Digitalisation and polycentricity in Moroccan Arabic: Complexity and heterogeneity in linguistic practices

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the notion of polycentricity (Blommaert 2005; 2010) and its application to Moroccan Arabic as a possible polycentric language. I understand polycentricity in the sense that any environment in which human beings gather and communicate is by definition polycentric and may therefore contain more than one identifiable centre of power (Blommaert 2005). A second objective is to explore how the digitalisation of Moroccan society and the increased use of social media and digital platforms are central to the phenomenon of polycentricity in Moroccan Arabic. In order to do so, I will examine a corpus of uses in various social media and digital platforms as a highly revealing manifestation of polycentricity and heteroglossia in Moroccan Arabic. The analysis reveals how practices and voicing are not subject to constraints or a single norm that defines what is ‘irregular’ or plain, thereby creating a rather complex polycentric system in Moroccan Arabic that affects both the language itself as linguistic system and its patterns of use.