The sociolinguistic of french in Algeria:the case of ain temouchent speech community

Abstract

The present research work sheds light on the sociolinguistic situation of AinTemouchent speech community in relation to the French language including its different uses in the Algerian society. The linguistic situation in Algeria is so complicated because of the various colorizations that Algeria has know in the past. Moreover, since the French language had a great impact on the changes of the sociolinguistic phenomenon in Algeria during the era of colonization; it had strongly affected Algerians’ speech resulting in different linguistic phenomena like bilingualism, code switching, code mixing and borrowing. Our research work is divided into three chapters. The first one deals with the theoretical part where it represents a general overview of bilingualism, its definition and the main causes that lead to such a phenomena. We dealt also with some features of bilingualism such as code-switching and borrowing. In the second chapter we dealt with the sociolinguistic situation in Algeria and its historical background. We also explained the linguistic and political processes that affected the current linguistic situation in Algeria mainly the “Arabization” process which aimed at regaining the Arabic identity after the independence. Moreover, we tried to explore the status of French in Algeria especially within Ain-Temouchent speech community. Finally, the last chapter tackles the research methodology and data analysis. It also tests how the Algerian population views the French language taking as an example sample population from Ain-Temouchent speech community. Several data collection methods such as questionnaire and an interview allowed us to seize of people’s attitudes towards French language. At the end, results were interpreted in order to check the validity of our hypotheses.