Towards an understanding of African endogenous multilingualism: ethnography, language ideologies, and the supernatural

Pierpaolo Di Carlo

doi:10.1515/ijsl-2018-0037

Article

Towards an understanding of African endogenous multilingualism: ethnography, language ideologies, and the supernatural

Pierpaolo Di Carlo

Published/Copyright: September 26, 2018

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language Volume 2018 Issue 254

Abstract

In a globalised sociolinguistics “[d]ifferent types of societies must give rise to different types of sociolinguistic study”, as Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich argue in the concluding remarks of their (Smakman, Dick. 2015. The westernising mechanisms in sociolinguistics. In Dick Smakman & Patrick Heinrich (eds.), Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory, 16–35. London: Routledge) book Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory. To this end, a basic condition must be met: both target languages and societies must be well known. This is not the case in much of Central and West Africa: with only few exceptions, here local languages and societies are generally under-researched and sociolinguistic studies have focused mainly on urban contexts, in most cases targeting the interaction between local and colonial languages. With regard to individual multilingualism, this urban-centered perspective risks to limit scholarly attention on processes that, while valid in cities, may not apply everywhere. For one thing, there might still be areas where one can find instances of endogenous multilingualism, where speakers’ language repertoires and ideologies are largely localised. The case in point is offered by the sociolinguistic situation found in Lower Fungom, a rural, marginal, and linguistically highly diverse area of North West Cameroon. The analyses proposed, stemming from a strongly ethnographic approach, lead to reconsider basic notions in mainstream sociolinguistics – such as that of the target of an index – crucially adding spiritual anxieties among the factors conditioning the development of individual multilingual repertoires in local languages.

Keywords: multilingualism; rural Africa; ethnography; language ideologies; spiritual insecurity

Acknowledgements

Research for this article has been supported by generous funding from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (under Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship 0180) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant BCS-0853981). This article is based on a paper that was presented at the “Globalising Sociolinguistics” conference in Leiden in 2015. It was planned to be included in the conference proceedings but then, since these did not materialize, it was accepted for publication in this IJSL “Singles” volume thanks to Patrick Heinrich’s efforts and Florian Coulmas’s kind availability: I thank both of them for their help. I would like to thank my two collaborators in the field (and students), Angiachi Demetris Esene Agwara (University of Buea) and Angela Nsen Tem (University of Yaounde 1), as well as our many linguistic consultants who made the work presented here possible. A special thank goes to the late George Bwei Kum Ngong, the best guide a European fieldworker could ever hope for, and to Jeff Good, for his moral and scientific support to this and related multidisciplinary research in the Grassfields. I also want to thank David Zeitlyn and the two anonymous reviewers for their stimulating comments on an earlier draft of this article. Responsibility for the content of this article is of the author’s alone.

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2007. Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Grammars in contact. A crosslinguistic typology, 1–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199207831.003.0001Search in Google Scholar

Aronin, Larissa, Joshua A. Fishman, David Singleton & Muiris Ó Laoire. 2013. Current multilingualism: A new linguistic dispensation. In David Singleton, Joshua A. Fishman, Larissa Aronin & Muiris Ó Laoire (eds.), Current multilingualism: A new linguistic dispensation, 1–23. Boston/Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.10.1515/9781614512813Search in Google Scholar

Ashforth, Adam. 2005. Witchcraft, violence, and democracy in South Africa. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Auer, Peter. 1999. From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects: Towards a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism 3(4). 309–332.10.1177/13670069990030040101Search in Google Scholar

Baeke, Viviane. 2004. Le temps des rites. Ordre du monde et destin individuel en pays Wuli (Cameroun). Nanterre: Société d’éthnologie.Search in Google Scholar

Beyer, Klaus & Henning Schreiber. 2013. Intermingling speech groups. Morphosyntactic outcomes of language contact in a linguistic area. In Burkina Faso, West Africa, Isabelle Léglise & Claudine Chamoreau (eds.), The interplay of variation and change in contact settings, 107–134. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/silv.12.05beySearch in Google Scholar

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and symbolic power. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar

Brookes, Heather. 2014. Urban youth languages in south Africa: A case study of Tsotsitaal in a South African township. Anthropological Linguistics 56(3–4). 356–388.10.1353/anl.2014.0018Search in Google Scholar

Brubaker, Rogers & Fredrick Cooper. 2000. Beyond “Identity”. Theory and Society 29(1). 1–47.10.1023/A:1007068714468Search in Google Scholar

