| ISSN: 2583-4371 | ISSN: 2583-4371JOURNAL ARTICLE
Abstract: In every linguistic community, the State’s management of the language issue, alongside minority groups’ activism to preserve, revitalise, and promote their linguistic rights, raises language tensions. Top-down and bottom-up policies play substantial roles in the emergence of new theoretical linguistic policies aimed at shaping or reshaping the nation’s linguistic identities. The Amazigh language in Morocco has been a subject of conflict and political tensions. Despite the suppression that accompanied their struggles, especially after the adoption of the Arabisation policy in the 1960s, Amazigh activists continued to fight for the integration of their language into key sectors of public life (education, media, justice, administration, etc.), particularly during the 1980s and 1990s. Correspondingly, the state implemented several language policies that profoundly altered the status of Tamazight in the Moroccan media. On March 1st, 1980, the first Amazigh newspaper was published. In 2005, the Amazigh radio station extended its broadcast to reach 16 hours. Later, the Amazigh channel began its trial broadcast on January 6th, 2010, followed by its regular broadcast on March 1st of the same year. Actually, several studies have tackled Tamazight in the media from different perspectives. The current study aims to analyse the impact of the adopted top-down language policy model on enhancing the status of Tamazight in Moroccan media outlets. More importantly, it seeks to examine the variance between the macro and micro levels of language planning and how this gap affects the status of Tamazight in Moroccan media.
Keywords: Tamazight, linguistic activism, language policy, language planning, Moroccan media outlets.
Article Info: Received: 07 Mar 2026, Received in revised form: 04 Apr 2026, Accepted: 09 May 2026, Available online: 14 May 2026
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