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Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVII: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013
Edited by Stuart Davis and Usama Soltan
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 3] 2016
► pp. 123–150

Moroccan artists ‘blacklisted’

Dialect loyalty and gendered national identity in an age of digital discourse*

| University of Toronto

This paper explores contestation in digital metalinguistic discourse from the perspective of the Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology – the unequal relationship between North African and Middle Eastern vernacular Arabic varieties. Specifically, the paper examines a Facebook page dedicated to the ‘Blacklisting’ of Moroccan artists who converge to Mashreqi Arabic varieties in pan-Arab encounters through examining these artists’ communicative practices and argues that the Blacklist Facebook is a discursive site that works to demand national dialect loyalty, especially from female cultural figures. However, the anxieties and language ideological debates made explicit on the Facebook page are not exclusively about language; more broadly, they unravel the complex relationships between communicative practice, morality, and today’s conceptualizations of Moroccan national identity.

Keywords: Facebook, gender, Metalanguage, Moroccan Arabic, national identity
Published online: 26 July 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.3.06hac
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