Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 1 Online version available in : http://arbitrer.fib.unand.ac.id | 2339-1162 (Print) | 2550-1011 (Online) | JURNAL ARBITRER Submission Track A B S T R A C T Recieved: January 10, 2022 Final Revision: March 31, 2022 Available Online: May 10, 2022 This paper uses critical discourse analysis (CDA), particularly Theo Van Leeuwen’s socio-semantic inventory, to discover the discursive representations of the social actors in the U.S. State Department’s coverage of Amazighs’ struggle for their linguistic and cultural rights in its annual reports on human rights practices in Morocco, between 1999 and 2020. The data comprises 21 texts with 5796 words. These are the content of the ‘National/ Racial/ Ethnic Minorities’ section within the pertinent reports, available on the State Department’s online database. The investigated section follows the section of ‘Persons with Disabilities’. The findings show that the Amazigh issue has not been reported with careful attention; inaccurate information has, for instance, been detected. The inclusion representational categories are predominantly used; differentiation and categorization are given special weight, compared to the strategies of genericization, individualization, objectivation, and assimilation. Assigning distinctive prominence to two groups aims to emphasize the persistent ‘conflict’ in Morocco between the disempowered Amazigh activists and the empowered Moroccan ‘authorities’. The exclusion representational categories, on the other hand, specifically backgrounding and nominalization, are also heavily employed to mystify agency in critical situations, mainly when the related social actors are ‘the authorities’. The study concludes that the representation of the social actors is influenced by the ideological stances and agenda of the U.S. State Department. Keywords Amazigh, critical discourse analysis, human rights reports, Morocco, social actors, U.S. State Department Correspondence E-mail: b.aitlaaguid@edu.umi.ac.ma Articles Amazigh in Morocco through the Lens of the U.S. State Department’s Reports between 1999 and 2020: A Critical Discourse Analysis Brahim Ait Laaguid1 Under Liscense of Creative Commons Attributioni-NonCommercial 4.0 International.DOI: https://doi.org/10.25077/ar.9.1.1-16.2022 1. INTRODUCTION The U.S. State Department’s coverage of the Amazigh issue in its annual human rights reports on Morocco has been academically overlooked. Other issues though have relatively been discussed. Criticism has been laid at the content of the reports since their very initial publications. It has for example been claimed that a report on Morocco “obscures a very serious situation by overt omissions and by minimizing severe problems and maximizing the effects of small changes” (Ahmad & Schaar, 1978, p. 15). The Moroccan government has also contended that there is bias, fallacies, allegations and inaccurate data in the reporting of human rights practices in Morocco (“Morocco Strongly Criticizes Washington’s Report”, 2016). There is in fact no tangible evidence confirming or disconfirming the prior claims. This paper theorizes that the required evidence should be linguistic and respective of the broader context of the texts’ production. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is the appropriate approach to do so. It provides one with a set of analytical tools. It is a democratic approach tending to make a change by criticizing any sort of inequalities, be them social or political. It decodes, deconstructs, and exposes the ideologies and power relations hidden in a certain text. It is particularly about discovering the critically significant devices used in a discourse to manipulate language use (Fairclough, 2014; Wodak, 1989; Van Dijk, 1993). 1Faculty of Arts & Humanities,Moulay Ismail University, Meknes, Morocco Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 2 This article is therefore a CDA study of the section entitled ‘National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities’ in the U.S. State Department’s human rights reports on Morocco since 1999 till 2020. The data has been retrieved from the State Department’s official website (www.state.gov/reports-bureau- of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/country- reports-on human-rights-practices/) consisting of 21 texts presumed to describe human rights violations against Amazigh in Morocco. As to the writing process of the reports, it is the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) that is responsible for the coordination and issuance of reports. The Embassy officers then write initial drafts for each country and the DRL staff, in agreement with other offices and embassies, edit the reports. The Office of the Secretary of State and National Security Council (NSC) staff may also intervene in the editing and reviewing process (Weber, 2021). It has been suggested that the State Department’s evaluation of human rights practices reflects the U.S. foreign policy’s ideological agenda and serves its international interests (Kuosmanen, 2021). This paper aims to contribute to critical understanding and discourse analysis of the State Department’s human rights discourse. It, more specifically, aims to discover the specific representations of the social actors involved in the reports, by extracting the different representational categories employed therein. The paper also intends to expose the ideologies hidden in the representations to verify the neutrality and objectivity of the reports’ producers. A General Overview of the Status of Amazigh in Morocco Imazighen1 are the indigenous people of North Africa whose existence goes way before the modern Arab society (MacDonald, 2021). They are also known as Berbers, but they find this term derogatory. People with Amazigh background are mostly present in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Smaller minorities, however, live in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Egypt. This community has survived “Punic, Roman, Byzantine, Vandal, Arab, Ottoman, French, Italian, and Spanish invasions and settlement” (Ilahiane, 2006, p. 5). They speak Tamazight, which is a 1It is the plural form of Amazigh. It means ‘free people’. branch of the Afro-asiatic language family. It encompasses about forty languages spoken in the region (Lafkioui, 2018). In Morocco, more particularly, the standard language is Amazigh. It combines three major varieties. These are Tarifit, Tamazight, and Tashelhit (from North to South). Notably, Tamazight, as a name, is used for both the language family and the Moroccan Amazigh language variety spoken in the Middle Alas. Arabs, on the other hand, constitute another ethnic group in Morocco. They came from the Arabian Peninsula in the eighth century. They brought a different ethno-linguistic identity, a new language, Arabic, and a new religion, Islam (Bret & Fentress, 1996). Morocco was not colonized, especially