. As education involves the mastery of a set of instrumental skills, it is highly viewed in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. Educated women are from the outset more socially privileged than uneducated ones; they have more job opportunities, more chances to achieve self-dependence, self-promotion, and self-satisfaction, as well as more freedom to influence the course of events in their lives. According to Vygotsky (1962), literacy involves different cognitive processes from illiteracy and provides changes in the technology of the intellect that have cognitive effects on the literate. Literacy is, thus, an empowering weapon in the hands of educated women. It allows them to fulfill themselves as citizens and to be able to express themselves and take decisions in the male-dominated public sphere. Educated women are, in general, aware of the prerogatives that literacy gives them in a society where al-wilm ‘science, knowledge’ is venerated, and where education is elitist and urban. By implication, illiterate women are disempowered and their personal and social promotion is drastically reduced. Illiteracy increases the economic and psychological dependence of women on men, and, thus, creates a real social and economic gap between literate (presumably urban) and illiterate (presumably rural) women. Seen within the overall Moroccan socio-cultural context, women’s illiteracy serves patriarchy and perpetuates strong gender dichotomy and gender polarization. Education is highly correlated with the possibility of having a job; however, educated women who succeed in securing a job and guaranteeing social prestige in their family and social environment, are subject to supplementary constraints. In fact, relatively few women further their studies at the postgraduate level and only a small minority of them indulge in scientific research or reflect critically on their condition. Most girls prefer to secure a husband and only then finish their studies. This is mainly due to the pressure of socio-cultural values and traditions which are still widely prevalent in Morocco. The weight of the socio-cultural pressure is also attested in the fact that although some women have managed to reach high levels of education, it is still very rare for them to be better educated than their husbands. Consequently, educated women either earn less or

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‘kill’ their career ambitions and think more of their husbands’ promotion than their own. Indeed, while a high level of education is an absolute pre-requisite for women to have a qualified job, poorly educated men may even be candidates to the Parliament and, thus, represent their areas at the national level providing they are rich enough to ‘buy’ the necessary votes, but poorly educated women do not have this possibility even if they are rich and powerful. Another aspect of the disempowering pressure of the socio-cultural environment and its negative impact on women is that the very few rural women whose families make sacrifices to send them to cities to complete their university education often find themselves in a very awkward situation when they graduate: they can neither go back to the their village of origin as they will be ‘out of place’ and would hardly be integrated as working women, let alone find a husband, nor stay in the city as they would be marginalized as ‘rural’ and out of place. Moroccan women’s relation to literacy and education has been greatly instrumentilized at various points in the course of recent Moroccan history. During the Protectorate (1912–1956), women were instrumentilized by both the French colonizers and the Moroccan nationalists. While the French colonialists denied education to Muslim girls under the pretext of ‘respect for the indigenous culture’, they encouraged the education of Jewish girls. Educating girls and women was never part of the colonizers’ agenda. It was only at the end of the Second World War that Moroccan girls were officially allowed to register in schools. Moroccan nationalists strongly opposed the education of girls in French under the pretext that girls’ education in a ‘foreign’ language constituted a threat to Moroccan national identity. The nationalists’ opposition to colonization concentrated on the defense of national identity and capitalized on the idea that exposing girls to French would alienate them and the families they were supposed to raise. Indeed, the relationship between women and French became a focal issue for Moroccan nationalists. For them, girls’ education in Arabic was a way of struggling against the colonizers. Moroccan nationalists were influenced by the reformist movements which banned a reinterrogation of traditional roles and which were already operative in the other countries of North Africa, namely, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. They had to mark their opposition not only with respect to the colonizers but also to the North African partisans of women’s emancipation (Qasim Amin, Tahar Haddad, etc.), accusing the latter

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of evolving in French-biased milieux and of being mouthpieces of French opinions. The credibility of the Moroccan nationalists greatly depended on this overt suspicion. In the logic of the nationalists, women needed to be distanced from French because they were considered more vulnerable than men and, hence, more easily influenced by the languages and cultural values of the colonizers. Men were encouraged to learn French because they were assumed to evolve in the public space and, hence, needed French to communicate with the colonizers. In its reform plan of 1934, the Moroccan nationalist movement established that the only language of Muslim girls’ instruction was Arabic and the only topic was religion. The right of educating girls was recognized but this right was severely limited as the main aim was to produce ‘good’ female Muslims and future mothers who could transmit the fundamental values of ‘authentic’ Moroccan culture to their children. As such, women were in charge of reproducing, maintaining and reinforcing Moroccan culture as the sole guarantee of Moroccans’ integrity as a group. Hence, paradoxically, while considered fragile and vulnerable, women, without being conscious of it, were in charge of the mechanisms of social control: the cultural values and the languages of Morocco. Within this context, where both French colonizers and Moroccan nationalists denied girls’ access to French to suit arguments that each party branded in the face of the other, women’s condition was discussed from an ideological perspective, but never from a human rights perspective. Men from both ‘camps’ exchanged ideas using women whose voice on the public scene was quasi absent. However, right after independence, girls of all social backgrounds registered massively in schools. In present-day Morocco, the instrumentilization of women’s education is taking another direction. As a liberal agenda that is linked to empowerment, education and literacy have been related to modernity. Women’s relation to literacy pushes us to re-interrogate modernity and literacy as a modernist agenda. Facts show that the gender training industry concentrates on girls/women more than boys/men because the State needs to teach women how to become ‘modern subjects’. Thus, the assumptions underlying this project deeply serve patriarchy and, once again, instrumentalize women. For example, the way development projects are implemented in rural areas emphasize the idea that to ‘become literate’ means to be ‘modern’, and, thus, the concept of ‘literacy’ enters into a feminist/gender politics through modernism. However, the limits of literacy are not known yet.

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Within this overall context, educated and non-educated women resist patriarchy and social oppression differently. Educated women use their learned knowledge and uneducated women use their oral skills. J O The variable of job opportunity is important in the Moroccan social context and, like the previous variables, it divides women into two social groups: ‘working’ and ‘non-working’. Working women have been socially defined as women who have a salaried job (cf. Belarbi 1988, Dweyer and Bruce 1988). A salary is society’s official means of valorizing work, and a salaried job is the only factor that is considered in the statistics relating to economic development. As such, these statistics exclude women’s housework and menial jobs and taxes them as ‘unproductive’. The category of ‘working women’ is much smaller than the category of ‘non-working’ women in Morocco, as the former involves educated, presumably urban women, whereas the latter covers a larger portion of women who may be urban or rural and educated or non-educated. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Moroccan housewives were in the majority of cases non-working and, hence, generally non-educated, but the situation has gradually changed from the 1980s onward, as more and more housewives are educated women who either cannot not find a job or choose to stay at home (cf. El Kamouri, 1983, Barkallil 1990). This situation is obviously linked to the overall economic situation in Morocco which witnessed a huge increase of unemployment. The variable of job opportunity is also closely dependent on class: upper class working women have more choices of deriving self-satisfaction from their jobs than poorer working women who often have to support their parents and younger siblings, in addition to participating in their own household income. On the other hand, upper class non-working women are more socially privileged than poorer non-working women. The status of Moroccan women as working or non-working has a direct effect on their relation to languages and their use inside and outside home. Working women use written languages more than non-working women and, thus, usually have a wider register (language and style choices) than non-working women. This is due to their status as women with jobs and, hence, to their relatively higher level of education. Working women often prefer to use the literate languages when discussing matters relating to their jobs, especially

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in mixed groups (cf. Sadiqi 1995), as they derive social prestige from this practice. In such groups, non-educated women often endeavor to use prestigious literate languages even when they do not master them well. According to Sadiqi (1995), only 5% of non-working women use Berber in mixed groups because these women, more than their working counterparts, need to assert themselves in the public sphere, given their social status, and, hence, use the language they consider prestigious. Although 84% of non-working women use Moroccan Arabic in mixed groups, the majority of these women mix their language with French to sound ‘educated’ (cf. Sadiqi 1995). The major reason for this is that Moroccan women are generally consciously aware of the social importance of French as a prestigious language. It is also true that Moroccan women tend to use French-Moroccan Arabic code-switching more than housewives. In the present economic state of Morocco, having a job, however small, is considered a social privilege and offers women positive choices. For example, it allows them to make and implement decisions in their households and often boosts their status in front of their inlaws. Having a job is also considered a security measure in case a woman is widowed or when marriage fails for some reason. In spite of the social privileges of a job opportunity, working women are subject to severe constraints. In urban areas, women are more affected by unemployment and economic crises than men. Official unemployment rates for women rose from 15.4% in 1982 to 25.3% in 1992 (cf. Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité 1999 for the statistics in this section). Since 1983, women’s employment opportunities is four times less than that of men’s. The female proportion of the unemployment population rose from 28.1% in 1972 to 38.3% in 1992. Likewise, the job opportunities that are offered to urban women are fewer than those offered to men. Highly educated women generally opt for ‘socially acceptable’ careers such as teaching and medical professions. Less qualified women also opt for activities and jobs that society expects them to do. For example, in spite of the fact that women are operative in the agricultural domain, girls are relatively absent in the agricultural sector of secondary level vocational schools, but constitute 72% of commercial sections. The reason is that by being restricted to the most traditional activities, women are excluded from the modernization process even in sectors where they are most needed. Female students are quasi-absent in some branches such as engineering, where they constitute only 15.7%. On the other hand, they constitute 48.3% of students in literary fields and Islamic studies.

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Similarly, a great percentage of women is found in the lowest levels of vocational schools: 72% of them have a primary school level and 50% have completed three years in the secondary school. However, females constitute one third at the highest levels of skilled technician training. In spite of the recent upsurge of computer training and jobs related to computer sciences, electronics, and hotel business, women still opt for typically-female branches like dressmaking, embroidering, typing and secretarial work. Likewise, women constitute the bigger portion of low-paid labor in manufacturing, and very seldom have access to positions of responsibility, as the job legislation based on equal rights is seldom enforced by employers. In manufacturing firms, where women constitute one-third of the labor force, paid wages are lower than the legal minimum wage. Women represent less than one-third of the labor force in only 41% of Moroccan firms. Women’s relatively greater presence in the service sectors is due to the nature of these services which are defined in statistics as ‘personal and domestic services’. Domestics, a great portion of them teenagers, are not declared, and are often underpaid and have no social protection. Some of the young housemaids are literally enslaved. The nature of women’s work as informal and occasional relegates them to the margins of society. In 1991, the number of female workers that are declared to the National Fund of Social Security (CNSS) decreased from 18.2% to 17.5%. Like the other sectors, the civil service sector, as the difference in pay for equivalent competence, still prevails. In addition, women take a longer time to be promoted than their male colleagues in the administrative hierarchy. In spite of good training and personal qualities, very few women are directors of firms or heads of departments. Although women constituted 30% of civil service staff in 1990, only 6 of them were directors, and 20 out of 855 were heads of departments. Further, women represented 36% of primary school teachers and 31% of secondary school teachers but only 6% of them were inspectors at the primary school level and only 12% were inspectors at the secondary school level. No woman has ever represented the Ministry of Education at a regional level, and it is only in April 2002 that the first woman has been appointed University President. Likewise, there is only one woman in the government. The only exception to women’s relative exclusion from the higher spheres of power is the existence of seven women advisers in the Supreme court. The key decision-making positions are still heavily male-dominated. The

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majority of women are found in subordinate and low-rank jobs. The reasons for this absence are mainly due to the weight of customs and traditions, and legal obstacles. Nowadays, the importance of women’s work for the economy of Morocco has become a reality; households need women’s financial contribution in order to survive. In spite of this, women’s work is ‘tolerated’ only if it does not clash with society’s gender role assignment. As for rural women, although they participate in agricultural production, they have been, and most of them still are, counted as ‘housewives’ or ‘family helpers’. It is only very recently that these women are listed in statistical accounts as ‘workers’ or ‘producers’. This shows the extent to which rural women’s work is under-estimated in society. This attitude still holds nowadays, as several types of goods that are produced by women and services that are provided by them are not counted as such by virtue of the fact that these products and services are non-commercial and are, thus, unpaid activities. Likewise, in rural areas, the predominance of small family farms makes female labor part and parcel of work in the farm. The fact that boys stay in school longer than girls in rural areas reinforces the need for female labor. Althoug rural women work an average of 10 hours a day, it is men who are the heads of the farms and the ones that are counted as full-time laborers no matter how long they stay in the farm. This explains the fact that the rate of economically active rural women (that is, women whose work is recognized as such) is abnormally low. In 1989, 82.9% of women working in agriculture were counted as family helpers. In present times, unpaid female labor is on the increase. Although national laws stipulate equal pay for equal work, women are generally paid less than men. According to a 1993 survey by l’AMFD (Association Marocaine des Femmes Démocratiques), women’s daily wages are on the whole 17% lower than men’s. In addition, as women are generally recruited for temporary or seasonal jobs, they do not have any job security. Women are not generally considered permanent workers even when they are employed for as long as a full year. Another problem that rural women face is lack of savings. This is mainly due to their inferior status in the discriminatory inheritance laws. Women’s share in land ownership is usually taken by male heirs. As a result, these women face difficulty in obtaining bank loans because of lack of guarantees. The devalorization of women is, thus, perpetuated because of law sanctions.

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Job opportunity is another social variable that attests to Moroccan women’s heterogeneity. The opposition working/non-working divides Moroccan women and, everything being equal, puts the non-working category at a disadvantage. Women’s financial contribution to the household often triggers mixed attitudes: on the one hand, it is welcomed as a supplementary source of income, and on the other hand, it clashes with the traditional view of women as primarily ‘housekeepers’. The idea that Moroccan women work outside their homes clashes with Moroccan socio-cultural values, affects Moroccan women’s external image, as well as their inner psychological selves. Moroccan women are generally brought up in a Muslim traditional environment which venerates patriarchal values and, thus, find it very difficult to accommodate the image of an obedient and hard-working housewife with a career, modern, and independent woman. Working outside the home is often accompanied by all sorts of tensions and stress for which Moroccan women are not often prepared (cf. Mernissi 1988). For example, having a job often involves dressing, appearing, speaking, and behaving in a ‘modern’ way. These daily gestures are intermingled with a strong social code of behavior which places considerable pressure on women who often find themselves torn between two clashing systems of values: tradition and modernity. Moroccan women’s work creates another paradox: although it is welcomed, it is socially perceived as being the cause of men’s unemployment. This is linked to the social attitude towards women’s work in Morocco which is still loaded with stereotypes. As a result, Moroccan career women face a dilemma: how to respond to the traditionally masculine norms of the job market, and at the same time respond to traditional feminine role expectations that social norms prescribe. Career women are subject to both the forces of traditional stereotypes and the demands of modern life; they are often ‘apologetic’ and ‘hesitant’ in public spheres, because they need to adopt more stereotypically male attributes (assertive and task-driven). These women are generally more assertive and forceful in private spheres. Working women constantly try to accommodate to conflicting and shifting demands. They constantly try to find ways to succeed in an androcentric and heavily gendered system where the design of job creation schemes does not take into consideration the role of women in childcare, for example (cf. Belarbi 1988). In addition, Moroccan women’s work affects gender relations and gender performance within households. For example, a woman would act in ways associated

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with traditional female stereotypes in the presence of her in-laws. In such contexts, she would often show obedience to the husband and would seldom disturb the patriarchal dogmas in the household. However, in the presence of male colleagues, the same woman would act in more egalitarian ways. Most often, such a woman would act outside the limiting norms that define her on the basis of predetermined dichotomous categories. As such, these women implicitly challenge the conflicting gender roles that their status as working women triggers: on the one hand, they are expected to actively participate in economy and earn their salaries, and on the other hand, their work contradicts the traditional gender role assignment. This gender conflict affects women’s conversation, intellectual development, and future success. As a result of this, the nature of jobs that Moroccan women may choose is very important. Some jobs, especially the ones which involve services at night, are taboo in Morocco. Furthermore, the nature of the job may jeopardize the chances of a woman to find a husband. Even in present-day Morocco, well-off husbands may forbid their wives from working outside the home. In addition, only a tiny portion of women consider female employment as a means of intellectual liberation. The majority of working women are small wage earners working in houses as seamstresses or domestics/cleaners, in shops as shop assistants, in factories as workers and in private institutions such as banks, supermarkets, and hotels. The fact that women have started to take up jobs has caused the emergence of two-career families, a typically urban phenomenon. For many career women, employment opportunities provide economic security. The relationship between women and work outside home has created three major categories of women: (i) women who work outside the home out of necessity, (ii) women who stay at home because their families do not need their financial help, and (iii) women who are forced to stay at home because they are not qualified for a job. These three categories of women do not negotiate power in the same way. Women who work outside their homes remedy their absence from home by hiring a domestic and regard the employment of domestics as a true necessity. Some working women are favorable to the idea of having recourse to the in-law help, that is, living with a member of the husband’s family. These women often seek to maintain power inside their household by paying a domestic or ‘helper’ and securing control over their household which is

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the source of their stability. As for the second category of women, that is, the ones that do not have a job, they may also hire a domestic if the income of the husband is high. These women maintain power by ‘using’ their husbands’ money to secure a comfortable life and free leisure time. The last category is constituted of women who are not qualified for a job but prefer not to work anyway. These women may or may not have a domestic, depending on their class. These women use family ties and their sons’ education if they are poor or their husbands’ money if they are wealthy. Depending on whether or not they have a job, women resist social oppression and assert themselves differently: working women use their salaries, social networks, and prestigious speech to achieve gains inside and outside the family, and non-working women use household management and the education of their children for the same purpose. L S A possession of language skills in the sense of knowing one or more literate languages in addition to the mother tongue is highly viewed in Moroccan society where multilingualism constitutes a strong cultural component. Being multilingual presupposes being educated and urban and, thus, allows access to culturally powerful institutions. On the other hand, knowing only one language is a serious social handicap which reduces linguistic choices in everyday social interactions. Being power-linked, the mastery of language skills in the Moroccan context is another social variable which divides women and accounts for their heterogeneity. It creates two social categories of women: ‘multilingual’ and ‘monolingual’, with varying sub-categories in between. Women who master one literate language, in addition to their mother tongue, have more social choices than monolingual women and less choices than women who master two or, sometimes, more literate languages. Each group of women react to patriarchy by using the linguistic spectrum that is offered to them: multilingual women use powerful languages, and sometimes code-switch between a powerful and a non-powerful language to secure social gains, and monolingual women use oral languages to achieve the same aims. In either case, Moroccan women are not linguistically passive. The use of languages in Morocco is related to gender. Moroccan women as a group are more associated with oral than with written languages mainly because of the high rate of illiteracy. However,

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these women generally make particular choices of the languages they know to gain social recognition and prestige and achieve specific aims. For example, women know that competence in Standard Arabic allows them to understand the media, to further their knowledge of this language by reading, to help their children at school, and to participate in public discussion. Moroccan women also know that in the present situation, although the mastery of Standard Arabic allows them to find a job as teachers of this language, the job possibilities that this language offers are rather restricted. Given this state of affairs, women who master Standard Arabic use it in areas where they achieve personal or social gains. In recent years, female supporters of religious feminism make extensive use of Standard Arabic as the language of the Quran and the ‘language of God’. They use this language to spread their ideas among other women and also to explain the precepts of Islam. These women are very much aware that the use of Arabic in such circumstances is symbolically strong and empowering. Competence in French is highly desirable by educated urban women because they know it is an absolute requirement for obtaining a job in the private sector. As women constitute around one-third of the administrative secretarial personnel in Morocco, their competence in French is required. This competence is also required in everyday life such as transmitting the language to children and actively participating in public debates. Women who master one or two foreign languages have more social choices and stand more chances for social mobility than monolingual women. As for monolingual women, they have less opportunities for social ascension and social prestige, let alone opportunities for reflecting on their condition and experiences as women. Competence in French is also highly sought by female religious feminists because they are aware of its crucial importance in the public job sector and also as a useful language for their children. Linguistic choice is a factor which creates social discrepancy among women. Geographical and class divisions correlate greatly with language skills. In fact, the group of Moroccan women who are likely to benefit from language skills are urban women, as Standard Arabic and French are learnt through education, and rural women are predominantly illiterate. This state of affairs automatically creates a social rift between urban and rural women. The pragmatic functionality of French makes women’s attitude toward this language more positive than men’s and explains their greater use of Moroccan Arabic-French

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code-switching. On a wider scale, this functionality creates tension between a negative attitude towards a ‘colonial’ language and the need to use this language for survival and promotion in a modern society. The social value of French is also linked to class: upper class families have a very positive attitude towards French and generally educate their children in French schools. This overall linguistic situation puts rural women at a great disadvantage. These women master only unwritten and non-prestigious mother tongues: Moroccan Arabic and Berber, and some of them are monolingual (speaking either Moroccan Arabic or Berber). These two languages may allow girls and women to marry in rich families if they are themselves rich, become domestics, or have a very lowpaid job in a factory in cities and towns, if they are poor. Moroccan Arabic and Berber do not qualify women for salaried jobs and, thus, put them at a great disadvantage. Likewise, in spite of the growing State and civil society endeavors to promote the literacy of rural girls and women, the latter generally acquire only a rudimentary mastery of Standard Arabic and French, as the aim of literacy campaigns is to make women able to read and write only. The mastery of language skills in the Moroccan context is a socially positive factor which may either empower or disempower women. Moroccan women’s discrepancy in mastering language skills makes them resist patriarchy in different ways: multilingual women use literate languages to assert themselves and fight exclusion in public spheres, whereas monolingual women use orality for the same reason. M S Marriage is an important institution in Moroccan society and culture, as well as in the Arab–Muslim world (cf. Afshar 1987). The marital status of women is an important social variable that reflects the heterogeneity of Moroccan women and the discrepancy of choices and chances they have. The importance of this variable cuts across geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, and mastery of language skills. Although each one of these social variables has its value in the Moroccan context, none of them reduces the importance of marital status because women in Morocco are first and foremost socially defined in relation to this variable. Marital status divides women into ‘married’ and ‘unmarried’. Whereas the social category of married women is clear, the cate-

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gory of unmarried women is more complex as the latter may be spinsters, divorced, or widows. While social attitude towards married women is very positive, it is rather negative towards the various subcategories of unmarried women. Therefore, the social choices and chances that are offered to women in the former category are very different from the ones offered to women in the latter category. This discrepancy in choices shows that Moroccan women are not socially oppressed in the same way. This discrepancy also creates great tension between women inside and outside families. Inside families, where both married and unmarried women live together, more value is given to married women, in the sense that these are more consulted in matters relating to the everyday running of the household than the unmarried ones. The social value attributed to married women is due to the fact that marriage is strongly encouraged by Islam, a particularly powerful component Moroccan culture. Marriage and family are sacred as they constitute very powerful means of social control and a guarantee for stability and continuity. Marriage is not only encouraged by religion, but it is reinforced and consolidated by institutions. From a very early age and through their schooling, girls are constantly reminded that their ultimate aim in life is to secure a husband and raise a family. Being educated and having a job are ‘secondary’ aims that ‘complete’ and never replace marriage. As a result, society views married women (wives and mothers) positively and considers them more ‘successful’ and more ‘trustworthy’ than unmarried women. In turn, married women derive social identity and social power from this status. They generally feel more socially secure than unmarried women. In fact, many girls shun from furthering their higher studies, especially outside Morocco, lest their chances of being married slip away from them. This is reinforced by the fact that men, in general, are reluctant to marry girls and women who have completed their higher studies outside Morocco as these are generally believed to be ‘too independent’, ‘experienced’, ‘harder to deal with’, and far from being ‘obedient’. Thus, the social status and identity of Moroccan women largely depend on whether or not they are married, whether or not they have children, and whether or not they have a job. Legally, women are not considered free agents; in front of the law, they need their fathers, husbands, even in cases where they are economically independent. Women without men (unmarried, widows, divorced) are defined in

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relation to the closest male kin. Because they are ‘without men’, these women are often marginalized by society at large (cf. Jansen 1987). In spite of its central role in Moroccan culture, marital status is undergoing great change in present-day Morocco. With the growing and widespread unemployment rate in urban areas, more and more young men find themselves unable to get married before the age of 35 or even 40. In a parallel way, more and more urban girls opt for furthering their studies. As a result of these deep and important shifts in Moroccan society, a new category of ‘aging’ educated urban single women is emerging; a category of single, divorced, or widowed women who seek to avoid the family pressure and who opt for living alone or with their own children. For reasons of security and in a search of social respect, these women usually live in apartments with close neighbors with whom they often have a ‘tense’ relation: for neighbors, women living alone or with children constitute a constant threat for the stability of surrounding households. The social pressure on women who live alone is indeed great whatever their age; if they are young, these women are ‘feared’ by female married neighbors as potential ‘husband-snatchers’, and if they are aging, they are taxed as se}h}harat ‘women practicing witchcraft’ or prostitutes, especially if they are illiterate. Among the unmarried category of Moroccan women, the ones that head households as lone parents raise a social concern. In fact, although women-headed households epitomize a stereotypical ideal of womanhood as they tie women very closely to the responsibility of child raising in a society which regards this responsibility as the primary task of biological mothers, female leadership is still not socially accepted and mother leadership rebounds upon women who are not single parents, but who live alone with other women or in multi-generational households. Within this overall context, women heads of households are survivors and victims as they daily fight to raise families in the midst of social oppression. The social variable of marital status socially divides Moroccan women into groups with deeply unequal social power. This variable also explains the various ways in which married and unmarried women negotiate gender and resist patriarchy. Married women use the social power that their status gives them to secure gains inside the family and in the street; they may, for example, use their husbands’ name or social position to achieve aims and exercise power. Unmarried women use their relatively greater public freedom to

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demarcate themselves from married women, assert their freedom, and resist oppression. The marital status of women within Moroccan society also problematizes gender equality: the fact that society emphasizes the ‘naturalness’ of women’s child-rearing role constitutes a hurdle for Moroccan women’s attainment of equal status with men in the labor market, before the law, and in politics. A   S H  M W The social oppositions of urban/rural, rich/poor, educated/noneducated, working/non-working, multilingual/monolingual, and married/unmarried, their social meanings, and the various ways in which they affect women underline women’s heterogeneity in terms of available social choices in the Moroccan context. The discrepancy in choice availability creates power differential between various social groups of women in Morocco. The amount of social choice, and hence, of power, that women have depends on their positioning inside social groups and the tools they have to fight oppression and marginalization within the overall social context. The diversity of the social conditionings of Moroccan women, as well as the opportunities that these conditionings offer are unequal at the outset and explain the deeply unequal status and power of women in Morocco. These conditionings and opportunities help understand the diverse ways in which women suffer from oppression and the diverse ways in which they resist this oppression. The fact that the two extremities of each opposition are socially viewed as either positive or negative validates the social tension that exists between women belonging to different social categories. As women in the Moroccan context may belong to several social categories at the same time, the tension is carried over across these categories, creating a very complex system of social interactions that further deepens the social heterogeneity of Moroccan women. Women in Morocco sometimes negotiate and endeavor to maintain social power to the detriment of other women. For example, by recruiting and controlling domestics, upper and middle class women seek to maintain their working status without loosing control on their household. It is through the ‘exploitation’ of the lower social status of domestics that higher class women score social gains and endeavor to keep them. There is, thus, a sense in which the social gains of

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upper and middle class women and their prestigious ‘public’ identity are socially validated and justified by the existence of lower class women who ‘work for’ them and on whom they exercise social and psychological power. In such contexts, within-group social identities and gender affiliation become complex, as they are influenced by the amount and quality of the social choices that are allowed, as well as by the interaction of the various ways in which Moroccan women relate to the social groups in which they live, as well as the various values that society gives to these relations. The complexity of social identity and gender affiliation is also attested in the fact that this identity and affiliation constitute a continuum with no discernable point at which women stop having a specific identity or affiliation and start having another. The non-discreteness of the social oppositions presented in previous sections is attested in the fact that each one of them may be further sub-categorized. For example, so far as the geographical origin is concerned, Moroccan rural and urban women do not form two discretely homogeneous groups; the rural areas that surround big cities do not have the same social problems as the ones that surround small towns, and both are different from the rural areas that are situated in the mountains with no proper roads, water, or electricity. Further, urban areas are far from being similar. For example, the urban area of Casablanca is different from that of Fes, Oujda, Marrakesh, or Tangiers. The differences involved are apparent in the ‘modern’ vs ‘traditional’ look of cities and towns, and this has repercussions on dress styles, food, and gender-related social interpretations and attitudes that accompany them. For example, Fes and Marrakesh are imperial cities that boast an ancient historical legacy, whereas Casablanca and Rabat are more cosmopolitan. Further, the ‘spiritual’ nature of the city of Fes casts a ‘religious’ and mystical aura on social meanings and make the city more traditional in comparison with other Moroccan cities, a fact which is socially interpreted as ‘lagging behind’ by the population around Casablanca and as ‘authenticity’ by the locals. Concerning the variable of class, the concepts of ‘rich women’ and ‘poor women’ in Morocco are relative; they include various degrees of being rich and poor, and women in these various sub-categories experience class and resist its negative aspects according to the means available to them. Further, as a group, ‘rich’ women’s class status is often attributed to their male relatives (fathers, husbands, brothers, or sons), whereas men’s wealth is seldom interpreted socially in rela-

