The challenges and benefits of Cameroon Pidgin English in education: A postmodernist perspective

Abstract

Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is a mixed language or multi-language variety, deserving of a lingua franca in Cameroon, yet expressively dialectic in the realm of education. Its users desire to connect to, or disconnect from certain dialogues in specific contexts, a routine that challenges the dynamics in language policy and biases that have emerged due to the scepticism about Pidgin in education in multilingual Cameroon. From a postmodernist perspective, the aim of this paper is to identify the challenges and benefits of CPE in education in Cameroon, appraise the implications of postmodernist tendencies toward it, and propose mechanisms that minimise the challenges and maximise its sociolinguistic potential. The generic question focuses on what the challenges, benefits, and implications of postmodernist tendencies toward CPE in education are, and the strategies to regulate them, whereas the main objective is entrenched in the aim. Secondary sources of data are extracted from blogs, students’ translated English into Pidgin English texts, and a collection of on-campus anti-CPE in education slogans. The data is analysed qualitatively at different linguistic levels and discussed on the basis of some postmodernist tendencies such as globalisation, fragmentation, tenets of scepticism, relativism, and an argument against method and evaluation. In conclusion, findings prove that CPE, like other languages, shares language universalities, nonetheless, retains its specificities. CPE is a purpose-specific language that communicates as concisely as possible, without introducing unnecessary ambiguity in its grammar. Its lexicon is inclusive, its morphology is cropped, and significant variation in its phonology. Its discourse gives its users the desired switch within context, in realtime; and like other languages, valid to be studied in academia, especially in a postmodernist digital age.