Abdenour Arezki
Université Bejaia, Algérie

Discrepancies between statutory recognition of a language and social practice: the case of Tamazight/Berber

If the heterogeneousness is inherent for the varieties supposed by the same language, the socio-cultural representations whether these are related to identity, or  religion and which are likely associated to them by the speakers, participate from now on in the division of the language multi-centric and/or poly-nomic. The social meaning of a linguistic practice is connected in a kind of membership and of identification in a set of marks: a geographical space, customs and faiths, a vision of the world … The berber language in Algeria is scattered on a very vast geographical area. Because of the difficulty of inter-understanding, the speakers of the various varieties resort to Arabic popular as interethnic communication language. The numerous communities constituting this linguistic minority in this space mainly Arabic-speaking, claim to be all of the same ancestor ethno-nyme: the Berber. Tamazight, a neologism, recovers the concept of language multi-centric. This has been introduced into the algerian education system as a syllabus during the 1995-1996 school year, as a result to the various bloody riots and the identical claiming which ended in the boycott of the school known as the strike of the school bag and which lasted a whole year in the Kabyle regions, the banner of the berber identity claiming. The use of the term “Tamazight \", to appoint the berber language, was revived from 1940s with the emergence of the Kabyle movement “Bberberist” and the foundation of the Berber regional education authority in 1966 in Paris. In regard to its application, its teaching has been encountered with educational and didactic obstacles. Therefore, our study of textbooks concerns the strategies implemented for the elaboration of a \"common\" language of a \"consensual\" reference variety. The authorities advocate a policy of Arabization and ignore any cultural diversity. To this, dissensions of ideological, cultural order re-appear between the representatives of the various communities (varieties of the berber) on a standard to be codified, appeal that the measures of linguistic arrangements concerned essentially the introduction of numerous neologisms and the restructuration of certain grammatical processes. Our analysis revealed the relation of dependence which the natives and / or the variety underestimated maintain towards the social system (of the hierarchical organization of the languages) and of the ever-existing diglossic plan. The consequence of this constant dependence reveals that the attribution of the language legitimacy or illegality and the assertion of membership identity in a given community might be meaningful unless they differ from the Other.