24.993, Review: Sociolinguistics; English: Anchimbe (2012)

[linguist at linguistlist.org]

LINGUIST List: Vol-24-993. Mon Feb 25 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.993, Review: Sociolinguistics; English: Anchimbe (2012)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin Madison
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin Madison
Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin Madison
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
       <reviews at linguistlist.org>

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Do you want to donate to LINGUIST without spending an extra penny? Bookmark
the Amazon link for your country below; then use it whenever you buy from
Amazon!

USA: http://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-20
Britain: http://www.amazon.co.uk/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-21
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistd-21
Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-22
Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistc-20
France: http://www.amazon.fr/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistf-21

For more information on the LINGUIST Amazon store please visit our
FAQ at http://linguistlist.org/amazon-faq.cfm.

Editor for this issue: Rajiv Rao <rajiv at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  


Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:42:53
From: Marcin Walczynski [marcinwalus at o2.pl]
Subject: Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=24-993.html&submissionid=7505217&topicid=9&msgnumber=1
 
Discuss this message: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=7505217


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-4132.html

AUTHOR: Eric A.  Anchimbe
TITLE: Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting
SUBTITLE: The Linguistic and Social Context of English and Pidgin in Cameroon
SERIES TITLE: Language Contact and Bilingualism (LCB) 4
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Marcin Walczynski, Wroclaw University

SUMMARY

This edited volume of papers on different aspects of Cameroon English (CamE)
and Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE), as claimed by the editor, has three main
objectives: (1) to explore CamE on different levels (e.g. grammar, phonology,
lexicon, as well as cognitive-sociolinguistic dimensions) within the new
research frameworks offered by scholars working in the paradigms of New
Englishes; (2) to examine certain grammatical aspects of CPE and show how they
have been changing over time; (3) to illustrate the two languages through an
ample sample of authentic texts.

The book is divided into three parts, each of which strives to achieve one of
the above-mentioned objectives.

The three main parts of the volume are preceded by the Introduction (Chapter
1: “Language contact in a postcolonial setting: Research approaches to
Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Eric A. Anchimbe), in which
the main aims and research paradigms taken up by the scholars contributing
papers to the volume are presented. Here, the editor sketches the topics and
research frameworks presented in the next parts of the volume, stressing the
wide variety of research approaches to CamE and CPE.

The first part of the book contains seven papers on CamE. The first article
(Chapter 2: “The expression of modality in Cameroon English”, by Daniel A.
Nkemleke) presents the ways in which modality is expressed in CamE on the
basis of a rich corpus collected between 1992 and 1994. From the paper, it is
evident that modal verbs (i.e. must, should, can, could, may, might) used by
CamE speakers are not so frequent as their equivalents in British English.

The next paper (Chapter 3: “A cognitive sociolinguistic approach to the
lexicon of Cameroon English and other world Englishes”, by Hans-Georg Wolf)
deals with the lexicon of CamE (or more precisely, with its selected items)
examined from the cognitive-sociolinguistic perspective. As an outcome of his
investigation, the author offers an interesting sample dictionary, which is
divided into two parts. The first part includes the entries composed of the
following types of meta- as well as cognitive and socio-linguistic data:
standard description (i.e. form, etymology, meaning), text examples and
underlying culture-specific conceptualizations (with links to target and
source domains). The second part presents the items arranged according to
these target and source domains. Such construction of the dictionary certainly
contributes to the lexicography of CamE and, additionally, shows how
culture-specific words can be described in a dictionary of a variety of
English.

Chapter 4 (“Reading the phonology of Cameroon English through the Trilateral
Process”, by Augusin Simo Bobda) is about the phonology of New Englishes, with
particular attention paid to the phonology of CamE and, what the author calls,
the trilateral process. Generally speaking, this process entails phonological
changes along three sides: (1) within the Inner Circle variety (e.g. Received
Pronunciation – RP); (2) from the Inner Circle English into a New English
variety (i.e. CamE); (3) within this New English variety. The author discussed
in greater detail the phonology of CamE with reference to this process but
this concept can also be applied to other world Englishes and their
phonologies.

Phonology is also the topic of Chapter 5 (“One variety, different ethnic
tongues. A phonological perspective on Nso’ English”, by Ernesta Kelen
Fonyuy). However, in this article, the focus is on the ethnic varieties of
English which are used in Cameroon. Particular attention is paid to the
phonological features of Nso’ English, which is the ethnic variety of CamE
spoken by the Nso’ community. Some of its characteristic features, revealed in
the phonological-statistical study presented in the paper, are the
phonological realizations of certain vowels and diphthongs which are different
not only from the RP realizations but also from the CamE ones. In general, it
might be concluded that as a variety of CamE, Nso’ English has its own
phonological peculiarities, making it quite distinct from CamE.

