Code-Switching Between French and Hausa in Radio Broadcasts in Sokoto State: A Sociolinguistic Analysis

Multilingual radio broadcasting in northern Nigeria increasingly incorporates French alongside Hausa, particularly on stations serving border communities and targeting audiences with cross-border commercial or familial ties to Niger Republic. This study analyses patterns of code-switching between French and Hausa in radio broadcasts of Radio Sokoto, examining the linguistic, contextual, and sociolinguistic factors governing switches. A qualitative corpus analysis methodology was applied to twelve hours of recorded broadcasts across three programme categories: news, commerce, and entertainment. Code-switching instances were identified, transcribed, and classified according to Myers-Scotton's markedness model and Poplack's typology of inter-sentential, intra-sentential, and tag switching. Results reveal that inter-sentential switching was the most frequent type, occurring predominantly in news and commerce programmes during reports on ECOWAS affairs, cross-border trade, and diplomatic events. French borrowings into Hausa discourse were most common for technical and administrative terminology lacking direct Hausa equivalents. Broadcaster identity, programme topic, and perceived audience composition were the primary sociolinguistic determinants of switching frequency. The study contributes to the documentation of French-Hausa contact phenomena in northwestern Nigeria and argues that language contact at the Niger Republic border has generated a distinctive bilingual radio register that warrants further linguistic description. Recommendations include training of border-region broadcasters in functional French competence to improve code-switch accuracy. Keywords: code-switching, French, Hausa, radio broadcasting, Sokoto State