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Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 10:5978, 2004

C Taylor & Francis Inc.
Copyright 
ISSN: 13537113 print
DOI: 10.1080/13537110490450773

LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN ALGERIA

MOHAMED BENRABAH
Universite Stendhal-Grenoble III, Eybens, France

Since independence, Algerian authorities have used a number of ideological processes to gain political legitimacy. One of these processes is the language policy
known as Arabization. The present article shows how this policy aims at providing the regime with political legtimacy, and serves as a means of social control
(Arabization/Islamization). We argue that, far from bringing about reconciliation between various groups and between these and the authorities, Arabization
has led to serious problems and major conflicts that have undermined both social
cohesion and the authority of the regime.

After Algeria won its independence in July 1962, its leaders decided to choose assimilation as a model of nation-building. This
model, which can be traced back to 18th century Liberal revolutions, aims at making most community members alike, sharing the
same behavior habits and thought patterns. Within this type of
integration, citizens are expected to learn and speak the same language. Monolingualism is considered to be the means by which the
people can be most easily united. To make a good their case for this
model, its supporters would ask: arent the Americans, the Chinese
or the French, who have adopted assimilationist language policies, among the most securely united nations in the world today?
Authorities in Algeria have chosen to adopt the same philosophy
for the national language policy best known as the policy of Arabization or Arabization for short.
The supporters of this policy believe that this type of nationbuilding, in which one language plays a major role, can serve to
reduce conflicts that come from factors that can roughly be divided into two categories. First, because of geographical spread
which generates multilingualism, miscommunication is likely to

Address correspondence to Mohamed Benrabah, University of Grenoble III 03, Rue

de Ruires, 38320, Eybens, France. E-mail: Mohamed.Benrabah@u-grenoble3.fr

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occur between the people of the same nation. Second, the use
of more than one language in a community can create inequality and exclusion among its citizens. A language policy that
encourages monolingualism is thus meant to produce national integration both horizontally and vertically. Political and social leaders, who prefer this approach, openly put these forward as their
objectives and Algerian leaders are no exception. For example,
one member of this group, who served the regime for twenty-five
years, described Algerian linguistic and cultural pluralism as divisive and as a mixing of elements from ill-assorted cultures, and
often contradictory, inherited from periods of decadence and the
colonial period.1 In 1973, the then General Secretary of the Ministry of Education said that Arabization was meant to fill in the gap
between those in leadership and the people.2
In this paper, we show how Arabization has failed as a process
of national integration designed to reduce conflicts. We argue that
because it was almost entirely dictated by political and ideological
factors, Arabization has, in fact, exacerbated these conflicts. But
before dealing with these aspects, it is necessary to consider first
the issue of why language and politics have been wedded in an
indissoluble union3 in Algeria, as in many other countries.
Lack of Legitimacy
At the source of the relationship between language and politics in
Algeria, there is the question of legitimacy. Bernard Cubertafond
quite rightly states: In Algeria, the crisis of legitimacy is profound. It is
the essential problem of this country.4 Political leaders, who assumed
leadership positions in Algeria in 1962, tried to found a State without taking into consideration this state of affairs. This crisis of
legitimacy can be traced back to Algerian ancestral attitudes towards the central power with which they have almost always been
in bad terms. These relations are vitiated by mistrust due to the
populations mode of representation of the State.
Before the French invasion in 1830, the Turks had controlled
Algeria since the 16th century. During the Turkish period, the collective consciousness associated the notion of the State with that
of the payment of taxes. The Ottoman central power made no effort to integrate within a single community something like 516 or

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more tribes that lived in the country.5 These tribes often had different languages (or dialects) and cultures. French colonization put
an end to this tribal system but did not improve the populations
mistrust towards the authorities: the relationship between the administration and the individual existed in a state of dominationsubjection maintained by brutal force. Exclusion maintained the
populations suspicion towards central power.
Even the national movement, the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), which helped free Algeria, has failed to unite the
people within a homogeneous national community. Following Eric
Hobsbawm, we would argue that, as for other independence movements in the Third World, the Algerian FLN was not nationalis
that is, a movement which seeks to bond together those deemed to have
common ethnicity, language, culture, historical past, and the rest6 but
internationalist. This failure has further weakened the authorities
legitimacy. In fact, tensions appeared right after the liberation of
Algeria between the different constituent parts of the independence movement (e.g. Kabylie unrest in 1963). What is more, the
very nature of Algerian political leadership has exacerbated this
crisis of legitimacy. A former political cadre, familiar with the mysteries of Algerian politics, gives his own account:
In an oligarchy, men of power play an important role, but in Algeria, maybe
even more than elsewhere. Thus, they will be very actively involved, because
a rigid and powerful authority, detained by a small group, could only but
give an extremely heavy weight to individuals.7