Cavalli, Marisa, Daniel Coste, Alexandru Crişan & Piet-Hein van de Ven. 2009. Plurilingual and intercultural education as a project. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, Language Policy Division. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/LE_texts_Source/EducPlurInter-Projet_en.pdf (accessed 2July 2016).Search in Google Scholar

Chilver, Elizabeth M. & Phyllis M. Kaberry. 1962. Traditional Government in Bafut, West Cameroon. The Nigerian Field 28. 4–30.Search in Google Scholar

Chilver, Elizabeth M. & Phyllis M. Kaberry. 1967. Traditional Bamenda. Buea: Ministry of Primary Education and Social Welfare.Search in Google Scholar

Cobbinah, Alexander. 2010. The Casamance as an area of intense language contact: The case of Baïnounk Gubaher. Journal of Language Contact 3 THEMA III. 175–201.10.1163/19552629-90000010Search in Google Scholar

Cobbinah, Alexander, Abbie Hantgan, Friederike Lüpke & Rachel Watson. 2017. Carrefour des langues, carrefour des paradigmes. In Michelle Auzanneau, Margaret Bento & Malory Leclère (eds.), Espaces, mobilités et éducation plurilingues: Éclairages d’Afrique ou d’ailleurs, 79–97. Paris: Édition des Archives Contemporaines.Search in Google Scholar

Connell, Bruce. 2009. Language diversity and language choice: A view from a Cameroon market. Anthropological Linguistics 51(2). 130–150.10.1353/anl.0.0012Search in Google Scholar

Connell, Bruce & David Zeitlyn. 2010. Sociolinguistic studies of West and Central Africa. In Martin J. Ball (ed.), The Routledge handbook of sociolinguistics around the world, 203–215. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Cukor-Avila, Patricia & Guy Bailey. 2008. Real and apparent time. In J. K. Chambers & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 2 edn., 239–262 Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. Trans. by Steven Randall. Berkeley: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2011. Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective. Africana Linguistica 17. 53–100.10.3406/aflin.2011.994Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2015. Multilingualism, solidarity, and magic. New Perspectives on language ideology in the Cameroonian Grassfields. In Simone Casini, Carla Bruno, Francesca Gallina & Raymond Siebetcheu (eds.), Plurilinguismo, sintassi. Atti del XLVI congresso internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) – Siena, 27–29 settembre 2012, 287–302. Roma: Bulzoni.Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2016. Multilingualism, affiliation, and spiritual insecurity. From phenomena to processes in language documentation. In African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches, Special Publication No.10 of Language Documentation & Conservation, edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur, 71–104. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24649.Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo & Jeff Good. 2014. What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields. In Peter Austin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Endangered languages: Beliefs and ideology, 231–264. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.5871/bacad/9780197265765.003.0012Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Jeff Good, and Rachel Ayuk Ojong. Forthcoming. Multilingualism in rural Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.22710.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.227Search in Google Scholar

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo & Ayu’nwi N. Neba. 2016. “Social structure, group-formation, and multilingualism. Preliminary notes from Bafut”. Paper presented at the KPAAM-CAM – Crossroads joint workshop, SOAS London, June 6 2016. Presentation available at. https://soascrossroads.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/dicarlo-neba_01_june_2016_2.pdf (accessed 15 July 2016).Search in Google Scholar

Eckert, Penelope. 2012. Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41. 87–100.10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145828Search in Google Scholar

Ellis, Stephen. 1999. The mask of anarchy. The destruction of liberia and the religious dimension of an African Civil War. London: Hurst & Co.Search in Google Scholar

Esene Agwara, Angiachi D. 2013. Rural multilingualism in the North West Region of Cameroon: The case of Lower Fungom. Buea: University of Buea MA thesis. http://buffalo.edu/~jcgood/EseneAgwara-2013-RuralMultilingualism.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Evans, Nicholas. 2010. Dying words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781444310450Search in Google Scholar

Ferrari, Aurélia. 2012. Emergence d’une langue urbaine: le cheng de Nairobi. Louvain-Paris: Peeters.Search in Google Scholar

Fishman, Joshua A. 1967. Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues 23(2). 29–38.10.4324/9781003060406-8Search in Google Scholar

Fowler, Ian. 1993. African sacred kings: Expectations and performance in the Cameroon Grassfields. Ethnology 32(3). 253–268.10.2307/3773472Search in Google Scholar

