Augustin Simo Bobda On the Indigenization of English in Cameroon and new Englishisms Series A: General & Theoretical Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 1998 (2., unveränderte Auflage 2006) Paper No. 441 Universität Duisburg-Essen Augustin Simo Bobda University of Yaoundel, Cameroon (West Africa) On the Indigenization of English in Cameroon and new Englishisms Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 1998 (2., unveränderte Auflage 2006) Linguistic Agency Series A University of Duisburg-Essen General and Theoretical FB Geisteswissenschaften Paper No. 441 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen Order LAUD-papers online: http://www.linse.uni-due.de/linse/laud/index.html Or contact:
[email protected] Augustin Simo Bobda On the Indigenization of English in Cameroon and new Englishisms Since its transportation and transplantation in the colonies, the English language has kept on distancing itself structurally from mother-tongue varieties. Depending on the causes and the manifestations of this divergence that writers have in mind, the phenomenon has in turn been termed indigenization (e.g. Moag 1982), localization (Strevens 1982, Kachru 1986), nativization (Kachru 1986), domestication (Odusina and Ikegelu 1990), adaptation (1991), or evidence of ownership of the “other tongue” (Chisanga and Kamwangamalu 1997). The common suggestion in all these labels is that, in former British and American colonies, English has, through fossilized deviations, irreversibly taken on new identities. The present paper gives further evidence of this acquisition of new identities, based on the Corpus of Cameroon English, of which it is one of the pioneer analyses. It then discusses striking similarities in all New Englishes across national and continental borders, and discusses the strategies underlying features which, it is argued, should henceforth be called New Englishisms.