Today, the idea of the state as an institutional system is still

not well fixed in peoples minds. Many Algerians associate it with
the men that represent it. Building a state in these conditions becomes almost impossible especially when those in charge of doing
it are not disinterested. They believe they are building a state when
they set up a strong central power. This populist way of assimilating power with the state tends to make leaders identify themselves
with their people.8 As soon as the leader identifies himself with the
people, confusing his own interests with those of the entire population, he tends to do everything he can to remain in a dominant
position and exclude the majority of the population. This mutual
negation produces a kind of hatred of the state.9

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Instruments of Legitimacy: Islam and Arabic

Immediately after independence, those that assumed political
leadership used various instruments to compensate for their lack
of legitimacy. Among these, three ideologies can be mentioned:
(1) socialism, (2) nationalism, and (3) Islam.10 The search for
legitimacy via nationalism and Islam makes the language issue become apparent.
In a society where the majority of the population is Muslim, Islam is legitimizingthis is part of the main characteristics of ArabMuslim countries.11 In fact, authoritarian regimes, which are the
rule in these communities, can find their justification in the Koran
itself (4th S, v 59): Oh you believers! Obey the prophet and those
amongst you who are in position of authority.12 What is more,
during the French colonization, Islam was a powerful instrument
for resistance. For example, the colonial school was perceived as a
means for Algerian children to lose their religion.13 Consequently,
Algerians were led to live in a state of cultural rigidity.14 Contrary
to what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, where colonized people
looked for ways of acquiring the colonizers secrets, Algerian
parents preferred their children to remain illiterate rather than
sending them to French schools. The few who did attend these
institutions were considered renegades by the majority of their
compatriots.
As to nationalism, it imposed itself as a natural tool for gaining legitimacy since Algeria had been marked by French colonization. This fundamental legitimizing instrument has been effective in three areas:15 (1) a militant diplomacy which was meant
to turn Algeria into a model for the Third World so as to reinforce the countrys image within and without; (2) a heightened nationalism through a re-invented history-saga (histoireepopee) often entirely fabricated; and (3) the language policy of
Arabization.
The Algerian authorities could not do without a language policy: Algerians had been demanding a status for their language(s)
since the birth of the independence movement in the 1920s. The
language issue was part of an element among the constituent parts
of Algerian nationalism. In fact, the linguistic claim was in the political agenda of the three founding parties of the movement. For
example, in its 1927 program, the first party for independence

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(lEtoile Nord Africaine, lENA) included the demand for granting the Arabic language an official status.16 This was a reaction to
centralized Jacobin French practice, which could not tolerate the
presence as a rival of another language with a great tradition.17
So French was imposed as the unique official language in Algeria.
Colonial legislators even declared Classical Arabic as a foreign
language by decree (Arrete du 8 mars 1938). This very legislation
had the effect of reinforcing the status of Arabic as a martyr language: it served as the language of independence.18 But Arabic
also became a constituent part of Algerian nationalism because of
its link with the Koran and Islam.
In Algeria, what links together Islam and nationalism is the
Arabic language. Indeed, in the post-independence era, the language that was imposed as the unique national and official language (Article 3 in all successive constitutions) is Classical Arabic,
the liturgical language, the language of the holy book of Muslims. This is how one political leader (M.K. Nat Belkacem), who
was a fervent advocate of Arabization, describes this code: The
Arabic language and Islam are inseparable. Arabic has a privileged
position as it is the language of the Koran and the Prophet, and
the common language of all Muslims in the world, language of
science, language of culture.19
The impossibility to disassociate language from religion leads
Algerian leaders to equate the Arabization of society with its
Islamization. This view is largely held by members of the movement whose ideology has served the regime since independence:
the Ulemas, a religio-conservative movement which has become
actively involved in the process of Arabization after the military
overthrow in June 1965. After this coup detat, the authorities had
to work harder to find instruments of legitimacy. The Ulemas offered their help. Since then, they have been granted a third of
government positions (ministries).20 They were in charge of the
Ministry of Cult, the Ministry of Information, and, most important
of all, the Ministry of Education. These religio-conservative ideologues cannot conceive language as a vehicle of an already existing
culture. They rather see it as an instrument for imposing another
culture. According to an Algerian historian,
[the Ulemas ideology rejects] the cultures of the people, the religion
of peasants and systematically depreciate dialects that express them. The

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Arabic language is not thought of as a means of transmitting knowledge
but as a support for religion which must hold the highest influence over
ideas. The revival of Arabic doesnt only aim at putting it in competition
with French but as a barrier erected against foreign influences.21

