Anglophone Population Research Articles

A Legal Appraisal of the Causes of the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis

The Cameroon Anglophone Crisis, which erupted in 2016, stems from longstanding grievances among the Anglophone population regarding marginalization, governance issues, and cultural rights within a predominantly Francophone nation. This legal appraisal examines the historical context, highlighting the post-colonial legacy that has shaped Anglophone identity and political aspirations. It analyzes the key main Causes of the anglophone crisis bringing out facts such the constitutional problem, socio-political causes and the role of the diaspora and the media. The study adopts a qualitative research methodology which makes use of the doctrinal method as one of the main methods which deals with content analysis of primary and secondary data. Unstructured interviews and observation were also used as part of the methods of obtaining data. The ensuing results reveals that the main cause of the crisis is one of ideology which was birthed as far as the period of reunification which has remain unaddressed till date. Hence, it laid a foundation for the researcher to recommend a sincere and all-inclusive dialogue amongst the concerned parties amongst others.

Missed or misused opportunity? Social cohesion, national dialogue and peacebuilding in Cameroon

ABSTRACT This paper uses the multidimensional aspects of social cohesion which comprises different elements of trust, equality, inclusion, and participation, to show how political actors can impede efforts to foster social cohesion in conflict affected societies. It identifies key opportunities that were either missed or misused by elites during the national dialogue process intended to resolve Cameroon's Anglophone crisis. Historically, the relationship between elites and the Anglophone population in Cameroon has been characterised by fragile social cohesion due to marginalisation experienced in Anglophone communities. The actions and power-preserving efforts of elites have exacerbated inequalities, political exclusion and mistrust, thereby affecting social cohesion. Based on field observation, semi-structured interviews and secondary data, this paper identifies and analyses five scenarios where Anglophone elites could have acted differently to enhance social cohesion, but failed to do so. Rather, their actions towards the population further weakened social cohesion and facilitated the instrumentalisation of the 2019 national dialogue in Cameroon. Considering the unique characteristics of this case, future dialogue processes, especially those addressing marginalisation concerns, should prioritize strengthening social cohesion and refrain from overlooking its relevance by merely treating it as a desired outcome of a dialogue process.

The Social Media, Human Dignity and Linguistic Violence in Cameroon: A Socio-Pragmatic Perception

Conflicts, violence, human rights abuses, and the influence of the social media are the most serious challenges the modern world and emerging democracies face today, and Cameroon, in which verbal and nonverbal violence, has become a daily social fact, is no exception. The language that we speak or write influences our cultural identities, and perception of our social realities. The aim of the present study is to collect and examine specimens of speech acts specific to acts of violence used by the social media practitioners as sociolinguistic facts in Cameroon, in order to analyse the different expressions that typify instances of use depicting verbal or linguistic violence in their discourse. The types of words, phrases and linguistic forms identified and analysed characteristically describe these texts as authentic lexicon specific to discourse of conflict and violence within Cameroon in the context of social tension and the Anglophone crisis. The objective being to create more public awareness on the devastating consequences of violence to unity, human dignity, insecurity, peace and living together in Cameroon. To handle complex sociolinguistic data of this sort, the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to collect online reports from content creators, trained and untrained media practitioners and to analyse these from a sociopragmatic perspective in order to describe its impact on the readers and Cameroonians in situ. The qualitative discourse analysis used was based on a combination of different theoretical frameworks including the Critical Discourse Analysis, Speech Act Theory, Semantic theories, communicative acts, and sociopragmatics relevant to pragmatically explain some of the vocabulary, frequently occurring in the corpus and characteristic of the lexemes of violence, referred to as linguistic violence. Note that words carry and transmit powerful vibrations and emotional energy discharges capable of igniting feelings of hatred, anger, insecurity, intolerance, bitterness, and consequently gruesomely unacceptable acts of human rights abuses. Equally, after the analysis, findings reveal that the different discourse types employ different performative speech acts and stylistic devices including connotation, imagery, symbolism, synonymy, polysemy, and neologism in the forms of verbal abuses, insults, minimisation, and stigmatisation that characterise the contemporary Cameroon society, which suffers from verbal abuses and indecent language use that communicates specific hate-filled and hurtful messages characteristic of linguistic violence in Cameroon, with an urgent need to be addressed. After the analysis, several findings reveal an unprecedented increase in violence and atrocities committed by both separatists and government military on the Anglophone population in particular and on Cameroonians as a result of the Anglophone crisis in violation of human rights and dignity. While suggesting the need to seek for a genuine and an inclusive dialogue, tolerance, the use of polite and decent speech acts, for peace to return is imperative, findings equally reveal that conflict and acts of violence has greatly enriched the Cameroon English language vocabulary, compounding old words to take on new meanings and introducing new words with connotative meanings from other languages like French, local and Pidgin English languages.

