Keywords

1 Introduction

Language is used in a variety of ways to fulfill different functions such as constructing aspects of our identities in particular speech events. Deckert and Vickers (2011: 87) suggest that through language practice, more than one aspect of identity can be constructed. There have been a wave of new African urban youth languages whose central aim has been to develop a sense of group membership aimed at creating urban space and carving identities by excluding an out-group (the older generation): Nouchi in Cote D’Ivoire, Sheng in Kenya, Tsotsitaal in South Africa, and Camfranglais in Cameroon. These urban youth languages have been criticized in terms of formal education, given that their structure and vocabulary are truncated and characteristic of hybridity and the bending of rules (Trudgil 1972; Ze Amvela 1989; Niba 2007; Stein-Kanjora 2008; and Nweze 2013). Camfranglais originated in the francophone part of Cameroon in the 1980s and is recently making inroads in the Anglophone part (Ojongnkpot forthcoming). Ewane (1989) asserts that this new urban slang is a form of rebellion against the older generation in particular, and society in general. In addition, Ewane (1989); Niba (2007); and Nchare (2010) affirm that it is a speech variety used to break both local and western traditional norms and values, as well as resisting linguistic norms and rules. Talking about rules in discourse, Johnstone (2002, P. 107) illustrates that:

“There are rules at home for what can be talked about at dinner…there are spelling rules at school, rules about topic sentences, rules about comma splices and split infinitives… But what are rules? Where do they come from, and what is their role in discourse building?”

In this way, Johnstone illustrates the ‘generative’ nature of rules, which suggests that language can be formed at anytime and anywhere with its own system of rules. Hopper (1988) considers rules as existing before and apart from utterances, that is, “a priori”. Camfranglais is characterized as not rule -bound as it stems from a playful mix of language to hide meaning. That is why Stein-Kanjora (2008, P. 120), describes it as a language of fun, leisure time, characterized by word play and the creation of neologisms. Camfranglais is characterized by code-switching, language mixing and extensive borrowing based on French, English, African national languages, Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE), Spanish and German (Ze Amvela 1989; Ewane 1989; Bandia 1994; Stein-Kanjora 2008; Nchare 2010). These authors further argue that though used in informal situations, code-switched or mixed languages serve important purposes. Camfranglais thus remains an important means of communication as well as a medium of urban identity for the youth.

The dynamic characteristics of language prompt communicators to seek means and ways of varying their language to suit various purposes and intents. Therefore, the advent of ICT, caused Camfranglais to transfer to social media (FaceBook, Whatsapp, Imo, etc.), which, as Nchare (2011) posits, has an advantage in that users find it easier not only to use this language, but also use it with a greater number of peers both in and out of the country within a relatively short time, with the implication that many more users get involved. Interlocutors feel at ease speaking their mind in making certain requests and pronouncements, given that there are little or no such constraints that usually inhibit users engaged in face-to-face exchanges. Another observation is the portability of the cell phone known for its uniqueness in carrying all forms of social media discourse. The internet remains an exclusive privilege of urban dwellers in Cameroon, as a huge majority in the rural areas do not have access to it, but the cell phone is increasingly providing social media opportunities beyond urban areas. It is assumed that by the end of this century, Camfranglais will be used all over Cameroon, Africa and the world at large, given that ICT has made the world smaller (Adejub 2010). This chapter thus investigates the morpho-syntax of Camfranglais in a bid to figure out trends in the use of this new urban language in social media.

2 Camfranglais and Texting in Cameroon

This chapter hypothesizes that the Camfranglais used on social media is different from that spoken in terms of structure and content. Hughes (1996) and (Biber 1998a, 1998b) demonstrate the inherent difference between speech and writing in relation to context. Thus, the chapter demonstrates that Camfranglais texters in their online chats make use of orthographic, syntactic and even phonological structures that are absent in the spoken mode.

In terms of content, Camfranglais texts, just like the spoken form, are characterized by youth concerns as their discourses hinge on love, academics, beauty, money, rape, dating, food, dressing, partying etc. The online platform thus is convenient for creating in-group identity and urban space for themselves through synchronous communication as opposed to asynchronous (Crystal 2008; Yamagata-Lynch 2014). However, it is the peculiarity in the use of morpho-syntactic forms in the Camfranglais online chats of UB students that prompted this investigation.

Among other uses of the internet, Cameroonian youth find fun engaging in social media because it gives them leisure as well as space to share their common concerns, especially for the fact that in the urban areas, physical space is limited as there is struggle for space (Okoth-Okombo 2002). In such spaces as social media, bonds built proceed to create identities that cut across clan and ethnicity. This is illustrated in Yule (2006)’s theory of ‘us” versus “them” (attitude) wherein texters form an in-group that makes them more concerned with their peers rather than their parents (P. 205). Given that this relatively new language form is getting the attention of the youth more than ever, it was deemed necessary to investigate its morpho-syntactic structure so as to examine trends of the language.

