Abstract
Cameroon proffers a propitious environment for the breeding of interesting linguistic phenomena that attract the curiosity of innumerable researchers. Its rich socio-cultural and linguistic background demonstrate a seemingly harmonious co-existence of two official languages – English and French, a wide spread de facto lingua franca – Pidgin English and a myriad of about 266 Home Languages attest to the complexity inherent here. The co-existence of these languages, like in similar multilingual societies produces language contact situations such as code switching, interference, linguistic borrowing, diglossia, translation, etc., as users interact. This paper assesses language behaviour in such a complex multilingual setting where users adopt varying behavioural patterns leading to the production of interesting linguistic features and patterns worthy of investigation. Following Giles' Accommodation Theory and the descriptive and exploratory approaches, the paper accounts for and paints a vivid picture of the nature of language contact here, the consequences on the different languages and their users. It redefines conflict in relation to the socio-cultural and linguistic realities of this community. Drawing evidence from true-to-life situations, the paper establishes that if contact has to engender conflict, certain socio-cultural, political and linguistic forces related to attitudinal prejudices, unintelligibility, language policies, contextual clues, linguistic hostilities, etc., are likely to be responsible. It concludes with practical remedies like the redefinition of language policies based on the linguistic aspirations of speakers and the reconciliation of linguistic and political independence in order to carefully harness the linguistic resources of this crassly heterogeneous community.
Highlights
The present socio-historical and linguistic situation of Cameroon, a direct consequence of an accident of history, continues to fascinate keen observers
A critical survey of some of these situations of language use has enabled linguists to surface with phenomena that are characteristic of language contact situations such as code switching, code selection, code mixing, borrowing, translation and interpretation, etc., all manifest in the linguistic behavior of Cameroonians
Do we find the maintenance of the grammatical structure of English or French but what is remarkable is the high degree of interference of lexical items from Pidgin English such as no, from English language such as work and school and others from either a jargon or a HL such as chatch, chap, mbom, débré, and blo
Summary
The present socio-historical and linguistic situation of Cameroon, a direct consequence of an accident of history, continues to fascinate keen observers. Situated near Englishspeaking Nigeria to the west, French-speaking countries such as Chad to the north, Central African Republic to the east, Gabon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo to the south and the Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea, the country enjoys in this positioning innumerable advantages It is blessed with a rich sociolinguistic background (a myriad of about 266 Home Languages (HLs) (Ethnologue 2005), two official languages – English and French, a de jure lingua franca – Pidgin English (PE) and a hybrid code – Camfranglais. Erstwhile statements by linguists viz: Weinreich (1953) Blom and Gumperz (1972), Ferguson (1972), Sankoff (1972), Kachru (1986), Bokamba (1989), Essein (1995), Jackson and Lang (1990), Nelde (1999), etc., have highlighted these aspects in their studies carried out in complex multilingual and multicultural communities This write-up attempts to investigate the question of language contact and conflict in a complex speech community – Cameroon.
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