by the French occupier, from 1912 till 1956, without enough attention to the local languages. The French occupation authorities had to look for ways to make Morocco’s linguistic bilingualism (Amazigh and Moroccan Arabic) a problem rather than a favorable rich diversity. For this reason, the colonizer publicized a biased narrative seeking to partition Morocco as a decree (Dahir) was issued in 1930 aiming to formalize two different legal systems in Morocco, the Islamic law for Arabs, and local customary laws for Imazighen (Hart, 1997; Masbah, 2011). Gradually, French has had a powerful presence around the country to the point that it has become a language of prestige and advancement (Reino, 2007). The post-colonial Morocco has been characterized with linguistic diversity. It has a complex sociolinguistic situation, consisting of Standard Arabic, French, Amazigh, and Moroccan Colloquial Arabic. Since the independence of the country in 1956, two ideologies have dominated: the ‘Francophonie’ and Arabization. The latter was claimed to be the state’s strategy to gradually minimize the presence of the French language, reinforce the use of Arabic and hence maintain Morocco’s national unity (Marley, 2004; Sadiqi, 2011). The former, on the other hand, is represented by the French language’s authority and supremacy in various domains of public life (Alalou, 2006). For decades, Amazigh language and identity have been subject to extreme forms of Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 3 marginalization and exclusion. Amazigh was for a long time confined to oral communication. It was considered inferior and no more than a vernacular. Amazigh has then been minoritized for social and political reasons (Boukous, 2012). Since late 1960s, the Amazigh Cultural Movement2 has defended the Amazigh linguistic and cultural rights. It has been the representative of the Amazigh community in its struggles towards official recognition and institutional access (Fisher, 2011). However, ever since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Amazigh language and culture have been undergoing a process of revitalization. In 2001, the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) was established. In 2003, Amazigh was introduced for the first time into Morocco’s educational system. In the subsequent years, the language has been moderately present in the Media scene and, more importantly, recognized as a co- official language alongside Arabic in the 2011 constitution (Boukous, 2012). There has been a drafted organic law 26- 16 (Art. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) intended to define the stages of the Amazigh language activation and the modalities of its integration into public life. This law has been neglected until recently. In 2019, the parliament approved the activation of the official character of the language. Despite these humble attempts to promote the language and attain linguistic equity, Amazigh’s ethnolinguistic vitality is still latent. It has been argued that the regression and deceleration to develop the Amazigh language are a direct result of the state’s lack of genuine will (El Kirat & Boussagui, 2017; Errihani, 2006; Idhssaine & El Kirat, 2019; Idhssaine, 2020; Marley, 2004). Critical Discourse Analysis Critical discourse analysis is a multidisciplinary field that draws from different areas of study. It is principally “a perspective on critical scholarship: 2 It is a movement that has been instrumental to the strengthening of civil society and democracy in Morocco and Algeria. Its activists call for the promotion and integration of Amazigh into different aspects of public life (Ennaji, 2019). a theory and a method of analysing the way that individuals and institutions use language” (Richardson, 2007, p 1–2). It views language use not only as a product of society but also as a ‘social practice’, considering the ‘context of language use’ to be crucial. Van Dijk (1997) argues that CDA is not just another form of academic analysis and that it aspires to take the side of those who suffer from linguistic-discursive forms of domination and exploitation. Scholars of CDA maintain that the ultimate objective of doing CDA is what they call ‘social emancipation’. Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) rely on Habermas’ concept of emancipatory knowledge interest, which aims “to free oneself from ideologically frozen relations of dependence which can in principle be transformed” (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999, p. 29). However, critical analysis is not mechanical. Meanings are not produced in a vacuum. It would otherwise be insufficient to just extract the discursive strategies from the texts, without considering the wider context. For instance, the speeches delivered by politicians and the reports issued by NGOs are influenced by the institutions these discourse producers belong to. They do so in socially determined ways that have social impacts and implications (Fairclough, 1989). Language thus is constructive and shapes the social structures and the representations of social actors. Huckin (1997) claims that the primary activity of critical discourse analysis is the close and deep analysis of written or oral texts considered to be politically or culturally influential to a given society. The analysis process requires explanation rather than just stating the linguistic features used in the text. The textual analysis goes through three levels: description, interpretation, and explanation (Fairclough, 1989). The first level helps accumulate linguistic evidence displaying ideology and power, by describing the linguistic strategies employed in the text. The second level relates the kind of language used in the text to its meanings in the wider context, whereas at the third level, the analyst explains why the discourse is as it is, how it is closely connected to the social structures and practices, and what change it makes. In other words, the analyst asks why the social actors are represented in a specific way (Fairclough, 2014). Accordingly, this paper Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 4 draws on the different socio-political conditions of the Amazigh issue’s coverage by the U.S. State Department. The ideological implications of this institution’s representation of the involved social actors can only be shown through a thorough analysis of the employed manipulative discursive strategies. The U.S. State Department’s Reports The State Department’s reports are claimed to be prepared by different institutions, including the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), embassies, the Secretary of State, and the National Security Council (NSC). The information sources relied on include “nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), press reports, academic and congressional studies, international organizations, governments, and alleged victims of human rights abuses” (Weber, 2021, p. 