ARTICLES
(Mliless & Larouz, 2015)​
This paper aims at investigating Moroccan students' online behaviors exhibited through social networking sites. Such social facts have raised the interest of many researchers and stakeholders alike to provide immunity for vulnerable adolescents and teach them how to manipulate social networking sites with minimum risks. For that reason, privacy and safety measures need to be invested and promulgated. Still, there is a lack of research covering issues related to safety and privacy, and the role of school education in triggering students' awareness towards such conducts. To this end, 288 Moroccan secondary school students were surveyed on a) their frequency of registration into social networking sites accounts, b) their attitudes towards privacy and safety measures, and c) whether they perceive any role of school education to empower students to cope with issues of privacy and safety. Findings of the present study show that i) students share different personal information ii) they are not aware of personal information privacy, iii) they scarcely adopt techniques to escape cyber-bullying, and iv) they hold negative attitudes towards the implications of school education regarding the risks of online personal information.
(Mliless, 2017)
Master of Arts Theses' Abstracts in Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Meknes Morocco:
A Genre Analysis
It is commonly believed that writing abstracts for academic purposes is not an easy task for non-native English students. In the Moroccan context, students need to write dissertations in conformity with conventions adopted by scholars of academic genre analysis. This study investigates the extent to which writing abstracts by Master of Arts students in applied linguistics at the faculty of Arts and Humanities Meknes, Morocco is in conformity with academic conventions. In fact, little research has been devoted to this issue in the Moroccan context. To fill this gap, this study analyses 30 abstracts, submitted between 2013 and 2015, using (Hylan d, 2000) IPMPrC model to investigate moves occurrence, the use of past and present tense , and the frequency of active and passive voice. The results reveal that the PMPrfeature is prevalent, the present tense is used more than the past tense, and that act ive and passive voice structures occur recurrently in the present tense. The findings have important pedagogical implications for Master students in applied linguistics and teachers of research methods so as to implementconvenient methods that may boost students’ writing skills. Keywords: Master of Arts thesis, Abstracts, Applied Linguistics, Genre analysis, Academic writing, Moroccan master students.
(Mliless & Larouz, 2018)
Smartphones Use, Dependency and Addiction Predictors among Moroccan University Students
Smartphones are hybrid technological devices that incorporate communication and computing. Despite their beneficial functions, they have negatively influenced students' social and learning environments, an issue that remains less investigated in the Moroccan context. To explain their problematic use and to investigate addiction and dependency predictors among Moroccan students, this study uses a questionnaire which was distributed to 254 English department students and 250 students pertaining to the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Métiers (ENSAM). Their age ranged between 19 and 22 years. Indeed, students' attitudes were investigated regarding the effects of smartphones on their overall well-being on the level of i) the content for which smartphones are used, ii) the activities/uses of social networks sites, iii) the length and duration of use in day and night time, and finally iv) the effect of the device on students' social and learning outcomes. The results of the study reveal that a) students share a big amount of internet content via smartphones, b) they use smartphones to connect to different social networks sites, c) students' day and night frequency and duration of use are long, and d) they hold negative attitudes towards the impact of the tool on their social and learning outcomes. Eventually, this study has important implications for future researchers and students in order to consider the impact of the device on students' social relationships, their academic achievements, and their psychological and health well-being.
(Mliless & Larouz, 2018)
An ecolinguistic analysis of environment texts in Moroccan English language teaching textbooks
Article Type: Full Length Research Article In Morocco, many textbooks pertaining to different teaching disciplines integrate environment education (EE). For instance, textbooks used to teach English in high school include distinct units to promote the principles of environmental education and to empower students' awareness regarding recurrent environmental problems. The aim of the present study was to analyze 14 environmental texts from an ecolinguistic perspective by examining seven English language teaching (ELT) textbooks used in Moroccan high schools. Specifically, this was study aimed at examining how euphemism, agency and passive voice are used in environment texts to sensitize students about environmental issues. The present study was also meant to examine the extent to which the ELT textbooks used in Morocco really reflect the principles of ecolinguistics. To this end, the study adopted a content analysis to examine EE in textbooks. The findings obtained reveal that the prevalence of euphemism mitigates the hazardous reality of environmental issues in the texts, and that the absence of agency obscures meaning in texts. Also, the presence of passive voice in narratives hide individuals' responsibility as perpetrators of destructive actions to the environment. These findings have important pedagogical implications on the elaboration of environment units in ELT textbooks.
