Better Sound Rural or Criminal? Data from a Case Study: The City Of Temara, Morocco

This paper moves from the following issue: is there a homogeneous variety of spoken Arabic in expansion in Morocco? An ongoing research project on language practices in the Moroccan town of Temara, a sort of “new-town” that has been growing dramatically in the last four decades by the effect of internal immigration, seeks to partially answer this question by analysing language in an urban context, which by its very nature demands a “delocalisation” of speech from its dwellers. After stating why the focus is placed on the social interpretation of single linguistic features rather than on the definition of a “variety”, the paper goes on to motivate the choice of comparing the data collected on the field with the use of spoken Moroccan Arabic in fiction as a technique to acquire more information on the sociolinguistic connotation of linguistic traits in the community. Finally, a brief sketch of the linguistic features selected and the first results of the analysis are provided.