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tion to their female relatives (mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters). Continuum is also attested in the educated/non-educated social categories of Moroccan women. The label ‘educated women’ covers a large section of women who may either have a primary school level, a secondary school level, or a university degree. These subgroups of Moroccan women do not have the same choices and chances of self-assertion within Moroccan culture. The more education a woman has the better chances she stands to find a job and be economically independent, and the less education a woman has the less chances she stands. As with geographical origin, class, and education, job opportunity also constitutes a continuum. Sex-typed tasks and jobs vary from very well-paid, to well-paid to low-paid. However, the great majority of Moroccan women have average to low-paid jobs. Likewise, the mastery of language skills constitutes a continuum which ranges from knowledge of one, two, three, or even more languages. However, the majority of women being illiterate, knowledge of either one or both mother tongues is the most frequent. Although illiterate, these women may understand a language like Standard Arabic (because they pray in it, for example) without actually writing it. Finally, concerning marital status, the category of married women covers women with or without children, and the category of unmarried women covers divorced women, spinsters, and widows. The various sub-categories that form each social variable is a clear indication that it is impossible to put Moroccan women in one social group. By implication, Moroccan women are not treated socially in the same way. The sub-categories also show the variety of nuances that each opposition within each social variable triggers, as well as the interaction between these sub-categories. The most significant distinctions are the ones based on geographical origin and class. The distinctions based on geographical origin are included in (6) and the ones based on class are included in (7) below; all these categories and correlations are mine. (6) C      M  – Urban vs rural – Urban rich vs urban poor – Urban rich educated vs urban rich uneducated – Urban rich educated working vs urban rich educated non-working – Urban rich educated working multilingual vs urban rich educated working monolingual

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– Urban rich educated working multilingual married vs urban rich educated working multilingual unmarried – Urban rich educated working multilingual married with children vs urban rich educated working multilingual married without children – Urban rich educated working multilingual married with children, especially boys vs urban rich educated working multilingual married with children but no boys – Urban poor educated vs urban poor uneducated – Urban poor educated working vs urban poor educated non-working – Urban poor educated working multilingual vs urban poor educated working monolingual – Urban poor educated working multilingual married vs urban poor educated working multilingual unmarried – Urban poor educated working multilingual married with children vs urban poor educated working multilingual married without children – Urban poor educated working multilingual married with children, especially boys vs urban poor educated working multilingual married with children but no boys – – – –

Rural rich vs rural poor Rural rich educated vs rural rich uneducated Rural rich educated working vs rural rich educated non-working Rural rich educated working multilingual vs rural rich educated working monolingual – Rural rich educated working multilingual married vs rural rich educated working multilingual unmarried – Rural rich educated working multilingual married with children vs rural rich educated working multilingual married without children – Rural rich educated working multilingual married with children, especially boys vs rural rich educated working multilingual married with children but no boys – Rural poor educated vs rural poor uneducated – Rural poor educated working vs rural poor educated non-working – Rural poor educated working multilingual vs rural poor educated working monolingual – Rural poor educated working multilingual married vs rural poor educated working multilingual unmarried – Rural poor educated working multilingual married with children vs rural poor educated working multilingual married without children – Rural poor educated working multilingual married with children, especially boys vs rural poor educated working multilingual married with children but no boys

Two major blocks of distinctions are shown by the above classification: the urban block and the rural block. A number of points may be drawn from the correlations in (6) above. To start with, this categorization is based more on behavior in the public than in the pri-

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vate sphere. The reason for this is that it is in the public sphere that social gender oppositions arise and acquire social meanings. Second, this categorization is not static; it changes according to social movement, circumstance, purpose, and personal interest. For Moroccan women, working in rural areas does not socially mean the same thing as working in urban areas. Furthermore, although having boys is important in rural areas, it is less so in urban areas. In addition, whereas educating girls is valued in urban areas, it does not really make a difference in rural areas because on the one hand, for the family, girls’ work at home is far more important than their work outside the home, and on the other hand, female job opportunities are almost non-existent in rural areas; very few women have salaried jobs. Recently, there is a slowly growing number of rural women who are educated, which usually means that they have completed their secondary schooling, but their number is too small to draw significant generalizations, and their schooling is beneficial financially only if they emigrate to towns and cities. Finally, any one of the correlations given in (6) above might rank higher in specific situations. The second most important social distinction is class. Like the variable of geographical origin, class allows a classification of women in two blocks: rich and poor. The following correlations are, thus, arranged in four blocks because it builds on the two blocks already yielded by the geographical origin variable: (7) C      M :      – Rich urban educated working married with children, especially boys – Rich urban educated non-working married with children, especially boys – Rich urban uneducated married with children, especially boys – Rich urban educated working married with children – Rich urban educated non-working married with children – Rich urban uneducated married with children – Rich urban educated working married childless – Rich urban educated non-working married childless – Rich urban uneducated married childless – Rich urban educated working unmarried – Rich urban educated non-working unmarried – Rich urban uneducated unmarried – – – –

Rich rural educated working married with children, especially boys Rich rural educated working married with children, especially boys Rich rural educated non-working married with children, especially boys Rich rural uneducated working married with children, especially boys

 

208 – Rich boys – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich – Rich

rural uneducated non-working married with children, especially rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural

educated working married with children educated non-working married with children uneducated working married with children uneducated non-working married with children educated working married childless educated non-working married childless uneducated working married childless uneducated non-working married childless educated working unmarried educated non-working unmarried uneducated working unmarried uneducated non-working unmarried

– Poor urban educated working married with children, especially boys – Poor urban educated non-working married with children, especially boys – Poor urban uneducated married with children, especially boys – Poor urban educated married working with children – Poor urban educated non-working married with children – Poor urban uneducated married with children – Poor urban educated working married childless – Poor urban educated non-working married childless – Poor urban uneducated married childless – Poor urban educated working unmarried – Poor urban educated non-working unmarried – Poor urban uneducated working unmarried – Poor urban uneducated working married with children, especially boys – Poor urban uneducated non-working married with children, especially boys – – – – – – – – – – –

Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor Poor

rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural rural

educated working married with children educated non-working married with children uneducated working married with children uneducated non-working married with children educated working married childless educated non-working married childless uneducated working married childless uneducated non-working married childless educated working unmarried working educated non-working unmarried uneducated non-working unmarried

The presentation of the main social categories of Moroccan women in (7) is ranged from the ‘most privileged’ to the ‘least privileged’, and shows that the most important distinctions are related to geographical origin and class. The urban vs rural and the rich vs poor are the social oppositions which create the most significant social

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differences between women in Morocco. They are the ones that influence the presence or absence of the categories of educated vs uneducated, working vs non-working, and multilingual vs monolingual. However, marital status does not depend directly on the bigger categories: there seems to be more rural married women than urban non-married ones. This may be due to the heavier burden of traditions in rural areas. Granting the hierarchical nature of the correlations in (6) and (7) above, Moroccan women do not experience their social status in the same way. A rich urban married educated woman is indeed much more privileged than a poor rural, unmarried and uneducated woman. Likewise, possibilities of empowerment differ greatly from the former to the latter. In between, various groups of women leading various lives and having various experiences exist as the correlations in (6) and (7) above show. These social differences and social heterogeneity among Moroccan women create power hierarchies and show that Moroccan women are not affected by family pressure and social injustice in the same way. The least affected group by the burden of traditions is the one that includes women that are rich urban educated working married with children, especially boys, and the most affected group is the one including poor rural uneducated non-working unmarried women. This shows that when we deal with gender role distribution and perception in the Moroccan socio-cultural context, we are not dealing with women as one unified specific group. Consequently, it is unrealistic to rely on essentializing theories or homogenizing discourses which create a ‘unified’ and ‘unique’ image of the ‘Moroccan woman’ because it is dangerous to extrapolate from this hegemonic image and extend it to the totality of Moroccan women. Moroccan women are multiple beings who evolve in multiple social settings. Therefore, when issues of oppression in the Moroccan context are addressed, we need to keep in mind that oppression does not affect all women in the same way and with the same intensity. Thus, problematizing gender equity in the case of Moroccan rural poor uneducated unmarried women is not the same as problematizing it in the case of rich middle class married women. Even though rich middle class married women are victims of gender inequity within their class, they can be very influential and powerful in the lives of many lower class men, let alone, women. Furthermore, rural poor little girls are daily exploited by rich middle class, and sometimes less rich ordinary urban women.

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  S M  M W’ S D

Social categories are socially meaningful in specific societies (cf. Tilly and Scott 1978). Social meaning can be obtained only by deconstructing the interlocked socially significant information that the categories carry. Although the deconstruction of social categories neither alters their social functions nor ‘destructs’ them, it allows an understanding of the way these social categories are constructed. As Bucholtz (1996: 270) states: Deconstruction is not destruction, and to demonstrate that a category is incoherent is not to eliminate its strategic use as a resource for both dominant and subjugated interests. Moreover, because we live in a world that orients to categories, we cannot ignore their effects.

Moroccan women obviously fall into one, two or several of the social categories of geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, language skills, and marital status. The effect of these categories on women’s lives and experiences is real and testifies against the hegemonic discourses that present Moroccan women as homogeneous. The social meaning of Moroccan women’s heterogeneity may be understood only within the general socio-cultural framework in which they live. According to Meyerhoff (1996), differences in women’s (and men’s) behavior and norms exist because their social network ties differ. Although this view is theoretically sound, the strength and social meanings of the ‘network ties’ depends on specific cultures. For example, Moroccan educated urban women have social network ties that are peculiar to how ‘education’, ‘urbanity’ and ‘women’ are perceived within Moroccan culture. Understanding the culture-specific meanings of social categories is crucial because they link women’s identity as a social group with specific social gains that are perceived as such in the Moroccan context. Wealthy women have network ties linking their identity as a group with visible social prestige (like owning a luxurious house and two or more cars, having an x number of domestics, etc.). What is interesting from the point of view of this book is that differences in behavior and norms are encoded as linguistic markers in social interactions. For example, educated urban women highlight their status by speaking French or by code-switching between French and Arabic in mixed groups, and married women may use linguistic expressions that highlight their status, especially in the presence of unmarried women.

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Significantly, it is always the socially privileged groups of women that index their social status in speech with the aim of demarcating it from that of the unprivileged group. In doing this, these women gain social prestige through the use of language. Social status indexing in speech has positive social meaning since it highlights a ‘privileged’ social position. According to this view, each of the social categories that affect Moroccan women influences the way they communicate in a crucial way in the sense that the more a social identity is salient, the more frequently it is adapted by speakers. Identities are established in parallel with the number and nature of social networks, as well as their saliency in specific contexts. In conversations, speakers manage multiple social identities that are appropriate to both the situation and the interlocutor within and across interactions. Therefore, it is only through speakers’ identification with specific social network ties that successful communication is achieved. Social categories are strategically used as a resource by women and men according to immediate interest. On the basis of this, interaction between the various social categories shows that categories other than gender may be more salient in specific social encounters and that gender is not always viewed by the speaker and the interlocutor in the same way. By moving from one social category to another, speakers adopt different social identities. For example, the same educated woman who highlights her social prerogatives by using French would readily switch to Moroccan Arabic or Berber in the presence of her in-laws even if she is not addressing them directly, given the power that the latter have (she has to please her husband in front of his parents to maintain his trust). Social identities are activated and influenced by interactional networks. According to Deschamps and Doize (1978: 144), the social environment of an individual is constituted of ‘a network of categories which will tend to cut across each other’. Moroccan women’s heterogeneity that is created by social variables supports two facts: first, Western feminist models cannot easily be applied to the Moroccan socio-cultural context because meaningful social categories are culture-specific, and second, even within Moroccan culture, feminist movements are bound to be polyvocal and multi-dimensional. The unequal status of Moroccan women means that there are different needs and demands which are based on geographical origin, class, etc. and which need to be addressed. These needs show that culture cannot be used as a unitary category;

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each group exhibits different cultural traditions. Multiculturalism is present in every ‘formal’ culture (cf. Abdo 1997). I  W M   M C Mainstream Western feminist models do not easily fit the Moroccan socio-cultural context. It should be noted that not all discourse by Westerners on Arab or Muslim women is perceived as patronizing. The aim of this section is not to set up oppositional and totalizing dichotomies of exactly the sort that are being criticized. Granting the existence of some deeply human and universal social values, the components of Western culture are significantly different from, and sometimes incompatible with, those of Moroccan culture. The histories, geographies, religions, oralities, social use of languages, social organizations, economic statuses, and political organizations are different. In Morocco, the social values and the way cultural components interact are indeed peculiar to the Moroccan context. Hence, gender conceptualization, perception, and performance are bound to be peculiar to the Moroccan context. Of the various cultural components, it is the social status and the reading of religion which influence gender role perception and performance most, and differentiate Moroccan feminism from its Western counterparts. The way religion (in all its facets) influences gender perception, gender performance and language use can be evaluated only within Moroccan culture. The concept of modernity is another issue where Moroccan and Western views greatly diverge. Modernity is generally read in the West (the colonizer) as a ‘favor’ done to economically poor and ‘backward’ countries, whereas it is perceived as both positive and negative by the poorer (colonized) countries, it is closely associated with colonization and ‘oppression’. The duality of ‘tradition and modernity’ is greatly favored in present-day Moroccan socio-cultural context although it is accompanied by daily identity clashes. There is persistence in maintaining the ancestral values and fear that modernization, and now globalization, may strongly threaten those values. The traditional aspect of the duality is where the collective self and culture reside, and the modern aspect is where survival and social dignity reside. The two are strongly perceived as complementary and not mutually exclusive. This perception is deeply entangled with

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questions of identity, the self and the other and becomes strongly meaningful in cultural contacts. Indeed, it is in cultural contacts that confusion at the level of interpretation between cultures is bound to arise. Thus, the complementarity between tradition and modernity in Morocco is not easily understood in Western cultures because the images of Moroccan women that are produced by these cultures are not intended for the ‘natives’ and, hence, are not meant to be deconstructed in a search for the stereotypes they fuel. Such images often express the point of view and the aggressiveness of their producers. The origin of the socio-cultural perception of Moroccan women in Western cultures is both historical and contemporary and is, hence, very complex. The historical aspect is largely related to colonization and the contemporary aspect to the media in all their facets. The media have not only created visual and abstract images of Moroccan/ Eastern women, but have also, and this is more dangerous because implicit and lasting, created strategies of interpretation which often magnify, distort, and distance these images from reality. The socio-cultural representations of Moroccan culture in the West rely heavily on oriental clichés. Moroccan women are perceived as one entity in which social boundaries do not seem to count. These women are very much associated with the terms ‘Arab’, ‘Oriental’, ‘Islamic’, and ‘exotic’ and everyone knows now, especially after the September 11th events, how complex these terms have become. For example, there are many visual codes in Western cultures which celebrate the exotic: women are often pictured as veiled, a fact which does not dissociate them from being sex objects; they are decorated and often located somewhere where camels are visible. It is the clichés that are associated with the Orient that are used by the media to create images of Moroccan women. At a less subtle level, Moroccan women are portrayed, overtly or covertly, by Westerners as underclass; they are objectified as ‘the other’. The other in the West is not only the socio-cultural context, but also the women themselves: helpless human beings who do not seem able to speak for themselves, mere consumers, and victims of stereotypes (domestically, they are victims of social stereotypes and outside the home they are victims of expectations of Western feminists). These women are seldom seen from within their socio-cultural context; indeed, Moroccan culture is poorly understood in the West. For example, in most cases, the difference between Islam-as-religion and Islam-as-culture is blurred. Islam is often portrayed as the source

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of ignorance, poverty, repression, aggression, and now terrorism. It is often forgotten that in Morocco, Islam is part and parcel of culture. Unlike in the West, people in Morocco do not choose their religion; they are born Muslim and they are expected to remain so. Being a Muslim is part of identity and the self. The way Islam as culture is perceived by Moroccans (no matter whether they practice or not the precepts of Islam as a religion) is, thus, significantly different from the way it is perceived in the West. It is difficult for Western scholars to really understand that Moroccan people have throughout history developed their own cultural values; they have their own definitions of ‘status’ and ‘authority’. Indeed, social class and differentiations among women vary in Morocco from the forms they take in the West (cf. Bessis and Belhassan 1992). Therefore, the use of a Western-driven ideology will not exactly fit the Moroccan social situation. The values that are essential in Moroccan culture are family, religion, traditions, self-sacrifice (especially in the case of women), altruism. Marital status, as well as language skills, are also different in Moroccan and Western cultures. Even concepts such as class, race, or gender equity are defined and perceived differently. These values have gradually been constructed within institutions and, thus, made harder to grasp. In Moroccan culture, women feel that the things that make them different are spoken of differently in the West. This often creates frustration which accentuates exclusion. Feminists in Morocco feel that Western culture is dominated by oppositional thinking (things are defined by their opposites and, hence, impose a hierarchy). By relegating Morocco, and the Arab-Muslim world in general, to the negative sides of the dichotomies on all levels, Westerners simply play the traditional anthropological role of describing the other and prescribing ways in which this other should liberate itself. This is an ethnocentric attitude whereby Western discourses on Moroccan, and Arab-Muslim, women is very patronizing at a time when mainstream Western feminists themselves fight patronization. In an endeavor to preach a common global culture, Western feminists negatively privilege difference instead of constructing difference within social and cultural relations. Women’s daily experiences and ways of perceiving and performing gender are constructed inside specific socio-cultural settings and their various responses to oppression carry meanings only within this context.

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M W’ S D  F It is true that in principle, a single homogeneous feminist movement is more likely to assert itself than several ones, but this type of feminism also runs the risk of being too essentialist, totalizing, and unrealistic. Since the voices of Moroccan women have become multiple, their feminist endeavors need to be multiple in order to match the needs with the demands. In the recent history of Morocco, feminism has largely been associated with educated, enlightened, and self-aware upper class women. It is this category of women who have so far spoken in the name of Moroccan women as a whole. It is also this category who made their voice more or less heard on the international scene. As a result, Western feminists have always perceived Moroccan women through the lenses of these feminists and, thus, have formulated generalizing ideas about Moroccan women as a homogeneous group. Up to now, it is this type of feminism that has prevailed. However, given the wide variety of women in Morocco, this type of feminism is at best unrealistic because it still does not include readings from feminists of other social backgrounds. In the last two decades or so, a reaction to this state of affairs materialized in the emergence of a variety of feminisms with varying degrees of insistence on one or more components of Moroccan culture, be it religion, social organization, or language. Religious feminism, an expression which would sound self-contradictory within the Western framework but which seems to work perfectly well for a large portion of Moroccan women, is emerging. Likewise, feminists have started to consider the interface between language and gender. Indeed, religious feminism and language awareness are emerging as powerful forces that not only compete but create a balance in an emerging young democracy in Morocco.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONTEXTUAL DIFFERENCES I This chapter focuses on another type of variables which further accentuate the heterogeneity of Moroccan women: the general context in which women find themselves. This context is mainly constituted of the physical setting, the participants (the speaker and hearer), the topic of conversation, and the purpose of conversation. These contextual factors influence styles and patterns of speech in a significant way and widen the concept of gender further than the cultural and social variables by adding supplementary categories of analysis. Given that Moroccan men and women conduct their everyday lives multilingually, the term ‘style’ is used in its broadest sense, i.e. including the use of more than one language, as well as the various oral skills. Linguistic studies have shown that individual speakers possess competence that allows them to control a range of styles and registers (occupation-linked jargons) and use them appropriately in various situations (cf. Chafe 1985, Tannen 1985, Chafe and Danelwicz 1987, Biber 1988, West 1995, and Freed 1996, among many others). Contextual variables are as important as social variables in influencing the form and content of communicative events; they play an important role in the manner in which the floor (speech turns) is ‘taken’, ‘given’, ‘claimed’, etc. Both sets of variables interact in a complex way. For example, it is difficult to separate the social variable of ‘class’ or ‘marital status’ from the contextual variable of ‘participant’ or ‘physical setting’ as language choices are motivated by both simultaneously. These two types of variables are neither additive (occurring sequentially) nor easily separated (cf. Keenan 1974, Gal 1989, 1992, hooks 1990, Goodwin 1980, 1991, Ochs 1992, Freed and Greenwood 1996, Bucholtz 1996, Johnstone 1996, Meyerhoff 1996, Polanyi and Strassman 1996). Although the two types of variables interact in a significant way, they are treated separately in this book for the sake of clarity. Contextual variables are also closely linked to identity variables.

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Contextual variables are particularly significant in cases where particular choices of languages and modes of expression and communication have social meanings. In such contexts, women’s language styles and patterns are revealing. Two such styles and patterns are provided in this chapter: women’s oral styles (storytelling, poems, etc.) and women’s code-switching (mixing of two languages). Although both women and men use these styles, only women are dealt with here. The first style is mainly used by rural monolingual Berber and Arab women and the second by multilingual urban educated women. Both styles are used by women as empowering linguistic means. For example, in oral skills, illiterate women create images where gender roles are sometimes subverted, and in code-switching, educated multilingual women create linguistic means of gaining prestige in mixed or all-female conversations. The two contextual styles call for different discourse strategies and reveal ways of female self-assertion in a rigidly patriarchal society. In this chapter, contextual variables are not dealt with separately; rather, focus is put on ways in which Moroccan women use context-dependent empowering styles to assert themselves. The function of contextual factors in broadly shaping conversations indicates that gender is, after all, not the most important factor in conversation. The aim of this chapter is to provide more support for the hypothesis that Moroccan women’s heterogeneity can be understood only within culture because contextual variables, like social variables, are closely linked to specific cultures. By concentrating on language use in a variety of cultural settings, this chapter deals with negotiation of meaning in both theory and everyday practice. C-R S  G In a multilingual society like Morocco, the use of languages is bound to be influenced by specific contexts or situations. It is the situation in its broadest sense which dictates choice of particular languages. Thus, the use of French, for example, depends on situations which involve an urban setting, educated participants, a topic such as education or globalization, and a purpose such as showing one’s knowledge of the language. On the other hand, a topic such as the ‘explanation’ of the Quran (tafsiir) is usually discussed in Standard Arabic and presupposes participants (usually male) that are well-versed in the theology of Arabic and a formal setting such as the mosque, the university, or the living room of a house. Further, a setting such as a rural farm

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would be more appropriate for the discussion of a topic like agriculture, livestock-raising, and wood gathering. The interaction between situational variables and language use in the Moroccan context is sensitive to gender. Although extensive research has been carried out on the interface between Western languages, especially English, and gender, very little has been done on the way gender interfaces with non-Western languages and cultures. Indeed, very few studies have been published on the language/gender interface in Morocco (cf. Sadiqi 1995, Rashidi 2000, Badran, Sadiqi and Rashidi 2002). Four major languages are used in Morocco: Standard Arabic, Berber, Moroccan Arabic, and French. These languages compete for symbolic prestige in the linguistic market (cf. Ennaji 1991, Boukous 1995). This competition is inevitable as the four languages vehicle culturally meaningful social, ethnic, and identity values. The tension between languages in Morocco affects men and women in different ways as gender role demands are not the same for the two sexes. Consequently, languages in Morocco are not used by men and women in the same way as the gains that such usage allows differ not only from men to women, but also from situation to situation. The general picture that emerges from a consideration of language choice in Morocco is the following: Standard Arabic is a ‘male’ language, Berber is a ‘female’ language, Moroccan Arabic is both a male and female language, but is more a male language in rural areas, and French is both a female and a male language, but more a female language in urban areas.1 This general picture reveals that whereas gender bias is clearly attested in the case of Standard Arabic and Berber, it is less so in the case of Moroccan Arabic and French. This dichotomous qualification of Moroccan languages is not rigid as women and men may use various languages according to context; it is only meant to underline the major gender traits that characterize the use of particular languages. The purpose of this gender qualifcation is also to draw attention to the fact that the use of languages in Morocco affects and is affected by gender. Standard Arabic: a Male Language The main reasons that mark Standard Arabic as a male language are its strong association with the religious establishment (Islam and a∫1

See Rashidi (2000) for a more or less similar categorization.

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∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’) on the one hand, and with the huge bulk of written scholarship on the other hand. It is important to note that these reasons do NOT make Arabic a men’s language; they simply mean that historically, more men may have been more competent in the religious and literary language-dependent professions given the greater social opportunities they had. The historical influence of strong gender-biases reinforced the male dominance of Standard Arabic. The contexts in which Standard Arabic is used are constructed as typically male in Moroccan culture. These contexts range from institutions to physical settings (spaces) to conversational situations where male-oriented topics are raised. It is only through a survey of the various domains in which Standard Arabic is used that an understanding of the constructed male character of the situations in which this language is used may be achieved. In present-day Morocco, Standard Arabic is officially established as the language of the highest institutions. The Moroccan Constitution opens with the following statements: Article 1: Morocco is an Arab and a Muslim country. Article 2: Islam is the official religion of the State Article 3: The Arabic language is the official and national language of the State. The official standardization of Arabic was a direct consequence of Morocco’s alliance with the Arab nation (al-Umma) after independence. This consciously constructed alliance was based on the ‘one nation, one religion, and one language’ principle and was needed for the cultural unity and the cultural identity of the newly independent Morocco. Accordingly, Standard Arabic became both a language of political power and a ‘high’ (status-marked) language. A ‘high language’ is a language of important social, religious, legal, and political rituals. These rituals are conducted in domains of public power to which women have had little access up to now. According to Kaplan (1978: 6), the male dominance in society is achieved by distancing women from high languages: Refusal of access to public language is one of the major forms of the oppression of women within a social class as well as in trans-class situations.

The strongest power-related aspect of Standard Arabic is its intrinsic relation to Islam, the official religion of Morocco. Since the arrival of Islam in Morocco, Standard Arabic has never ceased to be the

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language of religious practice and scholarship. It is men who have mostly used Islam and Standard Arabic to rule, and consequently, Islam and Standard Arabic gradually became associated with male concepts, spaces, and practices. The public expression of religion and scholarship in Standard Arabic has become a typically male task with which men identify and which defines the concept of maleness in the entire Arab-Muslim world. This strong Islam/Arabic association crystallized into a specific worldview, ideology, and institutional organizations where concepts and roles are rigidly gendered. Consequently, although Moroccan women strongly feel that they ‘belong’ to the official religion of Morocco, they do not really participate in this religion; their religious space is more restricted than that of men’s and never coincides with the latter because it is very different from it (cf. Buitelaar 1993). Unlike men, women, especially younger ones, do not usually attend the mosque and, thus, do not participate in the daily ritual of public prayers as frequently as men. Even if they attend the mosque, women are usually ‘apologetic’ in the mosque as a space. They pray in ‘special’ places where they may see men without being seen by the latter. As a compensation, women visit tombs of saints and holy sanctuaries of ancestors more than men in the search for baraka ‘God’s blessing’, an act which ambiguously ‘intermingles’ with religion in their minds (cf. Gellner 1969, Doutté 1984). These tombs are perceived by women as being associated with religious power. This is reinforced by the important place that religious sites have in Moroccan culture; they are visited for a variety of reasons which range from seeking to ‘enter paradise’ after death to imploring God for bearing children, especially boys. Moroccan women’s religion is mixed with the supernatural. When entering a saint’s shrine, women usually utter religious expressions such as bismillah ‘in the name of God’, ?a jah mulana ‘by God’s power’. They also invoke supernatural powers: tteslim ‘I am totally obedient to you’ where ‘you’ is a reference to al-jinn ‘demons’. Women’s visits to saints’ shrines may be accompanied by jjedba ‘hysterical dance/ trance’. However, these expressions and practices are not religious in the straightforward sense of the term; pragmatically, they partly resemble Moroccan greeting and leave-taking formulae which are religious in form but not in content. Saints’ visitations may also be used for other purposes, such as meeting friends and family, exchanging news, looking for daughters-in-law, indulging in gossiping, etc. Being used quasi-exclusively by women, the saints’ shrines are spaces

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where women acquire freedom from men and practice religion in a typically female fashion. Besides their religious power, Islam and Standard Arabic have a legal power. Being a State religion and an official language, Islam and Standard Arabic constitute reference and means of expression in law. Although Moroccan laws regulating policy-making and economy are based on liberal modern universal laws, those regulating the family and men-women relations and behavior are still largely based on a∫-∫ariwa ‘Islamic law’. Indeed, laws relating to family and men-women relations witnessed very little change in spite of the fact that Moroccan society has greatly changed in the last century, especially over the last four decades. The religious and legal aspects of Standard Arabic reinforce its powerful status in politics and decision-making and emphasize its male character. In addition to its religious, legal, and political aspects, Standard Arabic is also the language of (written) literacy, another male-dominated domain. Standard Arabic is backed by centuries of ancient documented history, literature, poetry and prose. Arabic poetry and literature have always been prestigious forms of symbolic language. The relatively greater number of male scholars and erudites dramatizes the gap between ‘literate’ and ‘illiterate’ Moroccans on the one hand, and distances men from women on the other hand. The fact that Standard Arabic is learnt and not acquired during childhood puts it on a pedestal where men, more than women, can use it to gain public power. Standard Arabic and Arabic science have strong ‘masculine’ connotations and often result in the false view that thinking and reasoning are ‘male’. In contemporary times, Moroccan women’s relation to literate knowledge is still ambiguous; it is generally believed that knowledge threatens women’s ‘femininity’.2 On the other hand, rural women are excluded from Standard Arabic. Monolingual Berber women say their prayers in this language without understanding it. Even if they are bilingual (using Berber and Moroccan Arabic), these women do not know Standard Arabic. In fact, Moroccan women in general are less proficient in Standard Arabic than men, and generally feel less comfortable in using it. This 2 On a more general level, the scarcity of women writers in general is due, according to Kaplan (1978), to a prohibition at a deeper psychological level so far as women are concerned. The idea that poetry and literature are not a woman’s domain is deeply internalized in women.

