The pledge of allegiance as a political factor in the reproduction of the sovereign order in the Moroccan Sahara

Abstract

 The pledge of allegiance, as a political institution, has long served as a substantial source of  theocratic legitimacy in Morocco. This paper studies how political legitimacy is constructed by shedding light on a statement of Cheikh Maa Al Aynayn in which he expressed allegiance to the Sultans of Morocco. The study relies on Teun Van Dijk's Socio-cognitive Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the dynamic interplay between discourse, cognition, and society. It concentrates on three levels of analysis that are textual scrutiny, social context, and social cognition. In reference to historical and institutional setting, the analysis critically explores the conditions of existence and possibilities of the statements articulated; it highlights the cognitive processes through which discourse production and interpretation are mediated, as it focuses on the linguistic patterns through which ideologies are embedded. The findings demonstrate that the pledge of allegiance is not solely a personal stance of loyalty but a theocratic and institutional necessity that legitimizes the centralized governance of Morocco over the Saharan tribes. The discursive patterns of the text, instead of justifying the Sultan's authority, naturalize hierarchical political dealings between the Sultan and his subjects.