Senior Capstone Pre-Analysis Plan

This project investigates how language variety and communication medium shape political trust and engagement in Morocco, a context characterized by diglossia. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the language of education, religion, and official state communication, while Moroccan Arabic (Darija) is used in everyday interaction and popular culture. I argue that language variety functions as a social signal: MSA is expected to evoke trust by indexing authority and competence, whereas Darija elicits willingness to engage through cultural proximity and familiarity. I further propose that the communication medium (text or audio) conditions these effects. Written messages encourage analytical processing and reinforce perceptions of credibility, while auditory delivery heightens emotional resonance. When language and medium align (Darija in speech or MSA in writing), the message should appear more congruent and thus more trustworthy; misalignment is expected to weaken these impressions. To test these expectations, I employ a conjoint survey experiment that randomly assigns both language variety (MSA vs. Darija) and communication medium (text vs. audio). Respondents evaluate political messages attributed to a hypothetical political actor, allowing for causal identification of how linguistic and modal cues influence political trust and willingness to engage. This study contributes to three strands of research: 1) providing empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, a region underrepresented in studies of language and political communication; 2) examining how language variety interacts with communication medium, addressing a gap in the literature on conditioning factors; and 3) offering causal evidence on how linguistic choices shape political attitudes through an experimental design. The pre-analysis plan outlines the hypotheses, research design, and empirical strategy that will guide the study.