Global identities or local stigma markers: How equal is the "E" in Englishes in Cameroon?

Titelangaben

Anchimbe, Eric A.:
Global identities or local stigma markers: How equal is the "E" in Englishes in Cameroon?
In: Mahboob, Ahmar ; Barrat, Leslie (Hrsg.): Englishes in Multilingual Contexts : Language Variation and Education. - Dordrecht : Springer , 2014 . - S. 47-62 . - (Multilingual Education ; 10 )
ISBN 978-94-017-8869-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8869-4_4

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Abstract

Given the global spread of English and its extensive use in various parts of the world, it is now used by diverse groups of new speakers who now struggle to create new identities and identity icons around it. One outcome of this process is the redefinition of the standards of the language in relation to specific groups of speakers. Taking Cameroon as a case in point, this chapter illustrates how French-speaking Cameroonians now identify with English but not in the same way as their English-speaking counterparts for whom English is the first official language.

For the francophones today, the English they speak is international English. They claim a global identity of the language, and to make this superior to the anglophones, they castigate the anglophone variety of the language as exceedingly pidginised, i.e. influenced by Cameroon Pidgin English, hence local English. Controversial as it is, given that English is taught in the country predominantly by the anglophones, this is giving fresh impetus to the construction of glocal identities on a language that used to be treated as a minority code of the minority English-speaking group.