For the Ulemas, the Berber, Phoenician, Roman, Vandal,

Spanish, Turkish and French past is nothing but a heresy. All the
constituent parts of the Algerian cultural and linguistic heritage
must give way to a unique dimension, the Arab-Islamic one which
is deliberately amplified. For example, the refusal to recognize
French language and culture is seen as a way of disposing of the
influences left by the infidels.
Implementation: Language Expropriation
As far as language implementation is concerned, the first independent Algerian government (19621965) chose to adopt a centralized language policy that favors monolingualism even though the
population is characterized by multilingualism and multiculturalism. Its implementation was authoritarian: there was no attempt
to reach a consensus on this sensitive issue and there was a total
disregard towards the linguistic and cultural make-up of the country. To illustrate this authoritarianism, it is worth mentioning here
the authoroties reaction to a sociolinguistic survey conducted in
Algeria. In 1963/1964, the Algerian government hired a team of
American sociolinguists (University of Berkeley) to draw up the
sociolinguistic profile of the country. As a conclusion to their survey, the researchers recommended the institutionalization of Algerian Arabic and Berber as inter-regional languages because they
were the most widely used and most consensual. But the Algerian
authorities signed a contract with this group of sociolinguists under the terms of which the conclusions of their survey of Algeria
should never be made public.22 Kaplan and Baldauf,23 among others, consider the sociolinguistic survey as the most sophisticated
way of collecting the information necessary for any language planning process. In Algeria, those involved in this process rejected
such an approach and preferred to reinforce classic diglossia.24
Charles Ferguson describes classic diglossia as a social context in
which two clearly distinguished languages coexist, one High and

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one Low. Among his case studies, Ferguson mentions the Arab
world with Classical Arabic as High and mother tongues as Low.25
At the core of the Algerian authorities decisions, there is the
impossibility for those in power to separate religion from politics.
There is also the very powerful ideological status of the language
of the Koran among Arabs. Note that these language attitudes,
which are widespread in the Arab world, are not found in all
Islamic countries. For example, non-Arab Muslim countries like
Tanzania and Indonesia have adopted language policies that do
not neglect the populations mother tongues (or languages of
wider communication).26 In Algeria, the language issue has been
further polluted by pan-Arab nationalism (the Baath movement,
which favors the promotion of a centralized language policy and
monolingualism in the entire Arab world), religious fundamentalism, the Arab/Berber conflict (which has been a reality since the
end of the 1930s), and the deep resentment of intellectual leaders
towards French, the language of the ex-colonizers.27
As a conclusion to the first part of this paper, we will rely
on Robert Coopers accounting scheme for the study of language
planning in Algeria. Coopers framework can be summarized as
follows: What actors attempt to influence what behaviors of which
people for what ends under what conditions by what means through
what decision-making process (decision rules) with what effect.28 The
discussion so far provides an answer most of these questions.
For Algeria, actors refers to the members of a small group of
the military and religio-political establishment that has imposed
Arabization authoritatively from above (by what means). The
decision-making process was dictated by ideological and political
considerations under post-colonial conditions marked by military
hegemony and lack of legitimacy. In the next section, we shall
attempt to deal with the remaining part of Coopers questions:
[actors] influence what behaviors of which people for what ends
with what effect.
Implementation: Language-in-Education Planning
In the following section, our theoretical orientation assumes
that schools function as major socializing agents that can reflect
and (re)produce the dominant social order or the order that

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the dominant group(s) aim(s) to set up. Language-in-education

planning29 or acquisition planning30 is one aspect of language
implementation. [It] is often seen as the most potent resource for
bringing about language change.31 Through schools, one can introduce language changes among large groups of children. Such
changes can affect the larger community and increase the population for whom the language policy is designed. In Algeria, the
educational system was the first institution to be Arabized. This became a priority for the religio-conservatives when they were offered
the Ministry of Education in July 1965.
Arabization was put in place in two steps. During the first
three years (19621965), which were marked by uncertainty and
difficulties, the authorities did not get involved in any systematic
implementation of this language policy. However, even though it
did not have the necessary human nor the material means to do so,
the government decided to introduce Arabic in the curriculum:
seven hours a week in 1962 and ten hours in 1964. To compensate
for a serious shortage of teachers, one thousand Egyptians were
hired, even though most of them had not had any training in
teaching. The majority of these recruits had one thing in common:
they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is how Islamic
fundamentalism was first introduced in Algeria at a large scale.32
In fact, systematic Arabization or Arabization at all cost began with the military coup in 1965. The newly appointed Minister
of Education, described by an Algerian political observer as intelligent and learned, a magnificent product of bilingualism,33
declared during a government session: This [Arabization] will
not work, but we have to do it. . . .34 The Ministers words reveal
the authorities need for legitimacy and social control. In November 1965, that very Minister asked the question: What kind of
man do we want to train (in schools)?35 In a report drawn up in
August 1966, he writes: National Education is, in some respects,
like a business firm which needs to plan its production according
to its forecasts/perspectives mapped out not only for a few years,
but for almost a generation.36 He also writes: the school is the
silent revolution.37 In his book, he even goes as far as quoting T.S.
Eliots definition of the word culture: Culture is something that
needs to be developed. It is not in mans power to build a tree. All
he can do is plant it, take care of it and wait until it grows little by
little.38

