Additional information about research on Nichane

In a special issue of Sociolinguistic Studies ‘Arabic between tradition and globalisation’ I have published a research paper on the Moroccan magazine Nichane. I have analysed the use of Moroccan Arabic (Darija) in writing in this magazine. For further details I refer to the publication.

Abstract of the paper:
Darija, the Arabic colloquial of Morocco, and basically a spoken language, has gone through major emancipation processes since 2002. An illustration of this process is the magazine Nichane that appeared between September 2006 and September 2010 and that published articles featuring varying amounts of written Darija. This article presents an analysis of Darija as it is used in the magazine, relating the results to the current emancipation processes of this same language.
Link to the publication.

On this page I have made available a number of example pages and information on my research corpus.

Some Covers of Nichane

Issue 78 (first issue)	Issue 91 (the famous ‘jokes issue’)	Issue 214
Issue 219	Issue 220	Issue 229
Issue 235	Issue 263	Issue 268, last issue

Slidewhow of covers of the magazine Nichane
I have made a video of a slideshow containing (almost) all covers (169 different covers) of the magazine Nichane, about which you can read more elsewhere on my website.

Nichane Content

Editorial by Ahmed Benchemsi, issue 113 (pdf)

TelQuel

Issue 442, Cover, Adieu Nichane

Issue 442, Editorial by Ahmed Benchemsi (in French) on the discontinuation of Nichane

Corpus details

Corpus ordered by author/journalist (pdf of Excel-file)

Corpus ordered by type of article (pdf of Excel-file)

Description of the fields/columns in the Corpus Database

WMA nr. = record number in my database of Written Moroccan Arabic materials

Issue nr. = Issue number of Nichane

Type = type of text: article, editorial, cover story etc.

Author = name of the journalist/author

Subject = short description of the subject

X pages = number of pages

Columns/page = number of colums per page

Wrds/line = number of words per line

Lines = number of lines

Tot wrd = total number of words in text

Additional words = number of additional words in non standard lines

Grand total words = all words in text

Nr WMA phrases = number of sequences/phrases containing (written) Moroccan Arabic in text

Nr wrds WMA = number of words in (written) Moroccan Arabic

% WMA wrds in total = percentage of Moroccan Arabic (written) words in text

Nr WMA wrds per phrase = average number of Moroccan Arabic words per phrase, i.e. average phrase length in Moroccan Arabic

Nr WMA phrases per 100 words = number of WMA phrases/sequences per 100 words in the text