“More languages means more lights in your house”

AbstractFrench immersion programs throughout Canada have historically consisted of predominantly Anglophone populations pursuing bilingualism in the country’s two official languages, English and French. Nevertheless, recent developments in immigration and refugee resettlement have contributed to increasingly diverse student backgrounds nationwide (Statistics Canada, 2014). Researchers have explored the motivation for Allophone families to pursue FSL in Canada (Dagenais & Berron, 2001;Dagenais & Jacquet, 2000;Mady, 2010); the language proficiency of Allophone learners in FSL programs (Bérubé & Marinova-Todd, 2012;Carr, 2007;Mady, 2015); and the perspectives of FSL educators with respect to such learners (Mady, 2016;Mady & Masson, 2018;Roy, 2015). The present study draws from interview data to explore and compare the experiences and perspectives of seven Allophone parents and 43 FI educators in Saskatchewan. In the present article, we examine the perspectives of FI educators, the experiences of Allophone families, and the implications for immersion programs worldwide.

116 Cross-cultural Translation, Adaptation and Validation of the Burnt Hand Outcome Tool (BHOT) from English to French Canadian

Abstract Introduction The Burnt Hand Outcome Tool (BHOT) is a comprehensive patient-reported outcome measure to assess the multiple impacts of hand burn injuries. However, this tool is currently only available in English. The aim of this study was to create a French Canadian, cross-cultural translation and adaptation of the BHOT and to investigate its reliability and validity. Methods The BHOT was translated and culturally adapted following published good practice principles for patient-reported outcome measures. The steps included translation to French, backward translation, expert committee review, and cognitive debriefing with 5 adults having burn injuries excluding their hands. Then, 39 adults with hand burn injuries tested the pre-final French version of the questionnaire (BHOT-F) in order to determine its clinimetric properties. Reliability was investigated by determining the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient. Construct convergent validity was assessed by comparing the BHOT-F to the shortened version of the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire (QuickDASH). Content validity was evaluated based on comments extracted from interviews with the participants and a committee of burn care experts. Results The BHOT-F was modified during the adaption process to ensure its clarity. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.94 indicating excellent internal consistency and was > 0.75 for all sub-domains. The BHOT-F and the QuickDASH were strongly correlated (rs = .86; p < 0.01). Content validity was deemed satisfying. Conclusions The French-Canadian version of the BHOT is a reliable and valid tool that can confidently be used in clinical practice for adults with hand burn injuries and compared to data generated with Anglophone populations.

Psychometric properties of a Romanian translation of the Functionality Appreciation Scale (FAS)

The Functionality Appreciation Scale (FAS; Alleva et al., 2017) is a 7-item measure of an individual’s appreciation of their body for what it can do and is capable of doing. Although the instrument is increasingly used in interventionist studies, its psychometric properties have been infrequently investigated outside Anglophone populations. Here, we examined psychometric properties of a novel Romanian translation of the FAS. An online sample of 959 Romanian adults (18–73 years old) completed the Romanian FAS, and validated measures of positive body image (body appreciation), negative body image (weight discrepancy in women, drive for muscularity in men), eating disorder symptomatology, and psychological well-being (self-esteem, gratitude). Exploratory factor analyses led to the extraction of a 1-dimensional model of FAS scores, which we confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis. FAS scores achieved scalar invariance across sex, but the sex difference in latent FAS scores did not reach significance (d = 0.15). FAS scores had adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability up to four weeks, and further analyses provided evidence of convergent, construct, and incremental validity. These results support the psychometric properties of the Romanian FAS and present evidence of the importance of functionality appreciation in relation to healthier body image and psychological well-being.

