Languages’ Interaction in Algeria: Dialectical Text and French Graphic

Algeria is one of those countries where multilingualism underwent developmental states from simple contact of languages to an integrative code where two components from different languages combine linguistically in a significant linguistic system. This linguistic integration, though not so complete as in natural languages, is seen where two codes come into an intensive contact and their users show the inability to use them independently. However, such integration is partial and occurs at only some levels. Thus, multilingualism developed into multiculturalism and later into a monolingual code referred to here as “the integrative code”. The written form of texts expressed in the French language recognizes the influence of the spoken form of the Arabic language and altogether expressed only at the written level mainly for two reasons: (1) In the written texts, there is more space to reveal this unconscious integration because in the spoken form speakers' social conventions may not accept this integration to occur, and (2) the semantic form results from French lexis combined with Arabic meaning and together express an Algerian Arabic meaning. The present paper aims at exploring the notion of integrating independent elements from independent languages in one code addressed to users of only one language of the two. Written French is integrated with spoken Algerian Arabic resulting in an integrative code yet meaningful to Algerian readers and not the French ones due to the semantic restrictions of the integrated meaning.