Language use in the Islamic faith in Cameroon: The case of a Mosque in the city of Maroua

Abstract

This paper examines language use and religion, paying special attention to the languages of religious practices and the factors that determine the choice of these languages in a given polity. The data are drawn from a series of Friday congregational prayers in the main Mosque of the city of Maroua, the headquarters of the Far North region of Cameroon, an area where the Islamic faith has a high concentration of worshippers. For lack of an appropriate sociolinguistic framework of analysis, the structural-functional approach proposed by Kouega (2008a) was used. Sketchily, this approach consists in segmenting a religious service into its constituent parts and checking what language is used in what part and for what purpose. The analysis of the data collected reveals that a Friday Prayer service is divided into some 15 parts and the dominant language used is Arabic. One other language cited, exclusively for sermons and announcements are Fulfulde, a widespread northern Cameroon lingua franca. The choice of these languages is determined by a variety of factors: Arabic is the liturgical language associated with Islam, while Fulfulde is the language of the Imam, that of the Muezzin and a vehicular language in the neighbourhood. Key words: Islam, Cameroon, language in religion, language policy, language use, multilingualism.