Polarised Facebook Discourse on Anglophone Nationalism in Cameroon

Technological advances have decentralised public communication through networked digital communication. The present paper seeks to critically analyze Facebook contradictory discourses and conversations on the future of the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. In November 2016, the Anglophone population engaged in civil disobedience against the Government of Cameroon over nonchalant attitude towards its predicament or refusal to address its grievances. Focus is on trolls and polarized conversations and discourses made by Anglophone activists on Facebook regarding the socio-political crisis troubling Cameroon since the end of the year 2016. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a methodological and theoretical approach, this study shows that there are two opposing views on Facebook: the separatists’ and the pro-unionists’ positions. On the one hand, the separatist activists through their Facebook posts discourse repudiate the pan-Cameroonian identity which they associate with francophonisation and cultural assimilation, and promote a separate Anglophone nationalism. On the other hand, the pro-unity Anglophone activists defend national unity and reject the secessionist discourse, thereby reproducing and expressing their adherence to the Pan-Cameroonian identity. This study will try to go beyond linguistic elements analysis to include a systematic construction of the historical and political, sociological and/or psychological dimension in the analysis and interpretation of specific texts/discourse.

Des maquisards aux ambaboys: Dette impayée des francophones envers les anglophones

The establishment of the German colonial administration in Cameroon from 1884 to 1914 has multiple socio-political, cultural and economic consequences. The conquest, division and administration of this territory by the French and the British after the First World War intensified the injustices created by the German administration. A nationalist party, Union des populations du Cameroun [UPC], was created in 1948. It promised to improve the status of life and called for unification and independence. The French colonial administration muzzled its militants or supporters and banned it in 1955. Forced underground, its leaders retreated to British Cameroons where they coordinated an armed uprising until 1971. This region also gave asylum to many people from the region under the French administration. Undaunted by injustices similar to those experienced by East Cameroon under French administration since 1972 and frustrated by the refusal of the dialogue on the structure of the state and the lack of social justice, part of the population of the English-speaking regions have rebelled and are fighting for independence using methods similar to those of the UPC. In response, the Cameroonian state has deployed methods of repression similar to those used by the French forces against the 1950–1971 UPC’s guerilla. People in these areas are also looking for shelter and assistance. These needs remind us of the duty and debt of Francophones towards Anglophone populations. While I contend that after 3 years of intensive fighting, I do not see an engaged response from the francophone side, I intend to clearly identify some similarities between the two conflicts as well as point out deep-seated facts for the continuation of the UPC dream.

The Suitability of French Immersion for Allophone Students in Saskatchewan: Exploring Diverse Perspectives on Language Learning and Inclusion

French immersion programs in Saskatchewan have traditionally served to further the goals of additive bilingualism between Canada’s two official languages, French and English. Whereas these programs have historically consisted of predominantly Anglophone populations, recent trends in immigration have contributed to the increasingly diverse linguistic backgrounds of students throughout the province. The motivation, family support, and high academic achievement of allophone students learning French as an additional language have been documented extensively in Canada (Dagenais & Jacquet, 2000; Mady, 2013, 2014, 2015). Nevertheless, allophone students often do not benefit from the same access to second language education programs as their Anglophone and Francophone peers; indeed, such learners are sometimes excluded from French immersion programs on the basis of their lack of English language proficiency (Roy, 2015). Through Likert-scale surveys and semi-structured interviews, this mixed-methods research explored the perceived suitability of French immersion for allophone students by examining the perspectives of parents and educators in several schools in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This study will share the triangulated findings of the research, discuss the suitability of French immersion programs for allophone students, and provide recommendations for the future of such programs in Saskatchewan.

