Language Choice and attitudes in Public Institutions: The case of the University of Maroua

Abstract

This study sets out to investigate on language choice and attitudes in public institutions. The study intends to scrutinize the factors that account for the language choice made by some language users at the University of Maroua, i.e., to choose any other languages different from the two official languages. To do this, a random sampling of 250 participants was used. The instrument used is a questionnaire with a purely sociolinguistic undertone. Spolsky’s (2009) Language Management and Fishman’s (1972) Domain Analysis backed up the study as frames. At the end of the analyses, it has been shown that, students, the teaching staff (involving some university Administrators) and the support staff have some positive and negative attitudes following the language choices made in relation with where the communication takes place as well as the language situations such as enabling mutual intelligibility, social inclusion/exclusion, intimacy and showing identity, solidarity and work coordination.