Abstract
Contemporary Cameroon English is a reflection of many decades of its historical, political, social and linguistic development. The aim of this investigation, as descriptive linguistics, is to observe what, how and why the common Cameroonian citizen creates, coins and form new words in English speech, collect and analyse this as naturally occurring sociolinguistic data, characteristic of contemporary Cameroon English speech. The objective is to highlight on the linguistic and cultural diversity of Cameroon as a leit motive to create and introduce new words into the vocabulary system, thus, enriching contemporary Cameroon English. Both quantitative and qualitative research was carried to obtain valid data typical of Cameroon society based on the sociolinguistic and ethnographic methods of inquiry and analyses using a combination of the critical discourse analysis, semantico-pragmatic and speech act theories. After the analysis, contemporary Cameroon English is enhanced through different linguistic techniques such as dialectal and cultural borrowing, self-explained compounds, neologisms, eponym, and inflections, among others, which is of great interest to English language learners and teachers of today. These linguistic techniques have enriched Cameroon English vocabulary as a variety of speech typical of Cameroon English.
Highlights
Over several decades, many scholars have claimed that the art of invention is the sole propriety of scientific research in pure science, chemistry, physics, and not in arts, letters and social sciences
There is, a dynamic but unnoticed linguistic process exercised by erudite language users to enrich contemporary Cameroon English; that is, create new words or use old words with new meanings, and borrow from other co-existing languages to express new concepts and experiences characteristic of the Cameroon society
It further demonstrates that the resources available and the existing linguistic codes are understandably inexhaustible from a sociopragmatic perspective
Summary
Many scholars have claimed that the art of invention is the sole propriety of scientific research in pure science, chemistry, physics, and not in arts, letters and social sciences. One way to understand this is to examine the process of neologism or word formation, and how new words enter contemporary Cameroon English speech This preoccupying linguistic phenomenon, par excellence, focuses on the recent and innovative research on languages nationally and internationally. The history of its indigenous population over hundreds of years has paved the way to its complex linguistic diversity and cultural identity, sources that have greatly impacted the development of new words into the Cameroon English speech. A more enlightening concept, echoed in sociolinguistics, is that language is a form of social behaviour, interested in the underlying structures and claims that language is a manifestation of our thoughts and social behavior This view, to an extent, is shared by linguistic philosophers, who claim that speech acts encapsulate a speaker’s ideas and feelings. The study of neologism is a multidisciplinary domain of interest relating to other fields of language as a social behavior intersecting with intercultural studies, language didactics, anthropology, sociology, literature, and psychology
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