Contribution of local area deprivation to cultural-linguistic inequalities in foetal growth restriction: Trends over time in a Canadian metropolitan centre

This study investigated temporal trends in heterogeneity of foetal growth restriction across neighbourhood deprivation levels for two culturally distinct communities (Anglophones and Francophones) in a North American metropolitan centre. Inequalities in foetal growth restriction related to deprivation fell from 1989 to 2008 for Francophones, but initial improvements for Anglophones later reversed with a rise in poor foetal growth in the most materially disadvantaged and, unexpectedly, advantaged areas as well. Inequalities in foetal growth restriction related to neighbourhood material deprivation may be emerging in this minority Anglophone population. Potential mechanisms underlying these trends are discussed, as well as implications for perinatal health policy.

Pan-Canada or Little-Britain? The Sudbury Star and its Portrayal of Regulation 17

The implementation of Regulation 17 in Ontario in the 1910s, which restricted the use of the French language in Ontario schools, spawned a Canadian identity debate. The Anglophone population in Canada generally supported an imperialist identity; meanwhile the Francophone population generally favoured a nationalist one. Historians have uncovered, in most cases, the print media written in English also favoured the imperialist argument, while the print media written in French typically espoused the nationalist ideology. However, historians have failed to examine the Sudubry Star, an English written newspaper in the city of Sudbury, Ontario, with a population nearly split between Anglophones and Francophones. Using the lens intellectual historiography, this paper will, for the first time, demonstrate that the Sudbury Star treaded against the current and promoted a nationalist argument rather than an imperialist one.

Follow the leaders: reconciling identity and governance in Quebec's Anglophone population

Resolving matters related to identity, leadership, and governance has represented a considerable challenge in the community-building process of Quebec's English-speaking population. Despite a strong institutional network in the Montreal region where the majority of English speakers reside, there have been important debates about how and by whom political advocacy and representation are conducted on behalf of the minority language community. Organizations delivering education, health and social services to Montreal's English-speaking population have assumed near complete responsibility for representing their concerns to government, thereby forcing the once influential language-based advocacy bodies to rethink their objectives. Problems of governance and leadership in organizations defending the concerns of Quebec English speakers have also been challenged by the need to define a constituency which is in a state of demographic flux. It is contended that under certain conditions, being institutionally complete does not lead to community vitality and may result in some disengagement from the broader society. It is further argued that no study of the institutional completeness and governance of Canada's language minorities can be complete without properly evaluating the role of government as principal stakeholder and, as such, examining its influence on identity formation of the country's language minorities.

'Lucky to be so bilingual': Québécois and Chicano/a literatures in a comparative context

Chicano/a and Québécois literatures, both 'borderland' phenomena, share many signal features. This article advocates for increased comparative study of these two cultures, and outlines fundamental points for consideration. Perhaps most important is the common history shared by both Chicano/as and Québécois, who lost majority status during the colonial era and became minority cultures, politically and culturally dominated by Anglophone populations. In both cases, resistance to this domination emphasized both religious and linguistic difference, valorizing the Catholic faith and 'non-standard' forms of French and Spanish, in the face of considerable prejudice and discrimination. These forms of resistance have had their own outcomes: Catholicism's often rigid definition of gender roles has inspired a contestatory literary tradition with significant participation from gay and lesbian writers. These writers, including Gloria Anzaldúa and Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, are among those whose hybrid work features the code-switching and questioning of categories and loyalties characteristic of borderland literature.