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One can find in these quotations the discourse that is characteristic of totalitarian regimes: the need to transform the governed
and dominated by creating a new man and a new society. For
example, the newly appointed Minister of Education, who uses
the expressions a new Algerian and a new Algeria, talks about
the necessary emergence of a new generation that needs to learn
to think in Arabic.39 Other religio-conservatives prefer the new
school to Arabize thinking first or aim at an Arabization of minds
and hearts before that of languages.40
Following the military coup, course and school manual designers embarked on this process of arabizing minds and hearts.
The first step consists in disposing of French as a language of instruction. Gradually, it is replaced by Classical Arabic. For example,
since 1980, children start French as a subject when they enter the
Fourth Grade [quatri`eme annee fondamentale]. This is the case in
urban centers but not all over the country. When a French teaching
post is freed inland, for example, the local educational authorities
often refuse to appoint a new teacher. This more or less vindictive practice does not take into account the fact that most fields of
study at the university (particularly those in sciences) are taught
in French.
Before considering the content of manuals designed for Reading and History, it is worth mentioning at this point that Arabization has been accompanied by the adoption of traditional teaching methods, rigid Pavlovian pedagogical techniques that stress
obedience, memorization and repetition.41 The instructions for
teachers that accompany the books for Reading for primary schools
contain the following:
The program will consist in correcting and organizing the linguistic expressions that children bring from their homes.
The program starts with the childs language and his previous
acquisitions with a view to correcting them.
The school contribution only serves as a substitute for correcting
the childrens expressions.
To bowdlerize and correct the expressions that were acquired by
children before entering school.42
The authors of these instructions use a language of denigration: the childs mother tongue is constantly described as a small

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language, a dialect, faulty, defective, unorganized, unsophisticated, etc. Most of this discourse gives the impression that
Algerian speakers are disabled linguistically and culturally and
need some kind of rehabilitation. Another series of ministerial Instructions on Reading, Conversation, Religious education,
Koran, Writing, Arithmetic, published in 1971 by a government
institution called IPN (Institut National Pedagogique), clearly
states: Our job will be twofold. We will correct through the child
the language of his family. As the child is under the influence of
his family, he will influence it in turn.43 This kind of disassociation of child and family was considered by one FLN party cadre
as a solution to the problem of the Berber language. He stated
that in Algeria, the problem of the Berber language will be solved
when the children will not be able to understand their parents and
vice versa.44 These instructions aim at producing gagged children
(enfants ballonnes) by refusing them any spontaneous language
and by stripping them of their cultural heritage.
In the books designed for Reading for the very young, women
have an unenviable status and position. Pictures and texts do not
encourage equality or understanding between the sexes. For example, in the book designed for 8 to 9-year-olds (Third Grade or
Troisi`eme Annee Fondamentale), we can find, among other things,
a poem accompanied by a picture with a young female kneeling
down in a pool of water and busy doing the washing. The poem,
which is devoted to female submissiveness and obedience, reads:
Every day, I help my mother with the house work/From morning to
evening I do what she needs/I never go and play before I have helped
my mother/Oh mother! I am a dutiful daughter and attentive to what I
am told/And all you ask of me, I do it quickly and without delay/Bestow
blessings on me, I will be obedient and submissive.

How are cultural elements presented to children in primary

reading textbooks? For example, in a study published in 1991, S.
Redoune compares the contents of two Reading manuals (one
in French and one in Arabic) designed for the 11 to 12-year-olds
(Sixth Form). He examines the way the same cultural elements
are presented in the two books. The author analyzes the attitudes towards (a) Nature, (b) technology, and (c) the dichotomy
Arab-Islamic vs. universal values. In the book in Arabic, nature
is presented in idyllic and romantic terms. It is an object of

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contemplation and admiration. No hint is made of its exploitation

and transformation. In the book in French, however, the authors
presentation is, according to Redouane, more realistic and pragmatic. In order to survive, man tries to dominate nature and to
exploit it. He then comes into conflict with it.45 The messages
conveyed by the two books are in total opposition. As an illustration, the author compares two stories appearing in each manual
and dealing with a child abandoned in nature. In the French text,
the child manages to vanquish nature and control it. In the Arabic
text, the child, completely subdued, discovers God. As to the world
of technology, the Arabic text introduces instruments such as the
telephone as magical objects and does not try to show how they
work, nor does it attempt to give a brief history of its discovery, an
approach that encourages children to remain passive consumers
rather than as active producers of their own technology. In the
book in French, the approach is totally different: the child is given
instructions to understand the various technical processes. As far
as the Arab-Islamic vs. universal values dichotomy is concerned,
the book in Arabic describes the Arab-Islamic world in the single
light of its prestigious past. The vastness of its territory and the
numerical importance of its population are emphasized. Nowhere
in this idyllic presentation can one find any mention of the underdevelopment of this world and its political, economic and cultural
dependence, as well as interstate conflicts. This idealized picture
is given to the child so as to guarantee his sense of belonging to
the Arab world and his adherence to its unification. In the French
book, besides texts about Asia and Africa, most of the chapters
ignore the Arab-Islamic dimension and try to introduce the child
to the Algerian national cultural heritage so as to develop a sense
of national identity and belonging.
The teaching of history in the Sixth Grade was the first to
be Arabized both in form and content. Starting from September
1966, history was henceforth taught in Classical Arabic. This is how
a former cadre of the Algerian Ministry of Education describes the
Arabization of content: for that particular year [1966], school
children tackled history starting not from Antiquity but from the
beginnings of Islam. These measures were symbolic of the new
direction taken by the educational policy.46
Arabization has served as a process for eliminating the school
childrens historical conscience, self-esteem and national pride.

