Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

The mainstream Arabic pop music is in constant development where new trends replace the old, making room for music from countries like Morocco to participate in this genre together with music from Egypt, the Levant and the Gulf. There has been a rise in the popularity of the Moroccan song in the Arab world, alongside the usage of social media and the internet in the Arab region. The concern of this study is the linguistic and ideological effects this may have on the prestige of the Moroccan dialect, as presented in Atiqa Hachimi’s theory on the Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology. The Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology is about the conception of which dialects represent the most “Arabness” and which dialects represent it less or not at all. The pan-Arab music industry gives room for dialects to spread to other Arab countries. By examining four aspects: the popularity of the Moroccan song, the language use in the songs, face-to face encounters between Moroccan famous personalities speaking in Moroccan Arabic and Arab media, and non-Moroccan artists singing in the Moroccan variety, the research manages to say if there is a change in Moroccan darija’s prestige in the Arab world or if it has remained as how it has been described in the Maghreb-Mashreq dialect hierarchy: “a dialect of a lesser God”. This will hopefully provide a more profound understanding of the Moroccan dialect’s status and prestige in the Arab world.