2). The state department has been annually publishing its human rights reports since 1976. By 2019, two hundred countries have been covered (Kuosmanen, 2021). Some of these countries have heavily criticized the U.S. foreign policy over the years for its bias in reporting human rights violations (De Neufville, 1986). Different NGOs have also criticized the reports for redefining the international law and representing a narrow scope of human rights in a way that lends full authority to the U.S. (McMahon, 2009). The U.S.’ foreign policy has its own perspectives and worldviews. It tries to influence large audiences in order to shape their opinions and attitudes. Its defense of human rights serves its own ideological purposes, as the constructed discourse promotes the exceptional and perfect U.S. (Kuosmanen, 2021). The relevant reports target different countries, therefore different communities and ethnicities. This paper aims to provide a critical understanding of the issued reports by deconstructing the institution’s discursive representation of Amazigh as a specific minoritized linguistic group in Morocco. It approaches linguistic features in a text as being ideologically leaden. This study thus hypothesizes that the texts’ producers who reported the events and developments of the Amazigh issue favor one side over the other, manipulate and legitimize their opinions and actions (Wenden, 2005). Texts are ideological “in so far as they incorporate significations which contribute to sustaining or restructuring power relations” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 91). Most often, the text is constructed in such a way as to manipulate the reader into accepting a given idea, information, or opinion as an unquestionable reality. However, in a discourse, ideology is represented through textual, lexical, and grammatical elements (Fairclough, 2010). This study seeks to answer the following broad question: How does the U.S. State Department discursively represent the social actors in reporting the Amazigh issue between 1999 and 2020? Three secondary questions can then be formulated: 1. How are the discursive strategies used to represent the social actors? 2. What conclusions can be drawn from the representation of the social actors? 3. To what extent are the texts credible and objective? To answer these questions, and thus examine the representation of the involved social actors, specifically Amazighs and the Moroccan government, this paper uses CDA techniques and Theo Van Leeuwen’s socio-semantic approach. The analysis, more particularly, also draws from the methodologies of Fairclough (2010, 2014) and Van Dijk (1997, 1998) in an attempt to reach a comprehensive understanding of the explored representations. 2. METHOD 2.1. Data Collection and Description The present study follows a qualitative approach. It depends on the whole corpus of reports on human rights practices in Morocco, precisely the section on Amazigh, between 1999 and 2020. It should be noted that there is a year of difference between each report’s date of publication and the actual year related to the issued content. For instance, the 2011 report is published in 2012. The sample overall consists of 21 reports, retrieved from the State Department’s online database. As a representative of the United States and the department in charge of foreign policy issues, the Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 5 State Department believes that it is providing a service to the world by documenting the status of human rights in almost every country. Arguably, the department’s different offices and staff consider the issued reports as objective and comprehensive information made available to Congress, activists, academics, and the general public. The rationale for selecting all the texts is conducting a detailed analysis to obtain substantial conclusions and findings, generate a comprehensive framework evaluative of the U.S. foreign policy and institutional discourse, and provide a critical contribution to the representations of the Amazigh issue in the international context. Particularly, an estimated amount of 5796 words, counting for the 20 reports (1999-2020), are collected for analysis, as shown in the following table: Table 1: Word Counts for the ‘National/Rational/Ethnic Minorities’ Section in the U.S. State Department’s Reports on Human Rights Practices in Morocco (1999-2020). Report Word count % of Total 1999 484 8.35 % 2000 515 8.88 % 2001 442 7.62 % 2002 210 3.62 % 2003 235 4.05 % 2004 217 3.74 % 2005 161 2.77 % 2006 171 2.95 % 2007 194 3.34 % 2008 411 7.09 % 2009 222 3.83 % 2010 204 3.51 % 2011 173 2.98 % 2012 191 3.29 % 2013 187 3.22 % 2014 188 3.24 % 2015 191 3.29 % 2016 216 3.72 % 2017 229 3.95 % 2018 216 3.72 % 2019 367 6.33 % 2020 372 6.41 % Total 5796 100 % The term ‘report’ is used to refer to the section under investigation. Each section is exemplified above by the number of words it is composed of as well as the corresponding percentage it represents in comparison to the overall word count of all the sections. Out of the 5796 words (100%), for example, the 1999 section includes 484 words, hence 8.35 % of the total percentage. 2.2. Data Analysis The sampled data is analyzed following the techniques of critical discourse analysis and Theo Van Leeuwen’s socio-semantic approach (1996, 2008). The latter is applied to show how the social actors are represented in the reports. It studies “how social and political inequalities are manifested in and reproduced through discourse” (Wooffitt, 2005, p. 137). This model serves as an analytical tool necessary to reveal hidden ideologies through representations and discover how power relationships are unequally constructed or maintained. The texts are analyzed within the framework of CDA at two levels. Each text is analyzed individually, then, comparatively, to one, several, or all the other texts. The aim is to discover the dominant transformations, namely ‘repetitions’, ‘additions’, and ‘substitutions’, therefore examine the representation of the social actors by extracting the underlying discursive strategies. Almost all the representational categories outlined in Van Leeuwen’s (1996) socio semantic inventory are found in the texts. They are illustrated in the following points: 1. Inclusion and/ or exclusion: there are two forms of exclusion. The first one is radical or total suppression, which leaves no trace or does not make any sort of reference to the social actors anywhere in the text. The second type is less radical exclusion, also called backgrounding. By a process of inference or deduction of information, the excluded social actors can be found. However, nominalization is also a discursive strategy used for the purpose of excluding certain social actors. An instance of this process is when the noun phrase is used to downplay the social actor. 2. Nomination and categorization: refer to social actors by their unique identities or by their roles or functions, respectively. Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 6 3. Role allocation differentiates between activated and passivated roles. The former represents social actors as active and dynamic, while the latter represents them as objects (subjected), or as a third party that benefits from the activity, either positively or negatively. 4. Genericization and specification: social actors can be represented as classes, as a way of generalization, or as specific, identifiable individuals. 5. Assimilation and Individualization: social actors are represented as groups or as individuals. The focus of this category is on social actors as single entities. Assimilation includes aggregation and collectivization. The difference is that the first one qualifies groups of participants and treats them as statistics, whereas the second one does not. 6. Utterance Autonomization: it is a form of objectivation which is realized by metonymical reference. Reference is made to social actors by means of their utterances. 7. Classification refers to conditions where the social actors are represented in terms of the major categories by means of which different classes of people are differentiated, including age, gender, class, ethnicity, etc. 8. Differentiation explicitly differentiates an individual social actor from a similar actor, creating the difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. 9. Determination and Indetermination: the first refers to situations where the social actor’s identity is specified, whereas the second occurs when social actors are represented as unspecified, ‘anonymous’ individuals or groups. Indetermination anonymizes social actors. 10. Identification occurs when social actors are defined, not in terms of what they do, but in terms of what they, more or less permanently, or unavoidably, are. This part is organized into separate, yet interconnected sections. They are divided in terms of focused areas, while they are attached in the sense that they tackle the same general theme. For consistency reasons, the initial three sections are exclusively devoted to the 1999 report, as it provides the background text against which others are analyzed. 3.1. Demands to Integrate Amazigh in the Moroccan Educational System 1- Educational reforms in the past decade have stressed the use of Arabic in secondary schools (U.S. State Department, 2000). This sentence includes the impersonalization strategy, namely objectivation through nominalization. The noun phrase, written in bold, replaces the agent, the social actor(s) who made the reforms, in order to give the latter a negative connotation. The reporter critiques the excluded social actor(s) and the negative effects of their activity by foregrounding and lending an impersonal authority to the reforms. The sentence also hides the whole picture. It does not adequately explain Morocco’s educational situation at the time. Education in the country was shaped by a near-complete dominance of the French language. The latter, at least then, became the language of instruction for experimental and natural sciences in universities’ curricula, whereas these sciences were taught in Arabic in secondary schools. 2- Failure to transform the university system similarly effectively has disqualified many students from higher education in lucrative fields (U.S. State Department, 2000). This is an example of ambiguity resulted from the nominalization process. The sentence has two possible readings. First, it is the process of ‘failure’ which is responsible for the disqualification of ‘many students from higher education in lucrative fields’. Second, it is the social actor(s) who brought about the ‘failure to transform the university system’ that is responsible for this disqualification. Nominalization is apparent in the use of the noun ‘failure’, instead of what caused or who is responsible for the act. The doer is thus excluded. It should be noted, however, that the preceding sentence (1) lacks the agent of the action while both sentences are about education. The sentence 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 7 (2) is but a continuation of the criticism laid at the issue. The two activities, ‘the educational reforms’ and the failure to change the university system, are produced by the same social actor(s): the Moroccan government. The verb ‘to transform’ is used in its transitive form. We say to ‘transform something into something’ or ‘from something into something else’. In (2), we have the ‘what’, which is ‘the university system’, while the ‘from what into what’ is seemingly substituted with the adverb ‘similarly’. This adverb creates an ambiguity. However, it is, more likely, used to represent the replacement of the French language with Arabic. There is also a case of generecization: ‘many students’. The aim is to intensify the severity of the failure and its direct undesirable outcomes. 3- This especially is true among the poor, for whom French training is not always affordable (U.S. State Department, 2000). The strategy of abstraction is employed. ‘The poor’ students are assigned the quality of being problematic and regarded as a special case. There are accordingly others among those ‘many students’ who have been disqualified from higher education in lucrative fields for other reasons, and not necessarily due to their financial status. The classification representational pattern is consequently used. There is a category of students who are poor and by extension another class which is advantageous and has the means to benefit from the French training and then opt for the profitable fields in higher education. 4- Some 60 percent of the population claim Amazigh (Berber) heritage (U.S. State Department, 2000). The strategy of differentiation is used. It indicates that 60% of Moroccan population is Amazigh by origin, whereas only 40% represents other people from other origins. There is also the strategy of assimilation, precisely aggregation. It is used to qualify groups of people (Amazigh) and treat them as statistics (60%). The purpose of it is to support the claim and present it as a fact. This representational category is realized by the use of the indefinite quantifier ‘some’. However, there seems to be a contradiction in the statement in relation to the focus of this study, which is the section of ‘National/ Racial/ Ethnic Minorities’. The contradiction lies in the fact that 60% of the Moroccan population claims Amazigh, yet the U.S. State Department considers Amazighs a minority. It has been argued that the Amazigh community has been minoritized due to the dominance of colonial and postcolonial ideologies (Merolla, 2020). 