EMI in Moroccan high schools: Multilingualism or multiple monolingualisms, ambivalent linguistic identities, and language use

The mainstream colonial lenses that have been used to understand multilingualism in the peripheries may not account for the realities of Southern multilingualisms. This article takes up these epistemic challenges in navigating EMI through alternative lenses, aiming to complexify the discussion of EMI among young individuals who are engaged in linguistically mixed practices. This study seeks to bring different levels of onto-linguistic convolution in investigating EMI within the mixed linguistic phenomena of Morocco as an African periphery that is under-researched in the mainstream literature. This qualitative research draws on in-depth interviews with 20 students from an English medium high school in Rabat, to examine how students make use of EMI in relation to other linguistic resources available in secondary education, and how EMI contributes to recognizing and/or invisibilizing their linguistic, cultural, and epistemic identities. Findings revealed that students perceive the dynamics among languages to be fluid at the surface, but they are indeed wedded to logics of instrumentality. While students do not explicitly engage in counter-hegemonic agentic enactments, their agency in the classroom, on campus and at home seems to exemplify their collective performance of their linguistic, cultural, and political aspirations, hereby transcending their society’s historical struggles. Students note that Moroccans would need this multilingual capital to function within society, which implies that languages are used simultaneously with multiple convergences/intersections within education and society at large. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.