Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indigenisation

Eric A. AnchimbeEditor

Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indigenisation

On Multilingualism and Language Evolution

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ISBN 978-94-007-7880-1 ISBN 978-94-007-7881-8 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7881-8Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

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EditorE. A. AnchimbeDepartment of English LinguisticsUniversity of BayreuthBayreuthGermany

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Thalia &Ryanfor the many smiles they bring to us daily

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Preface

The notion of indigenisation and its instantiations under different societal conditi-ons have been investigated and labelled variously in the literature on transplanted languages, especially English and French in postcolonial communities. The most recurrent labels include: non-native varieties, L2 varieties, localised varieties, indi-genised varieties, and for the English language; new Englishes, postcolonial Eng-lishes, and recently the more encompassing term world Englishes. Although seve-ral studies have critiqued the naming tradition behind these labels (e.g. Mufwene 1994: “New Englishes and criteria for naming them” World Englishes 13(1): 21–31, Anchimbe 2008: “Giving English-speaking tongues a name” Issues in Intercultu-ral Communication 2(1): 29–44), today these varieties and the processes of their emergence and evolution no longer constitute a point of controversy. Rather the approaches and perspectives used to investigate them have expanded and become more sophisticated.

This volume further expands the investigation of processes and instantiations of indigenisation to include sociolinguistic and pragmatic phenomena through per-spectives that view indigenisation within the domain of daily social interaction. The book begins with a structural description before introducing aspects of indigenisa-tion in patterns of politeness, respect, compliment response, naming and address forms, linguistic identity construction, and ethnic accents. Focus is on Cameroon and the indigenised varieties of three extensively used languages, namely English, French, and Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE).

The chapters collected here rely on both natural and elicited data in describing the syntactic forms, pronominal usage, pronunciation patterns, and collocational possibilities of Cameroon English (CamE), Cameroon French (CamF), and CPE, along with the socio-pragmatic choices speakers make in interactions in and across these languages. From the findings made in this volume, we can say that a consis-tent system of social multilingual interaction seems to have emerged being a hybrid of indigenous cultures and patterns and those introduced during colonialism. Within this system, speakers’ multilingual repertoires, ethnic allegiances and stereotypes, language choices, and sociolinguistic identities play substantial roles. The exact extent of each of these factors can only be determined through extensive studies that engage with naturalistic data and corpora. It is, therefore, my wish that more

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studies follow this one, with a broader scope that includes phenomena in the indi-genous languages and CPE, since most previous research endeavours have focused extensively on English and French.

With this book, we honour the short life of our friend, colleague, and classmate, Yves Talla Sando Ouafeu, who left this world abruptly on 3 January 2011 after a cardiac arrest in his home in Montreal Canada at the age of 36. His chapter in this volume was submitted only a few weeks before his passing on and is published here posthumously. Shortly before this volume was published, our colleague, Charles Belinga B’Eno also passed away. May your souls rest in peace, Yves and Charles!

In preparing this volume, I received assistance from many people. I consulted extensively and benefitted from the input of Augustin Simo Bobda and Loreto Todd; and I am very thankful. I thank Springer’s two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The following colleagues and friends also read and commented on various chapters: Sibonile E. Ellece, Bernard Mulo Farenkia, Gilbert Ndi Shang, Uchenna Oyali, and Hector Kamdem. My gratitude also goes to the contributors to this volume for their patience and especially for sharing their invaluable research with us. I wish to thank Jolanda Voogd, Megha Koirala and Helen van der Stelt at Springer for the great support all through the editing and publishing process. Of course, my wife Joyce and our kids, Thalia and Ryan, were always there for me.

Bayreuth, 20 November 2013 Eric A. Anchimbe

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Map of Cameroon

Administrative regions and the anglophone and francophone parts

Source: Anchimbe, Eric A. 2013. Language Policy and Identity Construction: The Dynamics of Cameroon’s Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. xxi.

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Contents

1 Introduction—Indigenisation and Multilingualism: Extending the Debate on Language Evolution in Cameroon .............. 1Eric A. Anchimbe

Part I Structural Perspectives on Indigenisation—Syntax and Phonology

2 ‘That-clauses’ in Cameroon English: A Study in Functional Extension .............................................................................. 23Bonaventure M. Sala

3 Pronoun-Like Usage in Cameroon English: The Case of Copy, Resumptive, Obligation, and Dummy Pronouns ....................... 39Paul N. Mbangwana

4 Les camerounismes: Essai d’une (nouvelle) typologie ......................... 55Gratien Gualbert Atindogbé and Charles Bélinga b'Eno

5 Intonation in Cameroon English ........................................................... 81Yves Talla Sando Ouafeu

6 Ethnolinguistic Heterogeneity in Cameroon English Pronunciation ............................................................................ 103Ernesta Kelen Fonyuy

Part II Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indigenisation—Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics

7 Attitudes Towards Cameroon English: A Sociolinguistic Survey ......................................................................... 121Eric A. Anchimbe

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8 Gender and the use of Tags in Cameroon English Discourse ........... 145 Veronica A. Dashaco and Eric A. Anchimbe

9 Ethnicité, politesse et représentations au Cameroun ......................... 167 Bernard Mulo Farenkia

10 Address Strategies in Cameroon Pidgin English: A Socio-Pragmatic Perspective ............................................. 189

Joseph Nkwain

Index ............................................................................................................... 207

Contents

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Contributors

Eric A. Anchimbe teaches English Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His current research is on offers and offer refusals in postcolonial communities from a postcolonial pragmatics perspective, and also political discourse from below in Africa. Among his recent publications are the monograph Language Policy and Identity Construction (Benjamins, 2013), the special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics entitled Postcolonial Pragmatics 43(6) (2011, ed. with Dick Janney), Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting (ed., De Gruyter, 2012), and Postcolonial Linguistic Voices (ed. with S.A. Mforteh, De Gruyter, 2011). His research interests are in world Englishes, linguistic identity construction, and postcolonial pragmatics.