Language, Monuments, and the Politics of Memory in Quebec and Ireland

CONTEMPORARY Ireland and Quebec each have centuries of complex language traditions in which Irish, English, and French have jostled in different ways at different periods of time. This article examines two sites--the 1909 Celtic cross at Grosse Ile, Quebec, and the 1903 Miss Erin monument at Kilrush, County Clare--to highlight ways in which texts at those sites were attempts to fix collective memory, but over the twentieth century have become a kind of fragmented conversation about language, famine, nationalism, and identity. At each site, stone structures soar over eye-level text panels that seem to display one single message in Irish, French, and English. Two of the three languages make visible a dual linguistic history in the surrounding cultural landscapes: French and English at Grosse Ile, Irish and English at Kilrush. But why the third language? Was there a French quartier in Kilrush, an Irish Gaeltacht tucked away on the small Canadian island? If not, why did the designers feature another language that few visitors to the sites could have read? If the purpose of monument building is to make a particular memory publicly visible and thus more enduring, do the three languages aid that attempt or conflict with it? Does their presence raise silent questions about conflicts of memory? If needs for a third language were clearer at the time of construction than now, do monuments fix or mark the passage of memory? These questions suggest that visual displays of language carry meanings beyond those apparent in the written words. The broader contexts of the messages may have been so well understood in the early twentieth century that more explicit notation was unnecessary or intentionally omitted, yet other meanings may be clearer and more visible now. IRISH MIGRATIONS TO QUEBEC Before the nineteenth century Irish people emigrated to Quebec mainly through military service. After the Napoleonic wars in 1815, food shortages and epidemics in Ireland sporadically spurred Irish migrations to the predominantly French-speaking Catholic region. Between 1815 and 1861 the Anglophone population of Quebec rose from 15 percent to 24.3 percent. In this period the Irish accounted for almost twice the number of newcomers as English and Scottish immigrants combined (Dickinson and Young 2000:112). The cholera epidemic of 1832 stimulated more Catholic emigration from Ireland than usual, but until the massive influx of Irish Catholics in the years of the Great Famine, most Irish immigrants to Quebec were English-speaking Protestants. In the decade of 1845-55, there were unprecedented challenges to Quebec's religious, linguistic, and cultural demographics as thousands of Irish Catholics poured into Quebec City, Montreal, and other regions along the St. Lawrence River. Catholic ecclesiastical institutions had been entrenched in Quebec society since the French settlements in the early seventeenth century; thus life was considerably less complicated for the Catholic population than it was under the restrictions of the Penal Laws in Ireland. Nevertheless, the financial and political interests of the English-speaking population had increasingly gained control in Quebec after 1760 when France ceded to Britain its remaining colonial holdings in the region. Unrest grew in Quebec as its French-based societal structures and institutions were increasingly challenged. In recognition of growing unrest in the thirteen colonies to the south, England gave concessions to French Canadians to ensure some measure of loyalty, and the 1774 Quebec Act was passed in England to institutionalize measures of cultural continuity for the French-speaking Catholics (Dickinson and Young 2000:55). (1) The precedence of this legislation linked the aspirations of Irish and French-speaking Canadians seeking more independence under British rule and subsequently influenced the development of British policy toward Ireland in the nineteenth century. …

Transformation marquante dans la configuration spatio-linguistique de la région de Moncton au Canada / A significant transformation in the linguistic configuration and of the cultural identifies in the Greater Moncton, Canada

Located in the heart of the Maritimes in Southeast New Brunswick, Moncton has the highest concentration of Acadians in any urban setting in Canada. Over the years, Acadians have increasingly become part of the New Brunswick society. They have greatly contributed to Moncton's development through the creation of genuine Acadian institutions in the educational and financial sectors, which, as a result, have modified the spatio-linguistic configuration and the cultural identity of the place. This new reality has been the object of a series of spatiotemporal analyses using the Geographic Information System (GIS); they show that the dynamics of the Francophone and Anglophone populations in the agglomeration's different sectors lead to the creation of some isolated linguistic groupings. And that unlike the situation in other regions of New Brunswick, the assimilation process of the French-speaking Acadians into the Anglophone majority has slowed down in the Greater Moncton over the course of the last few years. These transformations point out to the crucial role of the Universite de Moncton as an educational, cultural and even political nexus for the Acadians in the Greater Moncton, as well as in the Maritime provinces in general.

“THE DISTURBANCES OVERSEAS”: A COMPARATIVE REPORT ON THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH STUDIES

This is an adaptation of a talk first presented to the Council for College and University English (CCUE) conference on English for the Millennium, Sept. 1996. CCUE is the British professional body that represents the discipline and departments of English in England, Scotland, and Wales. The talk was meant to provide a transatlantic perspective on the future of the discipline. Originally it was published in CCUE News (June 1997) and later adapted to presentations throughout the U.K. The excerpts here focus on issues of multiculturalism, interdisciplinarity, and cultural studies.WHEN I DRAW ON MY EXPERIENCE in the United States it is not because I am unaware that the centrality of English literary history is less controversial in England than in its former colony, but because the areas that I see as fundamental to the future of English — a diverse Anglophone population and the demands of the marketplace — are fundamental to both. Twenty years ago, American and British academics were different worlds. The formal democratization of the university and official ideologies of neoliberalism, or market orientation, have brought them closer together. My argument is that the future of English depends less on theories or ideas than on human geographies, institutional conditions, and our embeddedness in market society.

