The voices of Morocco: linguistic variation in Moroccan radio speech

By analysing a corpus of approximately two hours of radio news bulletins and call-in programs from three Moroccan radio stations (MFM, MED Radio and Radio Atlantic), a number of phonetic, morphologic and morpho-syntactic features are identified as relevant to the will of the speaker to adopt a more formal or less formal speech style. The variation of said variables are thus analysed in the different communicative contexts (News, call-in monologues and dialogues with experts, dialogues with audience on the phone) in order to determine the level of formality of such contexts. Moreover, the aim of the paper is to apply the concept of functional diglossia, (Albirini 2011) to the Moroccan environment, to try and determine whether the presence of features of more formal and less formal speech styles can be interpreted by means of the will of the speaker to perfrom a determinate communicative function (as lending a tone of seriousness to what is being said, giving explanations, performing an indirect quote). Linguistic variation is thus inquired giving more attention to individual varieties than to a theoretical framework that assumes discrete boundaries between one variety and another, focusing instead on the relationship between the individual variants selected by speakers and the meaning these choices have at the sociolinguistic level.