Naming, minoration and lexicographic effort to grammatise the languages of Algeria.

Abstract

This paper aims to study the process of linguistic minimization of Algeria’s languages during the colonial period. The analysis of the names of the different languages in a corpus of twenty-eight bilingual dictionaries made during the first century of colonization highlights the mechanisms of linguistic minimization established between a dominant exogenous language, the French language, and the endogenous languages of Algeria.The study of the titles of different collections as well as the discourse analysis contained in the prefaces and similar sources give an insightful approach, which reveals the denomination issues directly related to the ideology and politics of the time.What names do we use to describe Arabic, Berber and French mapped in these dictionaries? What ideological assumptions underline the application of a particular label to a particular language? What are the effects, conscious or not, of this ideology on local languages?