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Part of this has resulted from the falsification of history. In the

history book designed for the Eighth Gradethe only book which
deals with Medieval Algeriathe Arab conquerors are constantly
called Muslims and presented as the liberators of the native
inhabitants, the Berbers. Berbers, described as Maghrebans and
being colonized, then, by the Byzantines, were liberated by the
Arabs. Children are also taught that Berbers completely lost their
identity and fused into Islam. Nowhere can we find any reference to
slavery or war treasures collected by force from the native Berbers
by the conquering Arabs.
Moreover, designers of the manual for the Eighth Grade show
their beatitude towards the populations of the Middle East, a beatitude that is clearly found in secondary schools History manuals. In
his research study, Hassan Remaoun47 discovered that 75 percent
of the contents of these books deal with the history of the Middle East. Five centuries of the Roman presence in Algeria (e.g.,
archeological traces) are absent from these manuals. The absence
of these relics from Algerias pre-Islamic past reinforces and maintains a kind of collective amnesia. One should note here, that
such a misrepresentation of historical facts under the influence of
Arab-Islamic ideology can even lead some foreign observers with a
superficial understanding of Algerias modern history to be wide
off the mark.48
Selective amnesia is further enhanced by attacks on schoolchildrens psychological integrity. In this respect, the Fifth Grade
history manual designed for 8- to 9-year-olds is striking. In this book
entirely devoted to the Algerian war of liberation (19541962), one
discovers that school children are confronted with the crude reality
of war and its atrocities. The book is meant to cultivate the principle
of violence as a means for founding a nation. It contains several
authentic pictures which show populations being humiliated by
the French army, corpses, and mutilated bodies of young children.
What is more, the national educational institutions even embark
on a panegyric of violence that is glorified. For example, on 1 and
2 June 1997 (on the eve of the celebration of the International
Day of Children,) children who sat for the entrance examination
for Sixth Grade had the following dictation:
This country is dear to us and will remain invulnerable as long as its courageous combatants will defend it. This is the destiny of the sons of Algeria,

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as long as everyone will respond to the roll call with determination. Be a

faithful combatant who does not fear death and who faces the enemies
bullets by offering his chest, shouting in the name of God, the Merciful,
Allah Akbar. Dear children, why live in fear? Sooner or later you will die
(death is inevitable). The Homeland is ours, its honor is ours.49

Effects of Language Planning in Algeria

What are the effects of language-in-education planning in
Algeria? Let us first consider cognitive and psycholinguistic consequences. An Algerian researcher studied the production of
narratives among two groups of school-children: a group of 5 to
6-year-olds (age when they first enter school) and another of
9-year-olds. The results prove that 5 and 6-year-olds could produce, in an oral examination, non-deviant and correct language, a text the length of which corresponds to the age of the
child. The quantity of sentences far exceeds the content set in
his school manual.50 The results for the creative work with the
group of 9-year-olds show that, after three or four years at school,
childrens linguistic competence becomes fossilized.
Among the first non-Algerians to sound the alarm, we can
mention John P. Entelis, an American political scientist who lived
in Algeria in the late 1970s. In a paper published in 1981, he
warned against the mediocre and incomplete nature of much of
the educational process [if it] continues unchecked. He feared
that a third generation of disillusioned and economically unabsorbable counter-elites, as described by Waterbury and Zartman
for Morocco, would emerge.51 A decade earlier, J. Waterbury and
W. I. Zartman had written the following about Morocco:
The fact that these [third generation counter-elites] often tend to be
semi-educated, traditionalist school-leavers, trained only in Arabic and
more hostile than frustrated in their feelings toward modernization,
suggest that their reaction will be neo-traditionalist, . . . Islamic, populist,
and Qadhafite. It will be one of cynical radicals, suspicious of any
leadership . . . , intolerant, impatient, and embittered over being excluded
from the public benefits that private [and public] corruption make appear
inexhaustible.52

Let us consider two more field work studies that show how
Arabization in Algeria has failed as a linguistic process but has

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succeeded as a political and ideological process. In 1989/1990,