(Mliless et al., 2019)
In Morocco, public service announcement is a complex field in which various linguistic practices and semiotic representations collide. Hence, the aim of the present work is to demystify the misalignment between language and visuals in the public service announcement in a video on the protection of the environment, namely towards forests. This study adopts a discourse and a visual analysis to clarify the extent to which the interpretation of the announcement leas to misunderstanding and causes a lot of ambiguity. The study also shows that the trees and forests are linguistically reported as feminine constructs while the visuals portrayed them as masculine constructs. This article has a lot of implications for public institutions, advertising companies, and future researchers whose efforts are required to reconsider the pendulum between the linguistic and the visual in public announcements so as to effectively raise people's awareness towards environmental issues.
(Mliless & Azzouzi, 2020)
Environmental Discourse in Moroccan Eco-documentary: The Decryption of Scientists’ Narratives
Eco-documentary is a media genre that aims to raise environmental awareness among the general public. It exposes environmental degradations and presents alternatives for environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and deforestation among others. For this aim, the language of scientific experts contributes a lot to the making of the argumentative flow of the documentary. Within the framework of ecolinguistics, this article examines fear and threat expressions used by scientists to reinforce argumentation in Faouzi’s (2012) entitled / :انين المرجة الزرقاء whining of the Blue Lagoon/. In this direction, Witte, Cameron, McKeon, & Berkowitz's (1996) model of "perceived severity" and "perceived susceptibility" was adopted to explain the use of fear and threat appeals in the film. The results show that ‘perceived severity’ and ‘perceived susceptibility’ expressions are preponderant in experts’ discourse. This study has many implications for eco-documentary producers, governmental and non-governmental organs, and future research in Morocco to explore other facets of films that report about man’s damages perpetrated to environmental settings and resources. Keywords: eco-Documentary, ecolinguistics, experts’ discourse, fear and threat expressions
(Mliless & Larouz, 2020)
Print Media Coverage of Environmental Issues in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecolinguistic Analysis
The coverage of environmental issues is of great importance to Moroccan newspapers, namely As-Sabah, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Massae. The present study explores the frequency of articles that covered environmental issues and investigates the newspapers’ professionalism in writing environmental reports on man’s violations of the natural environment. The Research was accomplished through the framework of ecolinguistics to categorize and analyze all environmental stories that extended from the middle of March to the middle off July, 2020. The sums of 308 issues of the three newspapers were manually examined to study the news stories on the environmental problems. The findings revealed that media coverage of environmental crises by the three newspapers was feeble. Precisely, only 73 newspaper issues pertaining to the three newspapers contained at least one environmental story. Practically, identified environmental articles were manually searched and treated based on a keyword selection such as environment, forest, animals, water, pollution, air, irrigation, deforestation, and overgrazing, among other words. In total, the final sum of environmental articles published by the three newspapers during the COVID-19 period were 92 articles (1.8%) over 4922 total articles published by 73 issues. The role of print media is determinant in covering environmental topics to maintain the public informed about the protection of environmental resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this role is far from being achieved given the feeble interest devoted to environmental issues and the way through which the newspapers have produced environmentally based stories. To remedy this situation, some recommendations are afforded to improve the writing of environmental reports in line with ecolinguistics principles and environmental journalism ethics.
(Mliless, 2021)
Much can be said about the role of the Algerian Press Service and the political agenda it sets regarding three distinct geopolitical conflicts in Morocco, Libya, and Mali. It is hypothesized in this study that the agency’s double discourse to execute the Algerian political agenda nourishes secession and insecurity in the Moroccan Sahara and seeks to preserve security and stability in Libya and Mali. By double discourse, we mean that the language utilized by the press agency to qualify the three political issues is contradictory. For this aim, agenda-setting, framing, and priming theories are used to examine how the agency serves the Algerian political strategy that flagrantly promotes a secession project to dismantle Morocco by cutting the Sahara from the kingdom’s map. On the other hand, the theories will serve to study the media line of the agency which presents Algeria as a peacebuilder state that strives to preserve stability, souvrainty, and unity of Libya and Mali. Relying on the ‘world’ section of the agency’s English website, 1107 news stories were extracted from the 15th of May (date of the military coup in Mali) to the 15th of December, 2020 (Donald J. Trump recognition of Morocco’s souvrainty over its Sahara) in addition to the ongoing political conflict in Libya. As far as agenda-setting is concerned, this research identified many concepts and frames as indicators of the Algerian political position towards the three issues. In relation to priming, this article counted and categorized day by day news into four types named as ‘Morocco’, ‘Mali’, ‘Libya’, and the ‘Rest of the World’. The results indicate that the linguistic expressions and concepts indicate that the agency serves the political agenda of the Algerian