Discourse Marking Variation in Moroccan Arabic: Requests as a Case Study

Variation among Moroccan Arabic speakers has been the subject of study for many years and the result is a plethora of works that address several aspects ranging from purely structural variation, such as phonetic and morphological, to sociolinguistic and socio-pragmatic variation. The present study purports to go beyond the structural differences and investigate variation in discourse marking and social meaning in line with the contention that “Variationist approaches based on social meaning posit indexical links between linguistic and social structures that allow speakers to convey information through their linguistic choices and to thereby perform social work such as constructing identities and displaying stances” (Campbell-Kibler, 2010, p. 423). Thus, the study discusses variation in Discourse Markers (DMs), which are a class of linguistic items that are inseparable from discourse and fulfil important functions in discourse, whether spoken or written. More specifically, the study examines the use of expressions of request in two sub-varieties, namely Central Moroccan Arabic (CMA) and Jebli Arabic (JA) based on naturally collected data through participant observation, phone conversations as well as introspection. The study argues that sociolinguistic factors, such as the origin of the varieties, geographical space, and socio-economic activity, motivate the variation between the two varieties, which use different request patterns. Further, the study maintains that DMs index social relations as well as regional variation. The paper concludes that face maintenance and enhancement are tightly connected to the fulfilment of community specific norms