Algerian Official Bilingualism Between Political Decision and Real Application : Case of Different Public Administrations in Beni Saf

Abstract

Algeria is characterized by its multilinguality, and sociolinguistic complexity. This multilinguality has evoked variation in the bilingual practices, mainly Modern Standard Arabic-French bilingualism which is one of our major concerns. French continues to overlap with MSA in several domains including education, media and administration in which our research is conducted to investigate the linguistic practice adopted by administrative employees, in order to check whether it is matching the one established by the country’s constitution. To meet our research objectives, two different instruments involving the questionnaire addressed to employees from various public administrations in Beni Saf, and an interview administered to some of them in order to obtain more qualitative data and reinforce those accessed from the questionnaire. It was revealed from our analysis that there is another bilingual practice which replaces the official one. Finally, some recommendations and suggestions are set as a solution to the problem concerned with language planning situation