state. More than that, the discourse of the agency towards the Moroccan Sahara issue is derogatory and explicitly expresses that Algeria supports separatism, instability, and insecurity in Morocco. Differently, the agency articulates the Algerian commitment to maintain stability in Libya and Mali. Finally, the findings related to priming show that the press service has concentrated more on the Moroccan Sahara issue than it did for ‘Libya’, ‘Mali’, and the ‘Rest of the World’. In this sense, the findings show that the amount of news stories devoted to the three issues is meant to make the Moroccan Sahara problem a primary concern. Over the 1107 news stories that the APS used to cover all the international issues, 735 were reserved for the Moroccan Sahara, 85 talked about Libya, 77 news stories reported about Mali, and 210 covered the rest of the world. Keywords: agenda-setting, Algerian Press Service, double standard discourse, framing, Moroccan Sahara, priming
(Mliless & Handoko, 2021)
Andalas International Journal of Socio-Humanities Green Pantomime
When Silence Speaks out Environmental Issues
Green Pantomime Theater (GPT) is a tool for promoting children environmental awareness and activism. This paper provides insight into how environmental issues can be embedded in green performances and consequently offers a model of socio-environmental change. In Morocco, GPT performances aim to change children behavior, enhance their environmental awareness, and develop their abilities to act as protectors of the environment. The status of PGT upon children has considerably changed within the Moroccan theatre context. The ‘Creativity Association for the Development of Educational Work’, under Arabic name of‘جمعية إبداعات لتنمية العمل التربوي’, is a Moroccan non-governmental association that employs GPT to promote environmental awareness and activism. The study examines a 45 minutes show performed by ‘the Joker’ theatre group titled ‘هجرة البيئة: Environment Migration’. Within the framework of ecocriticism (Bracke & Corporaal, 2010) and visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), the present work attempts to explain how silence, gestures, and visuals mirror the themes of the show. The study argues that environmental themes adopted in the performance strongly point to the Anthropocene's responsibility in destroying nature. For example, scenes on pollution, deforestation, the killing of species, and unreported and unregulated fishing (UUF) show that man has been dramatically affecting the environment. To make of the show a success, participating actors have meticulously used signs and gestures to silently express their views about a highly sophisticated issue. They have made of this show a universal performance in that anyone anywhere can perceive. Eventually, GPTs are highly recommended to identify lines of confrontation that man has with nature. Also, GPTs are important in that they represent man’s practices through gestures and signs and may provide responses for inspiring socio-ecological change.
Documentary films, generally of short or medium-length, have informative and educational purposes. They present authentic reports on areas of life, human activities, and the natural world. Particularly, eco-documentaries aim to raise environmental awareness towards the degradation of natural elements; they present alternatives for environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and deforestation. To reinforce the argumentative process of environmental documentaries, laymen discourse contributes a lot to the meaning-making of productions. Within the framework of discourse analysis and ecolinguistics, this work examines fear and threat expressions used by ordinary witnesses to reinforce argumentation in Lahoucine Faouzi’s eco-documentary entitled “Whining of the Blue Lagoon". In this vein, the ‘perceived severity and perceived susceptibility’ model was used to investigate the implication of fear and threat appeals in laymen’s testimonies. The results show that these expressions are common among laymen’s narratives. This study has many implications for ecodocumentary makers, governmental and non-governmental organs, and future research to explore other linguistic features in eco-documentaries on man’s perpetrated damages to the environmental resources.
For decades, the Algerian elite have specialized in unjustified verbal attacks against Morocco. Academicians, politicians, high-ranking retired military members, diplomats, parliamentary members, and media figures have launched a viral campaign against the kingdom. Their discourse is marked by hatred to make of Morocco an ‘enemy’ of the Algerian people. To analyze this issue, this study adopts critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine overtly expressed structures of hate and to argue that the discourse of the Algerian elite is aggressive, insulting, and threatening. Practically, recurrent hate speech acts embedded in metaphors and mental frames are pure and explicit incitement to violence. To explain the implications of these acts, the study relies on videos posted on YouTube across roughly two months from mid-July to August 2021. The choice of this time span is important because it represents a culminating point in the conflict between Morocco and Algeria due to the succession of these events: 1) the call of the Moroccan ambassador, Omar Hilal, to the United Nations during the meeting of non-aligned countries for the ‘independence of the Kabylia people’ in Algeria, 2) the Pegasus leak, 3) the outburst of violent forest fires in North Algeria and the lynching and immolation of a young activist in the courtyard of a police station in Kabilya, 4) the visit of the Israeli foreign minister to Morocco, and 5) the breakdown of diplomatic ties between the two countries. To attain the current study’s aims, 44 videos have been identified to cover the five stages. The results show that the Algerian elite’s discourse towards Morocco is full of hate, derogatory, and incites violence and racism. The many metaphors and mental frames adopted in the excerpts are to serve the political agenda of the state by making of Morocco an ‘enemy’.
