Stylizing Tamazight (Berber)-Influenced Moroccan Arabic in a Moroccan Stand-Up Comedy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Elaborating on the concept of heteroglossic stylization, this paper examines how a Moroccan comedian—Zakaria Ouarssam—stylizes Tamazight (Berber)-influenced Moroccan Arabic (MA) in order to evoke comedic personae associated with the country’s Middle Atlas region. Our analysis focuses on Ouarssam’s on-stage performances to document the complex multilingual repertoire that allows him to (i) create contrasts between a supposedly unmarked MA and a stylized Tamazight-influenced MA and (ii) evoke comedic stances that associate the latter with stereotypes of his home region. Particular attention is given to Ouarssam’s use of code switching between Tamazight-influenced MA and untranslated Tamazight as a novel and potentially boundary-pushing practice when considered in the context of its live performance on national television. The paper argues that Ouarssam’s stylized performances contribute to the construction and valorization of an alternative expression of Amazigh and regional pride, even as they reproduce certain linguistic hierarchies and ideologies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".