James Michael Coffman, a PhD student from Stanford University,
carried out a qualitative and quantitative study at the university
campus in the capital, Algiers. The academic year Coffman did his
fieldwork (1989/1990) is particularly important: it coincided with
the first promotion of entirely arabized students being admitted
to higher education. In his dissertation, J.M. Coffman compares
the linguistic competence and attitudes of this group of students
with those of older bilingual students. His results show that the
freshers were much weaker in French, without being competent
in Arabic.53 According to the author,
[Arabization] has produced secondary graduates with no mastery of bodies
of knowledge and very weak critical and analytical skills. [. . . ] the tool kit
provided students leaving the Arabized secondary system in Algeria appears
to be both more Arab-Islamic than the previous system, and more limited
in its breadth and depth.54

In his concluding chapter, the American fieldworker states that

studying in Arabic has grounded students in a different cognitive
and symbolic order of thinking.55 He further adds:
This rise in Islamization accompanying the shift in language competence
and preference needs to be explained, for it is not simply the result of
a change in the socio-economic, geographical, or ethnic groups entering
the university. The high correlation between Arabization and Islamization
persists across all groups.56

The Islamic orientation of childrens instruction has produced a whole generation of school-leavers and students who value
religious beliefs and Islam more than the Arabic language. This is
confirmed by another fieldwork study conducted by an Algerian
historian, in the early 1990s. He used a questionnaire with a closed
choice presented to 1629 pupils their A levels while preparing final examination (Terminale). The results for two questions are
worth noting here. The questions are: (1) In which field would
you like the school to teach you more things? (2) What are the
values that you most adhere to? The results57 (see Table 1) show
that Islam fares the highest while the Arabic language the lowest:

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Language and Politics in Algeria

TABLE 1. Pupils Attitudes Toward Their Preferred Field of Study and the
Values They Adhered To
Question 1
Preferred field
Islam as religion & civilization
Meaning of life
Current affairs
Work techniques
History of Algeria

Question 2
%
20.5
16
15.8
15.5
10.6

Values adhered to
Religion
Family
Honor
Work
Equality
Honesty & integrity
Nationalism
School
Language

%
16.2
16
15.2
13.2
8.5
6.7
5.8
4.9
4.9

To sum up: let us come back to the remaining components

of Coopers framework: [what actors] influence what behaviors of
which people for what ends with what effects. It is clear now that,
through the educational system, the Algerian authorities intent
in the first place was to modify the behaviors of the majority of the
population (what behaviors of which people). However, they took
the precaution to keeping their own offspring away from the public schools that are attended by the general population. As in the
rest of Africa, the politics of language in Algeria is characterized
by elite closure.58 It is a language strategy where the dominant
groups children are sent to bilingual (French/Arabic) or monolingual (French-only) schools while those of the vast majority have
no other choice but to attend Arabic-only schools.
One of the main goals of Arabization (what ends) is the
need for the actors to control the populations behaviors. As to its
effects, the preceding section leads us to the following conclusion:
if Islam as a religion is not to blame, its manipulation via such a type
of language-in-education planning with a definite Islamic orientation could but lead to the emergence of new generations of school
leavers with radical Islamic views. According to many scholars,59
the process of Arabizing the minds and hearts has resulted in a
greater Islamization of the Algerian society. It is certainly a case of
identity planning carried out through language planning.60
Another consequence of Arabization that cannot be ignored
is its failure to reduce conflicts that impede national integration.
One can only agree with E.H. Jahr when he asserts that language

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planning activity may itself be the cause of serious problems as

well as major conflicts.61 The ideological and political decisionmaking process and the refusal to acknowledge the sociolinguistic
reality of the country have produced a language policy that has
exacerbated existing conflicts and created new ones. Algeria is
now a highly segmented community in which Arabophones are
opposed to Francophones, Arabic-speaking to Berber-speaking
Algerians, democrats who yearn for secularism, equality between
the sexes and individual freedom to fundamentalists who reject
these values as non-Islamic, and so on and so forth. These tensions
within the Algerian society have led to a kind of cultural civil
war with dramatic results: many French-speaking intellectuals in
particular were assassinated in the 1990s, and many female French
teachers were slaughtered sometimes in their very classrooms in
front of their pupils.
As to the long-lasting lack of legitimacy of the state, it has
gained almost nothing. Up to the late 1970s, the Algerian regime
had seemed to be unstoppable, even invincible, and its language
policy unshakeable. A policy secured by a totalitarian regime that
imposed a concrete screed over the country. The first major crack
that appeared in this screed came from the resistance to Arabization from one part of the population. In the spring of 1980, the
authorities prohibited an almost insignificant cultural event: the
Algerian writer Mouloud Maameri was to give a conference on
old Berber poetry at the university campus of Tizi Ouzou, the
administrative center of Kabylia, a Berber-speaking area. The populations reaction was unparalleled in post-independent Algerian
history: the entire Kabylian region went into civil disobedience.
This Berber unrest triggered a series of other outbreaks of violence all over the country which has shaken the regime to its foundations. It has never managed to get over it since. Hence, far from
providing the Algerian authorities with the necessary legitimacy
for its permanence, Arabization, used for political and ideological
purposes with a total disregard for the sociolinguistic reality of the
country, has generated conflicts that undermine and weaken it.
Conclusion
Although introduced to bring the colonial cultural legacies to
an end, Arabization has led to the emergence of a new type of