Fowler, Ian. 2011. Kingdoms of the Cameroon Grassfields. Reviews in Anthropology 40(4). 292–311.10.1080/00938157.2011.624994Search in Google Scholar

François, Alexandre. 2012. The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 214. 85–110.10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022Search in Google Scholar

Gausset, Quentin. 2010. Constructing the Kwanja of Adamawa (Cameroon): Essay in Fractal Anthropology. Münster: LIT Verlag.Search in Google Scholar

Geschiere, Peter. 1995. Sorcellerie et politique en Afrique. La viande des autres. Paris: Karthala.Search in Google Scholar

Good, Jeff, Jesse Lovegren, Jean Patrick Mve, Carine Nganguep Tchiemouo, Rebecca Voll & Pierpaolo Di Carlo. 2011. The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon: Grammatical overview. Africana Linguistica 17. 101–164.10.3406/aflin.2011.995Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles & Alessandro Duranti. 1992. Rethinking context: An introduction. In Alessandro Duranti & Charles Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 1–42. Cambridge: CUP.Search in Google Scholar

Hamm, Cameron, Jason Diller, Kari Jordan-Diller & Ferdinand Assako A Tiati. 2002. A rapid appraisal survey of Western Beboid languages (Menchum Division, Northwest Province). SIL Electronic Survey Reports (SILESR 2002-014).Search in Google Scholar

Hill, Jane H. 2001. Language on the land: Toward an anthropological dialectology. In John E. Terrell (ed.), Archeology, language, and history: Essays on culture and ethnicity, 257–282. Westport, Conn./London: Bergin & Garvey.Search in Google Scholar

Horton, Robin. 1972. Stateless societies in the history of West Africa. In J.F.A. Ajayi & Michael Crowder (eds.), History of West Africa Vol. 1, 78–119. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Husserl, Edmund. 1970 [1954]. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language. Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM/Oxford: SAR Press/James Currey.Search in Google Scholar

Kaberry, Phyllis M. 1962. Retainers and Royal Households in the Cameroons Grassfields. Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 3(10). 282–298.10.3406/cea.1962.3704Search in Google Scholar

Kaji, Shigeki. 2013. Monolingualism via multilingualism. A case study of language use in the West Ugandan town of Homa. African Study Monographs 34(1). 1–25. doi:10.14989/173534 (accessed 15 July 2016).Search in Google Scholar

Kießling, Roland & Maarten Mous. 2004. Urban youth languages in Africa. Anthropological Linguistics 46(3). 303–341.Search in Google Scholar

Kopytoff, Igor. 1987. The internal African frontier: The making of African political culture. In Igor Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier. The reproduction of traditional African societies, 3–84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kraus, Peter A. 2016. The politics of linguistic identity in Europe. Between the expression of power and the power of expressivity. In Christina Späti (ed.), Language and identity politics: A cross-atlantic perspective, 38–57. New York/Oxford: Berghahn.10.1515/9781782389439-005Search in Google Scholar

Lovegren, Jesse (2013). Mungbam grammar. Buffalo: University at Buffalo dissertation. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/Lovegren-2013-MungbamGrammar.pdfSearch in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike. 2009. At the margin—african endangered languages in the context of global endangerment discourses. African Research and Documentation 109. 15–41.10.1017/S0305862X00016472Search in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike. 2010a. Language and identity in flux: In search of Baïnounk. Journal of Language Contact 3, THEMA III. 155–174.10.1163/19552629-90000009Search in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike. 2010b. Multilingualism and language contact in West Africa: Towards a holistic perspective. Journal of Language Contact 3, THEMA III. 1–11.10.1163/19552629-90000002Search in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike. 2016a. Pure Fiction–the interplay of indexical and essentialist language ideologies and heterogeneous practices: A view from Agnack. In African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches, Special Publication No.10 of Language Documentation & Conservation, edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur, 8–39. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24650.Search in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike. 2016b. Uncovering small-scale multilingualism. Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(2). 35–74.Search in Google Scholar

Lüpke, Friederike & Anne Storch. 2013. Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9781614511946Search in Google Scholar

Menang, Thaddeus. 2004. Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): Phonology. In Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Bernd Kortmann, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds.), Handbook of varieties of English. Volume I: Phonology, 902–917. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197181-057Search in Google Scholar