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is mainly due to women’s economic and social lesser choices. Standard Arabic is learnt through schooling, and women get less schooling than men. Furthermore, men’s work and mosque attendance bring them into more contact with Standard Arabic than women. These and related facts remove Standard Arabic from women’s spheres of influence. For example, in the private sphere, mothers (and fathers) never coo to their children in Standard Arabic. Moroccan women’s relation to Standard Arabic must be placed within the more general context of the power of dominant groups where men create masculinity and femininity as mutually exclusive and unequal. In this context, Standard Arabic is part and parcel of masculine identity, hence its use in men-related domains. Language plays a part in this creation. According to personal observation, women’s ‘reticence’ to use Standard Arabic is not only due to their socio-economic status, but also to the attitudes of men. Moroccan men in general are more favorable to women’s proficiency in French than to their proficiency in Standard Arabic. A possible reason for this is that proficiency in Standard Arabic symbolizes cultural identity and power and, hence, is more threatening to the established male-biased status quo. Women’s mastery of Standard Arabic removes them from the public ‘lower position’ and destabilizes the hierarchy. For example, one may publicly ridicule women using French but not women using Standard Arabic. This explains the fact that women who use French in public are more easily criticized and ‘made fun of ’ than women who use Standard Arabic: the former language may be ‘made fun of ’ because it vehicles a ‘foreign’ culture, whereas the latter language may not because it vehicles ‘sacred’ religious and national collective identities. Being the language of Islam, politics, the media, and written knowledge, Standard Arabic is the ‘reciplical’ of the dominating ‘public’ and ‘high’ culture which constitutes the male domain in Morocco. It is the language of institutions where the gatekeepers of Arabic are most active. Standard Arabic is associated with formal, influential, and ‘serious’ language functions in which women’s voices are marginalized because these voices, like the bodies to which they belong, are socially considered fitnah ‘social chaos’. The male aspect of Standard Arabic perpetuates the view of the male as the norm and universal in Moroccan culture. By implication, the female is constructed as the ‘marked’ and ‘deviant’ version of the male. This explains the frequent ‘shock’ caused by Standard Arabic words such al-faqiha ‘female theologist in Islamic matters’, al-muftiya ‘female religious adviser’,

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al-muSaliyya ‘female leader of prayers’, al-muqri?a/al-mujawwida ‘female public reciter of the Quran). Although these religious female professions exist in Moroccan society, they are rather rare. Moroccan women’s ‘distance’ from the spheres in which Standard Arabic is used explains the general tendency to disqualify women as competent public speakers in Moroccan culture. This leads to an apparent paradox: Moroccan women are conservative in the sense that they are said to preserve oral culture by speaking Berber and transmitting cultural values and ‘non-conservative’ in the sense that they do not use the conservative means of public linguistic expression. Although the paradox does not make sense logically, it makes sense politically as it both maintains the status quo and the gender hierarchy in a patriarchal society, and highlights the respective political statuses of the written and the oral mediums of language. All the domains in which Standard Arabic is used are indeed contexts where this language is socially constructed as ‘appropriate’. The use of Standard Arabic in these domains is not dictated solely by the gender factor; Moroccan men do not use Standard Arabic because they are men; rather, the contexts and social meanings given to these contexts within the overall culture dictate the use of Arabic. The fact that men use this language more than women is mainly due to the fact that that men are given more chances to be in contexts where the use of Standard Arabic is appropriate. Women who reach publicly powerful domains in which Standard Arabic is used will use Standard Arabic for the same reasons as men. Likewise, topics of conversations that are related to the public male domains naturally trigger the use of Standard Arabic, and the fact that women are not given access to these topics explains their relative absence from situations in which Standard Arabic is used. Accordingly, gender relates more to the component ‘participant’ in a context than to the other components. As such, gender is but one of the factors that influence the choices of language use in Morocco, and the fact that educated women do not use Standard Arabic is not due to the fact they are incapable of using it, but to the fact they do not often find themselves in situations where they need to use it. In the Moroccan context, men and women are not given equal choices and chances in the public domains and, therefore, do not have access to the same situations of Standard Arabic usages. Although Standard Arabic is a male language, Moroccan women may use it and its resources subversively (cf. Walters p.c.). For example, liberal feminists use Standard Arabic and extracts from the

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Quran and the Prophet’s sayings on TV to show that Islam as a religion and Standard Arabic as a language are not solely men’s. In so doing, these feminists highlight the fact that Islam preaches universal ideas about equality and tolerance between the sexes. This particular use of Standard Arabic may be seen as a site of instigating ideological change and gaining more credibility in society at large. I myself was invited by the Moroccan TV in Ramadan of 2001 to speak about the essence of Islam and women and I deliberately used Standard Arabic instead of French. Berber: a Female Language The contexts in which Berber is used are very different from the ones in which Standard Arabic is used, and, hence, the social meanings associated with the former are different from the ones associated with the latter. Unlike Standard Arabic, Berber is neither associated with politics nor with religion in Moroccan culture. The fact that no holy book appeared originally in Berber removes this language from the religious sphere. The relationship between Berber and religion is explained by Brett and Fentress (1996) in historical terms. According to these authors, Berber religion in North Africa was based on Punic dual deities: the male God Baal and the female Goddess Tanit and, as a result of this dual character of religious symbolism, ancient Berber societies were organized into public (or male) space which was the domain of external politics, and private (or female) space which was the domain of internal traditions. Interestingly, although these domains were distinct, they did not oppose each other. With the advent of Islam, a typically monotheist religion, Berber society had to suppress its female characteristics so that it could form part of the male world of Islam. The Berber female aspect of ancient Moroccan society became gradually engulfed in magic and saint veneration. According to Brett and Fentress, present-day Moroccan women’s participation in mainstream religion is rather marginal and is often symbolized in female rites and rather ‘unorthodox’ or even ‘heretical’ practices of magic, sorcery, and ancestor/saint extreme veneration. This is attested in the cultural deep-rooted association of women with the zawias ‘sects associated usually with Sufi brotherhood’ and marabouts ‘saints’. These practices hindered women’s public access to the official language and religion and relegated them to unsanctioned domains, a fact which made women open to constant ambiguity.

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In spite of its disadvantaged position in the Moroccan linguistic market, Berber has extraordinarily managed to survive from pre-historic times to present times. Four major factors have contributed to this survival: (i) Berber’s status as a mother tongue, (ii) illiteracy, (iii) the fact that women, especially mothers, continue to be monolingual while men, working outside the home and often community, become bi-/multilingual, and (iv) the use of French in the Moroccan educational system. Firstly, being a native language, Berber possesses the dynamism and vitality which characterize mother tongues. The mother tongue status of Berber makes it closer than written languages to people’s everyday concerns and worries. Secondly, being a rural and exclusively oral language, Berber is used by a great portion of rural and illiterate women. Thirdly, the dissemination of education in the French language played a significant role in removing an association of Standard Arabic with religion only from the minds of Moroccans. This greatly helped to enhance Berber in the face of Islam-linked Standard Arabic. Three of the above factors are directly related to women: on the one hand, it is women who first speak Berber to their children; it is they who keep the language; and, on the other hand, there are more illiterate women than men. It is these two aspects that make of Berber a female language. This does not mean that men do not use the language, it only means that they use it less than women. As a language of cultural identity, home, the family, village affiliation, intimacy, traditions, orality, and nostalgia to a remote past, Berber perpetuates attributes that are considered female in the Moroccan culture. The absence of Berber from the powerful public key institutional areas reinforces these attributes. The contexts in which Berber is used indicate that this language is undergoing a conscious process of feminization on the part of mainstream language ideology. In other words, the situations in which Berber is used are more and more women-linked than men-linked. The constant reference of mainstream views in the political parties and the media to Berber as ‘indigenous’, ‘private’, and ‘traditional’ reinforces its feminization. Although the Berber population in Morocco cuts across the social variables of geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, language skills, and marital status, a female Berber monolingual is allowed the least chances of social promotion. Illiteracy and a heavily gendered patriarchal social system render the situations in which Berber is used socially less advantageous

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than the ones in which Standard Arabic is used. Again, it is not the languages themselves that are ‘responsible’ for the reduced spectrum of chances for Berber users, but the situations of use. It is situations of use that attribute specific social meanings to particular languages. The fact that topics discussed in Berber are in the majority of cases associated to home and hearth limit the use of this language. However, possible changes may take place with the launching of the Royal Institute of Berber. Moroccan Arabic: Both a Male and Female Language Whereas gender bias is easily observed in the use of Standard Arabic and Berber, it is not so much so in the use of Moroccan Arabic. Unlike Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic is used as a mother tongue, and unlike Berber, it is not restricted to private contexts, and, hence, is less of a ‘female’ language than Berber. Further, being historically related to Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic is culturally perceived as a ‘more civilized’ and more ‘prestigious’ language than Berber (cf. Ennaji 1991, Boukous 1995). In addition to the fact that Moroccan Arabic is more used than Berber in public domains, it is the language of home too, and, thus, the contexts in which it is used are are more versatile. For example, Moroccan Arabic is used more than Berber in trade transactions, education, on the radio and television programs, in the written media, in documentaries and in plays. These domains are more male-related than the ones in which Berber is used. Accordingly, the importance attributed to languages, in this case Moroccan Arabic and Berber, is not inherent to them as languages, but to ‘usages’ of these languages. This importance is ‘constructed’ and ‘created’ by the values that a society gives to specific domains and contexts. The values that a society attributes to specific contexts may both empower and disempower the users of the same language. For example, in mixed-sex settings, Moroccan Arabic may be used by women in either an empowering or a disempowering way: while in a rural public setting such a the suq ‘weekly public market’, the use of Moroccan Arabic by women vendors is empowering as it makes them gain more clients in their business transactions, the use of the same language may be disempowering for a Berber educated woman in a university setting where she needs to use Standard Arabic, French, or English to explain concepts. In the latter case, the use of Moroccan

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Arabic is generally interpreted as lack of competence. In both examples, it is the physical settings (the suq and the university), and not gender, which play a crucial role in language choice. In these two contexts, the importance of the physical settings transcends gender and culture. The mother tongue and lingua franca status of Moroccan Arabic are created by the wide number of the situations in which it is used, as well as the nature of topics which may be discussed in it. This means that as linguistic codes, languages are equal in importance in the sense that they are grammatical systems with equal grammatical potentialities, but as ‘means of communication’ within specific communities, these linguistic codes acquire social values in proportion with the values a society attaches to the situations in which they are used. Therefore, although both Berber and Moroccan Arabic are unwritten mother tongues, they are not socially perceived as equal because the situations in which they are used are not socially perceived as such. The fact that Moroccan Arabic is more used in public domains than Berber means that the topics that are discussed in this language are more versatile and public space-related than the ones discussed in Berber. Again, the nature of the situations, as well as the social values and the type of power attached to these situations, have a direct impact on language choice and social meaning. French: Both a Female and Male Language The domains in which French is used reveal the social meanings that Moroccans attribute to this language, as well as the attitudes they have towards it. In the Moroccan cultural context, French is generally perceived as a superordinate second language that is socially linked to modernity, open-mindedness, and job opportunity. The unique place of French in Morocco is mainly due to the key role that this language has been playing in Moroccan pre- and post- colonial politics, economy, and business. Even today, French is still extensively used in the business and administrative sectors. In fact, functioning in these two domains cannot be effective without a command of French. French is a typically urban and elitist language. Urban upper and middle class men relate more to the ‘business’ and ‘administrative’ aspects of French, whereas urban upper and middle class women relate more to the everyday use of this language. Men exploit the ‘emasculating’ aspect which usually characterizes colonial languages

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more than women in higher administrative and military positions. Women use the social prestige aspect of French which they, sometimes, derive from their ‘men’s’ higher positions. In urban centers such as Casablanca, Rabat and Fes, upper and middle class women use French more than men (cf. Sadiqi 1995); they code-switch between Moroccan Arabic, Berber, and French more than men. Indeed, Moroccan women are socially more expected to use French in the middle and upper classes because it is prestigious to expose children to French in these milieus. This is a stereotype that women ended up by internalizing in their linguistic behavior. Women generally aspire more to social prestige as they need it more than men. As French is the symbol of enlightenment, open-mindedness, and modernity in Morocco, women, more than men, derive social power from being ‘civilized’ and ‘modern’, and, thus, adopt French more readily than men. This use of French is also linked to the fact that women gain socially in identity assertion and negotiation when they use French in specific contexts. The association of Moroccan urban women with French is related to class. Apart from upper and middle classes, the majority of Moroccan women do not have an easy access to French and, thus, have lesser chances to use the socially empowering aspects of French. Women’s tendency to display proficiency in French more than in Standard Arabic is influenced by men’s attitude: men are more favorable to women’s proficiency in French than in Standard Arabic. However, the mainstream attitude towards French in the Moroccan context is deeply paradoxical: whereas attitude towards women speaking French to their children is generally positive and is encouraged, attitude towards women ‘acting’ French, that is dressing and adopting French ways of speaking, is generally negative. The use of French by mothers with their children is perceived as a ‘modern’ way of bringing up children; women here are perceived as ‘servants’ of society; they are preparing ‘useful future citizens’. However, when women use French ‘for themselves’, they threaten the status quo of men and become ‘too independent’, ‘too bold’, ‘too dangerous socially’. It is mainly in relation to this latter use of French by women that the arguments of women being ‘stripped’ of ‘authenticity’ and ‘alien’ is brandished. Although this is a paradox, it makes sense in a heavily patriarchal and sexist culture. Standard Arabic and French have different gender-related symbolic meanings in the Moroccan context. Although Moroccan post-

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colonial politics and economy require French, Standard Arabic symbolizes national identity and embodies a glorious past. Within the Moroccan patriarchal cultural system, women are not encouraged to appropriate the positive symbolic meaning of either Standard Arabic or French. They are both ‘excluded’ from the powerful public uses of Standard Arabic and more associated with the ‘modern’ and ‘alien’ aspects of French.3 As for Berber and Moroccan Arabic, they pose a problem which is related to their mother tongue status: being the ‘languages of the mother’ which is transmitted to ‘the other’, these languages may be said to be ‘inherently sexuated’ as they involve both the notion of mother and the notion of language. Consequently, their relation to the larger ‘modern’ national consciousness and language policy may in principle be either coincidental (convenient) or tense (involving resistance). Whereas a relation to the mother leads to an elaboration of a nationalist politics, a relation to language allows a deconstruction of frontiers. The above survey of the various gender-linked uses of the four major languages in Morocco shows that language choice is closely dependent on the overall contexts of language use. Public contexts in Morocco usually call for the use of Standard Arabic or French and private ones for Berber or Moroccan Arabic. A closer consideration of the survey also reveals that Moroccan women’s bi- or trilingualism threatens the male status quo; hence, the deliberate ‘distancing’ of women from the power-linked contexts of language use. In fact, Moroccan men face an ambivalence: they cling to their indigenous traditions, but assign the responsibility to guard these traditions to women. As men dominate public power in the Moroccan patriarchal society, their solution is to secure the public gains and have women guard the icons of tradition. This means that the association of orality and illiteracy with women serves the general patriarchal need of keeping women under control. The general argument that is advanced in this respect is that although economic advantages 3 Although English is gaining more ground in Morocco (cf. Sadiqi 1991), the gender biases towards this language are still to be explored. Being the language of globalization, English is highly viewed by both men and women but not for the same reason as French in the sense that unlike the latter, the former is not associated with colonialism in the collective memory of Moroccans. Given the relative ‘newness’ of English on the Moroccan public scene, the determining factor in general attitude towards English is age: English is more highly viewed by the younger generation than by the older one, as the former easily associate it with world culture, and usually aspire to further their studies in an English-speaking country.

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may be gained through foreign languages, the local way of life and identity may be threatened by acculturation and assimilation. Another implication of the above language survey is that the various gender biases towards the languages used in Morocco are deeply affected by Morocco’s official language planning and policy. The factors of class, level of education, and social influence have a great impact on the language choices that women and men make. Men use Standard Arabic more because they occupy key positions in government, administration, the media, and religious institutions. Urban men generally use Moroccan Arabic more than women by virtue of the fact that they are less concerned with ‘sounding modern’; they do not need the social prestige that may be derived from it; they may even loose by being taxed as ‘unauthentic’ and ‘artificial’, adjectives that they need to keep for women in order to stop them from reaching higher positions. Husbands generally tolerate, and even tacitly encourage, their wives’ use of French to their children because they know that French is useful for finding a job, for example. Moroccan women’s language choices are dictated by the various and changing contexts in which they find themselves. Different contexts create different choices and uses of language(s). Within these contexts, the participants’ social attributes (geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, language skills, and marital status), the physical setting, the topic, and the purpose of conversation significantly influence language choice and the meanings attributed to them. It is these context components which influence the way in which the floor is allocated to speakers, the turn-takings, and the design of interruptions during conversations. For example, interruptions have different social meanings according to specific contexts. In mixed-sex settings, interruptions are generally dominance-related and, in these settings, women are more easily interrupted than men because they are generally brought up to ‘yield’ the floor to men; their voice should not be louder than that of men in the group. However, in all-female groups, women interrupt each other frequently as a sign of support and solidarity, as the following extract from a recorded conversation shows. Three women were involved in this conversation: Nadia, Khadija and Meryem: (1) Nadia:

ó ó lhamdu llah lli Taht ∫∫ta! thanks God that fell the-rain Thank God that it rained! How

ó ∫hal how many many

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ó Khadija: ddenia xedra w hlat lxerja ll-wrubia! ?ana the-life green and sweetened the-going out to-countryside I The scenery has become green and it is a pleasure to go to the countryside, I ó Nadia: waxxa TTih ∫∫ta, even if it-fall the rain Even if it rains, Meryem: bnadem ma-ka-yqnaw-∫, ∫ufi, one not-he-satisfied-not look One is never satisfied, look, Nadia: a lalla ma∫i ∫gul-na lli oh lady not business-our the one who Well, it is not our business, he who ó ó Meryem: lhamdu llah wla kulli hal! thank God on every state Thank God for everything, anyway!

In this brief exchange, Khadija interrupts Nadia who was thanking God for rain by backing her idea and saying that the scenery became green as a result of rain. Likewise, Meryem interrupts Nadia who was stating that people were never satisfied by again supporting this idea and saying that people were never satisfied anyway, whether it rained or not. In such situations, interruptions are perceived by participants as supportive and collaborative. Within the overall Moroccan context, women’s overuse of interruptions amongst themselves is indeed creative and empowering in conversations as it allows all participants to ‘join in’. The number and quality of contexts of language use vary and their nature depends on the sex of the participants, their relationship, as well as the social values given to the contents of their speech. The amount of language choice that Moroccan women may have depends on how well equipped they are to function in various types of contexts. In spite of the great context-linked heterogeneity among Moroccan women, these women are far from being passive victims of patriarchal dogmas; using the various choices they are offered, various types of women express their agency by creating empowering linguistic strategies in various contexts of language use as the following sections are meant to show.

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Given the place that orality occupies in the Moroccan socio-cultural context, and given the high rate of female illiteracy in Morocco, Moroccan women usually use oral communicative strategies for selfexpression and self-assertion. These strategies include oral genres (poems, folktales, etc.) and code-switching (mixing of two languages). The first strategy highlights women’s oral genres, and the second one highlights women’s oral skills. In both strategies, Moroccan women exhibit a typical and creative use of language(s) and deeply female ways of expressing the self and resisting patriarchy. Within the Moroccan socio-cultural context, women use the speech genres that their social and individual conditions offer them. Generally speaking, Moroccan women may be categorized into two big classes in terms of the way they use speech genres. On the one hand, lower class rural and urban monolingual illiterate women use folktales, songs, and gossip to express their inner selves and voice dissent and dissatisfaction in a heavily patriarchal context. On the other hand, semi-literate and literate urban middle or upper class women use code-switching for the same purposes. This ‘blunt’ division does not automatically apply in all situations of language use, but it is useful in showing how Moroccan women use the linguistic choices that their socio-economic status and culture offer them. Although the two types of women, as well as the myriad of sub-types that everyday situations create, do not have the same chances of self-expression and self-assertion, they have the power to express the self and resist patriarchy in a typically creative way. The differences between the two types of women are attributable to the values that society and its battery of historical, economic, and political institutions dictate. Through their creative communicative strategies, Moroccan women do not consistently identify with the same social groupings that the Moroccan superstructure powers impose on them. Rather, they exploit the symbolic values of specific languages and language uses to score social and personal gains. Monolingual women use oral genres as empowering communicative strategies, whereas multilingual women use code-switching with the same aim. Thus, even though Moroccan women are not in general associated with powerful languages, they use communicative strategies that allow them to secure a place in the linguistic ‘arena’ of everyday conversations and to index their agency in language. Moroccan women’s speech genres are important in allowing a re-reading of Moroccan social history and tradi-

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tions, as well as supplying means of contextualizing historical and present-day events that highlight gender relations. As such, these speech genres are arenas where identities are constructed, deconstructed, and negotiated. The analysis of these speech genres highlights the role of monolingualism and multilingualism as analytical tools in feminist linguistics. Moroccan Monolingual Women’s Use of Oral Genres and Oral Skills Like female voices, Moroccan oral genres and oral skills, by comparison to written genres and skills, exist but are not officially ‘authorized’. They ‘circulate’ in the community and no one claims public authority for them. In the Moroccan patriarchal cultural context, where these genres and skills are doubly marginalized as oral and as female, the ‘anonymous’ aspect of oral genres is a result of the deliberate male historians’ exclusion of women’s voices from mainstream recorded history. In the face of this exclusion, women have exploited oral literary genres and traditional skills to assert themselves in the community and subvert the roles that are assigned to them. F O G Oratory in general is a type of political language in the sense that it expresses deep human feelings and emotions (cf. Bloch 1975, Slymovics 1987, Abu-Lughod 1990). Within the Moroccan culture, ó female oral genres include poems/songs, folktales, halqa ‘market place oratory’, and gossip. Illiterate, poor, and mostly rural women, fight marginalization and express their agency through these genres. The languages in which these genres are expressed are the mother tongues: Berber and Moroccan Arabic. Poems/Songs Female oral poetry is usually sung by female poets. This genre is an example of Moroccan women’s creativity and dexterity in language use. Nine examples of this poetry are given in this section: six in Berber and three in Moroccan Arabic. So far as the Berber poems are concerned, the first two were composed by Mririda N’Ait Atiq around 1927. These poems constitute part of a collection of Mririda’s poems that were translated into French and published in 1959 by René Euloge. Mririda N’Ait Atiq was an illiterate Berber woman

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who lived in Tassaout, Morocco at the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. She used to improvise her poetry and sing it in suqs ‘public markets’. Mririda N’Ait Atiq was monolingual and used only Berber as a form of self-expression. The first poem is called ‘Mririda’ and was translated from Berber into French by René Euloge (1959) and from French into English by Moha Ennaji (2001). Below is the English version: (2) Mririda People called me Mririda, Mririda, Mririda, the agile rennet of meadows . . . With eyes of gold . . . But the rennet’s white chest I do not have Nor do I have her green tunic. Yet, like her, I have my ‘zrarit’, my ‘zrarit’ [zrarit = cry of joy] Which reach the sheep-folds My ‘zrarit’, my ‘zrarit’ Of which people talk in the entire valley And even on the other sides of the mountains. My “zrarit” which marvel, which arouse desire. . . . Because ever since my first steps in the fields, I slowly took the agile rennet in my hands, And long pressed her white chest onto mine, And then onto my maiden lips. That is how the rennet gave me the marvelous virtue Of the baraka which makes her sing A song so clear, so vibrant, so pure In the Summer nights bathed by the moon, A song like crystal, Like the clear noise of an anvil In the resonant air that precedes rain . . . And thanks to the gift that Mririda gave me They call me: Mririda, Mririda . . . He who takes me will feel My heart beating in his hand As I often felt under my fingers The crazy heart-beats of the rennet. In the nights bathed by the moon He will call me Mririda, Mririda, The soft nickname that is so dear to me For him I will release my sharp ‘zrarit’, My strident, prolonged ‘zrarit’, That men admire and women envy, And such that the valley has never witnessed . . .

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Although this poem/song contains passages where the author expresses her desire to please ‘men’, the real subject matter is that of self, a rather unconventional theme within the overall Moroccan culture which cultivates the collective self. The text focuses on the poet’s self and her personal concerns within an overall context which condemns such a practice. The language and the originality of the poem highlight the strong personality of the poet and her desire to assert her own identity as a poor illiterate Berber woman living in a remote mountainous village at a period in the history of Morocco where women were denied the least of rights. Mririda’s poem is a prototype of the authentic oral female literature of Moroccan women. The author improvised this and other poems at a time when such a practice was not allowed to women. When René Euloge met and spoke to Mririda N’Ait Atiq in 1927, it was the first time that a European ever visited Tassaout. . . . This poem attests to the creativity, boldness and moral strength of Mririda N’Ait Atiq. The second poem is called ‘Affront’. Like the first poem, this one was translated from Berber into French by René Euloge (1959). This poem was translated from French into English by the author, who originates from the same area as Mririda. (3) Affront You are wrong, mother of my former husband, If you think that I am suffering, Say to your son who repudiated me That from my memory and my heart Are gone the good and bad days Of our once shared life They are gone . . . Like strands of straw in the wind . . . Not the smallest souvenir I have kept Of my exhaustion from work in the fields, Of the loads that bent my back, Of the pitchers that left marks on my shoulder, Of burned fingers from making bread, Of the leftover bones that your son Used to give me on feast days . . . He took back my jewels, Did he ever give them me? Were not blows what he gave me? Did he ever take me in his arms? Not the smallest souvenir do I keep

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It is as if I never knew him, You who once were my mother-in-law, Say to your son that Even his name I do not recall.

This poem is rebellious in many ways; the poet voices her dissent and condemnation of a husband who exploited her and stripped her of her dignity. Her repudiation is depicted in the text as a regaining of freedom. The fact that Mririda addresses her mother-in-law, another woman, attests to the notorious power that mothers-in-law had. This is a strong woman-to-woman language. In the text, the poet speaks of the jewels given by the groom to the bride upon contracting a marriage. These jewels remain the property of the husband who takes them back in cases of divorce. ‘Did he ever give them to me?’ asks the poet; a simple question that raises the whole issue of Moroccan women’s legal rights. The third poem is an improvisation of Late Rabha Moha, the author’s husband’s grandmother whose date of birth is unknown and who died in 1981. Rabha Moha was an illiterate Berber woman who lived in Timoulilt. The text was recorded, translated and given a title by the author of this book in May 1977 in Beni Mellal. (4) Tribal affairs O my tribe ‘Ayt Uherda’ Where are you heading? Ahmed ou Baha is now The Pacha Moha ou Bami is the Caid The barracks of ‘Touzdiyin’ are busy I call God to help me And give us more rain To send letters To the King And tell him the Caid Is dead

This oral poem was sung by its author. It is pure creation. The text is simple and beautiful; it is sincere because it invokes real people and real places. As for its content, the text highlights the fact that even in independent Morocco, local affairs were sometimes conducted from a tribal perspective. The author of the poem wanted the report to the king that the tribesmen were not doing their job.

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The author invokes the power of the tribesmen in people’s lives. The voice of the singer’s invoking the possibility of seeing the king reflects the extraordinary strength of her character and personality. This rebellious aspect of an old, almost blind, illiterate Berber woman who lived in a period where women’s public speech was heavily constrained inspires admiration. The fourth poem is a Berber song which is very popular in the Berber rural region of Beni Mellal. Although the author of this song is unknown, the content of it shows that it was said by a woman and up to present times, women in the region of Beni Mellal still sing it to the bride before she leaves her father’s house to her husband’s. This poem was sung to the author by her mother-in-law, Hadda N’Ait Hsain; it was recorded on June 21st, 2001, and later transcribed and translated from Berber into English by the author. Below is the English version of the poem/song: (5) Oh, my daughter! Oh bride, may God be your first helper! May He make your luck as straight as a reed! Who will believe in you and welcome you With cries of joy, my darling daughter? They are worse than singers Give me your hand so that With henna it will be beautified Give me your foot so that with A bracelet it will be decorated Don’t let them say that your hair is undone Or that your knees are dirty They will make you gather wood and keep sheep Take care of your work And keep clean Don’t let them mock you!

The subject matter of the above poem/song is marriage, family, and maternal love. The pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’ in the song refer to the female in-laws. The artistic value of the poem resides in the direct and simple expression of the mixed emotions that the female closest kin of the bride feel at her departure to a new house. The mixed nature of emotions is attested in the sadness amidst what is supposed to be a joyful occasion. For the female kin of the bride, especially her mother, marriage is an occasion of both joy and deep

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sadness. The joy (symbolized by hand and feet decorating) is mixed with the sadness that is felt when a young and inexperienced girl enters a new, often ‘alien’ household. Special mention is made of the female in-laws who usually make life difficult for the new bride. This is a woman’s discourse addressed to other women. This type of discourse highlights the female bond that strongly links daughters to their mothers and sisters. This specific bond is not often expressed while the bride is still with her parents lest the latter slackens in her training to become a good wife and a good mother. The female bond and solidarity in rural households is a form of resistance to oppression and a means of self-assertion. As for the Moroccan women’s poems/songs in Moroccan Arabic, the first one is entitled rebbi Tlebt lik! ‘I ask you God’. This poem belongs to a collection of poems/songs that Mohamed Al-Fassi recorded and published in 1957. According to this author, this genre appeared around the year 1206 of the Hegira ‘Muslim year’ (1801 A.C.) in the bourgeois urban women circles in the city of Fes and its surroundings, and survived well into the last century. The author of the poem is unknown, but its content indicates that it was a woman. The text was translated from Moroccan Arabic into English by the author. (6) rebbi Tlebt lik! ‘I ask you God!’ Oh God I have a wish: give me just one happy day! During which all your creatures will be under my rule And I, freely selecting the best of cloth, Wearing the new and discarding the old, Will make my enemy die of anger And happily welcome my beloved to my abode, And say: this is what God gave me!

