What’s cooking in the Moroccan sociolinguistics kitchen? A critical inquiry into epistemologies and the production of knowledge in language and society in Morocco

The main aim of this article is to discuss the hierarchisation of epistemologies in the history of Moroccan sociolinguistics and the ways in which sociolinguistic knowledge about Morocco has been produced and validated over more than a century within the framework of the coloniality and postcoloniality of knowing, doing and thinking. In order to achieve my main objective, I will first introduce some issues from a decolonial and critical linguistics framework which suggest new epistemologies in the field of sociolinguistics from the Global South. Secondly, I will provide an historical and critical review of several linguistic works, especially in the context of the so-called “colonial linguistics” in Morocco conducted by non-locals: their mainstream research, theories, methods, techniques, and ideologies regarding the objects they investigate. Third, I will offer an overview of the sociolinguistic research that developed following the emergence of this discipline and that laid the foundations for the work of Moroccan sociolinguistics, including the people they worked with and the topics they addressed. Finally, I will discuss the benefits of direct and indirect research by considering the historicity of the phenomenon of the benefits of sociolinguistic research. My self-critical reflexivity is connected to my subjectivity as African, Moroccan and Southern sociolinguist, which in turn presents alternative and innovative decolonial epistemologies in the study of language in society.