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Varieties of English in Cameroon audio-visual materials: Cameroon audio-lects

An account of five major English media ‘audio-lects’ in Cameroon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2018

Raphael Tegha Ketcha
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Extract

This paper identifies and describes five major varieties of Cameroon English (hereafter CamE) in Cameroon audio-visual materials. These five ‘audio-lects’ are Pidginized, Mainstream, Near-RP, Americanized and Frenchized CamE. The paper argues that these audio-lects mostly tie with real-life CamE, but differ from the latter phonostylistically. The utterances of 80 Cameroonian actors, actresses and musicians excerpted from 100 audio-visual materials constituted data for the paper. The audio-visual materials and artists were randomly selected to represent, as much as possible, CamE speakers from different socio-cultural spheres within Cameroon. The findings indicate that these audio-lects largely resemble real-life CamE varieties, which reflect the socio-ethnic, academic and professional diversity of CamE speakers.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 20 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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