This poem/song belongs to a female genre of oral poetry in Morocco called lawrubiyyat. The male counterpart genre of lawrubiyyat is called ó lmelhun. Apart from Mohamed Al-Fassi’s collection, very little mention is made of this female genre in mainstream Moroccan history and literary texts. Lawrubiyyat poems/songs have a number of specificities: first, they were created exclusively by women and were intended for an exclusively female audience. They were recited/sung among women of all ages. These poems comprised a minimum of two lines, and although they contained up to ten lines, they were usually short poems

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without any regular rhyme. Lawrubiyyat were often introduced by the string ana nana nana nana nana which was meant to set up the rhythm. Second, the settings where lawrubiyyat were sung included fields, gardens, and the occasions on which they were sung were long promó enades in the Spring and during the festivities of Eid Al-Adha ‘the traditional feast of Sacrifice’. Third, these poems were sung while women of all ages sat down; the younger ones, usually girls, used to move in a procession in front of older women (mothers, aunts, grandmothers, great-grandmothers) while the latter improvised poetry enumerating the beauty and other qualities of the girls. Fourth, lawrubiyyat were not signed because reciting poetry was not considered a ‘feminine’ practice at that time. In sum, lawrubiyyat may be viewed as a typically female and uniquely Moroccan genre. rebbi Tlebt lik! poem/song was recorded in Moroccan Arabic. The author of the poem was most probably illiterate and monolingual. As with the first Berber poem, the subject matter of this poem is the expression of the self. The poem/song is smooth and reads very easily. It expresses in very simple terms the deep wishes that women do not usually express in public: ruling over men and being free to entertain lovers. The imploration of God, as the supreme power, expresses the poet’s despair in getting power and freedom from men. In fact, the author implores God to give her things that men denied her: public power and freedom of action. These fantastic gifts were believed to come from God, not men! Ruling over others, becoming rich and wearing the best new clothes, having the freedom to meet with the beloved . . . were all dreams that the author of this poem implored God to make true, if only to ‘breathe’ and make the enemy die of anger. Such a text would be qualified as ‘daring’, ‘bold’, ‘aggressive’ and even ‘alien’ if said in a public mixed setting. The fact that such views were expressed by women in the 17th century, when Moroccan women hardly had any rights, is indeed surprising and challenges the mainstream historical theories that regard women as passive absorbers of orders. ó The second Moroccan Arabic poem/song is entitled qbeT rrha! ‘hold the grinder!’. Like the previous poem, this one was composed around 1801 and was published by Al-Fassi (1957). The author of the poem is unknown and the poem was translated by the author of this book.

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  (7) ó QbeT rrha ‘Hold the grinder!’ The grinder is in a ruthless hand Oh God may You grind him over and over He hit me and I became light in his hand Love is never given by force

The subject matter of this short poem is rebellion against men’s oppression and a desire of vengeance. The images in the poem are strong; they express strong feelings of anger and a cry for revenge from God. Again the ultimate power for the poet is God, not men. The artful use of language is indeed splendid. The text defies the view generally held in the Arab-Muslim world that women are not capable of expressing anger. The female poet refused to associate her fate with that of a man she did not love and spoke out loudly her refusal of the social and family pressures. Some varieties of lawrubiyyat, such as ssalamat ‘love letter exchanging’ and tadukan ‘lullabies’, are still sung today by older women. ssalamat and tadukan are characterized by the fact that they are accompanied by performances such as doing housework or putting a baby to sleep ó by rocking its dduh ‘craddle’. In the case of ssalamat, focus is deliberately put more on what is done than on what is said as a means of diverting attention from the meanings carried by the words. Here is an example of ssalamat: (8) rmit weyni ‘I threw my gaze’ I threw my gaze to where your house is, But alas, I have no power to come and see you. I so much long to see you that am as a bewitched woman! If only I were a stock-dove That could hover to your direction And seek news about you!

Like the above two lawrubuyyat poems/songs, this song was produced by an unknown author around 1801 and published by Al-Fassi in 1957. This poem was translated into English by Moha Ennaji in August 2001. This short text is very poetic and pleasant to listen to. Its simple vocabulary and the ease with which it reads renders it pleasant to the ear and to the senses. The value of this text resides in the subtlety of the feelings it expresses. The poet’s ability to express very delicate and subtle feelings of longing makes the text a valu-

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able piece of literature. The expression of love has long been considered a male attribute and this text is the oldest female expression of love by a Moroccan woman that is recorded in Moroccan Arabic. Given the historical era in which this text was produced, it is very likely that it was sung while the poet was engaged in some kind of housework like putting clothes on lines on a terrace. By emphasizing action, singers aimed at attracting the attention of the audience (which might include several women) and addressing one particular woman who would, then, transmit the love message to the addressed lover. The seven poems/songs cited in this section are good examples of illiterate women’s oral poetry/songs. In spite of the difference in geographical origin and class between the Berber poet and the Moroccan Arabic poets, all the poems express Moroccan women’s resistance to oppression, creativity, imagination, agency and self-assertion in a patriarchal society. The language of the poems is generally indirect, but simple and full of symbols. It exhibits intelligence, so much needed to communicate messages that would not be easily uttered in everyday language. This indirect and subtle feature of Moroccan women’s poems is congruent with the settings of the poems: nature and homes. Women’s poems are also usually short by comparison to men’s which are longer. Short songs presuppose more effort in condensing meanings, intelligence, and skill in transmitting messages. Further, women’s poems/songs are usually anonymous, whereas men tend to sign their songs. Women’s preference to remain unknown is concordant with indirectness and the subtlety of their poems/songs, as well as with the ‘un-author-ized’ nature of Moroccan oral literature in general. On the other hand, this anonymity is a reaction to the marginalization of women in a patriarchal society where women’s creations are not generally considered worthwhile. Furthermore, these songs are a means of resisting the pre-existing institutional structure which they problematize. All the characteristics of the above-mentioned women’s poems and songs attest to the fact that Moroccan women have never been linguistically passive. In present-day Morocco, women often sing in groups while working in the fields or weaving. The following is an example of such songs. The song was translated from Berber into English by the author:

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242 (9) Azda ‘Weaving’

Bless you azda So that you be peace A carpet that is well-weaved Is like a Pacha in front of his tea tray With a carpet in front of fantasias His house full of goods and wherever he is there is happiness Oh bee God gave you the craft of weaving You produced a weaving that no fingers made.

Such songs are not related to the activities being performed; they are usually popular songs that are known among the group. When asked, these women often replied that singing made them forget about the ‘harshness’ of life and about the ‘passing of time’. As working in fields or weaving are generally considered strenuous jobs, this type of songs often creates solidarity among women and makes them enjoy their work. Professional women folk singers have always constituted part and parcel of oral literature in Morocco. These women are usually referred to as ∫∫ixat (feminine of ∫∫yux, both meaning ‘folk singers’). However, whereas the latter term is neutral, the former one is pejorative and is often used as a synonym for ‘prostitutes’. This appellation greatly marginalizes and harms Moroccan female folk singers. The ∫∫ixat are professional women groups of singers of all ages which appeared in Morocco in the 1950s. They are very popular in both rural and urban areas. Although these women are generally poor, some of them succeeded in becoming rich and famous such as the Berber singers Hadda w Akki and Tihihit and the Moroccan Arabic singer Fatima Bent Lhussin. The following are two extracts from ∫∫ixat’s lyrics; the first in Berber and the second in Moroccan Arabic. The first extract is an example of Berber lyrics called thamawin which are mainly sung in the Middle Atlas. They are usually sung by a man and a woman in the form of ‘question-answer’ dialogues. This extract was recorded and transcribed by Fatima Amhennede and translated into English by Fatima Bouabdelli in May 2001): (10) Woman: i∫ana ∫a ssawd iynu nxedd asmun awriy yerthiyn ∫an wla xir adhi diik thawwurth Question: max max awenna giy dr ó wuul ateddud awri nemsamah

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Answer:

Woman:

Question:

Answer:

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addiy giyy thnas thixth max max isan yibbiy l∫arid madh xas udminuw awrillin iwa daythtuummth awllax ayenna yal uwujiil xef mays iwwar uu∫waD nthassa maj diy kafey ulinuw adhallax ayenna thalla thgut xef lajbaal adiykar uwmerdul aziza ddaw thiyyi Tiinuw Life has given me no luck Maybe something bad happened to him, or maybe my life companion does not wish me any good things He does not wish me any good fate Therefore life has given me no luck. Why? And why? O you that my heart has chosen to love Departed so far without we could say farewell? The burn of separation still inhabits me. Why and why? Have you been short of paper? Or if I am out of sight, I become out of heart? More than an orphan weeping over his mother, I did weep So unbearable to live with an enflamed leaver And almost unbearable an enflamed heart. I weep as clouds do over the mountains Till the grass has grown under my eyes.

This lyric is an example of thimawyin (plural of thamawayt), a type of lyrics where a man an a woman exchange verses while singing them. The verses sung by women are likely to have been improvised by them. thimawyin have a special place in Berber poetry and songs, and the ∫∫ixat that sing them are generalley considered professional artists. In the lyric in (10), the woman’s words express subtle feelings of love. ∫∫ixat’s lyrics may be seen as a reaction to marginalization by family and society; ∫∫ixat seldom sing in their village of origin. Their singing is a free and conscious choice; it is an expression of the self and a wish to create a universe of freedom and joy. These women sing in all-female or mixed-sex groups. The themes that are dealt with in ∫∫ixat’s songs vary from love to rejection of colonialism, support of political authorities, etc. Berber female group songs are more and more frequent as a result of male migration from rural to urban areas, especially in the south of Morocco, a fact which attests to an emergence of ‘communities of women’ (cf. Rashidi 2002).

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Folktales play an important role in Arab-Muslim societies (cf. ElShamy 1980). In Moroccan culture, the most common type of female narratives are folktales. This type of oral discourse is a typical female occupation, especially in rural areas where older illiterate women easily indulge in storytelling. An example of Berber folktales is ‘Fadma mzel aytmas ‘Fadma who lost her brothers’. This tale is extremely popular in the region of Beni Mellal. Its original author is unknown but it has been transmitted from generation to generation by older rural women. This tale was told in Berber by Hadda N’Ait Hsain and recorded, transcribed, and translated from Berber into English by Moha Ennaji in September 2001. The subject matter of the tale ranges from family, to death, the supernatural, self, courage, to female love, wisdom, and wit. Here is the tale: (11) Fadma mzel aytmas ‘Fadma Who Lost Her Brothers’ Once upon a time, Fadma, a young poor girl who, having lost her parents, had to cater for her seven brothers. She toiled tirelessly all day long in other people’s houses, gathering wood, grinding grains, sifting, and cooking. Six of her brothers grew up and got married. She was left with the seventh, the youngest. The youngest boy became very attached to Fadma; he called her lalla ‘my mistress’ and she loved him so much. In the evenings, after a day’s hard work, they both often sat down together dreaming about what they would do if they were rich . . . The boy wanted his sister to stop working so hard for others; he wanted to put an end to their suffering and misery. One day, after her usual daily work in the mountains, Fadma gathered a huge pile of wood to distribute to houses in the plains. Looking at the sunset, she decided to call it a day. While she was pulling on the heavy pile of wood to remove it from the ground, she heard a little squeak and after a quick search she realized that in her endeavor to uplift the pile she upset something . . . Looking again, she realized that she uplifted the lid of an iron case buried deep in the earth. She was bewildered and curious. Slowly, she came to the fact that that she was in front of a big safe full of golden coins and jewelry. . . . A Treasure! She replaced the lid of the case and hid it with dried plants and went back home with confusing questions in her head. After they ate, Fadma and her brother sat as usual chatting. She suddenly looked at him and asked: ‘My brother, what could we do if we had a lot of money?’ ‘I would buy goats and play with them’ he innocently replied. Digesting the answer, Fadma decided that the time was not ripe to tell her brother about her secret; she realized that he was not mature enough yet. Fadma continued her usual work, and from time to time, she went to the place where the iron case was buried and sat there for a while thinking and watching two camels grazing nearby. . . . She continued to ask her brother from time to time the same question ‘What could we do

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if we came into big money?’, but the answer she was waiting for did not come. She continued to visit the place where the case was from time to time, and enjoyed sitting there looking at the camels aimlessly. She liked the camels and willingly fed them, they became her friends in her loneliness. As time went by, Fadma’s youngest brother grew up and decided to marry. The answer Fadma was waiting for still did not come. When her brother took a second wife, she felt that the time to tell him about the treasure was not ripe yet . . . The bond that united Fadma to her brother became stronger, a fact which aroused the jealousy of his two wives. One day, Fadma became very ill. As her brother was leaving home, he asked his two wives to take care of Fadma. They said they would, but in fact they saw their opportunity and plotted to starve her to death. They wrapped her in a cloth-bag and took her to the mountains, and left her there with no food and no water. Nobody witnessed Fadma’s ordeal except the two camels . . . Fadma remained wrapped and unconscious for several days. One day, two men were passing by and noticed the cloth-bag and the camels. They made a deal: one of them would take the camels and the other the cloth-bag with whatever it contained. The one who took the cloth-bag found out that it contained a woman and decided to abide by his word and take care of her. He eventually married her and she gave him a son. In spite of the dramatic change of events in Fadma’s life, she never forgot her secret and what her brother’s wives did to her. She decided to search for her brother. She carried her son on her back and started the long journey. Fadma managed to find her brother’s house. She knocked at the door, the inhabitants came out. She made sure that nobody recognized her because she was dead for them. She asked refuge and they willingly gave it to her. At night, when everybody was asleep, Fadma woke up her son and when the latter started to cry, she started to sing him a lullaby. . . . A strange lullaby where she was relating her own life. The song was meant for the ears of her brother and she succeeded to draw his attention. After she finished, he came to her, they hugged and Fadma told him her story again, but leaving out her secret. Fadma’s brother decided to punish his wives in the most severe way: he brought two camels and stopped food for the first and water for the second one for seven days. On the eighth day, he tied the legs of his wives, each leg to a different camel and put food and water in a distant but within vision place: food was visible to the starved camel and water to the thirsty one. Food and water were placed in opposite places. At their sight, the camels rushed at a very fast speed, literally tearing the two wives apart. Fadma was left with her brother again. She then decided to tell him about the treasure.

Fadma mzel aytmas is a captivating tale which flows smoothly. Although the events are unusual, the listener feels tied to the plot and never fails to sympathize with the heroine. The end of the tale is terrible but it is fascinating that the idea of revenge did not come from the heroine, although she greatly suffered, but from her brother. The text also highlights the crucial role of women in the life of men and their deep influence on their destiny. Religion is not presented as a source behind this force; it is rather personal vision, strong will, wisdom, and wit that are.

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Although the contents of women’s narratives are full of stereotypic associations, they often empower women and construct gender and class from their own point of view and within the environment in which they live, allowing them to extend the limits of socially assigned gender roles. So far as context is concerned, storytelling usually takes place in private and intimate settings and contrasts sharply with male urban storytelling which usually takes place in public marketplaces such as Jamaa Lefna ‘Place of Finality’ in Marrakesh. In women’s storytelling, the audience is usually composed of animals, children and/or young adolescents, but may include adults. The languages of female Moroccan tales are Berber and Moroccan Arabic. The time of storytelling is usually the night. The topics, structure, and events of the tales are revealing in the sense that they convey women’s perception of significance in storytelling and, thus, constitute a site of self-assertion and resistance to marginalization. Topics The main themes of female Moroccan folktales evolve around a mixture of the supernatural, miracles, and the metaphysical, as the above folktale shows. The tales do not generally have a unifying topic; they constitute a set of ‘sub-topics’ loosely held by theme rather than by time. Moroccan female folktales are characterized by the fact that they transmit components of Moroccan culture such as language and social structure. Structure The structure of Moroccan women’s folktales, as the above tale shows, is highly complex and exhibits specific external and internal characteristics. So far as external aspects are concerned, these tales, like most tales, are characterized by three aspects: a beginning, a variable set of connected episodes, and an ending. Internally, the narratives are both non-chronological and atemporal. The most salient information in Moroccan women’s folktales is generally encoded in a distinctive way from the rest, that is, in the most relevant part from the storyteller’s point of view. For example, in the Fadma mzel aytmas folktale, the storyteller focuses on the virtue of persistence and keeps returning to it in various forms through the use of suspense until the story ends with the victory of the persisting woman. The tales generally develop in a cyclical fashion in the sense that sometimes the details of events do not relate to the preceding or subsequent events.

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When actually telling a story, women generally show an eagerness to provide the maximum background to their folktales. Further, women sometimes intervene to give their own point of view before each major event of the tale. The importance of background information resides in the fact that it situates the tale in physical, as well as psychological, time and place. Storytellers also pay attention to small and accurate matters of details which lead to the major events. Moroccan women’s strategies in storytelling may be qualified as digressive in the sense that they repeat and often shift quickly to new topics. Description of Events As in the tale of Fadma mzel aytmas, the descriptions in Berber folktales generally center around events and main characters. However, in the actual telling of the stories, glimpses of the storyteller’s life experiences may be ‘projected’ onto the story; the story is never repeated in the same way even by the same woman. These insertions are used by the storyteller as an empowering means of selfassertion. Events in the tales are not always described in the sequenced way in which they took place. Furthermore, the storytellers sometimes concentrate on a particular event which they consider essential; they usually stress the characters’ role in the family and the culture of the village. They stress the cultural identity and specificity of the social group they belong to. Storytellers also include a great amount of non-verbal behavior. They use paralinguistic features like emphasized articulation, increase in voice volume, laughter, variations in intonation, change of pitch volume, change of tempo, encouraging minimal responses, as well as frequent touching, hand holding, hand gestures, facial expression, tilted heads, sustained gaze, lockedeye gaze, and nodding. Given the oral nature of storytelling, body language and non-verbal behavior have the function of supporting storytelling and highlighting its centrality for the audience. Storytellers’ Perception of Significance in Storytelling Female storytellers take folktales so seriously that they tend to dramatize events and overemphasize actions. When describing events or characters, female storytellers do not respond easily to back-channelling by the audience with the aim of stressing the ‘seriousness’ and ‘importance’ of their tales. The significance of folktales for these women is taken for granted; they perceive the tales as vehicles of values that often happen to be theirs. For storytellers, there is always

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a morale to every story. A way in which female storytellers highlight the significance of a tale is by generously giving information about themselves. In involving themselves, Moroccan women attribute vision to themselves as ‘anticipators’ of events and actions, without, however, overtly committing themselves. They make frequent use of reported speech, as well as of moral judgements and critical evaluation. Storytelling is also perceived by women as a strong means of maintaining and perpetuating power inside the family, especially in rural extended family households. Grandmothers reinforce their status in the family by establishing strong ties with the younger generations, especially children, through deliberately postponing the end of a story until the following night and, thus, creating continuous suspense. These storytellers create rapport through stories and often give the impression that what they do not say is as important as what they say. In a sense, these women create their own power. This shows that contrary to essentialist views, women’s language is not powerless. Moroccan women’s storytelling strategies are understandable in settings where older women feel that younger daughters-in-law are gaining ‘too much’ power through having children and, thus, seek to have some control over the parents through their children. Older women, usually grandmothers telling long tales, are far from being simple-minded entertainers. They have strategy, exhibit powerful thinking and memory, as well as a skillful use of psychological knowledge of human beings. Through storytelling, women generally make the possibility of transforming the world easier to grasp. On a more abstract level, female storytellers fight oppression and resist patriarchy in their own ways. They often create a world of their own and use the linguistic resources that are available to them to express women’s (their own) intelligence, wit and victory over men in stories. In this way, storytelling may be perceived as a reaction to marginalization through the use of intelligence and cunning. This intelligence is often referred to as kayd ‘cunning’, ‘deceit’, ‘deception’, ‘treachery’, or ‘craft’. It is both admired and feared in Moroccan society. Storytelling is used by Moroccan women to stretch the boundaries of acceptable gender roles in Moroccan culture.

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ó

halqa ‘Market Place Public Oratory’ ó

halqa ‘market place public oratory’ is a site where gender is peró formed in the literal sense of the word (cf. Kapchan 1996). halqa usually takes place in specific public rural and urban marketplaces. ó The following is a short extract from a halqa in the region of Casablanca. It was recorded and translated by the author: (12) zidu a syadi, Selliw wlennbi, dir a sidi nniya, lhla ixeTTi rrjal. Jerrbu a syadi Taxlita, hada ddwa dlberd, ó lli wandu lemSaren, lkebda, katjih dduxa f SSbah, a syadi rah kul∫i men llberd, gir xamsa ddrahem, taman xubza, etc. . . . Come on my masters, have faith, may God preserve men, try this mixture, this is medicine for cold; he who has bowel or liver problems, or who suffers from dizziness in the morning, my masters, everything is caused by cold, this costs only five dirhams, the price of a loaf of bread, etc. . . .

ó Although the halqa oral genre of literature is dominated by men, ó women have started to appropriate it. The halqa discourse is loaded with mysogynistic ideology: women are usually portrayed as agents of ‘social pollution’ and fitnah ‘social chaos’. This discourse is also characterized by the frequent use of taboo words and expressions which are legitimized by frequent reference to religious sanctioning ó expressions like la hya f ddin ‘there is no shame in religion’. This ó makes the halqa discourse a curious hybrid combination: it is both ó religious and obscene. The halqa discourse is also characterized by a frequency of oaths, testimony, curses, monologue, and blessings. It is also often geared towards involving the audience. Moroccan female marketplace public orators are doubly marginalized in Moroccan culture: as women and as low class. These women are usually poor, illiterate and old. They usually address an audience of men and deliberately hold the same type of mysogynistic discourse as male orators to gain acceptance in a place which is alien to them, but where they have to survive. Although using a mysogynistic discourse is not feminist, the very presence of women orators in Moroccan marketplaces certainly is. Kapchan (1996: 165) says in this respect:

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  ó This [halqa’s] feminized discourse, although full of patriarchal traces, nonetheless spins out from itself aetiolating its own boundaries, feeding on its own excess and metamorphocizing into other forms.

Like female poets and storytellers, female market place orators are survivors in a socio-cultural context which denies them rights. They fight exclusion in the alien public sphere and assert themselves by having and holding attention in contexts which call for a great amount of courage, self-confidence, and self-control. In so doing, these women transgress the gender roles that Moroccan culture assigns to them and endeavor to make their voice heard, albeit at the price of facing more marginalization. Gossip Gossip is a female speech genre which has a specific style and a specific substance (cf. Brenneis 1984). There is a growing literarture on women’s gossip in an effort to ‘reclaim’ it (cf. Coates and Cameron 1988). According to Jones (1980), the term ‘gossip’ is a cultural trivialization of an authentic female means of expression and mode of speech. Jones celebrates gossip as a typically ‘female verbal culture’ which has played a significant role in the overall human culture both historically and today. Gossip may involve any number of people, but given its intimate nature, it usually involves two people. Gossip may, in principle, be positive or negative. Positive gossip is often complimentary and negative gossip is often malicious (cf. Besnier 1990, Gluckman 1963, Haviland 1977, Spacks 1985). The discourse of gossip is intimate and characterized by first-person narratives of past experiences, personal memorates and is often used as a means of negotiating reputations and redefining values. The discourse of gossip is a mixture of lies, truth, fantasy, and legend in which various voices and genres intermingle. Within the Moroccan context, although both men and women readily indulge in gossiping, gossip is stereotyped as a typically female, trivial and devilish activity. A graduate student reported to me that when he asked a man sitting for long hours in a cafe and gossiping all the time about what the man’s wife was doing, he answered: galsa f ddar waTyaha lttbergig ‘she is sitting at home, busy gossiping’. Although gossip is an oral folkloric event which is practiced and appreciated by both men and women, society does not regard men’s gossip as ‘gossip’, that is, negative. This is congruent with the gender per-

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ception in Moroccan culture. The terms for ‘gossip’ in Morocco are an-namiimah (Standard Arabic), lhadra/tbergig (Moroccan Arabic), awal g medden (Berber), and these are perceived negatively. This negative view within the Moroccan culture is due to the fact that gossip trivializes the sociopolitical import of speech and, thus, threatens the male status quo in a heavily patriarchal society. The following is an example of Moroccan women’s gossip. The excerpt is from a conversation where Amal, a teacher, gossips with a friend about her sister-in-law (in this case the husband’s sister). The excerpt was recorded and translated by the author: ó llwayes katwarfihum ó kidayrin, gir kay∫ufu ∫ihaja tzadtt wlik kay ibdaw f lhadra leqbiha. walaynni daba tjawwej u t∫uf. aji, tjewwjat Kenza lustek? You know what sisters-in-law are like, the moment they notice that you added something to your house (a piece of furniture for example), they start gossiping. But she will get married one day. Tell me, has Kenza, your sister-inlaw married? ó The friend: iwa hadi wam ba∫ m∫at bhalha. Well, it’s a year that she has gone (to her house). ó Amal: Belhaq kaynin bnat nnas; ana bewda, mxellya wyalat xxuti f ttiqar. But there are good women; I, for example, do not interfere with my brothers’ wives. The friend: tahanniti. You have peace.

(13) Amal:

In Amal’s gossip, the sister-in-law is constructed as an ‘envious’ and ‘disturbing’ woman. Amal creates a context where she feels comfortable because ‘envied’ by another woman. By asking her friend whether her own sister-in-law was married, Amal seeks to involve her in the gossip. In Morocco, female gossip cuts across the social variables of geographical origin, class, level of education, job opportunity, language skills, and marital status. However, gossip crucially depends on settings and the complicity of the participants. For example, gossip flourishes in closed, domestic, and private settings like tea visits, outings to the public bath, visits to the hairdresser’s, family celebrations like marriage, naming, and circumcision ceremonies. It can also take place in the saints’ shrines, workplaces, and Sports centers. Likewise, because it is characterized by emotional involvement, gossip relies on an exclusive audience which lends itself to complicity.

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Gossip is an occasion for speech whereby women represent the people and circumstances that constitute their community life in a personal way. These representations both reflect and affect the way women perceive each other and the way they perceive themselves. For example, in gossip, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law are ridiculed depending on who is talking. The impact or success of colleagues or potential competitors is often minimized. Expressions such as a∫ dar(t)? ‘What did s/he do?’ said about a colleague who has just achieved a success is often meant to minimize this success. Likewise, in everyday conversations, rural and urban women often represent themselves as victims of l-wayn ‘the evil eye’ in the sense that misfortune is not due to themselves but to others. Gossip is also a linguistic space where values and relations of dominance among women are renegotiated. For example, in urban areas, upper and middle class women, who no longer experience the traditional mother-in-law/daughter-in-law power tension, reconstruct this tension in their relation with their domestics. The housewife/domestic complex relationship is manifested in the obsession of housewives with their domestics and vice-versa. The following is an excerpt from a conversation between two medical doctors: Hafsa and Latifa, talking about their domestics. It was recorded and translated by the author: ó ó (14) Hafsa: lla yewfu wlina men lxaddamat, makayn∫i lli tdir lek lxdma bhal hebbiti. May God preserve us from domestics, none of them will do the housework as you wish. Latifa: yewTihum lwil, kulla nuba kan gul hadiw ttuba, walaynni a∫ ma∫ nwamlu, tteqherna a lalla Hafsa. May God give them misery, every time I say this is the last time (to recruit a domestic), but what can we do? we are overwhelmed, lady Hafsa. ó Hafsa: lbareh, kent galsa mwa sidi Mohamed, qultla lewquba tjib li lqahwa, hebbTaT nSha f ddruj. Yesterday, I was sitting with Sidi Mohamed (probably her husband), I asked the dumb (the domestic) to bring us coffee, she spilled half of it on the stairs. ó Latifa: ?ana dyali, kanwawd lha sebwin mrra wa∫ jaffefti teht TTebla, katqul iyyeh w minin kan Tlaw n∫uf, kanlqa dak∫∫i huwa hadak. As for mine, I repeat seventy times to her to clean under the tables, she says yes but when I go up to check I find the place as I left it.

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ó Hafsa: iwa SSber, kanqulu htta huma lla ikun f lewwan. Well, we need patience, I say that after all they are poor creatures. Latifa: wendak, rah gir kayettwelmu, kayzidu xelfa w ixalliwk. Be careful, the moment they learn things, they go away and leave you.

In the above excerpt, both Hafsa and Latifa construct domestics as an ‘indispensable evil’. Indeed, domestics are reconstructed in the Moroccan urban female language of gossip as ‘lower’, ‘dirty’, and ‘uncivilized’. Domestics are perceived as a threat to the balance of the household in the Moroccan middle classes. The use of domestics in gossip is an attempt to hide the centrality of these domestics in the maintenance of social and family order. As working women have entered the ‘public’ sphere, they strongly resist the symbolic dominance of the domestic in the household and tend to continuously position themselves in higher positions than the domestic, the ‘intruder’, in the family unit. The above example of gossip was recorded in a Sports club; it shows that the language of gossip publicizes what is private in a semi-private setting and, thus, problematizes the rigid dichotomy public/private. In fact, gossip transgresses the private sphere to include the communal and, as such, it bridges the gap between the two. Domestics also gossip about their employers. The following is an excerpt from a conversation where a domestic, Rqia, gossips with a cousin of hers about the former’s employer: (15) Rqia:

mnin kaydxul mul ddar kathabbeT kwariha llarD; kaddxul jwaha. mnin kankun gir ana wiyyaha, katfarwan; makatxallini∫ neglas. Walaynni daba ilagiha liha mulana. When he (the husband) comes in, she (the wife) becomes docile. When there is just her and me, she becomes a demon; she does not let me rest. But God will soon punish her.

The cousin: yewTiha lewma, u mnin kaykun rajlha? May God turn her blind, what about when her husband is in? ó ó Rqia: mnin kaykun, makatqadd∫ thal fummha, hit gadi iseddu lha. When he is around, she cannot open her mouth because he will shut it for her. The cousin: lwayalat dima mesmumat. Women are always poisonous

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254 Rqia:

ó huwa f lhaqiqa Driyyef, makayxaSSer li walu. mnin ja men fransa jab li magana, bezzez ba∫ xellatha li. To tell you the truth, he is nice, he never harms me. When he came from France, he brought me a watch; it was with great difficulty that she let me have it.

