French Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony in a Multilingual Context: Case of the Department of English, Bejaia University

Abstract

Although the EFL teachers and students at Abderahmane Mira University in Bejaia master at least four languages, French dominates their out-of-class communication. Despite the out of class settings offer an opportunity to practice English; yet, teachers and students prefer to use French. These paradoxical observations led to question the cultural and linguistic hegemony of French in the English department’s professional settings. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate whether the use of French by EFL teachers and students at workplace results from French hegemony though Bejaia is a multilingual and multicultural context. The study is qualitative in nature in which an ethnographic research design was adopted relying on observation and interviews for data collection. Results revealed that French is used both as the language of the administration and of the professional contexts. Besides, the use of French is considered as part of the Algerians’ culture and history.