TERMS OF ADDRESS IN MOROCCAN ARABIC. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

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BÁRBARA HERRERO MUÑOZ-COBO

Abstract

The terms of address (F.T) are a key topic in any study of the interaction between language and identity. Kinship terms, honorific titles, personal pronouns and proper names are the opening acts of oral language and the first social indicators that mark the symbolic space of self identity and its boundaries. Those forms are the first manner in which the speaker identifies and defines or re-defines the social frame of the conversation, testing it or placing himself in a relation of equality (creating solidarity) or of difference (creating distance or deference, depending on the case). Those forms define the frame of the relation according to two fundamental parameters: the degrees of power and affective closeness between speakers. This language-identity connection has a further consequence: the degree of complexity of the F.T reflects the hierarchical social structure in connection with two main parameters: the vertical distances between the poles of the social continuum and the horizontal parameter, with a clear cleavage between public and private spaces. In traditional societies in transition towards modernity, as is the case of the Arabic societies in general and the Moroccan one in particular, a wide range of terms of address reflecting that social complexity is still prevalent in the most conservative social groups.

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