Fluxus Editions

Abstract. In this paper, I examine script and writing practices after Tamazight officialization and standardization in the broader linguistic landscape of Morocco. Drawing on over 150 lifemaps (García-Sánchez 2014), whereby students in Tamazight classes in public elementary schools (grades 1 through 6) draw the places they frequent and label them, I consider script contact (contact between scripts) and the emergent ways students in southeast Morocco are expressing themselves multimodally with their entire semiotic repertoire. Similar to translanguaging (Otheguy et al. 2015) that recognizes peoples’ full linguistic repertoire without reifying named (colonial) languages, the lifemaps demonstrate the ways in which young students are, what I’m calling, trans-scripting} or transgraphing}. For example, elementary school students utilize several scripts (Neo-Tifinagh, Latin, and Arabic), write Arabic words with Tifinagh script, write Tamazight words with Arabic script, and muddle script directionality. I aim to take the aesthetics of scripts and children’s drawings seriously as an instantiation of linguistic justice (Baker-Bell 2020) that recognizes multiple ways of being “correct” as students are being interpellated as multiscriptal and multilingual citizens in the Moroccan social imaginary. Visually, I analyze the different aesthetics of frequented communal places. Indubitably, lifemaps are a powerful act of self-representation that reveals the ways in which young minds interpret spaces and places. Crucially, I contend that these lifemaps, with their distinctive aesthetics, function as an “other-archive” (El Guabli 2023) that documents a history enmeshed in loss and silence against the backdrop of layers of colonialism.

References References in BIB How to cite How to cite in BIB

Baker-Bell, April. 2020. Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge.

Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge University Press.

El Guabli, Brahim. 2023. Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence. Fordham Univ Press.

Garcı́a-Sánchez, Inmaculada Ma. 2014. Language and Muslim Immigrant Childhoods: The Politics of Belonging. John Wiley & Sons.

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia Garcı́a, and Wallis Reid. 2015. “Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective from Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3): 281–307.

@BOOK{baker2020linguistic,
   AUTHOR = {Baker-Bell, April},
   TITLE = {Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy},
   PUBLISHER = {Routledge},
   YEAR = {2020},
}

@BOOK{blommaert2010sociolinguistics,
   AUTHOR = {Blommaert, J.},
   TITLE = {The sociolinguistics of globalization},
   PUBLISHER = {Cambridge University Press},
   YEAR = {2010},
}

@BOOK{el2023moroccan,
   AUTHOR = {El Guabli, Brahim},
   TITLE = {Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence},
   PUBLISHER = {Fordham Univ Press},
   YEAR = {2023},
}

@BOOK{garcia2014language,
   AUTHOR = {Garc{\'\i}a-S{\'a}nchez, Inmaculada Ma},
   TITLE = {Language and Muslim immigrant childhoods: The politics of belonging},
   PUBLISHER = {John Wiley \& Sons},
   YEAR = {2014},
}

@ARTICLE{otheguy2015clarifying,
   AUTHOR = {Otheguy, Ricardo and Garc{\'\i}a, Ofelia and Reid, Wallis},
   TITLE = {Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics},
   JOURNAL = {Applied linguistics review},
   PUBLISHER = {De Gruyter Mouton},
   YEAR = {2015},
   VOLUME = {6},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {281--307},
}

Adeli V. Block (2024), “Inscribing Multilingualism: Lifemaps and “Trans-scripting” Among Moroccan Amazigh Youth,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 11, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 163–179.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla11-bloc,
   AUTHOR = {Adeli V. Block},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{Inscribing Multilingualism: Lifemaps and “Trans-scripting” Among Moroccan Amazigh Youth}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {11},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2024},
   PAGES = {163--179},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-bloc},
}