Neologism and the Media in Contemporary Cameroon English; a Sociopragmatic Approach

Abstract

Contemporary Cameroon English is a reflection of many decades of its historical, political, social and linguistic development. The aim of this investigation, as descriptive linguistics, is to observe what, how and why the common Cameroonian citizen creates, coins and form new words in English speech, collect and analyse this as naturally occurring sociolinguistic data, characteristic of contemporary Cameroon English speech. The objective is to highlight on the linguistic and cultural diversity of Cameroon as a leit motive to create and introduce new words into the vocabulary system, thus, enriching contemporary Cameroon English. Both quantitative and qualitative research was carried to obtain valid data typical of Cameroon society based on the sociolinguistic and ethnographic methods of inquiry and analyses using a combination of the critical discourse analysis, semantico-pragmatic and speech act theories. After the analysis, contemporary Cameroon English is enhanced through different linguistic techniques such as dialectal and cultural borrowing, self-explained compounds, neologisms, eponym, and inflections, among others, which is of great interest to English language learners and teachers of today. These linguistic techniques have enriched Cameroon English vocabulary as a variety of speech typical of Cameroon English.