Language choice in a public setting

This study sets out to investigate on language choice in public setting. The study intends to scrutinize the factors accounting for the choice of 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 backed up the study as the frame. 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.