Amazigh-Arabic Code-Switching in Radio Talk Shows

Abstract This study considers code-switching ( CS ) in the discourse of multilingual Amazigh speakers. The corpus consists of live Amazigh radio talk shows in Morocco (North Africa). The study examines the frequency and nature of CS between Amazigh (Tashelhit variety) and Arabic and identifies the conversational functions of CS . The analysis shows a substantial use of Arabic in Amazigh radio discourse; 72 % of the utterances attest to Arabic CS . The two languages play the role of the matrix and embedded language. Standard Arabic (92 %) is more activated than Moroccan Arabic (8 %). As for the conversational functions of CS , the majority of the functions in Gumperz (1982) are instantiated in the corpus: quotation, interjection, reiteration, message qualification, and personalization and objectivization, but new functions emerged: the principle of economy, cultural items, lexical and semantic gaps, and discourse fillers. Finally, we claim that Amazigh-Arabic CS has led to the inception of a third code that mixes verb stems with morphology of the two languages.