In Rqia’s gossip, the housewife (employer) is constructed as the source of evil in the house. To make this picture vivid, she makes a sharp difference between the husband and the wife and constructs herself as ‘closer’ to the husband: he never rebukes her and even buys her gifts. The expression hebTat kwariha and kaddxul jwaha ‘she becomes docile’ are very pejorative and reveal the domestic’s bitterness. The tension between the housewife and the domestic is also highlighted by the latter when she says that the former is reluctant to let her have the watch; this may be a lie because it is often the case that housewives are the ones who generally decide what to give to domestics. Rqia’s cousin actively participates in the gossip by fueling Rqia’s feelings of animosity with encouraging statements such as yewTiha lewma, u mnin kaykun rajlha? ‘may God turn her blind, what about when her husband is in?’. Rqia’s construction of her employer as ‘enemy’ and her employer’s husband as ‘friend’ constitutes a context where Rqia is comfortable. Gossip is structured in both conversational turn-taking and monologues, which are vehicled in various oral genres: narratives, jokes, proverbs, etc. As far as content is concerned, gossip topics turn around social themes such as domestics, employers, divorce, marriage, magic spirits, and taboo. The topics of gossip are related to the overall environments in which women evolve, and, hence, differ according to women’s social attributes, as well as the prevailing situational variables. These topics generally revolve around establishing the honor or dishonor of the members of a community. Gossiping derives its social power from the special value that Moroccan society attributes to the collective self, the face, and especially the honor of the family and, hence, thrives on these issues. As to the length of gossips, it depends on how frequently gossipers meet. As a female speech genre, female gossip, like their poetry/songs and folktales, is a site of contestation and subversion in the sense that gossipers play out and reorganize power and domination from their own perspectives. This is line with Abu-Lughod’s (1986), Badran and Cooke’s (1990), and Mills’ (1991) views that speech genres con-

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stitute sites where dissent is voiced. It is also in line with Tapper and Tapper (1987) who consider speech genres as means of creating and maintaining community and tradition, and who see speech genres as a means of mediating conflict. Although the Moroccan ó religious code of ethics forbids lying and considers it haram ‘taboo’, lying is socially accepted and even ‘encouraged’ in gossiping, especially if the participants in this activity hold the same attitude towards the persons/topics of gossiping. Through gossiping, women release social and personal tension and constantly redefine themselves in relation to their family and social surroundings. S This section on Moroccan female oral genres shows that these are subcultural varieties and styles which characterize various types of women. These genres constitute creative linguistic strategies of a ‘muted group’ in the sense of Shirley and Edwin Ardeners’ ‘Dominant and Muted’ theory. Moroccan women’s communicative styles are a reaction to lack of access to powerful linguistic resources and lack of acceptance of women’s voices in the wider, male-dominated culture. Moroccan female oral genres do not carry positive social values and this is mainly due to the deeply-ingrained stereotype that rrajel huwa lkelma ‘the man is the word, the authority’ or kalmet rrajel ó katharas lhjar (literally ‘a man’s word breaks rocks’, meaning ‘a man’s word has firm authority’). Female oral genres testify to the fact that Moroccan women (literate and illiterate) are not silent inarticulate women who cannot express their experiences. These women are resourceful and creative; they are far from being passive ‘parrots’ of oral rituals and oral literary genres; they problematize the socially constructed view of written knowledge as the only knowledge. The discourses of oral poetry/songs, storytelling, singing, and gossiping are powerful modes of expression and self-assertion for these women. These oral genres have multiple significances for Moroccan women because they constitute multi-faceted self-assertive acts that attest to the ineffectiveness of the reductive view which regards gender relations in Morocco as essentially a compound of male superiority and female oppression. Far from being ‘inactive’, illiterate Moroccan women are structural within the overall socio-cultural context. Their genres are strategies of resistance to prejudice and linguistic restriction;

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they are also a means through which rural and illiterate women differentiate themselves from men and from literate women. Some of the themes of Moroccan women’s oral production (of whatever type) are univesal and attest to the dialectic relation between the local and the global. In creating poetry, folktales, etc., Moroccan women produce oral texts; they cannot be said to ‘transpose’ from written texts because the greatest majority of them are illiterate. In producing orality, Moroccan women construct identity, collective memory, opacity and sainthood. What is important in this poetry is the effect it produces; the past is made present through language use. O S In addition to oral genres, Moroccan women possess skills or practices that are typically female such as midwifery, preparation of herbal remedies, carpet weaving, hand and feet decorating (henna), child rearing, and cooking. These skills are called ‘oral skills’ by virtue of the fact that they are based on face-to-face interaction and are often accompanied by linguistic expressions (oral rituals). Oral skills are acquired on the basis of direct empirical sources such as experience, practice, and inherited beliefs. As such, these skills constitute a type of knowledge which is largely based on ‘knowing how’, not ‘knowing what’. These skills are usually kept secret among women and may be considered ‘gender-specific experiential knowledge’ in the sense of Dalmiya and Alcoff (1997).4 In the family, girls learn and, hence come to know, household chores, by observing their mothers or female elders, participating in housework activities, or simply by trying out alone. These inner feels constitute their collective privacy and may be seen as a typically female approach to knowledge. For example, midwifery in rural and some urban areas is largely genderspecific in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. The midwife starts by reciting short verses from the Quran while washing her hands. She also invokes the ancestors’ and saints’ benediction and often ó keeps uttering llah ismah lina men lwalidin ‘May God forgive us for the harm we did to our parents’, llah i-sahhel wlik a benti! ‘May God 4 The two authors assert that ‘knowing how’, like ‘knowing what’, is a genuine cognitive activity. According to this view, in acquiring these skills, Moroccan women go through experiences and acquire inner ‘feels’ that are determined by both neurophysiological and socio-cultural factors.

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make the experience easy for you, my daughter!’. The midwife also keeps encouraging the woman in labor by repeating now and again that God will forgive all her sins now that she is suffering. Immediately after birth, expressions of thanks to God are uttered by the midwife. Likewise, the preparation of herbal remedies is still largely a female practice in Morocco. The preparation takes place amidst verses of the Quran and imploration of God’s mercy. henna decoration is usually accompanied by a type of ritual singing which invokes God and the Prophet: SSla u slam wla rasul lah ‘prayer on God and His Prophet Mohamed’. Finally, carpet weaving is often accompanied by group singing and chanting. Through handicraft, women transmit traditional knowledge from mother to daughter. Although Moroccan women’s skills are much respected in their community and are acknowledged to be essential in life, these skills are not considered knowledge because women are in the majority of cases illiterate and their knowledge is not codified: it is oral, practical and experiential and, thus, does not fit in the ‘normative’ type of knowledge, itself part of the larger male-dominated written paradigm of knowing which is the only sanctioned process of knowing in contemporary mainstream epistemology.5 This shows that science, like history, is a socio-political construct as practice is logically prior to codification. Moroccan women’s skills, like their oral genres, are sites of selfexpression and self-assertion. The frequent linguistic use of religious terms such as llah ‘God’ and nnbi ‘the Prophet’ during the performance of these female oral skills is meant to sanction and legitimize these skills, as well as ritualize and make them ‘sacred’ in the eyes of the community. This intelligent use of religion, which is highly viewed in the Moroccan context, attests to women’s endeavor to fight exclusion and valorize themselves. Female oral skills, like female oral genres, are empowering devices in a male-biased cultural environment. Moroccan Women’s Use of Multilingualism: Code-Switching While monolingual, and presumably illiterate, Moroccan women use oral genres as oral creative strategies of self-expression, multilingual 5 Even male practical knowledge (e.g. peasants’ work) is discredited for the same reason.

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women, either literate or illiterate, use code-switching for the same purpose. For the sake of clarity, this section focuses on the oral medium, by opposition to the written medium, which Moroccan literate women may use. Code-switching is the use of more than one, usually two, languages or ‘codes’ simultaneously. The languages involved may be both fully mastered by the speaker, as in the case of bilinguals, or disproportionally mastered, as when speakers mix their mother tongue with another language. In the two cases, codeswitching is a systematic and rule-governed use of language (cf. Gumperz 1982, Meyers-Scotton 1993). In the former case, both grammatical systems are used evenly, and in the latter case, the grammar of the mother tongue prevails in the structure of sentences (cf. Gumperz 1982, Meyers-Scotton 1993). Code-switching is normally oriented towards an in-group, and is used only with bilingual and bidialectal participants. As such, code-switching is a characteristic of multilingual settings. Code-switching is a context-dependent style of speech which does not imply a deficient mastery of the two languages involved, but, on the contrary, a competent use of two linguistic codes. Studies have shown that code-switching requires competence not only in two linguistic codes, but also in appropriately manipulating the two codes according to contexts of language use (cf. Gumperz 1976, Clyne 1987, Bokamba 1988, Heath 1989, Meyers-Scotton 1993). In implying choice on the part of the code-switcher, code-switching is a linguistically skillful practice which is motivated by individual intention. As such, code-switching indicates social attributes and composite identities. Both men and women use code-switching in their everyday conversation in Morocco, but code-switching is more associated with women than with men. Moroccans all believe and claim that women in Morocco use French more than men do. What they seem to mean by this statement is that urban women of any social class are more likely to speak French and engage in code-switching involving French than men from the same social background. As for men’s code-switching, it seems that it differs from women’s in the sense that it is the presence of educated women which may trigger it. Men may use codeswitching to impress these women, for example, or for any other similar reason. Code-switching is not likely to occur in all-male settings. Among the main reasons that explain women’s use of code-switching is a search of some kind of prestige. In urban areas, little girls are often more encouraged to use French than little boys. This prac-

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tice is carried on to adolescence where female teenagers use French more than male teenagers. The practice of code-switching is later encouraged by husbands, who often lay responsibility of speaking French to children on their wives. In this way, code-switching in the Moroccan context may be seen as a female language skill. Three gender-sensitive types of code-switching are attested in the Moroccan context: (i) the switching of Berber and Moroccan Arabic, (ii) the switching of Moroccan Arabic and French, and (iii) the switching of Berber and French. The first type is both a rural and an urban phenomenon, and involves literate and non-literate speakers, as Moroccan Arabic and Berber are non-written mother tongues, whereas the latter two types are typically urban and involve educated speakers only. Furthermore, the first type of code-switching is attested in all social classes, whereas the latter two types are more characteristic of middle and upper classes. Code-Switching of Berber and Moroccan Arabic Only speakers that have Berber or Berber and Moroccan Arabic as their mother tongues code-switch between these two languages. Studies on this type of code-switching in Morocco are almost inexistent. Given the linguistic situation in Morocco, Berber women borrow more from Moroccan Arabic than non-Berber women do from Berber. Berber women may borrow words or insert whole sentences from Moroccan Arabic in their speech. So far as loans are concerned, they are of two types: loans that have not been subject to morphological change, and loans that have been adapted to the morphological structure of Berber. The following are examples6 of the former type: (16) M A lfTur lbab lflus lma∫ina ssebt lmedrasa lkumir

B lfDur lbab lflus lma∫ina sseft lmedrasa lkumir

G breakfast door money train Saturday school loaf (of bread)

6 All the examples in this section have been gathered by the author during interviews carried out in Fes, Casablanca, Beni Mellal, Marrakesh, and Rabat during the academic year 1999–2000.

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The changes that may occur with loan words such as the ones given in (16) above are phonological, that is they affect the pronunciation of these words. Phonological changes usually involve voicing (addition of vocal cords vibration which, for example, distinguishes the voiceless /t/ from the voiced /d/ in English). Voicing in the above loan words is apparent in the changes from /T/ and /b/ to /D/ and /f/, respectively, in the pairs lfTur/lfDur, on the one hand, and ssebt/sseft, on the other hand. As for the second type of loans from Moroccan Arabic, it involves the adaptation of the Moroccan Arabic loans to the morphological structure of Berber. Here are some examples: (17) M A ∫∫ejra ó lhanut lkora ó lhemmam ∫∫ibani lbbalis ó lhwala ó lfallaha

B ta∫∫jert ó tahanut takort ó ahmmam a∫iban id ó lbulis ihulijn ó ifllahn

G tree shop ball public bath the old man policemen sheep peasants

In the first three examples in the list in (17) above, the words ∫∫ejra, ó lhanut, and lkora have been encapsulated in the Berber feminine disó continuous morpheme t . . . . . . t, yielding ta∫∫jert, tahanut, and takort, ó respectively. Likewise, the two words lhammam and ∫∫ibani have been prefixed by the Berber masculine marker a. Finally, the last two ó ó words lhwala and lfallaha have been inserted in the Berber plural ó ó form i———n to give ihulijn and ifllahn, respectively. In addition to loans, Berber women may use whole sentences from Moroccan Arabic in their speech. In the following examples, the Moroccan Arabic sentences are in italicized: (18) a. gri-g-as i fadma ba∫ te-wjen lxubz bekri. called-I-to her to Fadma so that she-makes bread early I called Fadma so that she could make bread early. ó ó ó b. lqqum da-txatar-n kul wahd kaym∫i bhalu adjen-km uhdi-km. children grow up-they everyone go away let-they-you alone-you Children grow up and leave the house, leaving you (the mother) alone. ó ó c. ffeg-g ad hawSa-g u ∫ri-t lhwayej l-lwlad u l-lbnat. went out-I to stroll-I and bought-I clothes to-the boys and to-the-girls I went out for a walk and I bought clothes for the boys and the girls.

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d. dgiq a i-Der unzar, ili-n iqariDn u n-diru lwers. now will it-fall rain be-they money and we-make wedding It will rain soon and money will be available and we will celebrate the wedding.

In (18) above, the Moroccan Arabic sentences are used to highlight the specific events that the speaker considers important from her point of view. In (18a), it is the making of bread, in (18b) it is the fact that children leave the house once they grow up, in (18c) it is the fact that the speaker bought clothes for her children, and in (18d), it is the celebration of marriage. These events are ‘highlighted’ in terms of the uptake or interactional consequences of switching (cf. Auer 1998). Although speakers claimed to have switched to make these events salient with the aim of producing an effect on the interlocutor, it is difficult to evaluate (that is, prove or falsify) their statements. However, the way code-switching data is analyzed in this section needs to be understood within the general goals of this book: code-switching is presented as an ‘empowering’ device for the majority of Moroccan women. In order to clearly show the empowering aspect of code-switching, it is sometimes relevant to ‘psychologize’, that is attribute specific intentions, emotional states, or motives to speakers with respect to particular utterances. In so doing, I use my status as a an ‘insider’ observer to highlight the ‘active’ (as opposed to passive) use of code-switching by Moroccan women. Code-Switching of Moroccan Arabic and French Code-switching of Moroccan Arabic and French is the best studied type of code switching in the Moroccan context (cf. Saib 1988, Nortier 1989, 1995, Lahlou 1991, among others). Although some of these studies included the gender factor, none of them presented code-switching as an empowering linguistic device for Moroccan women. Most of the studies on code-switching between Moroccan Arabic and French focused on the structural aspects of code-switching by men and women (cf. Lahlou 1991, Nortier 1989, 1995, Nait M’Barek and Sankoff 1988). In so doing, these studies have not really emphasized the sociolinguistic complex and fluid nature of codeswitching, as well as the central importance of interlocutors, rhetorical purpose and self-interest in determining the nature of code-switching. It is true, however, that as Holmes’ work on tag questions convincingly shows, it is almost impossible to control all the necessary variables to collect comparable data on men and women and their

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use of language because of the very different nature of women’s and men’s lives. Accordingly, claims on language ideology (both my informants’ and my beliefs about language and language use) in this section are as much as possible based on performance data from interviews that I carried out in the academic year 1999–2000 where all the relevant variables were controlled or at least acknowledged. These restatements of ‘facts’ are also meant to remind readers that we must all constantly ask ouselves how we know what we (think we) know about language in society. In general, it seems that when women and men use words or expressions from French, men would be more likely to ‘mold’ the loans in the general morpho-syntactic structure of Moroccan Arabic, whereas women would tend to pronounce the loans as they are pronounced in French. Thus, whereas educated women would be more likely to use veste ‘jacket’ men would say fista where the sound /v/ is devoiced and becomes /f/, and the Moroccan feminine gender morpheme /a/ is added to the word. Note also with respect to this loan the vocalic change from /e/ to /i/ as Moroccan Arabic does not contain the former sound. The most probable reason for this difference in women’s and men’s speech may be due to women’s ‘greater’ care with the way they speak, given the higher social pressure on them. The same is true of the following examples: (19)

F  camion télévision jupe mécanicien autoroute village bière

F  camion télévision jupe mécanicien autoroute village bière

M  kamiu tilifiziun jippa lmikanisian lotorot lfilaj lbira

Further, whereas Moroccan men would generally say ∫rit lmakina d SSabun ‘I bought a washing machine’, women would generally use the French counterpart as it is used in French and say ∫rit la machine à laver. It is important to note that this gender difference is not attested in the case of Berber women’s use of loans from Moroccan Arabic. The reason may be that in the latter case, being unwritten mother tongues, the two languages are socially closer, whereas in the case of Moroccan Arabic and French, the two languages are clearly demarcated socially. Note also that the ‘l’ which precedes the male loans originates from the definite article ‘al ’ in Standard Arabic

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and has become part and parcel of the structure of Moroccan Arabic loans in which it does not express any grammatical idea of definiteness. The phonological adaptation of French words to Moroccan Arabic morphology is more attested in words that are borrowed relatively recently. Borrowed words that have become part of the Moroccan Arabic lexicon are pronounced in the same way by men and women. Examples of the latter category are bola for ampoule ‘bulb’, simana for semaine ‘week’, and lma∫ina for train ‘train’. Although Moroccan women tend to use the type of borrowing which ‘molds’ foreign words in the morpho-syntactic structure of the host language less than men, it is important to note that this does not mean that women always and only use French phonology or embed phrases from French whereas men never do. Daily observation leads one to believe that the actual situation is more complex: code-switching depends on the interlocutors, the rhetorical purpose, the context, and the speaker’s immediate interest. In a mixed setting, for example, men often use French phonology. However, in the same appropriate contexts, women have less recourse to the ‘molding’ strategy than men. Beyond the word level, Moroccan women often insert whole sentences in French in their Moroccan Arabic conversations. Here are examples; the italicized strings are in French: (20) a. ?ana j’ai pris une décision u ma-nqdar-∫ ntaxella wliha. I I took a decision and not-can-not give up on it I took a decision and I cannot give it up. ó b. f naDari hadi c’est la meilleure décision qu’il faut prendre lahaqqa∫ ila ma-∫rit-∫ lbarabol daba, gadi yeglaw. In my opinion, this is the best decision to make because if I do not buy a satellite dish now, its price will go up. c. gadi n-ji, je vais faire mon possible, wTi-ni cinq minutes. will I-come I will do my possible give-me five minutes I will come, I will do my best, give me five minutes. ó d. ma-bqaw-∫ drari kayxedm-u bhal zman, ils sont de plus en plus gâtés. no-still-no children work-they like the past they are more and more spoiled Children no longer work hard as in the past, they are more and more spoiled.

In the examples in (20) above, whole sentences in French are inserted in the Moroccan Arabic ones. These sentences are said in their French version. The parts that are given in French are usually the

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parts that are focused upon by the speaker. In (20a), the speaker is keen on stressing the fact that she (and not anybody else) took the decision. She reinforces this in (20b) by asserting that the decision taken was the best move to make. This repetition is needed for selfassertion and for justifying the buying of the satellite dish. In (20c), the speaker stresses her willingness to go, and in (20d), she emphasizes the fact that children are being more and more spoiled. Code-switching is also a linguistic means of ‘demarcating’ oneself as different not only vis-à-vis men but also vis-à-vis other (rural, illiterate) women. Consider the following extracts: (21) a.rajl-i va prendre son congé ∫∫har jjay u gadi n-dewzu-h f sbaniya. husband-my will take his holiday month coming and will-we-pass-it in Spain My husband will take his holiday next month and we will spend it in Spain. b. ?ana je ne peux pas faire les deux: nTqadda u nTayyab, zett bnita xra pour qu’elle aide un peu. I cannot do both: shopping and cooking, I added girl another so that she helps a little I cannot both shop an cook, that’s why I engaged another domestic to help. c. ka-nfaddal ssekna lekbira, un jardin et plus d’espace, c’est important. I prefer dwelling big, a garden and more space, that’s important I prefer to live in a big house (villa), it is important to have a garden and more space.

(21a) was uttered by a woman7 in an all-female group in a Sports Club. Given the nature of the audience (middle class, educated), the speaker made sure to highlight the ‘social prestige’ associated with spending holidays in Spain. Mentioning that it is her husband’s, and not her, holiday is a way of underlining and making salient her ‘high profile’ identity (I am married to a wealthy man). In (21b), the speaker emphasizes the fact that she can afford two domestics, a sign of wealth, and in (21c), the speaker underlines the fact that she lives in a big villa, another sign of wealth. The following are other examples: ó (22) a. bgit n-xdem pour que j’améliore ma situation, lxedma, c’est donner, lahqqa∫ l’entreprise doit marcher.

7 The sentences in (22) are extracted from recordings that I made in Fes in May 2000.

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want-I I-work in order I improve my situation, work is giving because enterprise has to function I want to work in order to improve my situation. Work is giving and business needs to function. b. ka-newraf blli ttejriba muhimma, l’experience compte plus que le diplôme, et je suis prête à apprendre. I-know that experience is important, experience is more important than the certificate, and I am ready to learn. c. lfransawiyya muhimma, je parle le français couramment. Je n’ai pas de problèmes de ce côté. French is important, I speak French fluently. I have no problem in that respect French is important, I speak French fluently, I have no problem in that respect.

The sentences in (22) above were uttered by a young woman during an interview for a job in a private primary school. She was addressing a male employer and was trying to put all the chances of getting the job on her side. In (22), the speaker uses code-switching as a strategy to challenge the interlocutor’s institutionalized authority. This discursive practice allows her to subvert her own imposed position in the interaction by constructing the social identity of a ‘modern’ woman and patterns of alignments for herself that do not conform to the norms of discourse. The speaker exploits the symbolic value of French in code-switching in order to secure the job, knowing beforehand that the children in the private sector in Morocco need French and their parents (the employers’ clients) want their children to learn French and pronounce it well. In fact, the young woman in these examples ‘performs’ her ability in French in just the sense of Butler (1990). Code-switching may also be used to transmit messages containing meanings that are considered taboo in Moroccan culture. Here are examples: (23) a. xerj-at mwa-h, ils se sont embrassés. went out-she with him they kissed She went out with him and they kissed. b. xaS lbent twarf lweld qbal ma t-jawwaj, c’est normal d’avoir une relation amoureuse. needs girl she-know the boy before she-marries, it is normal to have a romantic relation A girl needs to know a man before she gets married, it is normal to have a romantic relation.

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  ó ó c. ja-w, t-gaddaw wend-na mlli bga i-xruj ils l’a enlacée bla hya bla he∫ma. came-they they-had lunch when he wanted to leave, he embraced her with no shame. They came and ate and when he was leaving he boldly embraced her.

In the sentences in (23), code-switching between Moroccan Arabic and French signals the speakers’ subversion of the socially imposed role that women should not utter taboo words in public by consciously constructing the social identity of an emancipated and broadminded woman. For example in (23a), the speaker consciously substitutes the Moroccan Arabic term tbawsu ‘they kissed’, which is taboo in the Moroccan context, by the French expression se sont embrassés which is not taboo in French culture. This use of French is a skillful way of transmitting messages without hurting the audience. The same woman who utters (23a) would readily revert to Berber or Moroccan Arabic with no code-switching from French when she is at home with her in-laws, for example. The same explanation can be extended to (23b) and (23c) where the Moroccan Arabic counterparts of the French expressions relation amoureuse and se sont enlacés are taboo in Moroccan culture. The examples in (20–23) above show that urban Moroccan women use French as a discursive practice which allows them to exploit the symbolic value of this language in interactions with the aim of both asserting themselves and ensuring conversational gains. Meyers-Scotton (1993) would likely refer to much of the code-switching presented in this section as ‘code-switching as unmarked choice’, a construct that is very congruent with the goals of this chapter. Code-Switching of Berber and French Another type of female urban code-switching is apparent in the speech of urban educated middle or upper class Berber women. The following are some examples: (24) a. sgi-g TTomobil pour que je puisse circuler librement. bought-I car so that I can circulate freely I bought a car so that I can move freely. b. ur-daggan-g ar jjuj parce que le petit est un couche-tard. not-sleep-I until two because the small one stays up late I don’t sleep until two p.m. because the baby stays up late.

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ó c. ig t-ri-t tagawsa ihlan il faut payer le prix. if you-want thing good it necessary pay the price If you want a good thing, you should pay a good price for it. d. t-dda s fransa parce qu’il n’y a pas de bons medecins au Maroc. she-went to France because there are no good doctors in Morocco She went to France because there are no good doctors in Morocco.

The type of code-switching in (24) resembles the one in (20) above. As the speakers who code-switch between Berber and French are usually upper and middle class, they emphasize the attributes of their class by using French sentences in their speech. In contrast with Berber upper and middle class women, lower class Berber women exploit the type of code-switching that involves Berber and Moroccan Arabic. This code-switching is attested in both rural and urban areas. The following are examples; Moroccan Arabic sentences are italicized: ó (25) a. n-sga tigmmi hit xrej rajl-i ttaqawud. we-bought house because went out man-my retirement We bought the house because my husband retired. ó ó ó b. urd-uki-g zik hit t-farrej-na htta l- lawhada d llil. not-woke-I early because we-watched TV until one o’clock I did not wake up early because we watched TV until 1 a.m. ó c. nni-g-as a i-seg tigmmi hit lflus dagya kayTiru. said-I-to him he-buy house because money quickly fly-they I told him to buy the house because money is quickly spent. d. zri-g imma t-nna-yi wla∫ ma-ka-tjiw-∫ bzzaf. saw-I mother she-told-me why not-come-not a lot I saw my mother and she said we should go more often to see her.

In the sentences in (25) above, Moroccan Arabic is used to show that the speaker knows this language, which has more prestige than Berber. In the presence of Berber speakers, who know Moroccan Arabic, the use of Berber is often a strategy of alignment with Berbers and, hence, signals an ethnic identity. This strategy is also attested in greetings such as: (26) a. maytawnit! How are you? b. thenna? Are you all right? c. manik? How are you doing?

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The greetings in (26) are frequently used with shopkeepers8 in urban areas to ensure quality and a good price.9 Even non-Berber speakers sometimes use these greetings. Greetings in Berber are meaningful linguistic markers that carry symbolic value in Moroccan culture. Among Berber female intellectuals, the use of Berber in interactions involving strangers involves the inclusion of public discursive patterns in otherwise private settings. This use of Berber expresses solidarity between women, and constitutes a conscious way of embedding the symbolic value of Berber as part of one’s identity. Code-Switching as an Empowering Communicative Device The examples in the preceding section and the comments on their contexts of use show that regardless of class, Moroccan women use code-switching as a primarily empowering linguistic device. The empowerment aspect of Moroccan women’s code-switching is clearly seen if placed within the overall sociolinguistic status of Berber, Moroccan Arabic, and French. Moroccan women manipulate the various values that are attached to each language such as education, modernity, prestige, ethnic identity, and intimacy in specific contexts, in order to score ‘gains’ in conversations. As code-switching is conscious and involves choice, it denotes women’s agency in everyday all-female or mixed interactions. The empowering aspects of women’s use of code-switching are attested in a number of facets that are summarized in the following paragraphs. To start with, in all-female and mixed groups, Moroccan women use code-switching as a means of attracting and maintaining attention in conversations. The deliberate mixture of two languages has the effect of breaking the stream of thought and forces the interlocutors to pay attention to what the speaker is saying. Women also use code-switching to create liveliness in conversations. Similarly, Moroccan women, especially in urban settings, use codeswitching to impose themselves by ‘snatching’ turns in conversations. 8

Most shopkeepers in Morocco are popularly believed to be Berber. According to Kharraki (2000), women in Eastern Morocco use patterns of negotiating consumer goods as part of their skill in efficiently running their households. As this latter skill is highly viewed in Moroccan culture, women use ‘insisting’ strategies to achieve their aim, that is, the least price for the purchased goods, and consider it a personal success. By contrast, men use ‘solidarity’ linguistic devices. The agency of women in this respect is significant as the overall context in which they live puts pressure on their freedom to interact with male salespersons. 9

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The use of French in such contexts is often perceived as ‘aggressive’, and many males are ‘put off ’ by this way of communication and prefer to ‘step back’ and let women talk. As men usually monopolize the turn-taking part of conversations, women’s use of code-switching in such contexts is a way of self-assertion. Likewise, Moroccan women’s use of code-switching is a linguistic device of power management and power negotiation in mixed urban settings where educated women are ‘overridden’ by less educated men in conversations. Through code-switching, these women transmit their level of education and ‘tell’ interlocutors that men need to take women’s educational ‘advantage’ into consideration. Code-switching is also a linguistic marker of in-group solidarity as the case of Berber women shows. The high class status of the upperclass Berber women who were observed and interviewed10 does not diminish the cultural significance of Berber forms and practices. The meanings associated with Berber allow these women to use the language symbolically both to construct an identity and to manifest opposition to the exclusion of Berber in the larger public discourse. The use of Berber in such situations marks in-group membership, especially in contexts involving out-group members. The use of codeswitching for reasons of in-group solidarity is also exemplified by the urban female adolescents’ frequent use of code-switching to demarcate themselves from male adolescents. The use of code-switching by women is also a type of linguistic innovation. Seen within the overall Moroccan socio-cultural context, urban women’s code-switching constitutes a ‘new style’ of speech. This style indexes ‘modernity’, ‘will’, and ‘determination’. It is an answer to women’s exclusion from the sphere of public powerful languages. Code-switching is also a means of restructuring speech situations. Subversive moves such as questions, deixis, and backchannelling, in a second code often result in the speaker restructuring the speech situation and offering an alternative to the dominant institutional conventions. This is congruent with the fact that strategies and potential strategic moves are not disparate sociolinguistic practices because they find explanation in the overall Moroccan socio-cultural 10 The statements made in this section are based on observation and interviews with various types of Moroccan women. The statements about Berber women in this paragraph are based on interviews of upper-class Berber women. The purpose of these particular interviews was to catch the tri-language code-switching which is mainly found in cities.

