| Abstrakt: |
This article investigates the presence of academic language features, widely referred to as Academic Register, that qualify the language of schooling in Darija, one of the mother tongues in Morocco mainly used for everyday communication and informal contexts. An important body of literature reveals that the home register considerably differs from the school register in many respects [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], among others. Scholars argue that early exposure to the characteristics of academic language at home is a prerequisite for the children's success in the academic environments [4, 7]. An examination of the precursors of the academic language features occurring in early mother-child interactions was undertaken. The theoretical framework adopted is based on systemic functional linguistics and is informed by research on the language of school to assess mother-child interactions in two different tasks and in two different measurement times at home. The DASH coding scheme was used and the CLAN was involved in running the frequencies of the occurrence of each feature, namely the non-present talk (decontextualized language) at the textual level, and open-ended questions and assertives at the sociopragmatic level. The results showed that Darija includes the features of the academic register though to varying degrees. Thus, the low status of Darija and its use in the informal contexts, does not seem to influence the existence of academic register in it. The differences in the children's performance in the study were mainly related to the family's socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy practices. Consequently, Darija was found to be like any other Standard language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
