Languaging ethnicity and decolonising language ideologies in Cameroon contemporary urban music

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between standard language ideologies and ethnicity as performed in music. This is premised against the assumption that research on language and race/ethnicity has tended to focus more on institutional settings and how ideologies about race or ethnicity are (re) produced and sustained through language policies and practices in these settings while little is done to account for how these tendencies are performed out of institutional settings. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines two Cameroonian songs as sites wherein ideologies about standard language are sustained and challenged. The ethnicisation of linguistic sounds in one True Feelings permeates a colonial tendency establishing the standard norm versus the non-standard variety between British English and Cameroon English or New Englishes in general. The purported Standard English is depicted as the norm against which deviant forms are judged. This tendency is decolonised Be Proud wherein plea is made to diversity and linguistic plurality as the alternation between different sound forms and structures is associated to the creative potential of the language. The analysis therefore demonstrates that there is need to consider and amplify the enormous research in the emerging field of Raciolinguistics by extending the debate into informal settings where such ideological work is either sustained or challenged.