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context. These strategies and strategic moves challenge the power differences that inhere in institutional and subject positions and assert women’s agency. Moroccan urban women use code-switching as a means of subverting the institutionalized relationships between them and the interlocutor (as in the case of the interview for a job). Finally, Moroccan women’s use of code-switching may be considered a way of stripping everyday speech from the moralizing database of language use that excludes women. This is seen in the mixing of Moroccan Arabic (which is related to Standard Arabic) with Berber or French. As the latter languages are not imbued with religion, they lessen the effect of religion on everyday speech. Code-switching is part of Moroccan women’s repertoire of language styles and constitutes a powerful communicative device that empowers women in a heavily gendered-society. Like oral genres, the skillful use of more than one language, each establishing, setting in motion, characterizing, and engendering a specific world view, illuminates ways in which Moroccan urban and rural women respond to contextual changes and allows insight into the dimensions of selffashioning and the politics of everyday events as they affect Moroccan women. Language is crucial in both shaping and challenging power relations; according to Butler (1990), the categories of sex and gender are constructed through cultural discursive practices. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992) relate the local and the global via practice which both produces language in situations and constructs social realities from language. In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, the fundamentally marginal location of women within predominantly male institutions, such as the mosque, the academy, and the media, triggers reactions on the part of these women and these reactions are indexed in language. Moroccan women make appropriate usage of code-switching with the aim of exploiting the position of the marginalized for strategic purposes and this is seen in the data presented above. For example, the use of Berber constructs an ethnic identity for women and marks them as simultaneously inside and outside the dominant discourse. As such, the relationship between identity and interaction is mediated by linguistic practices which acquire meaning only in the context of particular local sites and only with reference to other linguistic practices like genre and communicative norms. Finally, the data in the above sections clearly demonstrate the limits of essentialist theories like the work of Lakoff and de Beauvoir

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who set women up as ‘deviant’ or ‘other’. The Moroccan community’s ideology may be that women are schizophrenic as noted or alluded to in Chapter 1, but a postmoden analysis assumes that while there are ideologies of authenticity out there in the world, there are no ‘authentic’ Moroccans (or every Moroccan can potentially be) because an upper- or middle-class woman who switches between Berber, Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French and English can be just as Moroccan as a monolingual Berber-speaking woman. It is just that they are Moroccan in different ways and language plays different roles in the ways they perform their (always gendered) identities.

CHAPTER FIVE

DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE SELF I This chapter is concerned with a deeper source of Moroccan women’s differences: identity or self. Identity, or within-self, variables are closely related to women as individuals who seek to assert themselves and make public significance of their private experiences within a culture, a society, and a context. Identity may be cultural, social, contextual, gender-linked, etc. Like cultural, social, and contextual variables, identity variables are indexed in language use and, hence, constitute good analytical tools. Given the complex and shifting nature of selfinterest in conversations, women continuously adapt themselves to changing contexts according to their own immediate self-interest and may, hence, be said to have multiple identities. In dealing with the issue of Moroccan women’s multiple identities, this chapter focuses on the diversity and complexity of women’s experiences as individuals, the various degrees of consciousness they have of their differences and experiences, and the ways women encode their changing identities in language. Although both men and women exploit the symbolic value of linguistic variables according to what they want to achieve in a particular context, this chapter focuses on women. One goal of this chapter is to show how linguistic practices and language ideologies relate to gender identity. Language use, shaped by history, society, and self-interest, is both public and individual. It is public in the sense that it ensures communication with various social groups, and it is individual in the sense that it first and foremost serves the immediate needs of the language user. As such, language is a site of power negotiation, a view which is congruent with Greenwood’s (1996: 71) following statement: Actual instances of language use must be considered as part of a complex of interlinking cultural, social, political, psychological and linguistic systems.

On the basis of these and other related ideas, this chapter explores in more detail the nature of Moroccan women’s context-linked mul-

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tiple identities and the linguistic devices that index this individual multiplicity. To achieve this, an analysis of the language of introductions in the city of Fes is provided with the aim of showing how the setting and communicative tasks of an introduction may be more important variables than the sex of the speaker. The reason for this is that, as self-interest changes from context to context, women’s identities change accordingly. Before embarking on women’s linguistic patterns in introductions, a delimitation of the concept of identity is in order. The Concept of Identity Like the concept of gender, the concept of identity is both complex and fluid, and, thus, needs to be deconstructed in order to be grasped. Although identity has been studied from various perspectives, it is within the disciplines of social and developmental psychology that it has been most debated and highlighted. Tajfel, recorded in Fishman (1999: 448), defines identity in the following terms: that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [or her] knowledge of his [or her] membership in a social group (or groups), together with the values and emotional significance attached to that membership.

According to this definition, identity is deeply ingrained in the individual. The terms ‘values’ and ‘emotions’ in the quotation highlight the social and psychological dimensions of identity, and underline the interaction of the two, as well as close relation to the individual. These dimensions of identity are generally channelled through language and become particularly salient in social encounters where individuals meet with other individuals and try, through the use of language, to ‘sell’ themselves (their identities) according to how they want others to ‘buy’ (perceive) these identities in specific encounters. The social and psychological dimensions of identity, as well as the medium through which they are channelled, underpin the close relationship between identity, gender, and language. Identity and Gender The intersection between identity and gender creates ‘gender identity’. Gender identity is not only individuals’ perceptions of themselves, but also their conceptions of others and the latter’s conceptions

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of what constitutes ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. Men and women in specific societies and cultures describe themselves according to the ways their gender is socially and culturally defined. Men and women describe themselves on the basis of gendered stereotypical knowledge that their socio-cultural context offers them. Their self-images are informed by stereotypes of what is appropriate according to gender norms in given societies and cultures. For example, in the Moroccan context, women generally feel the need to foreground themselves as females more than men do as males. Thus, whereas men generally use generic nouns like l?insan ‘person’ in expressions such as l?insan xaSSu ixdem ‘a person needs to work’, women generally foreground themselves in such expressions: xaSni nxdem ‘I need to work’. A reason for this is that Moroccan society expects women to be Moroccan females first; consequently, women know that they would score social gains if they foregrounded themselves in speech. In fact, in the Moroccan context, it is strongly believed that there are fundamental differences between being a man and being a woman. The division between male behavior and female behavior is made through the tacit use of the ‘unmarked/marked’ opposition which reproduces patriarchy and reinforces the fundamental differences, recreating, thus, dominance and subordination. Individuals are trained to behave according to sex as men and women and towards men and women; they keep moulding their bodies and their minds to the shape of subordination and dominance. Given this, one cannot avoid acting according to gender expectations in everyday life. For example, people generally behave according to gender norms in basic choices in marriage when they think that the husband needs to be taller, bigger, stronger, smarter, and older than the wife. Granting that there is variability, as nothing falls within nicely-cut categories, gender norms are constantly recreated by individuals in speech and behavior. Thus, gender distinctions and roles are not marked in the same way in the home and in public places. For example, bathrooms are not sex-specific at home, but they are in public places. Apart from gender distinctions, gender-related expectations in Moroccan culture are revealed in the fact that women’s dependence on men is favored and encouraged. For example, Moroccan women tend to describe themselves as appendages of males rather than independent human beings on their own right: mrat rrajel (a man’s wife), bent flan (a male’s daughter), bent l?aSel (daughter of root, meaning a girl whose family is conservative and known), etc.

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are some of the many expressions which women use to pride themselves in front of other people with the aim of achieving immediate gains such as social esteem in specific situations. Further, women often justify their actions by attributing them to their husbands’: kan wayyed ó ó dima f dari wu ma∫i mwa hmati hit rajli ma kaybgi∫ im∫i wandhum ‘I always stay at home during feasts and don’t go to my mother’s-in-law because my husband does not want to go to their (his parents’) house’. Such sentences are often said in contexts where women attribute decisions that are theirs to their husbands in order to escape public rebuke. On the basis of this, the ways in which men and women describe themselves is dictated by the roles that they are expected to play in society. These roles influence each sex’s priorities in relationships. Failure to play those roles often results in social exclusion and social taxation as ‘deviant’ or ‘abnormal’. The more a culture has an impact on the behavior of men and women, the less freedom these have in ‘manipulating’ their assigned social roles. Moroccan society is rigid in this respect and uses powerful cultural tools like folk religious interpretations and moralizing to ‘watch over’ women’s and men’s behavior, but identity-shifts sometimes force gender subversion. Therefore, gender identity is the sense that individuals have that they are male or female in a given culture. The relationship between gender and identity is dialectical: the way gender is constructed is an important means through which men and women construct themselves and are constructed as identities and subjects. Subsequently, economic dependence, legal inequality, the pressure of traditions, customs and taboo in Moroccan society and culture reinforce men’s privileges and impede women from publicly expressing their own identities in an easy way. However, these identities emerge in a conscious or unconscious way in specific situations. In fact, having a solid base in reality, identity keeps shifting as gender is constantly performed. Individuals need to affirm manifold other memberships in times of need: age, political party, religious, class, or any other membership. The changing social identities of individuals are apparent in the fact that a person is one as a man or a woman, but his or her social identity is plural, and this is propelled by linguistic means. Context plays a crucial role in the interpretation of these linguistic means. For example, in the expression bnadem Swib ‘an individual is difficult’, we understand that it is the individual who is difficult, but in the expression lklam Swib ‘speech is difficult’, the word Swib ‘difficult’ is

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determined by the social reference group’s speech. Accordingly, a paradox is created: on the one hand, there is very little link between the behavior of women and their sex roles, and on the other hand, there are huge differences inside sex categories. For example, all women do not constitute a ‘Community of Practice’ in the sense of McConnellGinet and Eckert (1992), Bucholtz (1999), among many others) because so far as mutual engagement is concerned, individuals vary significantly as individuals not as men or women. It is not that women are nurturing while men are not; rather, it is the potential sources of social power that are not the same for men and women: men and women are associated with different social roles and social roles do not carry the same social power. This is why men and women use different linguistic strategies that reflect their different social roles and their different potential sources of social power. This is corroborated by the fact that linguistic acts are fully meaningful only in their social context, which includes the sex of the speaker. If both men and women used the same linguistic strategies, the social return will significantly differ for both sexes. The relationship between gender, identity, and language is apparent in the fact that the individual’s overall self-image depends on the general context in which s/he grows and socializes, as well as on the specific language of socialization, and the specific gender role assignment within that context. The individual’s general self-image reflects an accumulation of attitudes towards self and others that an individual gradually absorbs as s/he grows up. This self-image is expressed through language and in accordance with the gender roles that are allocated in specific socio-cultural contexts. Thus, identity inevitably involves language and gender as the three concepts are not an all-or-none game. The interaction of language, gender, and identity is revealed by two elements: (i) the ways in which men and women perform gender through differentiated language practices and (ii) the complex interaction of gender with the social variables of geographical origin, class, level of education, etc. and the situational variables of setting, participants, topic, etc., as well as identity variables. Both ways show that gender, like language, is salient to an individual’s sense of who s/he is. Male and female speakers are similar as speakers in some ways, but different in others. For example, the discourse strategies that Moroccan women use are different from the ones that men use because discourse and culture are tightly related and human beings belong to different discursive and cultural systems at the same time.

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Another aspect of the relationship between identity, language, and gender is revealed in the negotiation of power, be it physical, political, social, or otherwise. This aspect of the identity-language-gender interaction has been widely investigated by scholars in the discipline of language and gender. Feminist linguists regard language as a social means through which identity and gender are constantly negotiated. However, although the theories of language and gender deal in a way or another with power, they do not give it the same status. The relationship between language and identity is indeed central in any analysis of language and gender. Identity is often constituted or marked by language as a matter of dominance or difference. Language is used to ‘mark’ an identity which is already given by society. As such, language is a set of learned surface features whose use conveys the message that ‘I am a woman’ or ‘I am a man’. This highlights the cultural norms and pressures which lead people to adopt specific behaviors: if a man uses language to be marked as ‘feminine’, this would be a more-or-less conscious deviance. The relationship between language, gender, and identity is, thus, deeply related to power by feminist linguists. Three power-related questions have been raised in this respect: (i) who controls language, in what way, and to what extent? (ii) Does power in language derive from other kinds of power (physical, political, economic)? (iii) Does linguistic power define reality and, thus, is the key to all other forms of domination? The debate around linguistic determinism has been conducted in extreme terms: either language is the main cause or a mere mirror of a ‘society’. Some linguists, such as Cameron (1996), take a middle position: language neither pre-exists social arrangements nor simply reflects them; it is part and parcel of the social. Cameron agrees with the Whorfians and semiologists that individuals are products of cultures and that it is the societies and the traditions in which they live that create their personalities, desires, behaviors and perceptions. Accordingly, most forces that shape individuals are unconscious and the self that is socially constructed is the real self. In spite of the firm grip of cultural forces on the (linguistic) behaviors of individuals, these individuals are agents who can reflect on themselves and actively interfere with events. Indeed, gender and power cannot be explained by language alone, as class, economics, and biology all enter in the explanation. The individual’s linguistic agency is monitored by his/her motives and immediate self-interest.

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Although motives and immediate self-interest are deeply interlocked, motives may be seen as somewhat different from immediate selfinterest in the sense that the former are more general and may not be directly related to self. For example, a speaker’s motive may be to speak on behalf of a third party (not himself or herself ). However, motives generally push the speaker to achieve a goal that is self-satisfying: when speaking on behalf of a third party, the speaker at the same time satisfies himself or herself. Immediate self-interest is the immediate gain that a speaker seeks to secure in a conversation. In order to achieve an immediate selfinterest, a speaker often uses all the linguistic devices available to him or her as the following conversation between a husband and his wife is meant to show: ó (1) Husband: ∫hal s-sawa? what the-watch What time is it? ó Wife: xlaS, baaqi lhal! Come on still early state Come on, it is still early! Husband: walayni xaSni nkammel ∫i xedma. but need-I finish some the-work But I need to finish some work. Wife: nta dima wan-dek l-xedma ma t-kammel. you always be with-you the-work that you-finish You always have work to finish. Husband: u zaydun ma-wend-i flus. and in addition not-be with-me money In addition, I have no money. Wife: lflus wend-i w zaydun ttafeq-na n-∫riw tllaja. money be with-me and then agreed-we we-buy fridge I have the money; moreover, we agreed to buy a fridge. Husband: aSbar n-tfarrej f had lmuselsel. wait I-watch in this series Wait until I watch this series. Wife: gir i-sali jib l-flus u aji! as soon as it-finish bring the-money and come As soon as it finishes, bring the money and come. Husband: waxxa a lalla. All right oh mistress All right my dear.

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In the exchange in (1) above, neither the husband nor the wife are using speech literally. The husband’s immediate self-interest is to stay home, whereas the wife’s is to go out and buy a fridge. The two self-interests clash and both participants have to work on their strategies to score gains and satisfy their self-interest in the conversation. Realizing that his wife will win, the husband seeks to secure a smaller gain by making her wait in order not to loose outright. At face value, the fact that the husband says that he has work to finish and the fact that the wife says that she has the money are pure lies, but neither of the spouses accuses the other of lying; each implicitly presumes that the lying is part of the game and pursues his or her strategy to score a gain. Within the overall gender role allocation in Moroccan culture, it is the husband who ‘publicly’ decides on what and when to buy things, but in the above exchange the wife wins out. She even uses the money argument to put more pressure on the husband. Self-interests vary from situation to situation and from participant to participant and in the flow of conversation, the moment a selfinterest is secured, another one is created either to support the first one and score more gains or to shift attention to something else. Being related to people as individuals with different and changing personalities and self-interests, identity is neither a monolithic nor a static concept. It is fluid, ambivalent, pervasive and multi-faceted, as it is not only dictated by the immediate (and changing) self-interest of participants in given contexts, but also by the cultural, social and situational parameters that monitor the individuals’ speech behavior. As such, identity is not only affected by internal factors (the self ), but also by external factors (cultural, social and situational) and both types of factors are indexed in speech by linguistic markers and devices. The interaction of these two types of factors shows that identity factors widen the concept of gender more than the social and situational ones by adding more fine-grained categories of analysis such as motives and immediate self-interest. This widening of the concept of gender in conversational practices reveals that the various variables that have traditionally been subsumed under the term ‘gender’ are in fact reflexes of cultural, social, situational and identity variables. The decomposition of gender into a multitude of ‘acts’ does not mean that the social salience of gender is not valid; it only means that gender is not a natural given (cf. McConnel-Ginet and Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992) and in order to understand the real workings of gender as a complex category, we need to deconstruct it.

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Granting that identity is the image that a person has of his or her self, and the way they want to present this image to the others in specific contexts, the expression of the self according to motives and self-interest in specific contexts may be seen as styles in the same way that the expression of social belonging is. Linguistic studies have shown that an individual speaker of a language possesses competence that allows him or her to control a range of styles and use them appropriately in various situations (cf. Chafe 1985, Tannen 1985, Chafe and Danelwicz 1987, Biber 1988, West 1995, Freed 1996, among many others). The use of styles in conversations may be likened to ‘fighting’ in ‘arenas’ where participants constantly try to get their interests through by using strategies that vary according to the setting, the topic, and the interlocutors. ‘Loosing’ in such encounters endangers identity, and threatens the face of speakers as participants in conversations. Identity variables constitute the basis of communication and conversational practices. In everyday conversations, these variables interact in a complex way with cultural, social, and context contextual factors. Thus, participants continuously negotiate identity in accordance with various variables such as class, economic privilege, activity, audience, status, personality, social networks, market forces, immediate motives, communicative goals, etc. in specific settings (cf. Bergvall et al., 1996). The way women as individuals perceive themselves and others crucially depends on their expectations of who should convey which social meanings, when, where, and for what specific purpose. The interaction of these variables is neither ‘additive’, that is variables are not simply added to one another in a ‘cumulative’ way, nor easily separated, but inter-wined and complex (cf. Keenan 1974, Goodwin 1980, Gal 1989, hooks 1990, Lave and Wenger 1991, Eckert and McConnel-Ginet 1992, Ochs 1992, Freed and Greenwood 1996, Bucholtz 1996, Meyerhoff 1996, Polanyi and Strassman 1996). Participants choose to highlight or ‘discard’ given identities by either participating or refusing to participate in specific practices (cf. Hall and O’Donavan 1996). Motives and self-interest, as well participants’ endeavours to assert themselves in conversations, confirm the aforementioned fact that identity, language, and gender interact in a complex way with power. This interaction can be understood only within specific socio-cultural contexts. For example, the husband-wife exchange in (1) above makes sense in the Moroccan context, but may be perceived as a ‘quarrel’ or ‘severe disagreement’ in mainstream Western contexts.

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The interaction between identity, language and gender is greatly enhanced by non-linguistic factors such as age. So far as Moroccan women are concerned, the age factor is extremely important in understanding social meanings: while young age is appreciated in the overall culture in the sense that it allows women more choice in finding a husband, the older the woman is the more self-assertive she becomes. In all-female groups, for example, older women are more articulate and more likely to achieve self-interests than younger ones. The interaction between identity, language and gender also highlights the fact that linguistic acts that carry social meaning and achieve impact have the power of actions and are called ‘speech acts’ (cf. Austin 1962 and Searle 1975). In the following section, the speech act of ‘introducing’ is considered in a specific situation (encounters) and in a specific city: Fes. The aim of this section is to further highlight the complexity of identity, language and gender negotiation in everyday language use. Although a very straightforward and ordinary act, introducing indexes important social meanings and allows negotiation on the basis of parameters that are relevant to the community of Fes. The study of introductions in Fes shows the fluidity and pervasiveness of identity variables and attests to the within-self heterogeneity of Moroccan women. T M S1 This section focuses on Moroccan women’s ‘self ’ heterogeneity as individuals. An appreciation of this heterogeneity may be understood only within the overall Moroccan socio-cultural context because it is created and developed in this context. It is not easy to deal with women’s many selves in a culture that does not cultivate the individual self. The notion of self in the Moroccan culture is perceived as essentially collective in the sense that the individual is accountable to the community before he or she is accountable to himself/herself. On the basis of this view, what constitutes one’s overall identity, the extent to which this identity is overtly recognized, and the purpose(s) for which a specific identity is highlighted are intricate issues. If we add to this the gender dimension, the issues become more complex. More than men, Moroccan women find themselves 1 This section is partly based on an earlier version of Sadiqi (2002). However, more data and analysis, as well as amendments to fit the general orientation of this book, are included in this section.

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in a complex web of ‘shifting’ identities, due to socio-cultural constraints. One way of ‘capturing’ this identity-shift and understanding it is by considering the interplay of the social, situational, and identity variables in cultural interactions where social meanings are negotiated through the use of language. One such interaction is introductions; more precisely introductions in the city of Fes.2 It is important to note at the outset that although the form and constructions of introductions vary cross-culturally and even within the same culture, the concept of introducing people to other people is generally conceived as part and parcel of social politeness. For example, the Western concept of introductions is found in Moroccan urban areas, as well as in some rural areas, but generally speaking, urban and rural people greet and introduce each other in ways that are specific to them. Regardless of form, both rural and urban Moroccans are aware of the social function of introductions and express intricacies of politeness in ways that are specific to them. The Language of Introductions The language of introductions in the city of Fes reveals many aspects of Moroccan women’s selves. Fes is a Moroccan city which symbolizes tradition, modernity, social prestige, knowledge, know-how, and wealth in a developing multilingual Muslim country where religion and cultural values control the social norms and behavior of individuals, especially women. Although the social meanings of these symbols have changed relatively over the years as a result of modernity, migration, and social movement, they are still strongly adhered to by presentday inhabitants of Fes. These symbols have created a number of oppositions inside the community, such as between the rich and poor or between the Fassis—that is, the people whose families originally came from southern Spain and settled in Fes—and the non-Fassis. These oppositions are sociolinguistically important as they involve an interesting interplay of cultural, social, situational, and identity variables which range from sex, local geographical origin, class, setting, participants, age, and self-interest. The fact that these oppositions are indexed in introductions attests to their social significance, as introductions take a relatively short ‘space’ in the process of social interactions, and highlight only what is socially most important. 2

I chose Fes because I have been living in this city for more than two decades.

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Methodology The investigation of the language of introductions in Fes was based on a sample of fifty people. As introductions involve meeting people, usually for the first time, they naturally take place in specific social interactions which may be categorized in two types: (i) interactions in which people meet as part of everyday activity, and (ii) interactions in which the meeting of others is prearranged. For ease of exposition, the first type is termed ‘encounters’ and the second type ‘situations’. These are not technical terms and no theoretical assumption hinges on their use in this section. The encounters and situations that were investigated included all-men, all-women, and mixed-sex settings. They varied in terms of frequency and formality: encounters were more frequent than situations, and both encounters and situations ranged from formal to less formal to informal. Encounters took place in locations where I usually found herself such as the university, the Sports Club, the market place, and other semipublic places like get-togethers with friends, national conferences, and the public bath. As for the situations, they included a marriage ceremony, a birth ceremony, a birthday party, and a school end-ofyear party. Both encounters and situations are culturally valid events in the everyday lives of Moroccans as they constitute part of the Moroccan way of life. The methods that I found most suitable for gathering information about introductions in the city of Fes are (i) a background questionnaire, (ii) interviews, (iii) videotapes, and (iv) spontaneous observation. Background Questionnaire The aim of the questionnaire was to elicit background information from participants. The questionnaire was written in both Arabic and French and was distributed only among participants who could read and write. The major types of information targeted were the participants’ responses as to the frequency with which they either introduced others or were introduced by others in various mixed and same-sex settings, as well as the main types of information that they liked others to know about them, the meaning of this information to them, their reaction to specific types of information, etc. The background questionnaire was cross-checked by subsequent interviews and observation.

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Interviews Interviews lasted approximately fifteen minutes and targeted both educated and non-educated participants. In the case of the former, interviews served to cross-check the information obtained by means of the background questionnaire. Almost 50% of the 50 participants who responded to the background questionnaire were, thus, interviewed. In the case of the latter group, questions were used to elicit data from a large portion of participants which included elderly women and men who neither read nor write. In the interviews, the questions asked in the background questionnaire were basically rephrased. Videotapes In the videotapes, data from fifteen social interactions where the act of introduction took place was collected (cf. the section on participants below). All the participants in these interactions knew that they were videotaped. Videotapes proved to be an excellent means of social interaction analysis. Observation Another method of research used for the analysis of introductions in the city of Fes was observation. As spontaneity was capitalized on, natural observation and introspection were relevant to the nature of the sought information. It was convenient to gather observational data on introductions as the act of introduction occurs frequently. Observation was also useful in the sense that it allowed me to become more acquainted with participants and, hence, to relate linguistic behavior to extralinguistic phenomena more easily. In the background questionnaire, interviews, and videotapes, the variables of sex, local geographical origin, social status, and identity were controlled. The local geographical origin was controlled by singling out the characteristics of the Fassi dialect. It was relevant that the groups’ composition was of the same or mixed sexes. There were obviously different patterns according to gender and other equally important variables. The social status was controlled by concentrating on interactions where men and women addressed participants of higher and lower status than their own. Finally, the identity factor was controlled by analysing the speech changes that resulted from shifts of self-interest. In analysing the obtained data, frequency and formality were controlled by statistical and approximate percentage calculations, as well as by estimates.

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Participants The number of participants varied with the type of methodology used. For the background questionnaire, I had responses from fifty participants, roughly half of whom were women. I interviewed half of these participants: thirteen women and twelve men. I videotaped fifteen interactions (encounters and situations). Each interaction contained a different number of participants. I also kept in touch with a number of participants with whom I had the opportunity to meet more frequently outside the interactions per se. Participants included men and women of various geographical and socio-economic backgrounds, of various age groups, and with various levels of education. All these participants lived in the city of Fes. Some of them were born and raised there; others lived in Fes for various periods of time. Two significant facts need to be mentioned at this juncture: first, some participants called themselves Fassis; other did not, although they were born and lived all their lives in Fes. Second, although some of the participants were educated and some were not, all participants had varying degrees of exposure to the French language and culture, through which the modern notion of introductions ‘infiltrated’ into Moroccan society. The preliminary classification of participants was carried out on the basis of sex and social class. Positionality In carrying out these methods of research inside the groups, I have always felt that I have enough of an insider and an outsider status. The issues of insider status involve the fact that I am a woman, I speak the languages of the informants, I am a University Professor in Fes and, hence, many of my informants know or have heard of me. As for the issues of outsider status, they involve the fact that I do not originate from Fes and I have a clear Berber accent. There are positive and negative aspects to each status. For example while I sometimes felt that my upper class Fassi informants did not consider me ‘really theirs’ because I was not Fassi, I felt I had enough freedom to observe their behavior and analyse it. I also felt that irrespective of geographical origin or class, my informants held me in great esteem. Indeed, I had enough of an insider status because I easily integrated in the groups I worked with as I have been living in Fes for more than two decades and, hence, have come to understand the local speech habits. On the other hand, I had enough of an outsider status because I felt able to establish methods of information

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elicitation, especially observation, as well as methods of comparison with speech habits from other parts of Morocco, such as Ait Hassan (a Berber region of Azilal), Nador, Oujda, Rabat, Casablanca, and Beni Mellal, where I have lived for varying periods of time. Types of Introductions Before dealing with the types of introductions in the community of Fes, the semantic forms that are used in these introductions are presented first as these correlate with the types. The Form of Introductions: Semantic Formulae Being short segments of talk, introductions are usually expressed by specific semantic formulae that appear in an early stage of the socialization process, usually when people meet or become acquainted for the first time. These semantic formulae are not consistently expressed in one language. Generally speaking, Moroccans introduce themselves or are introduced in French or Moroccan Arabic. In this respect, it is interesting to note that although there are ways of greeting people, there are no ‘ritualised’ expressions of introductions or introduction semantic formulae in Berber. The Berber phrases used at the beginning of socializations in encounters and situations change according to the topics of conversations. In this language, an information-seeking question about the name and father’s name of the introducee usually functions as the introduction. The language of the semantic formulae depends crucially on the type of introductions. An analysis of the data suggests that two types of introductions are used by participants. The first type may be termed ‘direct introductions’ as they resemble the European, especially the French, type of introductions, and the second type may be called ‘indirect introductions’ as they have the form of direct questions and carry local sociocultural overtones. Direct Introductions The standard structure of direct introductions includes the following components: (2) a. Greeting b. Je te/vous présente Monsieur/Madame/Mademoiselle/Docteur/Maître/ Colonel/Son Excellence . . .

   

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Or kanqademlek ssi/msiu/madam/lalla/madmozil/ddoktor/ddoktora/lkolonil/sawadat . . . Let me introduce Mister/Missus/Miss/Doctor/Colonel/His Excellency . . . c. First name of the person introduced d. Family name or father’s name preceded by ben ‘son of ’ or bent ‘daughter of ’ e. Title (according to occupation), especially if the introducee is a medical doctor, a pharmacist, a lawyer, a military officer, or a university teacher. In the case of married women, the name and occupation of the husband may be given. This is almost always preceded by mra-t ‘wife of ’.

So far as the titles are concerned, Madame is used when introducing a woman only when her husband is present or when the woman is known to be married. Otherwise, the title Mademoiselle ‘Miss’ is generally preferred among women, especially if they are young. When introducing men, the title ssi or Monsieur is consistently used. In the case of both men and women, the professional title is generally provided if the introduced person is male and, less frequently if the person is female. Thus, Docteur is used for medical doctors and university teachers, Maître is used for lawyers (men and women), and lkolonel or sawadat ‘His Excellency’ for ministers, ambassadors, governors, etc. The standard response of the introducee is: (3) (Très) enchanté(e) (Very) honored

in the case of French introductions, and (4) met∫erfin we are honored I am honored

in the case of Moroccan Arabic introductions. Whereas the French response has no variant, the Moroccan Arabic response may be replaced by one of the following expressions: (5) a. ahlan wa sahlan! You are welcome! b. tbark allah wlik! God bless you! c. nwam ?a sidi/lalla! Yes Mister/Missus/Miss!

