Exploring the linguistic landscape of Cameroon: Reflections on language policy and ideology

Abstract

<jats:p>This contribution focuses on the study of Linguistic Landscapes in the Central/Western African state of Cameroon, with particular reference to its capital, Yaoundé. Linguistic landscapes is a relatively recent area of research, and can be broadly defined as the visual representation of languages in public space. This paper will show that the field of linguistic landscapes can act as a reflection of linguistic hierarchies, ideologies and acts of resistance in multilingual and multicultural communities. At the same time, the sociolinguistic situation in the country will be investigated, which is paramount to understanding the linguistic and ideological conflicts between the anglophone minority and the francophone government. Cameroon’s linguistic landscape will be explored via the various spaces that English, French, Pidgin English, Camfranglais and, to a minor degree, indigenous African languages occupy in its sociolinguistic composition. The methodological design is quantitative in nature, involving collecting more than 600 linguistic tokens (digital photos) in various public places mainly in and around the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé. It will be demonstrated that the deployment of languages on signs and linguistic tokens, apart from serving informative and symbolic functions for the audiences or passers-by they target, also has social and political implications in an ethnically heterogeneous and linguistically hybrid society such as Cameroon. Whereas in some other former British colonies there are indications that the public space is being symbolically constructed in order to preserve some of Africa’s indigenous languages (e.g. in Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania), in Cameroon the linguistic landscape almost exclusively focuses on the dominant status and role of one single language, i.e. French, and to a lesser extent English, whose speakers therefore feel marginalized and oppressed by the French government.</jats:p>

Code-Mixing and Code-Switching in Cameroon Social Media

“…These results are similar to the findings in Tabe (2017, p. 68) which show that "other languages that are valued after English by Anglophones are French and CPE". Pütz (2020) is also in keeping with the findings when he states that the typical Cameroonian speaker daily switches between three and more codes, not necessarily within the same word but rather from utterance to the utterance (inter-sentential switching) or speech event to speech event.…”

A semiotic portrait of a big Chinese city

“…Notwithstanding the scholarly interest for urban communication, we are not aware of any study clearly formulating its basic principles and summarizing its difference from previous approaches to urban discourse, such as onomastics, media linguistics, pragmalinguistics, etc. On the basis of the analysis of numerous publications and conference presentations (Aiello & Tosoni 2016, Kvyat 2013, Laundry & Bourhis 1997, Lotman 1992, Mellor 1977, Pavlenko 2017, Pütz 2020 we have formulated the following constituent features of urban communication studies as a research area (Leontovich 2020a):…”

“…Scholars characterize LL as the totality of the language's visual existence: all signage, announcements, billboards, public road and safety signs, slogans, names of buildings, streets, shops, graffiti, etc. (Baranova and Fyodorova 2017, Gorter 2013, Pavlenko 2017, Pütz 2020, Yelenevskaya & Fialkova 2017. They emphasise its multimodal character and role in top-down and bottom-up communication (e. g., see Pütz 2020) viewing the study of LL as a promising area of research which reflects sociocultural and political reality, aesthetic perception, interethnic and intergroup contradictions.…”

“…The physical context of urban communication viewed from the linguistic perspective represents the notion of 'geosemiotics' (Scollon & Scollon 2003, Pütz 2020 and incorporates names of streets, avenues and other topological objects, the notions of centrality and environment. Social segregation of the city space results in the formation of sociolects.…”

“Battle” between languages over the public area in the tourism destination city of Bali: lexicological and linguistic landscape perspectives

“…It has arisen due to growing interest in linguistic diversity, language ecology, the era of internationalization, and world integration. In this regard, societies, languages, and spaces can interact to create environments locally and globally in the public sphere (Pütz, 2020). From the results of several studies, multilingual signs tend to add English as one of the languages spoken.…”