The Sociolinguistics of French in the Nigerian Educational System: Prestige, Identity, and Language Choice

French occupies a distinctive sociolinguistic position in the Nigerian educational landscape, simultaneously functioning as a school subject, a marker of elite education, a regional communication language, and a symbol of cultural capital, yet its sociolinguistic dynamics within the educational system have not been comprehensively theorised from a Nigerian perspective. This study investigates the sociolinguistic dimensions of French in the Nigerian educational system, examining prestige attribution, identity implications, and language choice behaviour among teachers and students across three educational contexts: a Federal Government College in Kano, a public secondary school in Lagos, and a university French department in Enugu. An ethnographic sociolinguistic design combining participant observation, sociolinguistic interviews, and language diary data was employed over one semester in each site. Bourdieu's concepts of linguistic capital and symbolic market were applied as the primary theoretical framework. Results reveal significant geographical and institutional variation in the prestige ascribed to French, with the highest prestige concentration in federal institutions and Yoruba-speaking urban contexts where French functions as a marker of cosmopolitan identity. In Kano, French was more strongly associated with practical ECOWAS mobility than cultural prestige. Language choice in French classrooms showed consistent target-language avoidance in teacher explanation, with English functioning as the unmarked classroom medium across all three sites. The study proposes a Nigerian sociolinguistic model of French prestige stratification and its educational implications. Keywords: sociolinguistics, French language, educational prestige, language choice, Nigeria