Language Policy and Identity in Mauritania. El Hacen Moulaye Ahmed
is considered as a very sensitive one in Mauritania. In fact, anyone who tries to explore language and identity in Mauritania might bring on himself or herself a social misfortune.
Moreover, the reason the present study has chosen Mauritania as a case study was not hit or miss. First, the history and the present of Mauritania and its people are shrouded behind a thick veil, for they do merely exist in the corpus of English literature. To the best of this researcher’s knowledge, there are only few works that were devoted primarily to charting out the culture, religion, and politics of Mauritania. Two works (Pazzanita’s Historical Dictionary of Mauritania, 3rd edition, 2008; Handlof et al. Mauritania: A Country Study, 1990) were composed in the form of dictionaries. Such form implies that the information provided in the books might be superficial since dictionaries are meant to cover all knowledge about a particular state or field. The other works include Ould-Mey’s Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: The Carrot and the Stick in Mauritania (1996), Blauer and Lauré’s Cultures of the World: Mauritania (2009) and very few others. As the titles of the article and books reveal, limited branches of knowledge are exposed to the readers. The absence of Mauritania from the corpus of English literature was also remarked by Yassin-Kassab and Sardar. They stated that “[d]espite the majority of their efforts often being overshadowed by Western media narratives, which tend to focus on isolated and often sensationalist topics, such as slavery, terror threats, or the practice of force feeding known as gavage” (2014, para. 6). As such, the study is the first to mirror a clear and full picture of language policy and identity in Mauritania.
Several factors can be listed as the main reasons behind the inattention in Anglo-American academia. To begin with, Mauritania is demographically, geographically, and economically irrelevant. The population of Mauritania is estimated to be only about 4 million. Such number makes it the smallest country in the North African region. It is also located at the extreme western edge of the Arab world. The remoteness from the Middle East contributed to its obscurity. Another important factor that might be behind the neglect of Mauritania in the Anglo-American scholarship is the perception that it falls within the sphere of French influence; therefore, it is irrelevant to English researchers and scholars. Moreover, high English is a rare commodity in Mauritania. The country does not have enough researchers who may represent it in the corpus of English literature. Besides, Mauritania is a poor if not the poorest country in the Arab world. Furthermore, unlike its neighbors in North Africa, Mauritania is only fifty-seven years old. Before the coming of the French colonizer, modern-day Mauritania was known by different names, and it was not a political territory in the sense of nation-state system. Rather, people were organized in emirates and tribal presidencies. Moreover, the fact that Mauritania is almost absent from the corpus of English literature might be due to the fact that it is religiously homogeneous. All Mauritanians are Muslims. The world might have given it more importance if it has a religious minority, say Christian or Jewish.
In addition, the importance of the study stems from the fact that it is not only a thorough introduction to an unfamiliar territory, Mauritania, but also a complementary contribution to knowledge about the “Arab” Maghreb in the Anglo-American academia. This is because studies on the Maghreb are relatively few in the corpus of English literature. Indeed, according to White and Zoubir (2016), the Arab Maghreb countries are relatively neglected in the Anglo-American scholarly works. White and Zoubir added that there are two reasons to this longstanding inattention. The Maghreb “is somehow part of the European especially France spheres of influence, and therefore not of particular relevance or interest to North American scholars.” Furthermore, “the Levant and the Golf region—the Arab-Israeli conflict, the instability of Lebanon and Syria, petropolitics, and the Gulf wars—have long attracted greater attention because of their geostrategic importance” (2016, p. xi). It seems that the geostrategic importance of the Levant and the Golf region made it a recurrent theme and thus eclipsing other themes about the Maghreb. Since Mauritania is part and parcel of the Maghreb, taking it as a case study is definitely a significant contribution that fills the gap in the corpus of English literature about the Maghreb.
In order to investigate thoroughly the language policy and identity in Mauritania, two main complementary methodologies are adopted. The first one involves a descriptive and analytical synthesis of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include but not limited to accounts of the founding fathers and governmental documents (e.g. memories and census data). Concerning secondary sources, the study draws on innumerable books, articles, PhD dissertations, monographs, videos, to name but some (see bibliography). The first methodology is adopted in the first four chapters of the present study. The second methodology deployed in the study is empirical. It is used in the fifth chapter. In this respect, the study hypothesizes that
a. ethnic identity is stronger than any other identity, and
b. language policy is ethnically oriented.
To meet the overall aim of the study the following questions are raised:
a. How do the Mauritanians identify themselves?
b. Which language policy do they prefer?
c. Is there any relationship between their choice of language policy and their identity?
In order to answer and test the research questions and hypotheses about language policy and identity in Mauritania, two techniques, namely, questionnaire and interview, are used to collect data. The questionnaire, which was printed and administered on 506 students (254 Kwr students and 252 Bedan students) of the Modern University of Nouakchott, included seventeen mixed closed-ended and open-ended questions in order to elicit a clear and comprehensive data which helps in understanding the participants’ manifest and latent ideologies. The participants were selected based on nonprobability quota sampling in order to give all the ethnic groups equal rights to voice their perceptions of themselves and of their co-nationals as well as their attitudes toward the language policy of the state. By the same token, list of nine open-ended items were posed to two party chair-persons in one-to-one interview. The two parties, the Call of the Motherland and Alliance for Justice and Democracy/Movement for Renewal, were chosen on the basis of their ethnic orientations. Whereas the former represents itself as the champion of the Arab nationalism, the latter’s discourse is establishing the Kwr’s interests. As such, both of them are considered a representative sample of the parties as well as the people in Mauritania. Content analysis is used in approaching the elicited data. It is worth noting that the quantitative data elicited from the closed-ended questions in the questionnaire are treated by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (henceforth SPSS).
The study comprises five chapters. The first two chapters are intended to provide a conceptual aerial map, covering key concepts and theoretical debates over language policy and identity. The first chapter is devoted to defining key concepts, language, language policy, and identity. Types of language policy and identity are also charted out in the chapter. Besides, factors that affect language policy and markers of identity are discussed. The second chapter examines the interplay between language policy and identity. It discusses the role of language policy in nation-building and identity formation. It also investigates the role of identity in devising a particular language policy. Other issues discussed in the chapter are multilingualism and multiculturalism. Definitions and types of each one of them are outlined.
The third and fourth chapters constitute the bridge between the literature-review in the first two chapters and the fifth empirical chapter by situating the study and discussing themes and related themes of language policy and identity in Mauritania. The third chapter surveys the historical names through which Mauritania was known along the history. It also situates Mauritania geographically. After introducing the state, an investigation of themes pertaining to the people of the state is carried out. The tribal composition and religion are discussed. The fourth chapter, as aforementioned, is the first of its kind to anatomize here and there ethnic and national identities in Mauritania. Innovatively, the chapter also surveys the linguistic landscape of Mauritania. It endeavors to capture the languages spoken and used in Mauritania. Besides, the language policies, which modern-day Mauritania has adopted ever since the eleventh century, are investigated. In other words, precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial language policies are examined. The choice of the eleventh century as the starting point of analyzing language