Old World Traditions, New World Landscapes: Ethnicity and Archaeology of Swiss-Appenzellers in the Colonial South Carolina Backcountry

German-speaking Swiss immigrants from the Appenzell region of Switzerland settled in the South Carolina frontier township of New Windsor in 1737. After initially establishing an insular physical and social relationship with the dominant Anglophone population, the Swiss adopted strategies that increasingly integrated them into the greater regional society. Theory of ethnicity informs archaeological, testamentary, and landholding data concerning the symbolic action of the Swiss to assert and then transform their cultural identity. Evidence of competition, ethnocentrism, and differential power reflects the dynamic process of ethnogenesis that characterizes the South Carolina frontier.

Discrimination of normal and aphasic subjects on a test of syntactic comprehension

An Anglophone population consisting of 37 aphasic patients and 23 normal control subjects, and a Francophone population consisting of 49 aphasic patients and 23 control subjects were given a task requiring the comprehension of syntactic structures for the correct assignment of thematic roles to nouns. Discriminant analysis was used to classify subjects into aphasic and normal groups according to their scores on the task. In both populations—Anglophone and Francophone— most of the subjects were classified into their actual groups except for an occasional normal subject classified with the aphasic group and a small number of aphasics classified as noemal. A cut-off score below which performance is clearly abnormal and above which performance is clearly normal can be set for this test. Patients who performed normally on this test had lesions affecting any single lobe within the dominant perisylvian cortex and mostly consisted of patients with dysathria, apraxia of speech, and ‘mixed’ aphasia types. The results have implications for the incidence of aphasic disturbances of syntactic comprehension and for the nature of language representation in the brain.

"Linguistic and Ethnic Factors in the French-Irish Catholic Relations in Ontario"

Until the 1850’s, Francophones constituted a majori t y o f the Canadian population; since Confederation the reverse has been true, and increasingly so. The co n t inued growth of the French Canadian population was due almost exclusively to a phenomenally high birthrate to which immigration has added hardly at all. It was in this context, then , t h a t t he scarcity of arable land in Quebec’s Saint Lawrence river valley coupled with the density of the area’s population and periodic economic crises, prompted Francophones, in the last three quarters of the nineteenth century, to migrate in ever-increasing numbers to the adjacent province of O n t a rio. Needless to say, their Church accompanied t h em. During this same period, Irish immigrants also began coming to Canada, as a result of the critical conditions prevalent in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth cent u r y . Although Ontario had previous settlements of Francophones in its southwestern tip, the phenomenon of large-scale Catholic immigration, both French and English, became a subject o f c oncern and a s pringboard for nativist feelings among Ontario’s Protestant Angl ophone population. At the outset, during the eighti e s and nineties, the main conflict was religious; the Protestants, led by the Orangemen, and the Pro t e s t a n t Protective Association (1891-1897), feared a Catholic takeover of their country, and the Catholics, in spite of their ethnic differences, st u ck together in order to ward off the attacks of the Protestants. Within this context, schools became the foci of debate, the Catho l i c s wanting full equality in tax-sharing for their public (but separate) schools. Indeed, Ontario had a system of public (or common) schools, all subject to the Ontario Department of Education, but wherein local school boards could declare their schools denominational, and thereby become “ Separate” schools. The P rotestants as a rule w a n t ed one faith, one flag and one language. The issue which was allegedly a religious conflict at its inception, slowly transformed itself in the three decades between 1 883 a nd 1913 into an explicitly ethnic, linguistic and cultural conflict, and the Roman Catholics who had resisted the Oran g emen’s sallies in unison during the eighties and nineties, became progressively more divided al ong li nguistic and cultural lines. By 1910 the latter is s u e took precedence over the P rotestant-Catholic