Aspects des parlers jeunes en Algérie

Leila Tounsi: Aspects of the speech of young people in Algeria In today's multilingual and strife-torn Algeria, the young generation, who are the majority in numerical terms but are more and more on the fringes of socioeconomic and political life, arc creating their own areas of freedom and inventing their own personal linguistic codes. Unlike their elders, who are more than ever confronted with the « linguistic issue » and with « identity problems », they seem to be drawing without any hesitation elements from the languages at their disposal : dialectal Arabic and Berber in all their regional varieties, French and written Arabic. They use their words to express the dullness or the violence of their daily lives but also to express love, friendship, and their sense of values and sometimes, their hopes. They sprinkle their everyday conversation with this language and also their artistic and creative fields such as songwriting, theatre, cinema and even the written press. In today's multilingual and strife-torn Algeria, the young generation, who are the majority in numerical terms but are more and more on the fringes of socioeconomic and political life, arc creating their own areas of freedom and inventing their own personal linguistic codes. Unlike their elders, who are more than ever confronted with the « linguistic issue » and with « identity problems », they seem to be drawing without any hesitation elements from the languages at their disposal : dialectal Arabic and Berber in all their regional varieties, French and written Arabic. They use their words to express the dullness or the violence of their daily lives but also to express love, friendship, and their sense of values and sometimes, their hopes. They sprinkle their everyday conversation with this language and also their artistic and creative fields such as songwriting, theatre, cinema and even the written press.Tounsi Leila. Aspects des parlers jeunes en Algérie. In: Langue française, n°114, 1997. Les mots des jeunes. Observations et hypothèses, sous la direction de Henri Boyer. pp. 104-113