Language Management in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the City of Maroua: Default Language Policy and Historical Factors

Francois Baïmada Gigla

doi:10.11648/j.ijll.20200804.16

Abstract

This paper looks into language management and factors affecting language use in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the city of Maroua. The methodology consists of observation followed by a pre-prepared questionnaire supplemented with personal interviews with church faithful and rulers. The approach used to analyse the data is the structural-functional approach propounded by Kouega (2008) and successfully applied to some Christian Churches and to Islam. The findings show that, contrary to previous works, this Seventh-Day Adventist Church adopts only a default language policy as its religious language management strategy. The use of Fulfulde and French as the two default languages was found to be motivated by the wish to follow a neutral policy due to cosmopolitanism of the polity but also to keep the historical tradition. This policy is in total contradiction with what obtains in Catholic masses whose language policies were deeply influenced by the resolutions Council Vatican II authorizing the use of vernaculars in religious services and in Protestant churches where the sociolinguistic identities of the worshipers matter in the choice of the language in which some activities should be conducted.

Highlights

The thematization of the interplay between language and religion is not new in the field of sociolinguistics
Issues of literacy in the religious language or the language used for Francois Baïmada Gigla: Language Management in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the City of Maroua: Default Language Policy and Historical Factors specific rituals, cosmopolitanism, rurality, historical factors, etc. make it difficult to use one and the same frame for all religions and at all places
This paper has looked into language use in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church with the intentions to identify the languages used and to determine the factors affecting their uses as proposed by the structural-functional approach

Summary

Introduction

The thematization of the interplay between language and religion is not new in the field of sociolinguistics. The advent of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Far North Region of Cameroon in general and in the city of Maroua in particular dates back to the year 1928 with the arrival of Ruben Bergström a Missionary of Swedish descent who went from Sweden to Northern Cameroon through neighboring Nigeria with the intention of converting several pagan tribes known under the collective name of Kirdis (keer-dee) Existing literature on these people describes them as being extremely hostile to the French colonial government, and, owing to the mountainous nature of their country, were long able to resist foreign rule.

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Conclusion