Meyerhoff, Miriam & James N. Stanford. 2015. “Tings change, all tings change”: The changing face of sociolinguistics with a global perspective. In Dick Smakman & Patrick Heinrich (eds.), Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory, 1–15. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Moore, Henrietta L. & Todd Sanders (eds.). 2001. Magical interpretations, material realities. Modernity, witchcraft, and the occult in postcolonial Africa. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Ndinga-Koumba-Binza, Hugues Steve. 2007. Gabonese language landscape: Survey and perspectives. South African Journal of African Languages 27(3). 97–116.10.1080/02572117.2007.10587290Search in Google Scholar

Ojong, Rachel A. Forthcoming. A micro-study of sociolinguistic dynamics in a multilingual setting: The case of Lower Fungom. Buea, Cameroon: University of Buea PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Ranger, Terence. 1983. The invention of tradition in Colonial Africa. In Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.), The invention of tradition, 211–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781107295636.006Search in Google Scholar

Rickford, John R. 1986. The need for new approaches to class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language & Communication 6(3). 215–221.10.1016/0271-5309(86)90024-8Search in Google Scholar

Ryle, Gilbert. 2009 (first ed. 1971). The thinking of thoughts: What is ‘le penseur’ doing? In Gilbert Ryle, Collected papers 1929 – 1968, Volume 2, 494–510. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23. 193–229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2Search in Google Scholar

Slotta, James. 2012. Dialect, trope, and enregisterment in a Melanesian speech community. Language & Communication 32. 1–13.10.1016/j.langcom.2011.11.003Search in Google Scholar

Smakman, Dick. 2015. The westernising mechanisms in sociolinguistics. In Dick Smakman & Patrick Heinrich (eds.), Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory, 16–35. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315697826Search in Google Scholar

Smakman, Dick & Patrick Heinrich (eds.). 2015a. Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315697826Search in Google Scholar

Smakman, Dick & Patrick Heinrich (eds.). 2015b. Concluding remarks. In Dick Smakman & Patrick Heinrich (eds.), Globalising sociolinguistics. Challenging and expanding theory, 269–270. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315697826Search in Google Scholar

Stallcup, Kenneth. 1980. La géographie linguistique des Grassfields. In Larry Hyman & Jan Voorhoeve Jan (eds.), L’expansion Bantoue: Actes du Colloque International du CNRS, Viviers (France) 4-16 avril 1977. Volume I: Les Classes Nominaux dans le Bantou des Grassfields, 43–57. Paris: SELAF.Search in Google Scholar

Storch, Anne. 2011. Secret manipulations. Language and context in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199768974.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Stroud, Christopher. 2007. Multilingualism in ex-colonial countries. In Peter Auer & Li Wei (eds.), Handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communication, 509–538. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110198553.4.509Search in Google Scholar

Nsen Tem, Angela. Forthcoming. Assessing multilingual competence in rural Africa: The case of Lower Fungom, NW Region of Cameroon. Yaounde, Cameroon: University of Yaounde 1 PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar

United Nations. 2014. World urbanization prospects. New York: United Nations. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Highlights.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Vaughan, Jill & Ruth Singer. In press. Indigenous multilingualisms past and present, https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.langcom.2018.06.003.Search in Google Scholar

Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1979. Noun-classes, lexical stocks, multilingualism, and the history of the Cameroon Grassfields. Language in Society 8(3). 409–423.10.1017/S0047404500007624Search in Google Scholar

Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1985. Echanges, développement et hiérarchies dans le Bamenda pré-colonial (Cameroun). Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.Search in Google Scholar

Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 2009. Régner au Cameroun. Le Roi-Pot. Paris: Karthala.10.3917/kart.warni.2009.01Search in Google Scholar

Whiteley, Wilfred H. 1971. Introduction. In W. H. Whiteley (ed.), Language use and social change. Problems of multilingualism with special reference to Eastern Africa, 1–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Wolff, Ekkehard. 2016. Language and development in Africa. Perceptions, ideologies, and challenges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316105023Search in Google Scholar

Zeitlyn, David & Bruce Connell. 2003. Ethnogenesis and fractal history on an African frontier: Mambila-Njerep-Mandulu. Journal of African History 44. 117–138.10.1017/S002185370200823XSearch in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2018-09-26

Published in Print: 2018-10-25

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-0037

Keywords for this article

multilingualism; rural Africa; ethnography; language ideologies; spiritual insecurity