Language Contact and Language Conflict

Abstract

Algeria, no doubt is a nation that has witnessed a cross current of linguistic activities due to it inherent multilingual nature coupled with her colonial experience under the French. After attaining independence in 1962, Algeria started on the one hand to arabise all public sectors, especially the educational one for ideological reasons related to national identity and nationalism. From the other hand, it has maintained French as the language of science and technology. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine Language Contact and Language Conflict between the two mostly used languages, Arabic and French. And for a better understanding we have chosen the faculty of Medicine as an appropriate environment for such investigation. Data for this survey came from a questionnaires and an interview distributed in the period of three months to fifty respondents from the Faculty of Medicine in Tlemcen University. The sample comprised forty Arabised students and ten Francophone teachers. The variables used to study these respondents’attitudes included age, gender, linguistic competence, language use in various settings as well as language attitudes towards the codes involved in the study.