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alienation for the Algerian individual, on the one hand, and provoked a deep crisis within the Algerian society, on the other. For
the last two decades at least, Algerian and foreign observers have
pointed out that time had come for a serious evaluation of Algerian
language policy and planning. However, the current socio-political
system remains the major obstacle to such a process. Within this
system, language planning is authoritarian and characterized by a
top-down approach.62 One can seriously question whether such
planning has ever existed as many politicians (and others who
propose language plans) go about planning as if it could and
should be done only on the basis of their intuitive feelings, that is,
in terms of [a] language planning model [which begins with] the
policy decisions.63 This is partly the reason why language and politics in Algeria are wedded in an indissoluble union. One possible
way out is to give priority to a global societal project grounded on
an ideology that favors pluralism in general and multilingualism
in particular.64 In other words, to allow Algeria to head towards
linguistic democracy, one prerequisite would be to embark on
a real language plaining process based on methodology and sociolinguistic surveys, an approach that would reflect bottom-up
planning.
Notes
1. Taleb Ibrahimi, A., De la decolonisation a` la revolution culturelle (19621972),
(Alger: SNED, 1981), 63.
2. Berri, Y., Algerie: la revolution en arabe, Jeune Afrique, N 639 (7th April
1973), 1418.
3. Weinstein, B., The Civic Tongue. Political Consequences of Language Choices
(New York & London: Longman, 1983), 155.
4. Cubertafond, B., LAlgerie contemporaine (Paris: PUF Que sais-Je?, 1995),
93.
5. Harbi, M., LAlgerie et son destin. Croyants ou citoyens (Alger: Medias Associes,
1994), 226.
6. Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 179.
7. Hasan, Algerie, histoire dun naufrage (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1996), 10.
8. Addi, H., LImpasse du populisme. LAlgerie: collectivite politique et Etat en construction (Alger: ENAL, 1990), 10.

9. Boukhobza, M., Octobre 88: evolution ou rupture? (Alger: Editions

Bouch`ene,
1991), 2128.
10. Cubertafond, LAlgerie contemporaine, 94.

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11. Grandguillaume, G., Language and legitimacy in the Maghrib, in Language Policy and Political Development, ed. B. Weinstein (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex,
1990).
12. Quoted in Cubertafond, LAlgerie contemporaine, 106.
13. Heggoy, A.A., Colonial education in Algeria: assimilation and reaction, in Education
and the Colonial Experience, eds. P.G. Altbach and G. Kelly (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Books, 1984), 97116.
14. Djeghloul, A., Huit etudes sur lAlgerie (Alger: ENAL, 1986).
15. Cubertafond, LAlgerie contemporaine, 109.
16. Stora, B., Histoire de lAlgerie coloniale (18301954), (Paris: Editions La
Decouverte, 1994), 119120.
17. Fishman, J.A. Sociolinguistics and the language problems of the developing
countries, in Language Problems of Developing Nations, eds. J.A. Fishman, C.A.
ferguson, and J. Das Gupta (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1968), 9.
18. Benrabah, M., Langue et pouvoir en Algerie. Histoire dun traumatisme linguistique
(Paris: Editions Seguier, 1999), 5859.
19. Rouadjia, A., Les Fr`eres et la mosquee. Enquete sur le mouvement islamiste en Algerie
(Alger: Editions Bouch`ene, 1991), 111.
20. El-Kenz, A., Algerie, les deux paradigmes, Revue du monde musulman et de la
Mediterranee, Vols. 6869 (1994), 8384.
21. Harbi, M., La Guerre commence en Algerie (Bruxelles: Editions Complexes,
1984), 117118.
22. Elimam, A., Le Maghribi, langue trois fois millenaire. Explorations en linguistique
maghrebine (Alger: Edition ANEP, 1997), 158.
23. Kaplan, R.B., and Baldauf, R.B., Jr., Language Planning from Practice to Theory
(Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1997), 102118.
24. Fasold, R., The Sociolinguistics of Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1984), 54.
25. Ferguson, C., Diglossia, Word, Vol. 15 (1959), 325340.
26. Whiteley, W., Swahili, the Rise of a National Language (London: Methuen,
1969); Labrousse, P., Reforme et discours sur la reforme: le cas indonesion,
in La Reforme des langues, vol. 2, eds. I. Fodor & C. Hag`ege (Hambourg: Buske
Verlag, 1983).
27. Calvet, L.J., Les Politiques linguistiques (Paris: PUF Que Sais-Je?, 1996), 120.
28. Cooper, R.L., Language Planning and Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 98.
29. Kaplan and Baldauf, Language Planning from Practice to Theory.
30. Cooper, R.L., Language Planning and Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989).
31. Kaplan and Baldauf, Language Planning from Practice to Theory, 122.
32. Boudjedra, R., Le FIS de la haine (Paris: denoel, 1994).
33. Hasan, Algerie, histoire dun naufrage, 180.
34. Grandguillaume, G., Comment a-t-on pu en arriver l`a?, Esprit, N 208,
(janvier 1995), 18.
35. Taleb Ibrahimi, De la decolonisation, 72.
36. Taleb Ibrahimi, De la decolonisation, 101.
37. Taleb Ibrahimi, De la decolonisation, 76.
38. Taleb Ibrahimi, De la decolonisation, 66.