5-Amazigh cultural groups contend that Amazigh traditions and the Amazigh language (which consists of three dialects) are rapidly being lost (U.S. State Department, 2000). The sentence includes an identification strategy, namely classification. The groups referred to, though it is not specified how many exactly they are, are classified as being Amazigh and cultural. This is further an instance of association, whereby the relevant groups are not labeled in the text. Passivation is also employed. What makes, to what or to whom ‘Amazigh traditions and the Amazigh language are being rapidly lost’ is excluded. 6- Their repeated requests to King Hassan II to permit the teaching of Amazigh languages in the schools led to a 1995 royal speech authorizing the necessary curriculum changes; however, such changes have not yet been implemented (U.S. State Department, 2000). The sentence starts with the plural pronoun ‘their’. The strategy of polarization through pronominalization is used. ‘Their’ serves the function of demonstrating that there are two opposing polars: ‘Amazigh cultural groups and the King Hassan II’. There are also the referential or determination strategy of nomination and the strategy of individualization. The king of Morocco is referred to by name: ‘Hassan II’. This strategy results in creating, first, a difference (differentiation) between King Hassan II and Amazigh cultural groups, and, second, a categorization between the social actor that received the act of request, and therefore who is powerful, and the other social actors that made the request. These are powerless. However, there is also the strategy of indetermination; the changes referred to are indeterminate. The representational pattern of genericization is employed as well: “such Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 8 of ‘Amazigh cultural groups’ and ‘a number of Amazigh associations’ to get their language and culture recognized by the ‘Government’. They then state the reactions of the latter against these attempts. 10- These associations claimed that the Government refuses to register births for children with traditional Amazigh names, discourages the public display of the Amazigh alphabet, limits the activities of Amazigh associations, and continues to Arabize the names of towns, villages, and geographic landmarks (U.S. State Department, 2000). The writer supports the previous statement by exemplifying the violations committed by ‘the Government’ against the linguistic and cultural rights of the Amazigh people. Similar to example number (6), the use of the pronoun ‘these’ results in polarization. It indicates that there are two opposing sides: Amazigh associations and the Government. However, the objectivation discursive strategy of utterance autonomization is also used: ‘claimed’. The instances of violations provided in the sentence are stated by the Amazigh associations referred to. 11- The Government thus far has made no response to the petition, although Prime Minister Youssoufi acknowledged Amazigh culture as an integral part of Moroccan identity in a speech before Parliament in April 1998 (U.S. State Department, 2000, 2001). The representative of the government, the Prime Minister Youssoufi, admitted that the Amazigh culture is part of Moroccan identity, yet there is no response from ‘the Government’ to the petition already issued by several Amazigh associations. In order to sound professional and ascribe power and authority to the identified social actors, the representational categories of individualization (nomination) and categorization (functionalization) are used. The Prime Minister Youssoufi is referred to by both his occupation and surname. 3.3. Past Simple Tense and Lexical Choices One striking remark about the 2002 text is changes”. It is not specified what those changes are. The writer thus foregrounds the fact that those ‘changes have not yet been implemented’. 7- In September, teaching of the Berber language began in 317 primary and secondary schools and plans call for the addition of other schools in the future (U.S. State Department, 2004). The exact same paragraphs written in 2002 are repeated in 2003 with the addition of one sentence at the end of the report. Surprisingly, the information is inaccurate. The Amazigh language has never been taught in secondary schools. The 317 schools where the Amazigh language was first taught in September 2003 were all elementary (Sadiqi, 2011). 8- In July in Nador, the Minister of Territorial Management (and number three official in the ruling USFP party) attended a conference on education in the Amazigh language (U.S. State Department, 2000). In sentence 8, the strategy of functionalization is used without nomination. The Minister is referred to by his occupation: ‘the Minister of Territorial Management’, and also by his role within the party he represents: “number three official in the ruling USFP party”. 3.2. The Struggle of Amazigh Associations 9- In 1996 a number of Amazigh associations issued a communique petitioning the Government to recognize their language as an official language and to acknowledge their culture as a part of Moroccan society (U.S. State Department, 2000). The sentence involves the representational category of differentiation. There are two different categories in struggle: ‘a number of Amazigh associations’ and ‘the Government’. There is however no specification as to how many these associations are. Interestingly enough, in terms of lexical choices, two synonyms are used differently. While ‘to recognize’ means to appreciate and consider the Amazigh language worthy of having an official status in Morocco, ‘to acknowledge’ means to admit that the Amazigh culture is part of the Moroccan society. The writer criticizes the status quo by first foregrounding the attempts Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 9 French. ‘Obtain’ and ‘access’ can be considered two verbs within the lexical field of possession. This field helps us understand the writer’s worldview which is associated with the unequal realities poor students in Morocco endure. 3.4. The Constitutionalization of the Amazigh Language The 2011 report starts with a repeated paragraph, but with some important changes, in comparison to the earlier texts. 16- Although the country is majority Amazigh, rural areas that are predominantly Amazigh are the poorest in the country. Illiteracy in some areas runs as high as 80 percent, and authorities often do not provide basic governmental services. (U.S. State Department, 2011, p. 34). 