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In spite of the fact that Moroccan Arabic direct introductions are similar to the French ones, they differ from them along two lines: first, Moroccan Arabic introductions allow a wider variety of linguistic expressions as replies, and second, these alternative replies carry local cultural overtones. These replies, for example, carry religious overtones and serve as a politeness strategy. For the sake of clarity, some background information on Moroccan norms for greetings and leave-takings in general is appropriate. In Morocco, it is much more important (even ‘required’ in some sense) to greet and explicitly take leave of everyone at encounters like social gatherings, or at least everyone or nearly everyone one knows—far more than is the case in Western countries such the United States, for example. Almost all forms of greetings and leave-takings in the Moroccan cultural context have literal religious meanings. The following are a few examples: (6) a. ssalamu walikum! 3 God/Peace on you!2 Hi! b. llah ihannik! God bestows peace on you!/May God give you peaceful! Good bye! ó c. llah yaswed ssabah/lmasa! God makes happy morning/evening Good morning/evening! d. rebbi ywawen! God helps May God help you! e. llah i-Sebbh-k bi-xir! God he-will make pass the night-you with-good Good night! f. i-xalli-k li-li! he-preserves-you for-me May God preserve you for me! Please! or Thank you!

Direct introductions are usually carried out in accordance with a specific protocol. For example, the direct type of introductions is usually conducted in rather formal settings where participants are formally dressed and where speech is ritualized. An analysis of the number of participants (men and women) in the observed or videotaped interactions where direct introductions took place allowed me 3

‘Salaam’ is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam.

   

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to draw the following statistical figures. Each interaction was constituted of an approximate number of 40 people. (7)

N   3 4 to 5 Over 5

T   direct direct direct

P 10% 30% 60%

The greater the number of participants involved in interactions where the direct introductions took place, the more formal the encounter or situation were. Furthermore, the greater the number of participants in direct introductions was the less time was allocated to ‘small talk’ between these participants. It is sometimes the case that direct introductions were verbally solicited by participants who wished other people to know who they were. The videotapes recordings and observation showed that the participants involved in direct introductions were in the majority of cases educated, good-mannered, well-dressed, modern-looking, and bilingual in the sense that they used Arabic and French. The salient characteristic of direct introductions is that they are formal. They usually take place in encounters and situations involving formal interactions and rigid protocol, as well as in business meetings, or settings involving some kind of hierarchical ranking— which may be social, professional, or religious—or in the presence of a male or a female complete stranger. The rather rigid nature of the protocol of direct introductions may sometimes make these introductions be perceived as ‘artificial’ in Moroccan culture. However, according to the background questionnaire and interpretations, participants in general have a very positive attitude towards the use of direct introductions either by themselves or by others. The following are some of the responses given by participants. These responses were translated from Arabic or French into English: (8) – ‘Direct introductions are a sign of education, modernity and good up-bringing’. – ‘I like to be introduced in a formal way because people will respect me after that’. – ‘Direct introductions reflect a civilized way of communicating with others; they do not clash with our cultural beliefs’. – ‘I like to be introduced in French because it gives me social importance’.

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These attitudes are corroborated by the fact that the absence of direct introductions in formal settings involving first encounters is generally considered by participants to be extremely rude. Here are a few reactions to lack of introductions in formal settings: – ‘When I am not introduced to strangers, I feel ignored and marginalized’. – ‘Lack of introductions in formal settings is a sign of under-development’. – ‘Lack of introductions in formal settings is a means of excluding people, and that is bad’.

Indirect Introductions As for indirect introductions, they have the form of questions which politely ‘force’ the person addressed in a conversation (the addressee) to identify himself or herself. These questions invariably have the form of bent men/weld men ntina? ‘whose daughter/whose son are you?’. Although they appear to be ‘rude’ for a non-local speaker, such ‘questions’ are not consciously meant by inhabitants of Fes to be so. In fact, in first encounters, natives of Fes expect to be asked such ‘questions’. The main purpose of these ‘questions’ is to identify the addressee’s family name and, hence, figure out ways in which the questioner/inquirer relates to this addressee. If the addressee is a married woman, a second question may seek to identify the husband’s family background as well. Although they do not have the form of standard Western-type introductions, these questions are genuine methods of introduction which allow self-identification in encounters and situations and, hence, serve the same purpose as typical introductions. In fact, this type of introductions usually leads to identification of the introducer either by having the former ask the latter the same question or by the latter giving his or her identity right after the former’s identification. Sometimes, the introducee gives full identification of himself or herself by specifying his or her family affiliation without being asked the question in the first place. This shows the extent to which indirect introductions are frequent in the city of Fes, and, hence, expected to take place in first encounters. This also shows that more than direct introductions, indirect introductions explicitly index the Fassi/nonFassi opposition in speech. Although they are not considered rude by the inhabitants of Fes, indirect introductions are often felt to be so by people who are not acquainted with the linguistic norms and expectations of the Fassi

   

291

community. These people often perceive such introductions as either ‘too bold’ or ‘aggressive’ and often react negatively to them. Contrary to direct introductions, indirect introductions tend to take place in relatively smaller groups of participants (both men and women). The following statistical figures are based on the observed or videotaped interactions where indirect introductions took place. Again, the number of people in each interaction is around 40. (9)

N   3 4 to 5 over 5

T   indirect indirect indirect

P 9% 28% 63%

The table in (9) above reveals a complementary distribution with respect to the number of participants in direct and indirect introductions. The way Moroccans introduce each other in Berber may also be qualified as ‘indirect introductions’. For the sake of comparison, here is an extract from a conversation between three Berber women: Yamna, Hlima, and Itto. The setting is Yamna’s house, Yamna introduces Hlima to Itto. (10) Yamna: lla wewn, maytawnamt? sellem f Itto. hi, how are you-PF greet on Itto Hi, how are you? say hello to Itto! ó Hlima: ma-mi ga l-hal a ultma, izd utt Hssan a t-gi-t? What-to you is the-state o sister-my whether of Hassan that you-are-you How are you, sister? Are you from Ait Hassan? Itto: ihi, fi-g tawyyalt inu i Yamna, umma kmmin ma-ys g- t-gi-t ? no gave-I girl my to Yamna and you where-from you-are-you No, I married my daughter to Yamna’s son, and you, where are you from? Hlima: utt Buzid ad gi- g, ddi- g-d ad izar- g aTbib. of Buzid that am-I came-I-here to see-I doctor I am from Ait Buzid, I cam here to see the doctor. Itto: ad-am i-wfu rebbi! may-to you he-cure God May God cure you!

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In the extract in (10) above, Yamna introduces Hlima to Itto by literally asking her to greet the latter whom she was meeting for the first time. Although no introduction formula is used, Hlima and Itto succeeded in establishing a first contact by each asking the other about their tribe of origin and the motive of their presence. This type of introductions is very similar to the indirect introductions in Fes. However, unlike the Fassi instance, focus in the Berber extract is more on the region of origin than on the name of the family. The following is a very short extract of introductions among males that I had recorded in a marriage ceremony in a Berber village in the Middle Atlas, in central Morocco. On this occasion, there was a famous Berber singer who sang for the guests. After the ceremony, the host introduced some distinguished guests to the singer: (11) Host:

wadx Moha u Haddu. this one Moha of Haddu This is Moha son of Haddu! Singer: m∫∫iin! Poor one! Host: wadx Lahsen u Hammu! this one Lahsen of Hammu This is Lahsen u Hammu! Singer: m∫∫iin! Poor one!

And so on . . . The setting of this extract is more formal than the one in the extract in (10) above. Part of the formality of the setting is due to the presence of a nationally known singer. In this context, the word m∫∫iin ‘poor one’ does not express ‘pity’ but modesty and an attempt to be close to the introducee. This word is derived from the Arabic word meskin ‘poor’ and is usually used in some parts of the Middle Atlas as a reply to a direct introduction where the name of the introducee is mentioned. The above two examples of Berber female and male introductions are meant to draw attention to the fact that each social group constructs its own introductions and that variation among individuals is not excluded. Extralinguistic Properties of Introductions Both direct and indirect introductions are usually accompanied by extralinguistic behavior such as handshaking, kissing on both cheeks,

   

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hugs, and silence. Hugs form part and parcel of female introductions in all-female informal, and sometimes formal, settings. They often express a sense of belonging and a desire to keep in touch. In the presence of complete strangers, especially those from upper classes, hugs are means of establishing contact. The latter are frequent among an emerging new class of businesswomen in Fes who need to ‘attract’ new female clients. As for handshaking, it usually accompanies formal, especially French-type introductions. It is usually followed by silence or polite linguistic forms of indirectly obtaining ‘relevant’ information from the participants, such as their occupation and social rank. In Morocco, men and women greet members of their respective sex with kisses (at least ‘air kisses’ for men) and hugs. Silence is usually attested in two contexts: first, in very formal mixed-sex settings where people do not know each other, and second, in upper class formal all-female settings where participants do not wish to make ampler acquaintance with other women from lower classes. Cheek-kissing and hugs are almost the only extralinguistic features of indirect introductions among lower social classes. Silence is considered very rude among participants from these classes. C B  T  I  I The interactions where direct and indirect introductions took place were classified according to gender and class. These two variables were felt to be the most important in triggering change in the form and content of introductions. Classification According to Sex A classification of participants on the basis of sex reveals that introductions vary according to who introduces who, to whom, and in what setting. Thus, the speaker, the hearer and the setting are crucially relevant. On the basis of these variables, eight different types of interactions in which introductions took place were singled out; they are presented below as groups for ease of exposition: (12) – Group 1: Males introducing males in all-male settings – Group 2: Males introducing females in otherwise all-male settings

 

294 – – – – – –

Group Group Group Group Group Group

3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8:

Males introducing males in mixed-sex settings Males introducing females in mixed-sex settings Females introducing females in all-female settings Females introducing males in otherwise all-female settings Females introducing females in mixed-sex settings Females introducing males in mixed-sex settings

Granting some degree of homogeneity in class and level of education, a male introducing a male in an all-male setting or a female introducing a female in an all-female setting does not generally involve a gender element and, thus, triggers a relatively more relaxed atmosphere. On the other hand, when a male introduces a female in an otherwise all-male setting, or when a female introduces a male in an otherwise all-female setting, the gender aspect of the overall situation surfaces and the atmosphere automatically becomes less relaxed and more formal. The introduced woman in such a context is in most cases related to one or several of the males and often resorts to silence with the aim of gaining respect and producing an effect. In such contexts, Moroccan women may achieve social prestige and respect through silence. When a male or a female introduces a person from the same sex in mixed-sex setting, the gender factor becomes more prominent. The same is true when a male or a female introduces a person from the opposite sex. These inter-group differences are important in the sense that they affect the whole situation of introductions. In fact, each type of the above eight interactions produces a specific type of introductions. On the basis of broad percentages, these correlations are recorded in the following table; the number of the people involved in each group varied between 8 and 20. (13) G Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6 Group 7 Group 8

D  70% 80% 60% 50% 60% 70% 80% 75%

I  30% 20% 40% 50% 40% 30% 20% 25%

The variable of sex has an impact on three aspects of introductions: (i) their frequency, (ii) their formality, and (iii) their initiation. So far

   

295

as the first aspect is concerned, the same-sex settings are more common contexts for introductions to take place in than the mixed-sex settings. Instances of group 2 and group 6, for example, are rather rare (15%), although instances of group 6 are more common than instances of group 2 (25%). As for the second aspect, the variable of sex has a direct effect on the formality/informality of the settings. Same-sex groups tend to be less formal than mixed-sex groups. Groups 1 and 5, for example, are the least formal. Groups 4 and 8 are more formal, but group 4 is slightly more formal than group 8. On the other hand, groups 2 and 6 are the most formal groups, and groups 3 and 7 are less formal. The scale of formality is concordant with the specific social meanings that each type of introductions carries. It is also concordant with the frequency of introductions in general; indeed, the more relaxed a setting is the more likely introductions are to take place. Finally, concerning the third aspect, the initiation of introductions largely depends on the variable of sex; in mixed-sex settings, it is usually the case that a male performs the act of introduction. Classification According to Social Class The participants belonged to upper, middle, and lower social classes. A rough estimate may be presented as follows: 10% belonged to upper classes, 50% to middle classes, and 40% to lower classes. The variable of social class has an impact on three aspects of introductions: (i) the choice of the language of introductions, (ii) the initiation of introductions, and (iii) the explicit indexing of the local geographical origin in speech. So far as the first aspect is concerned, the choice of French depends almost exclusively on class, as upper- and middleclass participants usually use French when introducing others. So far as the second aspect is concerned, it is usually the case that upperand middle- class participants initiate introductions. Finally, family affiliation is explicitly indexed in introductions by participants from upper, middle and lower classes. In the latter case, age is important: older women index family affiliation more than younger women. The variable of social class interacts with the variable of sex in a significant way. For example, upper-class women initiate introductions more than upper-class men. This may be due to women’s greater need for social prestige as a result of lesser choices in the overall socio-cultural context (cf. Sadiqi 1995, 1997b). This may also

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be due to what Fishman (1980) termed ‘interactional shitwork’ that women are expected to do. In either case, the difference is evidence of how women perform class, gender, and age simultaneously. A Introductions allow analysis within a rather restricted local domain which, like most local domains, is suitable for defining who the participants are, what they mean, and how they like people to perceive them. In this section I analyse (i) the social meanings of the various types of information indexed in introductions with first an emphasis on the local geographical origin variable, then on gender, class, and age correlations, respectively, and (ii) identity shifts that accompany introductions, especially in relation to the gender variable. Social Meanings of Introductions Introductions are conducted through the use of language. They are speech acts in the sense that they constitute minimal and meaningful units of interaction (cf. Herbert 1986, Wolfson 1984, Holmes 1984, 1989). As units of social interaction, introductions require more than one participant and may be said to constitute a meaning-making Community of Practice in the sense of Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), as they almost always trigger oppositions like Fassi/non-Fassi, rich/poor, men/women, and young/old. Given the relatively short time allocated to introductions in conversations in general, the information they encode represents what a given community values most and, hence, foregrounds to the beginning of the socialization processes. This is significant as the way conversations are started greatly influence the way they develop. In both their modern direct form and their traditional indirect form, introductions are part of the social etiquette system in Morocco. The modern form of introductions is a legacy of the European (especially French) system of etiquette, and there is no counterpart of it in Moroccan culture. For example, rural people’s norms for politeness and construction of face (in the sense of Brown and Levinson 1987) are different from those of urbanites; they do not introduce people or get introduced by people in social encounters through the use of specific semantic formulae, but this does not mean they are not polite.

   

297

In the Moroccan urban context, introductions carry specific social meanings. The primary social function of introductions is to set out the communication experience. Within the Moroccan context, this setting out triggers four socially meaningful and mutually interacting oppositions that are linguistically indexed: Fassi/non-Fassi, rich/poor, men/women, and young/old. As the first opposition greatly influences the way the other ones are ‘activated’, I discuss it first, then deal with the class, gender, and age correlations in conveying significant social meanings. Fassi/non-Fassi In the process of introductions, the first piece of information that participants usually seek to know about a complete stranger in an encounter or a situation is whether or not the person is Fassi. Being Fassi means belonging to a socially ‘prestigious’ family, presumably ‘being rich’, ‘modern’, ‘educated’, and ‘snobbish’. By implication, being non-Fassi, generally categorizes individuals as socially ‘less prestigious’, ‘rural’, ‘uncivilized’, and from a presumably lower social class. These qualifications are generally considered as ‘givens’ in the minds of participants. Being Fassi basically means ‘belonging to one of the Fassi families’, a fact which is socially valued in Fes. Most Fassi families are proud to speak about their genealogy. From a broader historical perspective, family names are relatively recent in the Moroccan sociocultural context. In the old traditional social framework, people usually carried their father’s (and sometimes mother’s) name as part of their own. Even in present-day Morocco, people in rural areas are still named after their father: Moha u Lahsen, Fadma u Ali (the Berber forms of ‘Moha son of Lahsen’ and ‘Fadma daughter of Ali’), Mohamed ben Haddu, Yamna bent Ahmed (the Moroccan Arabic forms of ‘Mohamed son of Haddu’ and ‘Yamna daughter of Ahmed’). The importance of family names in Fes is attested in the fact that, unlike most other regions of Morocco, people who originate from Fes have a family name and seldom change it. This does not mean that people from other regions do not value family names; it only means that family names tend to have more social meaning in Fes than in other cities of Morocco. The importance of family names in Fes is apparent in the fact that the sex of the referent is sometimes linguistically indexed in the family name during the process of

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introductions. For example, a woman belonging to a family named Sqalli or Cohen may be introduced as Sqallia or Cuhna where the final a encodes feminine gender. The derived terms are generally used to refer to the introducee as a mark of prestige. Such linguistic appellations index social information that either creates or breaks a circle of intimacy. Further, relatively poor members of a once rich family usually cling to their family name and use it to keep up the social prestige. Given the social meaning of family names, people who call themselves ‘Fassi’ assert this fact both overtly (by stating it) and covertly (by implying it) in the process of introducing or being introduced, whereas the non-Fassi resent the appellation, either overtly or covertly, although some of them may happen to have lived all their lives in Fes. To be born and raised in Fes does not qualify one as Fassi; it is rather the family name and affiliation that do. It is interesting to note that people who have been raised in Fes usually acquire the Fassi dialect with all its linguistic characteristics except the Fassi r, a type of rolled r which is the most characterizing feature of the Fassi variety. Reluctance to consciously pronounce r in the Fassi way by these people shows that socially, only Fassi people are expected to use it in their speech. The social meaning carried by the linguistic indexing of the opposition Fassi/non-Fassi creates and perpetuates the following cliches in the minds of the inhabitants of Fes: Fassi people generally belong to upper or middle classes; some of them may belong to lower classes, but these are neither very poor nor rural, even if they may own land; Fassis are keen on keeping up ‘wealthy’ appearances and prefer to marry only within the Fassi community unless the party is rich. These cliches are reflected in everyday expressions such as weld Fes ‘son of Fes’ or bent Fes ‘daughter of Fes’ which clearly demarcate Fassis from non-Fassis as socially ‘more prestigious’. This demarcation is further reinforced by the frequent use of the expression Fes TxelleT ‘Fes became mixed’ by Fassi people from all social classes meaning that Fes is loosing its ‘purity’ as the non-Fassi population, usually Jbalas (people from the rural areas surrounding Fes), is ‘constantly invading’ it. The social meanings that the opposition Fassi/non-Fassi carries are supported by the broader Moroccan ideological and sociocultural context which strongly favors education, wealth, and modernity and, thus, creates power relations inside the community. It is a fact that

   

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people in a community aspire to reach the ideals set as positive by a given culture. On the basis of this, it is only natural that the various social meanings of introductions significantly influence the type of introductions and presumably the overall nature of the ensuing conversations. They have an great impact on three aspects of introductions: (i) the frequency of introductions, (ii) the choice of the language, and (iii) the time allocated to introductions. So far as the frequency of introductions is concerned, Fassi people tend to frequently introduce themselves or other Fassi people because of the positive social prestige that is expressed in these introductions. The Fassi element also largely influences the participants’ amount of intimacy and degree of cooperation in ensuing communication processes. For many speakers that were interviewed, the Fassi/non-Fassi opposition either lifts or creates communication barriers between interacts, especially in first encounters. As for the choice of language, Fassi upper- and middle- class participants, especially young women, use French. Older women in these social classes tend to use Moroccan Arabic either because they are religious or because they do not know enough French. As for lower Fassi classes, they tend to use Moroccan Arabic because they mix more with non-Fassi lower classes. The use of French in Morocco is very dependent on an interplay of class, sex, age and religion. French is used in urban upper and middle classes by women and men throughout Morocco. Lower classes, however, generally use Moroccan Arabic. Younger people—especially from the middle and upper classes—tend to use French, and older people—especially from the lower classes—tend to use Moroccan Arabic. Finally, the more religious a person is the less French he or she uses. Concerning the time allocated to introductions, when the Fassi element is indexed in an introduction, the time of the encounter is relatively longer. The reason is that either the participants are Fassi and, thus, find a common ground for ‘stretching’ the communication process, or one of the participants is Fassi, and, hence, takes the opportunity to ‘show off ’ and be proud of his/her family background. The amount of time allocated to introductions varies according to whether the introduction is direct or indirect; it is generally longer in the case of indirect introductions. In this type of introductions, participants, especially older women, have often asserted in the interviews that they find asking questions about the family background an effective tool of seeking qualities such as ‘good upbringing’, ‘know-how’, and ‘level of education’. They consider these qualities

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crucial in choosing a future daughter-in-law, for example, hence the frequency of indirect introductions in formal gatherings which involve family celebrations such as marriages or birth ceremonies. The ‘extra’ time that indirect introductions take to highlight the significance of the Fassi element is not generally appreciated by non-Fassi participants. Many participants have stated that this practice carries clear overtones of ‘negative attitude’ and ‘exclusion’. As a reaction, many of these participants would stress their identity by exaggerating their ‘non-Fassiness’ in their speech. This section has shown that the opposition Fassi/non-Fassi is very alive and meaningful in the city of Fes. It is interesting to note that this opposition cuts across the variables of class, gender, and age, which have, traditionally, been given as the most powerful social variables in sociolingusitic studies across cultures (cf. Labov 1972, Trudgill 1974). Class, Gender, and Age Correlations with the Fassi Variable An analysis of the data reveals the following general picture: the variable of sex correlates most with the variable of age; these two variables correlate more significantly with the variable of local geographical origin than with the variable of social class, although the latter has a considerable effect on initiating introductions. The variable of class is important in introductions. Being socially categorized as ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ roughly corresponds to the geographic division of the ville nouvelle ‘new city’ and the Medina ‘old city’, at least in the minds of participants. This has its roots in the fact that historically, the Medina preceded the new or modern city of Fes. In fact, most of the original inhabitants of the old Medina moved to the new city where they built more modern-looking houses as they became richer. The variable of social class correlates with the variables of sex and age in one aspect of the structure of introductions: their initiation. The findings suggest that higher-status men generally initiate introductions in all-women encounters and situations, and higher-status women generally initiate introductions in all-women encounters and situations. Accordingly, it seems that the social factor of class overrides gender in the execution of introductions. From a conversational behavior point of view, the fact that men, more than women, initiate introductions in mixed-sex groups is linked to

   

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power: initiating a conversation also implies dominating it. In such contexts, participants show linguistic solidarity more to their social group than to their gender group. The present investigation shows that power and relative status are more important as sociolinguistic variables as they override variables like gender, age, and context. For example, in occupational mixed-sex settings, it is the more powerful partner that introduces more, regardless of sex: a female medical doctor or pharmacist shares the same interactional style as her male colleagues and, thus, is more likely to introduce a male patient. Thus, there are mixed-sex settings in which female participants initiate introductions, especially if these women have higher professional status. This is an indication that women do not form a homogeneous group in the present study. Even as individuals, these women do not always exhibit the same gender behavior in all the observed encounters and situations. For example, in all-women groups, a lower class woman may initiate introductions if the number of lower-class women in the group outnumbers that of the higher-status women. This is line with O’Barr and Atkins’s (1980) study of courtroom interaction where social position, rather than gender, triggers linguistic markers as indicating ‘powerless language’ once believed to be ‘female speech’. Female speech can be powerful or powerless when it intersects with status, class, and immediate interest. In spite of the importance of social class in introductions, the variables of sex and age correlate more significantly with the variable of local geographical origin. For example, there are quantitative and qualitative differences among males and females, as well as their age in the case of indirect introductions where the Fassi element is more highlighted. In fact, statistically, significant differences were found in this respect. Extending the percentages given earlier on the use of indirect introductions, only 5% of relatively young males and females from upper or lower social classes used indirect introductions, whereas 95% of older participants did. Within the latter group, 65% of females and 35% of males used indirect introductions. The gender-age correlation reveals that older participants, especially women, use the local variety of introductions. This gender-age correlation does not seem to be significantly affected by class the way it is affected by the variable of geographical origin. For example, although older participants from upper classes have a relatively higher level of education than older ones from lower classes, the use of indirect introductions does not seem

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to be affected by the relatively high level of education, which is usually associated with higher classes. Both categories of participants tend to prefer the indirect way of introducing. This correlates with the fact that in the city of Fes, language use in general is more closely tied to the Fassi/non-Fassi opposition than to class. According to the interviews and questionnaire, Fassi participants in general, and females in particular, like to be introduced, and even ‘re-introduced’ to people they already know if a ‘stranger’ happens to be in the group. They generally prefer to be introduced by a third, ‘sympathetic’ party who would give the necessary information about their family background. This may be explained by the fact that Moroccan women need social prestige more than men (cf. Sadiqi 1995, 1997b). Stressing the family background in introductions is an opportunity for female Fassi participants of all social backgrounds to assert their social prestige. The fact that more older women than younger women use indirect introductions is due to the fact that the former feel ‘freer’ to use their ‘age privilege’ to seek such information more overtly than younger women. In the speech event of introduction, the geographical origin variable is made explicitly salient, a fact which is important from the perspective of the present chapter. The act of introducing is a practice in which people engage with the aim of highlighting their identities (in this case the fact that they are Fassi). This confirms the view that people do not in fact reflect their identities on the practices they perform, but rather that the practices themselves produce or constitute these identities. According to McConnell-Ginet and Eckert (1992), people habitually engage in certain practices and become members of specific communities which give them their identities in the sense that it is the variable of practice which mediates the relationship between men and women and the use of language. Cameron (1996: 46) states in this respect: There is no such thing as ‘being woman’ outside the various practices that define womanhood for my culture—practices ranging from the sort of work I do to my sexual preferences to the clothes I wear to the way I use language. The complexities of on-going gender construction cannot be satisfactorily accounted for within a framework that takes behavior as the simple and direct reflex of a once- and-for-all identification with a particular gender group.

   

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G  I S  I Identity shift means a switch between various identities according to situational variables such as the status and relationship of the interlocutors, and the immediate interest of the speaker. Identity shift is often indexed in language. An example of this indexing is given in the following extract from a conversation where a male (Karim) introduces a female (Mrs Saida Lwafi) to his mother (Lalla Malika) in a marriage ceremony in Fes: (14) Karim:

Mrs Saida L.: Lalla Malika:

Mrs Saida L.:

Lalla Malika:

Mrs Saida L.:

Karima: Mrs Saida L.:

Karim:

Mrs Saida L.:

kan qaddam lik madam Saida Lwafi. I introduce to you Madame Saida Lwafi This is Mrs Saida Lwafi. met∫erfiin. Très enchantée. I am very honored. tbark llah wlik a benti, bent men ntina? bless you God oh my daughter, daughter of who you May God bless you, my dear, whose daughter are you? bent Lawfi, mul lemmaken. daughter of Lwafi owner of machines Daughter of Lwafi, the owner of the ‘sewing machines’ firm. ó Sbhan llah, ka-twarfi Lalla Rita? glory to God you-know lady Rita Gosh, do you know lady Rita? ó allah awddi, Sahbet mama! God come on friend of mother Come on, she is a friend of my mother’s! Le monde est petit! The world is small! Effectivement, on ne se voit plus, llah i-xalli-k, jib mwa-k l-walida w zuru-na. indeed, we no longer see each other, God he-keeps-you bring with-you the-mother and visit-us Indeed, we no longer see each other, please bring your mother and come to visit us. waxxa a lalla, à la prochaine in ∫a llah! all right oh lady until next time All right, see you soon, God willing! C’est ça, ∫uf, je parle sérieusement, Lala Rita vient souvent à la maison et ta mère est la bienvenue.

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  that’s it, look, I am serious, lady Rita comes often to the house and your mother is welcome. ó Lalla Malika: llah i-hafd-ek a benti, sallam wla mama-k! God he-preserves-you oh my daughter greet on mother-your Mrs Saida L.: Au revoir, bslama, bye! Good bye, good bye, good bye!

