Bottom-up actors' attitudes towards languages at the Algerian primary educational level : a case study

Abstract EN

It is widely acknowledged that Arabization is considered as one of the major reforms tackled since independence.

despite the promotion of Arabic, the country exhibits a rich linguistic diversity through the existence of the mother tongues such as : Tamazight.

this paper investigates primary school educationalists’ attitudes towards the language in education policies undertaken and whether there is readiness to future reforms.

to reach that, we opted for a semi-structured interview with 3 headmasters and 6 teachers from 3 different primary schools in Maghnia.

the main findings reveal that participants hold positive attitudes towards Arabic meanwhile they hope for a solid and effective Arabization policy.

in addition, any initiative to incorporate Tamazight is perceived to be far-fetched due to several cultural and linguistic reasons.