ABSTRACT
Camfranglais (CFA) is a highly hybrid sociolect used by urban youth (Kießling and Mous 2004) in Cameroon’s big cities, Yaoundé and Douala. It serves its adolescent speakers as an icon of jocular resistance against feelings of deprivation and alienation caused by a long-standing exoglossic language policy which gives the elitist ex-colonial languages, French and English, an official status above the 250+ home languages in multilingual Cameroon. Structurally, CFA is grafted onto the grammar of Cameroonian French, with clear admixtures from Kamtok or Cameroonian Pidgin English (CPE). Its emblematic lexicon is created and is constantly being transformed by deliberate manipulation of lexical items from Cameroonian French, Cameroonian Pidgin English and various Cameroonian home, i.e. national, languages. The strategies employed, i.e. phonological truncation, morphological hybridisation and hyperbolic and satirising semantic extensions, clearly reflect the provocative attitude of its speakers and their jocular disrespect for linguistic norms and purity. Hybridity, in both its emblematic lexicon and grammatical frame, reflects an ongoing functional transition of CFA, from an ‘antilanguage’ to a code that combines connotations of adolescence, progressiveness and an urban Cameroonian identity.