Gratien G. Atindogbé is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Buea, Cameroon. He obtained a PhD in African Linguistics from the University of Bayreuth, Germany in 1996. Apart from phonology, his specialty, he teaches courses in the area of language planning and language acquisition. His research interests cover descriptive linguistics, documentation of endangered languages, historical linguistics (Bantu), tonology, Cameroon Pidgin English, intercultural communication and the sociolinguistics of the French language. He has published on the indigenisation of French in Cameroon. He is presently project leader in the documentation of two endangered languages of Cameroon, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Charles Belinga B’Eno(†) holds a Doctorat Nouveau Régime from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco-Langues’O) Paris (1996). His initial research was on the concept of language sciences and specifically on what he terms ‘written orality’ (oralité écrite). This concept, founded in text linguistics, approaches written African literary texts as products of verbal narratives, i.e. performance. Before his death in 2012, he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. A number of his publications are on the indigenisation of French in Cameroon.

Veronica A. Dashaco is a lecturer in English Language at the Department of English and Foreign Languages, and a teacher trainer at the University of Douala, Cameroon. She holds a PhD in Gender and Discourse from the University of

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Yaounde 1. Her domains of interest include syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language and gender, and corporate English. Many of her scholarly works so far have focused on gender, discourse, Cameroon English, and corporate English.

Bernard Mulo Farenkia is Associate Professor of French and Linguistics at Cape Breton University, Canada. He received his PhD (1997) and Habilitation (2004) in Applied Linguistics and German from the Saarland University, Germany. His research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse pragmatics (interlanguage, postcolonial, and variational), and contrastive genre analysis. He is the author of numerous articles in French, German and English in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Linguistik Online, Pragmatics, Lacus Forum, International Journal of English Linguistics, Cahiers franco-canadiens de l’Ouest, Linguistica Atlantica, Le Français en Afrique, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, Zielsprache, Deutsch, and Nordic Journal of African Studies. He recently published Des Formes d’Adresse en Français au Cameroun (Presses Universitaires Européennes, 2011). He is currently working on regional pragmatic variation in French and pragmatic competence/ performance in French as a second language.

Kelen Ernesta Fonyuy obtained her PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, where she also worked as a teaching and research assistant. Her research interests cover the fields of sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, contact linguistics, applied linguistics, variation linguistics, peace linguistics, ethnic Englishes, and less dominant varieties of English. She is the author of Ethnolects of Cameroon English: Pronunciation, Education, and Evolution (Peter Lang, 2013), and a number of book chapters and journal articles on English and ethnolects in Cameroon including “The rush for English education in urban Cameroon: Sociolinguistic implications and prospects” English Today (2010).

Paul N. Mbangwana is Emeritus Professor of English. Currently, he works with the Cameroon Christian University Bali, Cameroon. He has held administrative positions at the Universities of Yaounde I, Buea, and Dschang in Cameroon. He has published widely in the area of phonology, lexicology, semantics, Pidgins and Creoles, and world Englishes, and in international journals like English Today, World Englishes, International Journal of Humour Research, Lore and Language, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. He is author of Cameroon English Morphology and Syntax: Current Trends in Action (with B.M. Sala, 2009, Lincom), An Introduction to English Speech (with Augustin Simo Bobda 2004, B&K Language Institute), and English Patterns of Usage and Meaning (2002, University of Yaounde Press).

Joseph Nkwain is a Graduate Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Bilingual Studies, University of Yaoundé 1, where he teaches English for Academic Purposes, English-French comparative and contrastive studies, translation, and English grammar and lexicology. He has published in international journals like Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics, and Linguistik Online. His current research focuses on the functional and pragmatic aspects of Pidgin English in Cameroon Anglophone Literature. He has completed and is awaiting

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the defence of a PhD thesis on politeness in Cameroon Pidgin English. Among his research interests are sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, and the New Englishes.

Yves Talla Sando Ouafeu(†), before his passing on in January 2011, worked for the Montreal School Board in Canada. His PhD in English Linguistics was awarded by the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany, in 2006. He also held the following academic and professional qualifications obtained from the University of Yaounde I in Cameroon: a BA and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education in English and French Linguistics and Literature, and an MA in Linguistics. His book Intonational Meaning in Cameroon English Discourse: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (CSP, 2010) covers his major research interest, i.e. intonation in varieties of English. His papers have appeared in refereed journals such as English World-Wide, World Englishes, and English Today.

Bonaventure M. Sala is a Senior Lecturer in English Grammar and Stylistics in the English Department at the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. He holds a PhD in English Grammar from the same university and is interested in the syntactic description of the New Englishes, with special focus on Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English. He is co-author, with Paul N. Mbangwana, of Cameroon English Morphology and Syntax: Current Trends in Action (2009, Lincom). His scholarly articles have appeared in international journals like English World-Wide, English Today, Alizés, PhiN and World Englishes and in edited volumes.