Aspects of women’s bilingual behaviour

Abstract

The present work falls in the field of the sociolinguistics and aims at describing and examining Arabic/French bilingual linguistic behaviour among women in the speech community of Tlemcen. The research tries first of all to discuss some concepts of the Arabic/French language contact and the linguistic phenomena which result from it. By means of a methodology which uses different techniques for data collection, it shows that during the interactions, Tlemcen women use prestigious forms of the language. On the other hand, the use of code switching is strategic in the sense that the linguistic choices are motivated and have a social function.