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Descriptions of new varieties of European languages in postcolonial contexts have focused exceedingly on system-based indigenisation and variation. This volume–while further illustrating processes and instantiations of indigenisation at this level–incorporates investigations of sociolinguistic and pragmatic phenomena in daily social interaction–e.g. politeness, respect, compliment response, naming and address forms, and gender–through innovative analytic frameworks that view indigenisation from emic perspectives. Focusing on postcolonial Cameroon and using natural and questionnaire data, the book assesses the salience of linguistic and sociocultural hybridisation triggered by colonialism and, recently, globalisation in interaction in and across languages and cultures. The authors illustrate how the multilingual nature of the society and individuals’ multilingual repertoires shape patterns in the indigenisation and evolution of the ex-colonial languages, English and French, and Pidgin English.
Spoken examples of the book
This timely book brings together research on the features and evolution of Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English, approached from a variety of innovative multilingual frameworks that focus on the emergence of mother tongue speakers. The authors illustrate how language and population contact, history (colonialism), multilingualism, translation, and indigenization have contributed to shaping the norms of postcolonial Englishes and Pidgins. Employing naturalistic data, the volume provides a new fascinating perspective that better situates and supplements existing research in the fields of African Englishes and Creolistics. It is particularly of key interest to sociolinguists, contact linguists, Africanists, Anglicists, creolists and historical linguists.
This book brings to light work done in the area of gender with a penchant to language within the Cameroonian context. It looks at different domains of gender study where language is a significant variable. It is the very first edited collection that examines language and gender side by side. Contributors draw richly on their current theoretical leanings and on the current gendered discourses within the Cameroonian context to interrogate the interconnections between gender and language through social relationships and interactions. This is a pluri-disciplinary study informed by perspectives from anthropology, sociology and applied linguistics. The book hinges on gender, discourse and social c...
This volume gives a detailed overview of the varieties of English spoken in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, including L1 varieties (such as White South African or St Helena English), L2 varieties (such as Cameroon, Pakistani, or Malaysian English) as well as pidgins and creoles (such as Nigerian or Ghanaian Pidgin). The chapters, written by widely acclaimed specialists, provide concise and comprehensive information on the phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics of each variety discussed. The articles are followed by exercises and study questions. The exercises are geared towards students and can be used for classroom assignments as well as for self study in preparation for exams. Instructors can use the exercises, sound samples and interactive maps to enhance their classroom presentations and to highlight important language features.
Cameroon’s composite state of postcoloniality inevitably burdened it with a linguistic and pedagogic culture that changed the eager student into a centripetal mimic of the colonial imagination. Recent events in the country, especially relating to the Anglophone Problem, have spotlighted the need to revisit this space, which has been over-politicised into what Anglophone Cameroonians see as a state of hypnosis. Given the clash between postcolonial consciousness and the globalizing forces of late capitalism, a necessary meeting point had to be negotiated in linguistic and pedagogic contexts, to (re)affirm the identity problematic in Cameroon, and in the interpretation of colonial voices in literary texts. Bordered Identities in Language, Literature, and Culture: Readings on Cameroon and the Global Space offers a variegated reflection on these issues, and simultaneously responds to increasing demands to re-negotiate identity beyond mega frames of Empire, based on contextual data that combine indigenous and globalising imperatives.
This book aims to offer a broad history of theatre in Africa. The roots of African theatre are ancient and complex and lie in areas of community festival, seasonal rhythm and religious ritual, as well as in the work of popular entertainers and storytellers. Since the 1950s, in a movement that has paralleled the political emancipation of so much of the continent, there has also grown a theatre that comments back from the colonized world to the world of the colonists and explores its own cultural, political and linguistic identity. A History of Theatre in Africa offers a comprehensive, yet accessible, account of this long and varied chronicle, written by a team of scholars in the field. Chapters include an examination of the concepts of 'history' and 'theatre'; North Africa; Francophone theatre; Anglophone West Africa; East Africa; Southern Africa; Lusophone African theatre; Mauritius and Reunion; and the African diaspora.
The multilingual situation in Cameroon and the status of English as a co-official language constitute a unique and fascinating case for sociolinguistic investigation. Drawing from first-hand material, the author investigates several aspects of this complex configuration, including the historical development of English in Cameroon, the various languages and lingua franca areas, the linguistic policy, the de facto status of English and the situation in the anglophone provinces. The speech community of the Anglophones is highlighted as a rare example of an ethnicity tied to the second language. Apart from important sociolinguistic findings, the work includes a novel, corpus-based analysis of Cameroon English. Certain lexical phenomena are explained by the cognitive coding of culture - particularly the African cultural model of community, which also underlies the self-perception of the Anglophones - a perspective hitherto neglected in the study of the New Englishes.
Informed by a global space animated by various conflicts, this book brings a refreshing perspective on how the disciplines of literature and language engage this phenomenon. In its shift from a purely political interrogation of conflict, the volume provides a broad analytic canvas on which human behaviour in such contexts can be examined. This is an ultimate invitation to a re-visioning of socio-cultural parameters of identity construction, borders, natural resources, religion, cultural values, beliefs, governance, ideology, and globalisation. The book’s varied perspective, animated by a rich diversity of literary and linguistic approaches, gives it an interdisciplinary emphasis that will appeal to readers across disciplines. Its ultimate message is that conflict is not subject-bound. The liberal analysis of different aspects makes the volume an invaluable asset not only to literature and language scholars but also to everyone with inclinations towards conflict creation and management.