Questioning French language maintenance and shift to English within short-term mobility: experiences of Algerian PhD students in the UK
Creators: name: Chellia, Hadjer
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: actual behaviours
language maintenance
language shift
self-report perceptions
short-time mobility
translanguaging

description: This study examines the sociolinguistic interface between language and transnational  mobility as a lived experience. From a range of sociolinguistic practices, it covers an investigation of French language maintenance (LM) and language shift (LS) to English among a specific ethnolinguistic friendship group of Algerian PhD students, identified by their transition to the UK in the light of internationalisation of higher education, mobility and exchange programmes. The focus is on their use of French language (a colonial heritage) alongside other linguistic resources (Algerian Arabic and English) during languaging, for the competitive status it holds in Algeria, especially regarding English. The transition of students towards the UK is thereby assumed to trigger more complexity at the level of their verbal repertoires. To analyse this complexity, the study followed a mini-ethnographic case study methodology. Based on that, a corpus of data was obtained following a sequential mixed methods design. Two types of speech data were sought: self-report perceptions and observed actual behaviours to get more ‘’tick’’ descriptions of LM/LS. Semi-structured interviews among a group of 6 ethnically related Algerian PhD students in Scotland to elicit perceptions were complimented by web-questionnaire results from a larger sample for the purpose of contextualisation. Focus group sessions were organised among the 6 aforementioned participants to observe their perceived linguistic practices in practice. Subsequently, observation of speech practices embedded within everyday activity was conducted as a supplementary method to strengthen focus group results. The LM/LS framework is usually applied over an extended period of time. Although this framework poses considerable challenges in the context of this research, the interplay of findings proposed a novel and useful application, well-suited to situations of short-term mobility. These two processes (LM/LS) were deployed with considerable caution in the specific form of sojourn being studied, and thereby they were presented as non-deterministic processes, reflecting temporary and potentially nascent stages of LM/LS. Furthermore, the application of LM/LS in this specific context suggested that participants straddle two contexts: an international context and a traditional inward-looking Algerian context bound by current Algerian language policy which explicitly promotes English at the expense of French. Therefore, this research is building bridges between traditional perspectives and new ones. The short-term mobility of stay also appeared to affect perceptions more than behaviours. At a broader level, the study affirms the need to adopt translanguaging as a new approach in LM/LS which favours the co-occurrence of linguistic behaviours in concert with each other. Putting all these together, this research project has led to more nuanced understandings of LM/LS, especially in an era where globalised communication has changed the nature of migration studies.