Discovering the Discourse Functions of a Moroccan Arabic Discourse Marker

This paper is a case of the quantitative type of discourse analysis, which focuses on discrete items or particles. This research is data-oriented, i.e. not meant to confirm or confute any given theory on discourse organization or structure. It purports to deal with the relation between form and function of the discourse particle /waxa/ in Moroccan Arabic (henceforth, MA) in order to learn more about discourse organization in MA and the roles played by such particles in terms of their functions and distributions within MA discourse. This study provides a functional classification of ‘waxa’ together with a distributional analysis which accounts for its occurrence in turns at speaking. The data on which this paper is based were collected by extensive observation and note-taking on the spot. The observation was done over a period lasting more than four months in Casablanca, mostly, and in Rabat as well. This functional analysis has identified eighteen (18) different functions of ‘waxa’. Fourteen (14) of these are highly interactional functions whereas the other four (4) have a more syntactic or structural function. The eighteen (18) functions may not prevail in other varieties of Moroccan Arabic (e.g. Hassani variety; personal communication from Prof Tamek). It is worth noting that this particle is strictly restricted to spoken language and it is hard to find an appropriate equivalent to it in Standard Modern Arabic. Basically, ‘waxa’ has no inherent static semantic or structural properties; its meaning is actually mainly based on its context of occurrence.