The above exchange is a good example of identity shift and its reflection in language use. Mrs Saida Lwafi is a middle class, educated, urban, married, and multilingual young woman. These social prerogatives allow her to master a wide choice of linguistic devices that she manipulates in a brilliant way. Throughout the exchange, she switches between direct and indirect introductions according to the status and the relationship she has with her interlocutor, as well as her own immediate intentions. For example, when addressing Karim, an educated, presumably bilingual, middle class young man, she uses the direct type of introductions and French, and when introducing herself to Lalla Malika, a presumably monolingual (speaking only Moroccan Arabic) older woman, she uses the indirect type of introductions and Moroccan Arabic. The switch between the two types of introductions and the two languages are far from being ‘innocent’. Indeed, the content of Mrs Saida Lwafi’s speech is very revealing. For example, when addressing Karim, Mrs Saida Lwafi highlights various identities, among which her ‘urban’, ‘educated’ and ‘multilingual’ identities. Likewise, when addressing Lalla Malika, she highlights other identities, among which the ‘polite’, ‘condescendent’, and ‘cooperative’ aspects of her personality, as well as her middle class status (indexed in her Moroccan Arabic inserted ‘switch’ that she is the daughter of a firm owner). The last information is skillfully thought by Mrs Lwafi to be more effective when addressed to Lalla Malika than when addressed to Karim, because the latter might understand it as ‘showing off ’ whereas the former is most likely to consider it as an answer to her own question bent men ntina? ‘whose daughter are you?’ The shift between these identities is meant to ensure Mrs Saida Lwafi’s ‘prestige’ in the conversation. In fact, in constantly ‘regulating’ the content of her speech according to the addressee and her own intentions, Mrs Saida Lwafi aims at achieving maximum influence and gaining maximum effect through an exploitation of the discur-

   

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sive symbols that the languages she uses carry. Hence, she uses French because this language often propels very positive and highly valued symbols in first ‘middle class’ encounters. Likewise, she uses Moroccan Arabic to secure respect from Lalla Malika and gain her sympathy. This sympathy is almost guaranteed as Lalla Malika knows that Mrs Saida Lwafi is multilingual and that she uses Moroccan Arabic in a polite way out of respect. Further, Mrs Lwafi’s clever manipulation of language is also attested in her switch to Moroccan Arabic while addressing Karim when she indirectly invited Lalla Malika to visit her; she wanted her invitation to be ‘understood’ by Lalla Malika. From a wider perspective, Mrs Saida Lwafi’s use of linguistic devices shows that in Morocco, the same woman may manipulate a variety of language choices and linguistic devices to reach specific goals. The use of linguistic devices also shows that Moroccan women do not have a common linguistic agenda; they use a wide spectrum of linguistic devices to index a variety of identities in a simultaneous way. Moroccan women’s use of language patterns are part of their social construction of multi-faceteous gender, a fact which shows the limits of Lakoff ’s and De Bauvoir’s views that women are ‘deficient’ or ‘second’ version of men. According to Butler (1990), identity is ‘performed’ through daily acts which are subject to social norms and regulatory practices. These acts are neither automatically determined nor freely chosen. Cameron (1996) extends this view to language use. According to this author, the way gender is socially expressed is ‘policed’ by practices. On the basis of this view, both direct and indirect introductions in Fes, which mainly aim at highlighting the Fassi dimension, are stylized verbal performances through which the gender identities that the overall Moroccan context ‘polices’ are inculcated. As such, gender is experienced as part and parcel of identity and is produced and reproduced according to the accepted social norms. It is this social policing that makes gender socially salient. By implication, language use is part of gender and identity making. In the encounters and situations that have been investigated, the various social meanings that are indexed in introductions reveal that the latter carry significant information about the identities of participants. Two minimal types of such information are particularly important in this respect: self-identification by name and family categorization as Fassi or non-Fassi. Whereas self-identification by name is an individual-oriented identification, family categorization is a

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society-oriented identification. It is these two types of information that make introductions differ not only according to circumstances, but also according to purposes and personal interests. These differences are profoundly affected by the way participants are perceived by themselves and the way they want others to perceive them. As a result, the social meanings of introductions are negotiated according to the purpose and identity requirements of specific participants in specific interactions. For example, highlighting the Fassi element in an introduction does not only and in all contexts express the fact of belonging to a specific local geographical area, but it also claims a specific social prestige in order to achieve a specific purpose: social glamour, social ascension, etc. Fassi people in general take introductions to be an opportunity to stress their family origin and, hence, gain social prestige in the eyes of other participants. Interestingly, even within the group of Fassi families, some Fassi participants claim more social prestige than other Fassi families because the former’s families are richer, older or better known. Identity is, hence, a fluid and context-dependent notion. The shifting nature of identity is even more revealed when it is associated with gender. Within the group of Fassi participants, Fassi female participants are more likely to make explicit their local geographical origin than male participants because this gives them a good social profile and a good ‘public’ opportunity to demarcate themselves not only from men, but also—and this significant—from other non-Fassi females, creating, thus, a hierarchy in which they feel comfortable. Likewise, the non-Fassi element may sometimes be highlighted by non-Fassi participants in introductions as a means to demarcate themselves from Fassi participants and, hence, ascertain their individuality in a way that makes them comfortable and, hence, scores them gains in conversation. Like most everyday social events, introductions are opportunities for individuals to shift their identities according to specific purposes. It is important to note that the same participant may highlight the Fassi element on one occasion and downplay it on another occasion to express sympathy with another group for another purpose. For example, in all-women gatherings, Fassi and non-Fassi women continuously seek to have and maintain ‘conversational space’ by each asserting or implying that they belong to a ‘prestigious’ social group. However, in mixed-sex groups, it is often the case that the same Fassi women may seek to ‘align’ with non-Fassi men because they

   

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generally believe they are preferred to non-Fassi women by nonFassi men, whereas Fassi men may seek to ‘align’ with Fassi women because they believe that non-Fassi women will only loose in prestige if they align with a Fassi men group as the latter contains Fassi women with whom non-Fassi women compete. Another example in this respect is that non-Fassi participants may be highly appreciative of Fassi people in the absence of the latter, or as a means to be integrated in their ‘circle’ for some purpose. Further, from the 1980s onward, a considerable number of Fassi families emigrated to Casablanca and Rabat for business and, as a result, their dialect became ‘engulfed’ in the larger Casawi dialect. Interestingly, many of the people belonging to this category of Fassis consciously ‘hide’ the most characterizing features of their dialect and try to incorporate Casawi features in their speech in order to be accepted in the larger linguistic community. This is evidence that the social meaning that given linguistic items index changes according to situation and items that are power-laden in a situation may cease to become so in another situation. This shift is mainly dictated by immediate self-interest. Another example of identity shift is the fact that Fassi women consistently use the local Fassi linguistic variety, especially the /?/ instead of /q/ sound, when they are amongst Fassi women and often resort to the /q/ or even /g/ sounds, which characterize non-Fassi dialects, in the presence of non-Fassi women. In so doing, these women exploit linguistic variables as markers of the social identities they relate to most depending on the interlocutor and the goals targeted. These goals may be ‘getting closer’ to the interlocutor, fighting exclusion, seeking change, etc. especially because these linguistic markers carry strong social meanings. Fassi women’s use of /?/ instead of /q/ or /g/ if the interlocuter is local is also motivated by the fact that in this particular case, both the speaker and the interlocutor identify with locality. By contrast, Fassi women’s use of the non-Fassi /g/ in the presence of a non-Fassi generally emphasizes their potential identification with the interlocutor and a desire to avoid exclusion. Thus, in addition to exploiting the symbolic value of specific languages in code-switching, Moroccan women also exploit the symbolic value of linguistic variables by going beyond the selection of a specific language to the selection of specific linguistic variables. Accordingly, the use of French in Moroccan Arabic or Berber sentences, like the use of the non-Fassi /g/ or /q/ for /?/, shows that women have multiple identities that they express in an attempt to

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identify themselves as Moroccan (in the former case) and local (in the latter case) and a desire to associate with modernity (in the former case) and with the interlocutor (in the latter case). Indeed, both the immediate aims of the speaker and the interlocutor influence the choice of language and linguistic markers. Moroccan women’s multiple identities are also influenced by the fairly commonly accepted language ideology about women’s and men’s use of French and Arabic in Morocco, which needs to be deconstructed: men, especially intellectuals, speaking about Moroccan matters in public, usually pronounce the French /g/ as a rolled /r/ which is found in Arabic. This usage marks their group identity as Moroccans. The message is ‘even if I use French, I am Moroccan’. However, in the presence of women, the same men revert to the French /g/ to ‘sympathize’ with women and attract their attention in a conversation. This does not mean that men do not use the French /g/, or that they use it generally just to sympathize with women, but it means that if men use the French /g/ in many contexts, this usage indexes ‘sounding effeminate’ or worse, and sometimes gets them labelled in negative ways. In Morocco, what kind of /r/ is used depends on the person, the location (someone who is from a small town may use /r/ in the small town and /g/ in the capital, both variably), the age, the sex, and how ‘frenchified’ the person is or wishes to be seen as being. And, of course, there are degrees of trilling the /r/ and ‘uvularizing the /g/. The same is true for what happens with nasal vowels and men and women (Walters, Personal communication). As for urban, educated women, they generally tend to use the French /g/ because they are torn between a desire to identify as Moroccans and to identify with French values and greater social freedom. These women may also use French lexical borrowings for taboo words as a way to escape the Moroccan society’s pressure. So, the meanings of French for men and women cannot be explained on the basis of a simple dichotomy because that would be a gross oversimplification; these meanings crucially depend on so many other things that constitute the context of language use. We may even say that when speaking, men and women ‘perform’ their identities. Indeed, parts of Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s (1985) work focuses on performativity, but like most of the work in this area, it favors speaker agency generally at the total expense of (social) structure, when clearly both are important.

   

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On the basis of these facts, we may state that in both code-switching and the use of Fassi linguistic markers, Moroccan women ‘manipulate’ a number of social identities. Different identities are prominent in different communicative events. Moroccan women’s communicative competence lies in choosing the appropriate language or linguistic variable, that is, the one that expresses the identity they want to highlight in a specific context. Accordingly, a Moroccan woman may identify as a woman, as a local Fassi, as modern, educated, etc., depending on particular identity salience and the gains ensuing from it. The expression of multiple identities through the choice of multiple languages and linguistic devices may take place in the same speech event. As such, Moroccan women exploit the meta-messages of languages and linguistic variables and simultaneously observe Moroccan social norms as the two studied patterns in this book (code-switching and introductions) are meant to show. The chosen linguistic variables signal and symbolize the speaker’s identification with the social groups ‘women’, ‘married’, ‘multilingual’, etc., as well as with specific immediate self-interests. Indeed, identities shift within communicative events and across a whole lifetime of communicative events (cf. Meyerhoff 1996). Such a view is congruent with the Communicative Accommodation theory (cf. Giles and Coupland 1991). Identity shifts which are dictated by shifting purposes and personal interests reveal that although gender is a crucial factor in language use in general, it does not seem to be easily extractable as one single variable that works independently of other variables. It not only correlates with other variables such as family affiliation, class, and age, but also changes according to age, purpose and interest. The identities of Moroccan women are, thus, multiple and complex. Traditionally, multiple identities were presented as ‘additive’ (one identity ‘adding’ upon a previous one and subsuming it) or ‘multiplicative’ (one identity predicting’ the presence of another); however, the above analysis of introductions in the city of Fes shows, among other things, the complex and ‘non-additive’ or ‘non-linear’ interaction of identities. For example, as speakers, Moroccan women signal the predominance of different identities in different situations. The motives and opportunities are the two main factors behind this signalling. This implies that gender is only one of many social identities and, as such, cannot be analysed independently of other variables (cf. Meyerhoff 1996).

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In addition to motives and immediate self-interest, there are other relevant variables such as social networks, types of discourse, cultural and status situational differences, which are all as important. As the above analysis has shown, these factors are not salient in all contexts. Factors may outweigh or nullify other factors in specific settings under specific circumstances. In fact, the social structure and specific discourse of introductions reveal the continuous ‘foregrounding’ and ‘backgrounding’ of language patterns. On the basis of this, a simple dichotomy would not be appropriate as it would encourage ‘gender polarization’ and overlook critical variation. Bem (1993) defines ‘gender polarization’ as ‘the ubiquitous organization of social life around the distinction between male and female’. According to Bem (1993: 80–1), Gender polarization operates in two related ways. First, it defines mutually exclusive scripts for being male and female. Second, it defines any person or behavior that deviates from these scripts as problematic – as unnatural or immoral from a religious perspective or biologically anomalous or psychologically pathological from a scientific perspective.

Bem’s statement shows that gender identity is but a situational variable, a construct whose social significance crucially depends on situations. Women’s identification with gender-based identity depends on the interlocutor (cf. Doise and Weinberger 1973), the situation or task (cf. Doise and Weinberger 1973, Deschamps and Doize 1978), and on context (cf. Hogg 1985). Moroccan women dissociate from their male-defined traits when they are in all-female groups as in the hammam ‘public bath’, visiting saints, etc. In such contexts, they freely tell jokes and utter taboo words. Further, situational gender salience is hierarchical and gender identities fluctuate during an individual’s lifetime (cf. Meyerhoff 1996). According to social psychology research, childhood is the period where gender is the most salient for boys (cf. Doize and Weinberger 1973); this lessens in adolescence. For example, in spite of the fact that for inhabitants of Fes, linguistic variables are markers of a speaker’s association with a Fassi identity, this may change in the individual’s lifetime: the younger Fassi generation are less adherent to the Fassi norms and are, hence, less keen on higlighting them than the older generation. Identities are multiple and complex. They compute social meanings that are relevant in a specific historical period. The use of French in Morocco is a linguistic marker for both men and women but with different symbolic meanings for each. For men, it is a

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marker of professionalism (especially in business and administration); for women, it is a marker of social freedom in an oppressive society. Thus, the correlation between the speaker’s sex and use of a specific language or specific linguistic markers does not necessarily indicate that the variable functions primarily as an intergroup marker of gender. The use of linguistic variables to identify a specific social group is not a behavioral constant. Indeed, group identity is not solely based on gender as Meyerhoff (1996: 213) states: There is research in social psychology that indicates that we need to be careful to define precisely what it is we intend when we characterize a social identity as being gender-based. Members of a speech community may, for instance, agree upon the labels for some of the group identities that are considered salient, but they may have salient, different perceptions about what the labels mean.

Subjective inquiry into the nature of sex role identification among women shows that these women give different meanings to the terms ‘freedom of women’ and ‘feminism’. Individual women have different beliefs about gender and ‘womanliness’ in the Moroccan context and the feedback they want to get from their interlocutors. According to Meyerhoff (1996: 215): The uniqueness of individuals lies in their blend of multiple social and personal identities.

According to Meyerhoff, a speaker’s identity is ‘both a receiving and a sending post’. In general, a speaker interacts with others in terms of one, most salient group or personal identity at a time. The most salient identity is shaped by its relationship to other group or personal identities that a speaker is involved with. Identity is also a product of what the speaker’s interlocutor perceives to be the speaker’s most salient identification. Aspects of an individual’s overall identity change over time and across interactions. Indeed, through the choice of particular linguistic variables, Moroccan women unfold identification with specific norms which have different significance for different interlocutors. One may seek to increase or decrease personal distance between the speaker and the interlocutor depending on the way the latter aligns. Speaker’s linguistic choices and salience orientation is never done in isolation from other identities. The various identities that speakers assume complement or compete with other identities even when they are salient. According to Meyerhoff (1996: 216):

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  Speaker identity is seen as a network of interconnected identifications, operating together as if they were parts of a movable sphere.

In comparison with group identifications like class, education, language skills or work status which have a high ‘ethnolinguistic vitality’ in the sense of Meyerhoff (1996), gender identity has a relatively low ethnolinguistic vitality. For example, in introduction interactions, Moroccan women rely more on identities with higher ethnolinguistic vitality (such as the local Fassi identity) than on the ones with low ethnolinguistic vitality (such as gender). They easily shift from gender to this identity and make it most salient because it is most ‘securizing’. These shifts are clearly encoded in verbal interactions through linguistic markers like bent man ntina?. The view of a speaker’s overall identity as various identifications is, thus, complex and one way of dealing with it is by investigating the way it operates in verbal interactions. Identity and its relation to language and gender has been treated in sociology, intercommunication theory, and social psychology. In the Moroccan case, interviews have shown that gender identity is seen by many Moroccan women as being related to many other different identities. Thus, rural women generally see their identity as being very close to the land, urban women see it as being more associated with education, and economic independence, intellectual women see it as having a voice in the public sphere, and upper and middle class women see it as being associated with high social prestige, etc. In each case, Moroccan women identify with groups that have higher ethnolinguistic vitality from their own stance and perspective.

GENERAL CONCLUSION The overriding aim of this text has been to provide an idea of the diversity and dynamics of women, gender, and language in Morocco and disentangle some of the stereotypes that surround Moroccan women and language use. The main broad conclusions that may be drawn from the chapters of this book may be summarized in five major points. First, gender is assigned, perceived, and played off only within the value system of a specific culture. It is only inside a culture that gender performance acquires meaning. By implication, what is considered gender role subversion in a given culture may not necessarily be considered so in another culture, and what may be termed ‘feminism’ varies from one culture to another. Theoretical evaluation measures need, thus, to vary from one culture to another. Second, the characterizing components of a particular culture seem to be restricted, but each component allows a wide spectrum of variability according to context, situation, and individual interest. These components do not function in isolation; they constantly interact and acquire meaning and power within the culture that they broadly define. Human cultures owe their dynamism and overall specificity to the nature and interaction of the components that constitute them. Third, gender and feminism are not unitary theoretical constructs. Western theoretical models of gender and feminism cannot be ‘applied’ to the Moroccan socio-cultural context without an a priori understanding of the workings of the latter. The historical itinerary of Western feminist models, as well as the overall cultural environments in which they evolved, are different from the ones of non-Western models. Western feminisms drew on specific theoretical and political sources to develop a powerful and original critique of patriarchy; however, when this feminism articulated its own solutions to the problems it faced, it did so in a way that only addressed the contradictions as women from Western social formations experienced. Other contradictions, such as the ones attested in Morocco, have their source in patriarchy as it was historically constituted by class, colonialism, modernity, and religious interpretations, and these were not addressed by Western feminist theoreticians.

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Fourth, while Moroccan women are both socially and individually heterogeneous and have various and multifacetious positions in Moroccan culture, they, at the same time, are close to universal culture to which female and male human beings continuously contribute. Fifth, Moroccan women’s discourse strategies and use of language raise important questions and issues about gender, language, and language use, that need to be further investigated. Language and gender in Morocco is a worthwile project that can benefit feminist linguistics and women studies at large. On the basis of these broad conclusions, the following related suggestions may be made: first, Western models of feminisms need to interact with models of feminisms that emanate from other nonWestern socio-cultural contexts. Granting that biological sex and social gender are crucially important in all societies and cultures, and that in all speech communities, sex is universally recognized as a key social variable which does correlate with linguistic variation, there are things which are crucially important for gender but which are not the same cross-culturally such as historical circumstances, life experiences, and gender-specific phenomena, which affect women in ways that are not always related to the universal oppression of women as defined by most mainstream Western feminisms. Second, we need a global, more comprehensive, and cross-cultural account of gender that takes into consideration the dynamics of multilingualism, reading of religion, illiteracy, and orality. Such a view has many advantages: it enhances the unique position of language cross-culturally, it introduces non-Western dimensions, and it draws attention to the damaging role of stereotypical prejudices that usually accompany any assessment of female speech patterns and styles. This approach also fights overgeneralizations of the phenomena of both gender and language. Only new perspectives and comparison can guarantee progress in language and gender research in a world where non-Western communities are statistically bigger than Western ones.

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INDEX

Abu-Lughod, L. 60 African, 17 Agency, 1, 94 Agreement, 107–109, 112 Al-Ijtihad, 34–38 Allal al-Fassi, 22, 26 Al-Mudawwanah, 26–29, 37–38, 76 Ambiguity, 74 Analysis, 131, 203, 296 Androcentricity, 96, 119 Arab-Muslim, 18–20, 28, 85, 92, 102, 200 Associations, 25 Austin, J. 281 Authority, 74 Badran, M. 18, 20 Belarbi, A. 86–87, 94, 170, 174, 192, 196 Bem, S. 310 Berber, 43, 46–47, 57, 101, 113, 136, 225, 234–237, 242 Berber Decree, 47 Bergvall, V. 2, 11, 163 Binarism, 3 Bing, J. 11, 163 Bipolarization, 3, 218 Birth rituals, 58–59 Black magic, 73 Bornstein, K. 3 Bourqia, R. 171 Brett, M. and Fentress, E. 224 Brown, G. and Yule, G. 127 Bucholtz, M. 15, 210, 216, 276 Butler, J. 265, 270 Cameron, D. 2, 12, 15, 127, 158, 277 Chafe, W. 280 Chapkis, W. 3 Chomsky, N. 103, 105 Circumcision rituals, 60 Citizenship, 77, 93 Civil society, 21, 94 Class, 1, 86–88, 163, 185–188, 207, 216, 275 Classification, 293, 295 Coates, J. 2

Codes of honor and morality, 60 Code-switching, 49, 94, 158, 200, 257–271 Collective self, 65–68 Communicative device, 268 Communicative strategies, 232 Community, 168, 169 Community of Practice theory, 4, 12–13 Constructionist, 1–4, 16 Contextual differences, 216 Contextual factors, 216 Contextual variables, 1, 216, 272 Contextual styles, 217 Continuum, 164, 205 Correlations, 205, 209, 293, 300, 301 Culture, 16–17, 40–41, 53, 84, 91, 104, 106, 125, 145, 163, 169, 191, 201, 205, 217, 219, 224, 248, 272, 274–275 Cunning, 73 De Beauvoir, 4, 271 Decision-making, 71 Deficit theory, 4–6 Derivation Hypothesis, 103 Devor, H. 3 Difference theory, 4, 9, 10–11 Diglossia, 50–51 Diminutives, 154–155 Direct introductions, 286 Discourse, 144, 150, 270 Discourse strategies, 151, 158 Disguised Personification Hypothesis, 121 Domestics, 70–71, 174–175, 210, 252–254 Dominance theory, 4, 6–7 Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 12–13, 163, 270, 276, 280 Economic status, 1, 17, 85 Educated, 203, 206 Education, 1, 86, 90, 163, 170, 189, 190–191, 194, 200, 216 El-Khayat, 183 Ennaji, 45, 47, 51–52, 150, 218, 226 English, 50, 116 Entreaties, 157

334



Essentialist, 2–4, 16 Euphemisms, 155 Extralinguistic properties, 292

Grammatical generics, 117, 119 Greenwood, A. 216, 272 Gumperz, J. 258

Family, 54, 60–65, 68, 74, 84, 133, 134, 169, 220, 237, 248 Family names, 298 Family ties, 198 Fassi/non-Fassi, 297–300 Female, 3, 181, 247, 250, 256, 276 Female interruptions, 230–231 Femaleness, 105 Female oral genres, 233 Feminine, 101, 105, 107, 109, 128, 137, 139, 262 Femininity, 104, 274 Feminism, 11, 215, 311 Feminisms, 19, 29, 215 Feminist linguistics, 11, 12 Ferguson, 50 Fishman, 273 Folktales, 243–247 Fortune telling, 73 Foucault, 14 Freed, 11, 163 French, 49, 50, 116, 177, 228–229, 263 Functional gender, 110

Halliday, M.A.K. 145–146 9 halqa, 249, 250 Harding, S. 15 Henley, N. and Kramarae, C. 10, 163 Heterogeneity, 19, 162, 203, 217, 231 Heterogeneous, 19 History, 1, 17, 18, 19, 272 Holmes, J. 6–7, 261 hooks, b. 280 Household economy, 170–172, 183–185 Household female power, 68, 71, 72

Geertz, 10, 41, 65–66 Gender, 2, 3, 100, 193, 199, 217, 273, 276, 300, 302, 312 Gender and Language, 1, 2 Gender categories, 101 Gender identity, 270 Gender marking, 113–114, 116, 121, 159 Gender negotiation, 185 Gender perception, 1 Gender performances, 1 Gender polarization, 310 Gender-specificity, 137, 140–141, 161 Gender stereotypes, 100, 123–124 Gender subversion, 1, 68 Generic lexical nouns, 119 Generic masculine, 116, 120 Geographical area, 1, 163, 216 Geographical origin, 1, 164, 205, 282 Geography, 1, 17, 39 Globalization, 50, 212 Gold, 72–73 Gossip, 250–254 Grammatical androcentricity, 97, 104, 106 Grammatical category, 101, 104–105 Grammatical distribution, 109 Grammatical gender, 109, 123

Ibn al-Anbari, A. 103 Ibn Ginni, A. 103 Identity, 167, 201, 210, 256, 273, 275, 276–277, 279–280, 312 Identity shifts, 275, 282, 302, 304–308 Identity variables, 1, 280 Illiteracy, 88–91, 93, 189, 236 Illiterate, 89, 235, 241, 249, 255, 257, 264 Immediate interest, 1 Implementation of the law, 76 Indirect introductions, 290 Indirect language, 152–154 Inflection, 101, 116 Innateness, 3 Instrumentalization, 191 Interlocutor, 1, 268 Interviews, 283 Introductions, 282, 286, 293, 296, 302 Islam, 1, 9, 17, 21, 31–35, 93, 94, 199, 219, 220–224 Islamic, 33 Islamic law, 26, 32, 34, 36–37 Islamism, 93 Islamist, 33 Islamists, 95 Jansen, W. 202 Jespersen, O. 4–5, 97 Job opportunity, 1, 88, 163, 192–197, 205, 216 Jokes, 145 Kandiyoti, D. 18 Kapchan, D. 44, 172 Kessler, S. and McKenna, W. 3 Key, M. 2 Kramarae, C. 1, 63

 Labov, W. 3 Lacan, J. 13 Lakoff, R. 5–6, 97, 127, 271 Language and gender theory, 163 Language ideology, 102 Language skills, 1, 163, 198–199, 216, 311 Language use, 1, 176, 198 Laroui, A. 45 Leila Abouzeid, 23, 29 Lexical gender, 123 Lexical generics, 122 Lexical sexism, 128, 130–132 Liberal feminism, 22–31, 35, 91, 223 Lingua franca, 176 Linguistic agency, 277 Linguistic choice, 199, 216, 230 Linguistic equity, 161 Linguistics, 2 Linguistic strategies, 231 Lyrics, 242–243 Male, 3, 181, 276 Maleness, 105 Maltz, D. and Borker, R. 9, 10 Marital status, 1, 134, 163, 200–202, 216 Markedness, 110 Marriage rituals, 55–58 Married, 203 Masculine, 101, 105, 107, 109, 128, 137, 139 Masculinity, 104, 274 Meaning creation, 137 Medina, 177–181 Mediterranean, 17 Menopause, 82–83 Menstruation, 81–82 Mernissi, F. 27, 61, 87, 174, 183–184 Methodology, 283 Meyerhoff, M. 163, 210, 309, 311 Meyers-Scotton, C. 258 Mills, S. 83, 127, 132, 145, 147, 254 Milroy, L. and Milroy, S. 185 Modernity, 40, 170, 182–183, 212, 227 Modernization, 186 Monarchy, 92, 95 Monolingual, 233 Monolingualism, 203, 206 Monolingual women, 233–234 Moroccan Arabic, 43, 48–49, 57, 96, 101, 105, 113, 115, 136, 218, 226–227, 238–241 Moroccan citizenship, 77

335

Moroccan culture, 1, 2, 131 Moroccan feminism, 9, 19, 21 Moroccan languages, 96, 101, 161 Morocco, 1, 17–18, 20, 39, 51, 92, 160, 169, 215, 217 Morpheme, 101 Morphological androcentricity, 102 Moulay R’Chid, A. 26, 76 Motives, 1, 216, 278 Moves, 270 Multilingualism, 1, 17, 40–41, 44, 52–53, 163, 166, 198, 203, 206, 217, 233, 257 Multiple identities, 310–311 Muslim, 17, 76, 91 Naming, 133 Nationalists, 190 Negative gossip, 250 Negative socio-cultural value, 163 Nominal gender-marking, 113–114 Non-discreteness, 204 Non-educated, 203, 206 Nortier, J. 261 Oaths, 158 O’Barr, W. and Atkins, B. 7 Observation, 284 Orality, 1, 17, 41, 42–43, 166, 256 Oral literature, 43–44 Oral skills, 256 Oral traditions, 17 Participants, 216, 284 Patriarchal, 54, 93, 186, 229, 231 Patriarchy, 89, 169 Personal identities, 162 Pitch, 97–99, 247 Poems, 233–239 Polite forms, 156 Political system, 1, 17, 91 Positionality, 284 Positive gossip, 250 Postcolonial, 29–30, 185 Postmodern theory, 4, 14–15 Power, 1, 6–7, 68, 71, 277 Power structures, 1 Pragmatic androcentricity, 123 Protectorate, 49, 92, 190 Proverbs, 145 Public discourse, 75 Public/private dichotomy, 85–87, 92, 168 Purpose, 216

336



Qasim Amin, 20, 190 Questionnaire, 283, 289 Radical feminism, 9 Radical theory, 4, 8–9 Reformist theory, 4, 11–12, 20 Religious feminism, 21–22, 31–33 Reorganization of space, 85 Rich/poor, 203, 206 Rituals, 53–55, 255 Rural, 163, 165, 205, 264 Rural women, 165–169, 203–204 Sadiqi, 45–46, 50, 176, 193, 218, 228, 281 Sadiqi, F. and Ennaji, M. 100 Saliency, 1 Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis, 8, 12, 127, 136, 159, 277 Saussure, F. 105 Searle, J. 281 Secularization, 24 Self-assertion, 217 Self-expression, 234–241, 257 Self-interest, 272–273, 277–279 Selves, 281 Semantic asymmetries, 118 Semantic derogation, 138–139 Semantic formulae, 286 Semantic level, 113, 149 Semantic strategies, 151 Semiologist theory, 4, 13–14 Setting, 216, 219, 268, 294–295 Sexism, 130–131, 144, 149 Sexist language, 11, 127, 131–132, 141–143, 147, 151, 160 Sexual segregation, 172 Sibawayhe, 103 Situational variables, 218 Situations, 217, 223, 232, 259, 269, 279 Smuggling, 173 Social attitude, 75 Social categories, 162, 205, 206, 207, 208, Social differences, 162, 210, 215 Social groups, 162 Social heterogeneity, 203 Social identities, 162–164, 204, 275 Social identity theory, 162–163 Social interactions, 162 Social meanings, 123, 203, 210 Social networks, 280 Social oppositions, 162–163, 203–204

Social organization, 1, 17, 53, 54, 167 Social psychology, 163 Social subcultures, 9 Social variables, 1, 162, 205, 216, 217 Society, 87 Socio-cultural context, 1, 17, 19, 22, 24, 52, 61, 141, 148, 158, 163, 166, 211–212, 232, 256, 276 Socio-cultural value, 163 Songs, 233–239 Space, 167–177 Space organization, 167 Spanish, 50 Spender, D. 8, 133 Standard Arabic, 47, 96, 101, 103, 105, 113, 218, 219–223 State religion, 40 Stereotypes, 124–126, 228 Stereotyping, 123 Storytelling, 247 Style, 217, 280 Suqs, 172–173, 226–227 Syntactic level, 107 Synthesis, 158, 255 Taboo, 78–79, 84, 266 Tahar Haddad, 20, 190 Tajfel, H. 273 Tannen, D. 9, 280 Theories of language and gender, 2 The Plan, 33–34 Thorne, B. 10 Topic, 1, 216 Tradition and modernity, 69 Traditions, 168, 275 Transitivity, 145–146 Unmarried, 203 Urban, 163, 165, 203, 205 Urban women, 175–177, 183–185, 204 Veil, 24 Videotapes, 284, 289 Virginity, 80 Wagner, 188 Walters, 15, 22, 112 Western context, 159 Western feminism, 187, 212 Witchcraft, 73 Working/non-working, 203, 206 Zimmermann, D. and West, C. 7