Formality and informality

Formality and informality

« …speech between individuals of unequal rank (due to status in an organization, social class, age or some other factors) is like language to be less relaxed and more formal that between equals… »[1]

        
Indeed, we find in HM community that the young people use informal words either they speak to each other or they speak to the old people; and the old people use very formal words which the young people sometimes cannot understand.

         In fact, there are many factors that affect the young’ speech to the extent that their speech is really very informal in comparison with the oldpeople’s one. Some of these factors can be listed as follows:

¹⁾      Education: the majority of the young people  is educated and that’s why they sometimes tend to borrow words either from French or Arabic. Whereas, the most of the old people  are not educated, therefore, their speech is more conservative.

²⁾      Social mobility: the most of  the youngpeople  move from one place to another either to work or to study. For this reason, their speech is hybrid, that is to say, they speak Berber mixed with different words form different Moroccan Arabic dialects; whereas the most of the old people do not travel a lot, and if they do, they just move to some places where Tamazight is spoken, for instance, khnifra, Arich, Midalt….

³⁾      Mass media, like education, has influence on the speech of the most Young.

	formal words used by the old people	informal words used by the young
that’s enough shoe love alive	oda adoki amarg/ tayri idar	safi asbat lhob ihya

Written By: ABDELMAJID YAQOUBY

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[1] Trudgil, peter (1995). Sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society. England: clays ltd.st.lves plc