الهوية اللغوية لدى مسلمي موريشيوس: دراسة لغوية اجتماعية وتحليلية

Abstract

This is a sociolinguistic study of the Muslims of Mauritius aiming at identifying to what extent they are divided linguistically and religiously in expressing their Islamic identity in a multilingual, multi-religious, multicultural and multi-ethnic Muslim minority country. While some of them prefer to choose Urdu language for this purpose, others prefer to choose Arabic language, creating a sharp contrast between the two tendencies. What makes the situation more complex is that both languages are not currently spoken languages, instead they are learned, taught and manifested at different educational levels and cultural events, making linguistic identity one of the most appropriate sociolinguistic phenomenon to describe and study the research problem. After describing the condition of both languages and how their usage, teaching and learning developed in Mauritius from the arrival of the first Muslims on the island until today, we differentiate between two types of linguistic identities; Micro-linguistic identity for identity studied at the micro level of language and Macro-linguistics identity for identity studied at the macro level of language. Focusing on the macro level of both languages, we showed how the Muslims of Mauritius unknowingly form a particular identity for each language through religious, social, cultural, historical, educational and political manifestations. At the last stage, we base ourselves on quantitative data collected from 954 questionnaires to verify to what degree each language bears an identity among the Muslims of Mauritius. The sample represents mostly views of students, teachers and parents who are concerned with the choice and preference of one of these two languages. Among the main results of the research, is that Urdu in virtue of its precedence as the language of Islamic propagation and literatures among the first Muslim traders and immigrants, has given it an advantage over Arabic to represent the Muslims in Mauritius. In contrast, Arabic as the language of Qur’anic recitation and prayers has limited its role as a sacred language, until a new Islamic group different from their ancestors in ideologies and practices arise and choose Arabic as their Islamic language. Based on this, the majority of the respondents consider Urdu as the preferred language and culture of a particular Muslim group and Arabic as the preferred language and culture of another Muslim group forming two distinct Macro-linguistic identities. Among the main factors that are related with this split among the Muslim community of Mauritius are Islamic affiliation and its practices, cultural and ethnic allegiance, religiosity, geographic connection and cosmopolitanism. However, there are indications that this linguistic tendency might change in the future with Muslims from a particular group who prefer Urdu start preferring Arabic, its culture and its scholars.