A Sociolinguistic Analysis of French-English Diglossia in the Nigerian Educational System

Diglossia, the functional distribution of two language varieties across high and low prestige domains, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between French and English in the Nigerian educational system, where English functions as the H variety in most educational domains while French occupies a structurally subordinate position. This study conducts a sociolinguistic analysis of French-English diglossia in the Nigerian educational system, developing a diglossic account of French's institutional positioning and examining its implications for language planning. A quantitative and qualitative mixed methods design was employed, with language use domain surveys administered to 2,200 students, teachers, and administrators across secondary and tertiary institutions in all six geopolitical zones, supplemented by 68 in-depth sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic observation across eight institutional sites. Ferguson's diglossia framework was extended to accommodate the multiglossic complexity of the Nigerian context, in which English, French, Nigerian languages, and Nigerian Pidgin occupy overlapping and contested prestige positions. Quantitative domain analysis confirmed strict diglossic separation, with English dominant across academic, administrative, and professional domains, and French confined to the specific domain of the French language classroom. Nigerian languages showed patterned domain distribution shaped by ethnolinguistic community membership. Notably, French showed no domain expansion outside formal language education, distinguishing it from postcolonial cases of diglossia where colonial languages expand into new domains over time. The study develops a Nigerian French Diglossic Stasis Model to account for the persistence of French's restricted domain distribution and proposes domain expansion strategies through ECOWAS institutional engagement. Keywords: diglossia, French language, Nigerian education, language planning, sociolinguistics