17-Many of the poorest regions in the country--particularly the Middle Atlas region--are predominantly Amazigh with illiteracy as high as 80 percent. Basic governmental services in this mountainous and underdeveloped region were not extensive. (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). The focus at first is on the contradiction of the present state of affairs; the population in Morocco is majority Amazigh, but yet the poorest areas in the country are massively Amazigh. Illiterate Amazighs in the ‘poorest regions’ are assimilated through aggregation. They are treated as a statistic (80 percent) in both (16) and (17). The purpose is to generate consensus opinion about the critical situation of human rights in Morocco, especially among Amazighs in rural areas. In a broader context, the report emphasizes the interrelatedness of different aspects of human rights. A special attention is drawn to the fact that no development of Amazigh language and identity as citizenship rights would be possible without developing Amazighs themselves as humans. This is exemplified in terms of the little provision of basic governmental services by the authorities to the pertinent areas. Nevertheless, the phrase ‘as high as 80 percent’ in example 17 is changed to ‘higher than national average’ starting from 2016 till 2020. The report the ambiguous use of the past simple tense. “Both French and Arabic were used in the news media and educational institutions” (12) (U.S. State Department, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007). It is perhaps chosen to highlight the fact that there is a change, especially that the Amazigh status was reconsidered since the creation of the Amazigh Institute for Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in 2001. There is also a sentence that is constantly edited: “the poor lacked the means to provide additional instruction in French to supplement the few hours per week taught in public schools” (13) (U.S. State Department, 2003, 2004). The straightforward interpretation is that the poor students ‘did not have’ the means in the past, but now they do. The word ‘means’ itself creates a generalization; which ‘means’ exactly? Money, transportation, or what? One more interpretation is that the past tense is used because there are no new events, changes, or developments; thus, a repetition of information already mentioned. One more instance of ambiguity the change of tense causes is seen in the following instance: 14- A full page of a major national newspaper was devoted on a monthly basis to articles and poems on Berber culture, which were printed in the Berber language (U.S. State Department, 2003, 2004). Is this supposed to mean that after 2001, the full page of the major national newspaper, though there is actually no mention of this newspaper’s name so that we can verify the validity of the statement, is no longer devoted on a monthly basis to articles and poems on ‘Berber culture Opting for various lexical choices, compared to other texts, is also noted in some sentences. For instance, “the poor lacked the means to obtain additional instruction in French to supplement the few hours per week taught in public schools” (15) (U.S. State Department, 2006). The verb to ‘access’, which is used in the same sentence in the 2004 text, is substituted with the verb to ‘obtain’. The fact that the writer uses many synonyms for the same signified means that they are preoccupied with the issue being tackled. That is to say, the writer is obsessed with the poor students not having the necessary means to get additional instruction in Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 10 avoids the statistical consideration by adopting a general comparison. There is a presupposition that readers know the national average of illiteracy in Morocco. This manipulative linguistic choice is ideologically driven. There is a tendency to intensify the impact of illiteracy on Amazighs’ status in the country. In 2011, on the other hand, there is a generecization whose aim is to emphasize the inclusiveness of the exercised marginalization: “many of the poorest regions in the country” (U.S. State Department, 2012, National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities section, par. 1). Unlike example (16), in quote (17), an instance of the marginalized regions is given: ‘the Middle Atlas’. Conclusively, with no mention of ‘authorities’, through passivation and nominalization, the writer, seemingly, blaming the responsible, puts a particular weight on the reality of inadequacy and shortage of required services in ‘this mountainous and underdeveloped region’. However, the use of the past simple tense in ‘were not extensive’, while the case may still exist in the present time, leads to ambiguity. A key development took place in 2011, and the writer foregrounds it in the related report. The new constitution considers Amazigh a co- official language of Morocco, ‘after’ Arabic: “official languages are Arabic and--with the new constitution—Amazigh” (18) (U.S. State Department, 2012, National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities section, par. 2). The writer states the predomination of Arabic and the availability of French along with Amazigh in the news media and, in a lesser degree, in educational institutions. 19- Arabic predominates, but French and Amazigh were available in the news media and, to a much lesser extent, educational institutions (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). There is an edit that invites attention in a particular sentence in the text. Earlier, it was pointed out that 60 percent of the Moroccan population ‘claimed’ Amazigh heritage. From 2011 till 2020, ‘some’, a quantifier functioning as a specifier, is added. The sentence hence reads: 20- Approximately 60 percent of the population, including the royal family, claimed some Amazigh heritage (U.S. State Department, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). At first glance, it would seem as though the report tries to rectify the previous error, which is that not all the 60 percent of people are purely Amazigh. Yet, ‘some’ might be employed to minimize the impact of Amazigh’s predominance. The quantifier, nonetheless, might also be used to give the information more accuracy, since Amazigh is an ethnic community with a very long history, and it somehow does not make sense that just because around 60 percent claims Amazigh origins, then they are one hundred percent Amazigh; these people have always lived with other people from different ethnic backgrounds. One can thus find a person whose ancestors are of different origins including Amazigh. Besides, in this text, (2011), there is a case of nominalization: 21- Expanding Amazigh language education was hindered primarily by a lack of qualified teachers, which the palace- funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture was addressing through the creation of university-level teacher training (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). There are two excluded agents in this sentence. The social actor who made the expansion is radically excluded, whereas ‘lack of qualified teachers’ is backgrounded through passivation as the responsible for hindering the expansion process. The purpose of doing so is to show that the action of ‘expanding’ is more important than its doer. In other words, what matters is resolving the problem of not having qualified teachers, which basically stands in the way of increasing the extent of Amazigh language education. This issue, however, the writer illustrates, ‘was’ approached by means of creating university-level teacher training. As to the reports that preceded, the adjective ‘compulsory’ was employed, whereas from 2011 until 2020, its synonym ‘mandatory’ is used. The word ‘learning’ is moreover completely disregarded starting from 2012. Therefore, ‘instruction’ is meant to take place not only in terms of learning, but in all its aspects. Put differently, the writer moves from a specific determination of such an act to a more general one, demonstrating the prominence given to the Amazigh language in the school located in Kenitra. Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 11 22- The government also implemented compulsory Berber Amazigh instruction for students at the Ministry of Interior School for Administrators in Kenitra. (U.S. State Department, 2011, p. 34). 23- Instruction in learning the Amazigh language is mandatory for students at the Ministry of Interior School for Administrators in Kenitra. (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). 24- Instruction in the Amazigh language is mandatory for students at the interior ministry’s School for Administrators in Kenitra (U.S. State Department, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). In relation to the 2012 text, an addition and a grammatical change are detected. There is a follow-up of a constitutional amendment made in 2011; Amazigh has become an official language of the state. In this text, the writer brings into our consciousness and lends presence to the fact that no law has been passed to put the requirements of the 2011 constitution into effect, making Amazigh an official language. The sentence is passivated and deagentalized. The writer hides and backgrounds the social actor(s) responsible for not passing the law in question. 25- No progress was made toward passing a law to implement the 2011 constitutional provision making Amazigh an official language” (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). However, in 2013, 2014, and 2015, the agent, ‘authorities’, is foregrounded, aiming to put emphasis on the source of lack of progress regarding the expected law. The determination of the social actor (authorities) also shows that there has been a sort of hesitation and avoidance, given the particular nature of the concerned social actor. 26- Authorities made no progress toward passing a law to implement the constitutional provision making Amazigh an official language (U.S. State Department, 2014, p. 28, 2015, p. 30, 2016, p. 32). 27- On September 26, the Council of Ministers approved and sent to parliament for debate a draft law to implement the constitutional provision making Amazigh an official language. In example (27), the ‘authorities’ are specified through assimilation using ‘the council of Ministers’. It is represented as one single group. The sentence (29) is an edited version of example (28). The difference is that in 2011, ‘lack of qualified teachers’ is passivated, stressing on the crucial significance of the expansion process, whereas in 2012, it is activated and foregrounded as a central problem. 28- Expanding Amazigh language education was hindered primarily by a lack of qualified teachers, which the palace- funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture was addressing through …” (U.S. State Department, 2012, p. 27). 29- A lack of qualified teachers hindered otherwise expanding Amazigh language education, which the palace-funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture was addressing through the creation of university-level teacher training” (U.S. State Department, 2013, p. 29). 30- The palace-funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture created a university-level teacher-training program to eliminate the shortage of qualified teachers” (U.S. State Department, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) 31- Although the place-funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture created a university-level teacher training program to eliminate the shortage of qualified teachers, Amazigh NGOs contended that the number of qualified teachers of regional dialects of Amazigh languages continued to decrease” (U.S. State Department, 2019, p. 33, 2020, p. 35, 2021, p. 43). The same sentence keeps being reformulated, foregrounding ‘the palace-funded Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture’ as in example (30). In (31), ‘Amazigh NGOs’ are assimilated through collectivization. They are represented as a homogenous group with a shared objective. Nevertheless, the phrase ‘regional dialects of Amazigh languages’ is obscure. The plural form Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 12 ‘languages’ raises the question of what these languages are, given that the three dialects are varieties of the Moroccan Amazigh language. There is also the nominalization representational category. The social actor(s) responsible for the decrease in the number of qualified teachers is excluded. The reporting of the Amazigh language use extends to the progress that has been made in the provision of the Amazigh language in the television programs. Interestingly, in 2014 and 2015, they recognize the three Amazigh dialects as being national. 32- The government provided television programs in the three national Amazigh dialects of Tarifit, Tashelhit, and Tamazight. (U.S. State Department, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). One more facet of this progress, which the writer foregrounds, is the increase in the number of primary schools teaching the Amazigh language. Since 2013, Amazigh has been taught in the curriculum of 1681 additional schools. 33- The government also offered Amazigh language classes in the curriculum of 5,151 schools (U.S. State Department, 2015, p. 30). 34- The government reported that it offered Amazigh language classes in the curriculum of 30 percent of schools (U.S. State Department, 2016, p. 33). 35- The government has previously reported that it offered Amazigh language classes in the curriculum of 30 percent of schools (U.S. State Department, 2017, p. 35). 36- The government offered Amazigh language classes in some schools (U.S. State Department, 2018, p. 31, 2019, p. 33). 