Au seuil de la langue (nouvelle) : codeswitching, attitudes et changements linguistique en Tunisie
On the threshold of the (new) language: codeswitching, attitudes and linguistical changes in Tunisia

Author(s): Heikel BEN MUSTAPHA
Subject(s): Cultural history, Foreign languages learning, Local History / Microhistory, Language acquisition, Historical Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Cultural Essay, Philology, Translation Studies
Published by: Editura Junimea
Keywords: Codeswitching; Diglossia; language conflict; Threshold; language attitudes; language change;
Summary/Abstract: When applied to language, the polysemic notion of threshold [seuil] refers to a transitional space where any linguistic stage is linked to preceding and following statements, to the before and the after. Unlike structural linguistics which studies language in a diachronic way, spoken languages do not show distinct linguistic stages and cannot thereby be studied in the perspective of an extended diachrony. They are only studied in a synchronic method especially when it becomes to study the speech of people before the invention of new technologies of recording. While linked with the precedent stage, a spoken language seems to be a variation resulting from it which announces the very future phase. In this way, they show continuously aspects of language change, which can be studied in the perspective of the Labovian “apparent time”. In the Tunisian context, the changes observed are, in part, “contact-induced” and seem to be reflected by the generalized practice of codeswitching. But, this practice, while motivated by communicative pressures, is intimately linked with the history of language contacts and with the ideologies (attitudes and representations) supporting their conflicting relations. In Tunisia, the language conflict results in paradoxical identities which muzzles speakers, and which does not enable us to indicate the orientation that language change will choose.

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