The Language of Evangelisation in 'Foreign' Territories
The case of Maroua, Cameroon
Keywords:
Evangelisation Language, Lingua franca, Language use, Integration, MultilingualismAbstract
This paper is based on the postulate that mainstream Protestant churches in Cameroon have specific ethnic strongholds (Kamusella, 2012; Ndzotom Mbakop, 2016), and should therefore evolve novel communication strategies outside those settings. The data were collected through elicitation and participant observation in Maroua, Far North Region, Cameroon, following the structural-functional approach. The results revealed that, although Fulfulde is the main lingua franca in the whole Region, French remains the main liturgical language, whereas a few local languages were used at EEC Maroua-Hardé, namely Ngambay and Mundang. This shows that language used by these churches in foreign settings aims more at catering for the ideationally integrated members of the religious group while compensating the normatively integrated ones when possible. This confirms earlier claims that religious language varieties are more stable than their secular counterparts (Omoniyi and Fishman, 2006). The role of the historical factor also emerges as the fundamental variable that determines language choice in mainstream Protestant Churches in Cameroon.
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