37- The government offered Tamazight language classes in some schools (U.S. State Department, 2020, p.35, 2021, p. 43). The strategy of utterance autonimization is added. Since 2015, we can see that ‘the government’ is represented by means of reference to its utterances, what it reported. The purpose is to avoid any possible liability and instead hold ‘the government’ accountable for its statement. Four remarks, however, should be highlighted. First, in (35), the present perfect tense is used instead of the past simple tense as in the other examples. Second, in (37), Tamazight is used instead of Amazigh as in the previous instances, causing confusion and obscurity; both terms Amazigh and Tamazight are used interchangeably, given that Tamazight is a dialect. Third, in (36) and (37), the utterance autonimization marker (reported) is deleted. Fourth, the phrase ‘30 percent of schools’ is substituted by ‘some schools’. This transition from a statistical specification to genericization is an attempt to represent the related schools as a class, distinguishing them from other schools where Amazigh is not taught. The two strategies are yet distinct in terms of effect. Remarkably, ‘the government’ is foregrounded and represented as a category in all the examples. The individual social actor(s) who made the report is not identified. The analyzed reports are considered official documents. They are, by dint of their nature, edited and reviewed by professional writers and editors who are knowledgeable about the technicalities of language use in general and human rights language in particular. In addition to the writing style, the inaccurate information, the ambiguous, obscure and contradictory statements, the incoherent sentences, the manipulative use of specific recurrent elements, and all the other accumulated evidence assert that the US State Department lacks accuracy and meticulous presentation of information when it covers the Amazigh issue. This fact raises questions about who has written the related section, and whether different parties participate in the reporting process, or it is taken on by one single person. It has for instance been discovered that there is a mistake in the 2003 report, stating that Amazigh language was taught in 317 primary and secondary schools, while the fact is that it was taught in only 317 primary schools. Moreover, sociolinguistic terms such as Tamazight, Amazigh, language, and dialect are not used appropriately, instigating ambiguity and confusion in most cases. Thanks to the conducted microscopic analysis, the texts are clearly a close historical follow-up of the various violations against Amazigh linguistic and cultural rights in Morocco. Amazigh human rights activists, relying on the constitution and Discussion Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 13 the international legal agreements affirmed by Morocco, have nationally and internationally always raised and pleaded against these violations. It has been found, specifically, that there is the employment of several presence-lending strategies, mainly foregrounding and backgrounding. These are used to raise people’s awareness of the status of human rights in Morocco. There is also a continuous use of differentiation and categorization strategies to emphasize the ‘conflict’ going on in Morocco between the disempowered Amazigh people, generally, and, particularly, the Amazigh activists, and the empowered ‘authorities’. However, seeking neutrality and objectivity, utterance autonimization is used to represent the different social actors. Collectivization, a form of assimilation, on the other hand, is employed to represent the social actors within the category of Amazighs as a united group working towards the same goals. The U.S. State Department represents both ‘Amazighs’ and ‘authorities’ with equal preeminence. This particular choice manifests the department’s ideological perspective on the Amazigh issue and sustains the U.S. foreign policy interests as regards its discourse on human rights. At the level of lexical choices, using different synonyms for the same words is applied almost throughout all the texts, indicating the preoccupation of the writer with the raised issues. It has been furthermore revealed that strategies of passivation and exclusion, such as nominalization, are used a lot to mystify agency in critical situations, exclusively when reference is made to ‘the authorities’. Besides, particular social actors are hidden through the strategy of genericization and others are exposed through individualization, specifically nomination. All the reports in the online database of the U.S. State Department since 1999 concretize and criticize the status of Amazigh as an indispensable dimension of Moroccan identity. Throughout the texts, modifications related to the progress of the Amazigh issue and how it is treated by the authorities have been found. Throughout the analysis, a lot of evidence has been accumulated showing that the State Department emphasizes both the violations of human rights regarding the Amazigh situation and the developments taking place to promote the Amazigh language and culture. The focus is therefore on the issue’s both positive and negative sides. The study has been an attempt to critically analyze the discursive representations of social actors in the U.S. State Department’s human rights reports on Morocco, precisely the section entitled National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities. The data analysis has included 21 reports from 1999 till 2020. The objective has been to: 1) discover the underlying representations of the involved social actors, 2) expose the ideologies defining the different practices in these representations, and 3) substantiate that the language used in the texts is manipulative, has gaps and cracks, and is not as well-constructed as it may seem. This has been attained by employing Theo Van Leeuwen’s socio- semantic inventory and CDA techniques. The analysis has shown that the Amazigh issue has not been painstakingly reported by the U.S. State Department. The collected evidence puts the credibility of the reports at stake and shows that the section devoted to the issue in all the reports is more likely written by one single person. In an attempt to serve the State Department’s ideological purposes to delegitimize the authorities’ practices, the exclusion representational categories related to ‘nominalization’ and ‘back-grounding’, and ‘passivation’ are densely employed. These strategies are used to delete or conceal agency in controversial cases. There is also a predominance of the inclusion ‘representational’ categories, including ‘differentiation’ and ‘categorization’. These are frequently used to put special weight on the ‘conflict’ taking place in Morocco between Amazigh people, generally, and, particularly, the Amazigh activists and the authorities. Utterance ‘autonimization’ is also used to foreground particular social actors and demonstrate objectivity. ‘Substituting’ words with their synonyms is another linguistic phenomenon found almost in all the reports. Strategies such as ‘genericization’ and ‘individualization’ are yet employed to hide specific individuals or refer to certain social actors by name, respectively. 4. CONCLUSION Brahim Ait Laaguid / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022) 14 REFERENCES Ahmad, E., & Schaar, S. (1978). Human Rights in Morocco and Tunisia: A Critique of State Department Findings. MERIP Reports, 67, 15-17. https://doi.org/10.2307/3011402 Alalou, A. (2006). Language and ideology in the Maghreb: Francophonie and other languages. The French Review, 80(2), 408-421. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25480661 Boukous, A. 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