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39. Taleb Ibrahimi, A., De la decolonisation, 98.

40. Rakibi, A. (1975/1982), Arabiser la pensee dabord, in Culture algerienne dans les
textes, ed. J. Dejeux (Alger: OPU-Publisud, 1982), 137.
41. Boudalia-Greffou, M., LEcole algerienne de Ibn Badis a` Pavlov (Alger: Editions
Laphomic, 1989); Grandguillaume, G., Etre algerien chez soi et hors de soi,
Cahiers intersignes, N 10, (printemps 1995), 7988.
42. Greffou, M., LEcole algerienne, 3335.
43. Greffou, M., LEcole algerienne, 36.
44. Saadi, N., FIS: traffic de culture, in Telerama hors-serie: Algerie, la culture face
a` la terreur (mars 1995), 23.
45. Redouane, S., A propos des manuels de lecture de 6`eme annee fondamentale, Alger Republicain (25th November 1991), 9.
46. Haouati, Y. Trente ans deducation, Le Monde de leducation, N 223 (fevrier
1995), 56.
47. Remaoun, H., Sur lenseignement de lhistoire en Algerie ou la crise identitaire a` travers (et par) lecole, Naqd: Revue detudes et de critiques sociales, N 5
(avril-aout 1993), 5764.
48. See, for example, Souaiaia, M., Language, education and politics in the
Maghreb, Language Culture and Curriculum, Vol. 3 (1990), 109123.
49. Published in LHumanite (5th June 1997), p. 18.
50. Ghettas, C., LEnfant algerien et lapprentissage de la langue arabe a` lecole
fondamentale. Essai danalyse des competences narrative et textuelle de
lenfant algerien entre cinq et neuf ans. (Th`ese de Doctorat en linguistique
et didactique des langues. Universite Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 1995), 324.
51. Entelis, J.P., Elite political culture and socialization in Algeria: tensions and
discontinuities, Middle East Journal, Vol. 25 (1981), 208.
52. Quoted in Entelis, Elite political culture . . . , 208.
53. Coffman, J.M., Arabization and Islamization in the Algerian University (Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Stanford University, 1992), 146147.
54. Coffman, Arabization and Islamization, 147.
55. Coffman, Arabization and Islamization, 185.
56. Coffman, Arabization and Islamization, 185.
57. Remaoun, H., Ecole, histoire et enjeux institutionnels dans lAlgerie
independante, Les Temps modernes, N 580 (janvier/fevrier 1995), 7374.
58. Myers-Scotton, C., Elite closure as a powerful language strategy: the African
case, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 103 (1993), 149
163.
59. See, among others, Entelis, Elite political culture . . .; Harbi, La Guerre commence en Algerie; Rouadjia, Les Fr`eres et la mosquee; Coffman, Arabization and
Islamization ; Benrabah, M., Larabisation des ames, in Linguistique et anthropologie, ed. F. Laroussi (Rouen: Presses Universitaires de Rouen, 1996), 1330;
Dourari, A., Malaises linguistiques et identitaires en Algerie, Anadi. Revue
detudes amazighes, N 2 (Juin 1999); Benrabah, Langue et pouvoir en Algerie.
60. Pool, J., Language planning and identity planning, International Journal of
the Sociology of Language, Vol. 20 (1979), 521.
61. Jahr, E.H., ed., Language Conflict and Language Planning (Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 1993), 1.

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62. Kaplan, R.B., Language planning vs. planning language, in Language, Learning and Community, eds. C.H. Candlin and T.F. McNamara (Sydney: NCELTR,
1989), 193203.
63. Kaplan and Baldauf, Language Planning from Practice to Theory, 118.
64. Benrabah, M., An Algerian paradox: Arabization and the French language,
in Shifting Frontiers of France and Francophonie, eds. Y. Rocheron & C. Rolfe
(Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), 58.
Mohamed Benrabah is Professor of English Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Universite Stendhal-Grenoble III. He taught at the University of
Oran (Algeria) for 16 years before moving to France in 1994. His publications are concerned mainly with foreign-language learing/teaching and
sociolinguistics.