In the next chapter (Chapter 6: “The filtration processes in Cameroon
English”, by Eric A. Anchimbe), the author discusses filtration in CamE – a
process, whereby certain lexical items or syntactic patterns become part of
the variety whereas others are not so commonly used; it is conditioned by a
variety of factors (e.g. motivation, appropriateness, politics) and the
lexical or syntactic structures filtered in this way may be attested to
several sources, with language contact being one of the most fruitful of them.
The author gives some examples of words which have been filtered into CamE:
“achu” (foodstuff name), “manyi/mangi” (twins’ mother), “ekwang” (foodstuff
name).

Chapter 7 (“Language choice, identity, and power in the Cameroonian
parliament”, by Lilian Lem Atanga) ends the first part of the book by
presenting the issue of language choice in the Cameroonian parliament within
the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. The author demonstrates that a
number of factors (e.g. wish to belong to a group, wish to exclude someone
from the group, wish to mark the original Anglophone or Francophone linguistic
identity, etc.) are important when members of parliament decide upon the
selection of the language in which they deliver their speeches.

The second part of the volume concerns CPE and is composed of five chapters.
In Chapter 8 (“Tense and aspect in Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Anne
Schröder), CPE tense and aspect are examined. The data presented by the author
reveals that CPE uses four markers of tense and aspect: go (future), bin
(past), di (imperfective), don/neba (perfect). This system can also be found
in several other English-based pidgins.

Chapter 9 (“Reduplication in Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Bonaventure M. Sala)
presents formal and functional perspectives on reduplication in CPE. The
author draws an interesting conclusion, stating that reduplication (e.g.
gwà-gwá (“duck”), kind-kind (to mark plurality), some fain-fain woman (“a very
beautiful woman”)) is quite a productive word-formation process used to mark a
number of aspects such as intensification, plurality, restriction, etc.

The topic of Chapter 10 (“Pronouns in Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Gratien G.
Atindogbé and Evelyn Fogwe Chibaka) is the system of CPE pronouns. Through
their profound analysis, the authors convincingly prove that CPE (or, as they
view this language, Cameroon Pidgin Creole) has quite a rich system of
pronouns. This richness is visible in the fact that there are many categories
of pronouns such as personal subjective pronouns, personal objective pronouns,
weak possessive pronouns, strong possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns,
simple emphatic pronouns, composed emphatic pronouns, demonstrative pronouns,
interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and reciprocal
pronouns. Such a division of pronouns and their pragmatically conditioned use
are observed in many English-based pidgins, for example, in Nigerian Pidgin.

Chapter 11 (“Gud Nyus fo Pidgin?: Bible translation as language elaboration in
Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Susanne Mühleisen and Eric A. Anchimbe) discusses
the translation of the Bible into CPE and its importance in establishing
certain norms regarding spelling, the lexicon and word-formation, as well as
grammar. However, the authors state that the Bible translation under
discussion has produced writing norms which are examined by scholars and not
necessarily adhered to by CPE writers, especially those producing literary
texts. On the basis of “The Lord’s Prayer”, the authors also provide a small
comparison of the orthographies used to write CPE words. For, example, the
English word “this day” has 3 different spelling forms: “this day”, “today”,
“tudei”, with the last written according to the conventions adopted for the
2000 CPE translation of the Bible titled ‘Gud Nyus fo ol Pipul: Nyu Testament
fo Pidgin’. Similarly, the word “come” is spelled in different ways: “come”,
“came” and “kam” (the last being the spelling form adopted for the Bible
translation).

The final chapter of the second part, Chapter 12 (“German colonial influences
on, and representations of, Cameroon Pidgin English”, by Brigitte Weber),
presents how the German language has exerted some influence on different
levels of CPE (phonology, e.g., pronunciation of certain sounds), syntax (e.g.
the syntactic structure with the word man, word order in some sentences with
prepositions, etc.), vocabulary (e.g. certain lexical items might have been
derived from German like zucker and marsch)). Moreover, the author analyzes
the negative attitude towards CPE of the German administration, who deemed
this language as a “horrible jargon” (p. 287). On the other hand, they
realized the usefulness of this language and the necessity of its basic
command. Such thinking resulted in the preparation of some course books like
Kurzes Handbuch für Neger = Englisch an der Westküse Afrikas unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung von Kmerun (1908, Gunther von Hagen). Overall, this chapter
show how extralinguistic factors can influence the shape of a language.

The third part is a valuable collection of original written and oral text
samples of both CamE and CPE. Snippets of the CPE texts are as follows:

“Meik wuna no di joj oda pipul, an God e no go joj wuna, foseika sei, hau weh
wuna joj som man, na so God go joj wuna, an de loh weh wuna di yus-am e go bi
de loh weh God go yus-am fo wuna”. (p. 308)

“You know we don educate patients for way weh them suppose for di help them,
we no get for hala them”. (p. 311)

EVALUATION

The volume of papers on CamE and CPE is an extremely valuable contribution to
Creolistics for several reasons. First of all, all of the chapters form a
uniform whole, presenting the complex linguistic situation of Cameroon, where
two languages are of paramount importance: CamE and CPE. Secondly, it is
noteworthy that the authors of the papers included in the volume do not limit
themselves to only one research perspective, but rather focus on the
multifacetedness of modern approaches to the studied languages. This certainly
enriches the study of both CamE and CPE. Thanks to such a rich variety of
research frameworks presented in the volume’s chapters, the reader gets a very
informative account of what these two languages really are, what
characteristic features they have and (especially for CamE) in what way they
are different from standard British English.