(Mliless & Larouz, 2021)
Information in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era: Is it Fact Fake or Fear
Concerns about fake news on social network sites are ascending. The aim is to deliberately create and share false or manipulated information to mislead the public, to cause harm for public figures, and/or get financial gains. In Morocco, the rise of fake news in the COVID-19 era highlights the fight of many media institutions, including the Maghreb Agency Press, against misinformation. The content used by media and social network sites to report about the spread of the disease has put the pandemic at the forefront of people’s daily discourse. Actually, the outbreak of unfiltered information on the COVID-19 contagion seems to have sparked fear amongst the public via re-tweetable tweets, likable posts, and shared documents. For about three months, a deluge of fake news was created to target COVID-19, health stuff, society, security, and religion, among other public domains. Relying on the Maghreb Agency Press database fact-checking, the present study investigated news stories, verified by the agency as false stories, since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country between March 11 and June 11th, 2020. The data comprise 249 stories posted, shared, and retweeted by people on social network sites. Overall, an increasing trend in sharing fake news on COVID-19, health, security, crime, society, and education, among other issues has been observed. The role of social media is determinant in the propagation of misinformation. Equally important, the constructed and shared content on social networking sites regarding the issue of COVID-19 needs to be carefully considered so as not to maximize public fear and panic.
(Mliless & Handoko, 2022)
Editorials of Conspiracy Hate and Insecurity: The Algerian Military Magazine ‘El-Djeich’ as a Case
This research critically analyzes 10 editorials written in Frenchthat the Algerian army magazine ‘El-Djeich’ published fromJanuary 2021 to October 2021, a peak time for the army toreinforce its threatening discourse against Morocco (the classicalenemy of Algeria). It attempts to explore how the editorials employa conspiracy narrative to represent Morocco as a country that hasbeen waging wars and threatening its stability. The editorials aimto construct an ‘outer enemy’ to shift the public opinion frompolitical, social, and economic problems that the appointedpolitical leadership fails to solve. More than that, the editorials tryto reestablish the image of the army underestimated by the socialprotestation HIRAK1 which claims a ‘civil and not a militarystate’. Since the 16th of February 2019, the HIRAK has beenclaiming thatthe army should return to its barracks and take careof the security of the country's borders instead of interfering insocial, political, and economic affairs. The theoretical frameworkof this study was based on van Dijk’s model (van Dijk, 1985,1989, 1993, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2004, 2006) to treat the texts asa voice of the Algerian army that violently attacks Morocco,amidst high tensions between the two countries, accusing thekingdom of instrumentalizing ‘conspiracies’ and waging ‘cyber-attacks' against Algeria. Relying on critical discourse analysis(CDA), the many linguistic constructions identified in theeditorials reflect that the stand of the army and the politicalleadership towards Morocco are unfounded and fallacious. Forinstance, the findings of this research identified a pattern ofargumentation based on erroneous allegations that the magazineof the army attributed to Morocco. Devoid of any proofs, theeditorials have portrayed Morocco as a ‘threat to the country’. Asa matter of fact, the studyassumes that the magazine of the armyuses editorials to rally the population against an external enemyand to divert the attention of the algerian population from real internal problems. Indeed, the challenge for the Algerian militaryleadership is to convince the HIRAK partisans, who stronglydenounce the interference of the army in Algerians life, that thenational army is the only institution that can stop an externalenemy (Morocco) which threatens their well-being than dointernal economic, political and security challenges.
(Mliless, 2924)
The Nexus of Climate Change and Policing Guidelines to Improve Climate Change Governance
International Journal of Police Science (IJPS)
Climate change has far-reaching consequences that go beyond the environmental, economic, social, and health sectors, influencing public safety and security considerably. Rising temperatures, shifting weather patterns, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise affect law enforcement and governance, notably in disaster risk reduction and management. Climate change exacerbates current hazards and has been connected to an increase in criminal activity such as human trafficking. It also affects migratory patterns, making law enforcement activities more difficult. These difficulties highlight the critical need for context-specific measures to improve the resilience and adaptability of law enforcement organizations, particularly in developing nations. This involves strengthening law enforcement, implementing community policing techniques, and encouraging inter-service cooperation. Addressing these current circumstances needs immediate attention as well as new cross-sector solutions.
