Kum, Henry Asei (2018) Language – Culture: Marginalisation or Opportunity in Cameroon’s official ‘state bilingualism’. In: Language, Identity and Symbolic Culture. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 105-134. ISBN 9781350023017
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The language situation in post-colonial Cameroon (a former French and British colony) is often described as official state bilingualism where French and English are the two official languages. Official bilingualism functions within a complex framework of over 270 indigenous languages, several regional lingua francas and a quasi-national Pidgin English. This complex post-colonial set up has let to, among other individual discontentment, several complaints of sociolinguistic disadvantages by various groups which affect the people’s interaction with others, their choice of identity and their socio-economic opportunities. The most visibly marginalised are the minority Anglophones that make up less than one third of Cameroon against the more privileged majority Francophone ethnicity that has also been in political power since the birth of independent Cameroon. The marginalisation of Anglophones and the abounding opportunities of ‘Francophoness’ posit competing tensions where one group closes its social borders to the other, identity construction and preservation of in-group qualities continue to affect the internal stability of Cameroon as a nation state
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | Language, culture, marginalisation, opportunity, Cameroon, Bilingualism |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Education |
| Depositing User: | Henry Kum |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jun 2017 09:10 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Nov 2024 10:25 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2050 |
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