Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language Accommodation in Tlemcen Speech

The work is about a sociolinguistic situation that takes place in Northwestern Algeria. Tlemcen is a town whose speech has long been characterized by its urban Arabic. At a given time, namely the Black Decade (1990-2000), due to political issues that resulted in insecure life, the country witnessed a great exodus from the contingent villagers to towns. Being one of the most ancient and antic urban centers, Tlemcen was a mecca for a lot of neighboring village dwellers. This exodus yielded a sociolinguistic situation worthy of study. Due to linguistic contact between newcomers and indigenous inhabitants, a sociolinguistic situation arose. New settlers tried to get close to indigenous people linguistically and vice versa. This work tried to investigate the psychological reasons behind such behaviors.