A Vision for a Policy of Arabization in Algeria

The political authorities in the Algeria of the seventies of last century bet culturally on the ‘Arabization policy’ as a means of reclaiming Algeria’s national identity determinants, of which Arabic is considered to be one of their most important elements. They worked towards ‘Arabizing’ the social environment in general and education being the ideal space for spreading Arabic as a challenge to French colonialism which distorted Algeria’s cultural character. However, this challenge resulted into a set of outputs that generally characterized a language conflict between Arabophones and Francophones – despite all the gains in favor of Arabic.