An unquestionable asset of the volume is that all of its objectives that the
editors write about in the Introduction are achieved. With regard to the first
objective, CamE is indeed analyzed on different levels and the observations
on, for example, CamE modality, lexicon or phonology are novel and certainly
contribute to a better understanding of the processes that take place in these
aspects of CamE. Certainly, another strength is the analysis of language
choice, identity and power, as observed in the example of the Cameroonian
parliament. Such studies shed new light on the real attitude of CamE speakers
toward the languages they use. To some extent, this study may also be
indicative of how the identities of members of parliament are constructed via
language and how the choice of language governs social inclusion/exclusion
processes.

As for the second aim, CPE grammatical patterns are also well examined by the
authors in the second part of the volume. Thanks to the in-depth analyses, the
reader is informed of how tense and aspect, reduplication, or pronominal
systems work in CPE. The focus on these features seems to be justified since
many pidgins and creoles exhibit various patterns of aspect, tense and
modality markers, various contextual-dependent needs for using reduplication,
and different pronouns in their pronoun systems. These are often quite salient
features of pidgin and creole languages. In many cases, these features are not
directly related to the lexifier/superstrate languages the pidgins and creoles
are based on and are rather attributed to other sources (including the
substrate languages). The grammatical analysis presented in this part of the
volume is certainly a valuable contribution which may be exploited in further
cross-linguistic studies of such features in pidgins and creoles. Equally
valuable are the conclusions drawn at the end of the last two papers in the
section dealing with Bible translation and the influence of German on CPE. In
several cases, the translation of the Bible has had a significant impact on
pidgin/creole standardization (including language elaboration, e.g., in Tok
Pisin), and in the case of CPE, it seems that this did not work this way
because, as the authors conclude, the spelling patterns adopted for this
translation of the Bible have not been followed yet by CPE users; they have
merely been the topic of scholarly analysis. The last paper shows that Germans
and their language did exert a strong influence on the lexicon of CPE by
presenting the wide social context in which such influence took place.

Referring to the third objective, the collection of texts in CamE and CPE is
an excellent illustration of what these languages really are. They allow the
reader to get a glimpse into the (especially lexical and syntactic)
peculiarities of CamE and CPE. Another great asset of the reviewed volume is
the fact that the authors do not merely present their research perspectives on
the basis of some artificially created language samples. On the contrary,
almost all papers draw extensively on numerous data samples from corpora. As
such, the reader observes analytical frameworks applied to real linguistic
data compiled from different sources.

With regard to the target audience of the book, it should be stated that this
volume is intended for students and scholars interested in the formation of
new Englishes as well as pidgins and creoles. It will enrich the targeted
readership’s understanding of a whole gamut of linguistic and sociolinguistic
processes taking place in languages themselves and in the communities using
those languages. Equally noteworthy are the theoretical foundations upon which
all the analysis presented in the volume are based, which, to a certain
extent, may form a foundation for other research initiatives.

Having said the above, the reviewer can raise two minute objections. First of
all, given the richness of aspects of CamE and CPE discussed in the book, it
was surprising to see that very little attention was paid to the pragmatics of
both languages. Devoting separate chapters to the pragmatic aspects of both
languages would certainly raise the already high value of the book and enrich
the research perspectives applied in it. This additional approach could have
shed new light on the pragmatic norms of use of the languages under analysis.
Secondly, there seems to be an editorial problem: the title of Chapter 4
included in the table of contents is not exactly the same as the title of the
chapter in the body of the volume. This, however, does not in any way reflect
the quality of the chapter itself.

In sum, this volume sheds new light on different aspects of both CamE and CPE
and provides the reader with original language samples. Moreover, the studies
presented by the authors can be further used in the comparative analyses of,
for example, aspect-tense-modality markers or reduplication found in pidgins
and creoles, and therefore, this work opens new possibilities for further
research on CamE, CPE, and other related pidgins and creoles and world
Englishes, which is what each new contribution to any field of science should
do.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

MARCIN WALCZYŃSKI, Ph.D. in linguistics, is an assistant professor in the
Department of Translation Studies of the Institute of English Studies at
Wrocław University, a lecturer in the Section of Business English of the
Institute of Modern Languages of the University of Applied Sciences in Nysa.
His research interests include sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics,
contact linguistics and creolistics, lingua franca studies, special purpose
language studies (business, law, computer technology, medicine and media),
translation and interpreting, theory of communication, intercultural
communication, journalism and media discourse(s). He has taught numerous
courses on various aspects of the English language, translation and
interpreting, linguistics and communication sciences, history and culture of
English-speaking countries and journalism and the media. He is also a regular
translator translating business, legal, medical, technical, artistic and
scientific texts.








----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-24-993	
----------------------------------------------------------