Morpho-syntax is the study of grammatical categories or linguistic units that have both morphological and syntactic properties. Fundamentally, morphology and syntax are independent of each other; morphology deals with forms, and syntax deals with relationship between structures. In other words, it involves the set of rules that govern linguistic units whose properties are definable by both morphological and syntactic criteria. By doing a morpho-syntactic analysis, we are able to establish functional structures of this relatively new urban language use on social media.

A wealth of research has been done in the domain of language in online chatting, but literature on the morpho-syntactic analysis of Camfranglais in social media discourse is scarce. Bergs (2006) investigated the network concept and illustrates how coalitions and community of practice help in investigating online communication. The present work is related to Berg’s (2006) in that ‘community of practice’ is a group of people who are linked by a common endeavor to develop and share beliefs, values, ways of doing things, as well as ways of talking. Eckert (2000) further explains that the construct of “communities of practice” reflects the in-group’s mutually constitutive nature.

Crystal (2008) aimed at doing a descriptive analysis of internet language by examining the effects of the internet on language use. He concludes that language used in ICT is a variety of language which is quite different from conventional language. Our chapter finds relevance in Crystal’s as he resolves that internet language can be studied in terms of all linguistic aspects such as grammar, discourse, phonology, and orthography. After examining the use of spelling by texters, Akande and Akiwale (2010) recommend the standardization of writing format for texting so as for there to be harmonization in text messaging. Using the term “Netspeak” for online chatting, Silva (2010), through a discourse approach, characterizes linguistic features and argues that Netspeak is not a new language, rather is a recreation of language learning. Owens et al. (2012) came up with a corpus of the lexis and discourse of online texts aimed at availing internet texters of a standardized form readily acceptable for classroom use. Their study is in line with the present chapter. Rafi (2010) used 120 utterances from students’ cell phones, paying attention to words and structures, their functions and influence on the official languages.

3 The Place of Youth Language in Society

Violence has been done to young people by adults in the name of discipline. Young people are often branded as negative in all aspects including language use (Savicki et al. 1996; Wyn 2005; Giroux 2000; Paltridge 2010; Lesko 1996). Quite often, adults, in talking about youth, glorify the past in expressions like: gone are those good old days when youth were youth… Giroux (2000) uses the ‘politics of culture’ syndrome to attempt an explanation of such a misrepresentation of youth as he asserts that the politics of culture has played a big role in conceptualizing the youth in a particular space which then constructs them, thus superseding the youth both ideologically and institutionally. Giroux argues that the youth have always been represented as different whether in people’s experiences of community life, their standards of morality, or the way they organize their personal relationships. It is therefore important to get an understanding of such power relations that define youth experiences by probing into their use of language. The ways of fighting back by the youth include creating for themselves space and identities that attempt to exclude the older generation. Since urban space is highly sought after, the youth take refuge in language which is commonly referred to as urban youth language (see chapters xxx in this volume). This trend is experienced in different parts of Africa as has been mentioned earlier. According to Thurlow (2007), public discourse about emerging technology is polarized by judgments of its being either ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ to which he illustrates that young people are often understood to be or rather accused of –reinventing or destroying not only the (English) language, but also the entire social order (P. 214). In fact, negative conception about the youth present them as devoid of offering anything, whereas the language of the adult may not be better than that of the youth. In this way, Cameron and Kulick (2003) opine that whatever language accomplishes, its primary goal remains identity – whereby, people tell others the kind of people they are. Tan (2005), on his part, posits that teenagers in Singapore used slang for group membership, to cement relationships as well as keep their conversation private. Thomas (2000, 2004) explored the issues of language and identity in online chat and illustrates how girls use words and images to establish online identities. The advantage of such, according to Paltridge (2010, p. 98) is that the online medium provides a safe place to establish fantasies. This chapter maintains that Camfranglais as an online language serves a number of needs not only for the in-group, but also humanity if well developed with stated rules.

4 Methodology

The subjects comprised 60 informants resident in the urban areas comprising 27 Francophones (45 %) and 33 Anglophones (55 %), of both female and male from the Faculty of Arts, UB. The study used purposive and snowball sampling techniques, targeting those who use Camfranglais both in speech and on social media following Kombo and Tromp (2006). Data consisted of 337 social media transcripts sentences from authentic discourse practices from which 507 morpho-syntactic structures were identified. Also included in the data were 24 rated items on a five-point Likert-scale ranging from 0(never) to 4(often) based on the structured interview. Questions were about their use of Camfranglais (6 items), about their frequency of use (6 items), about the impact of Camfranglais ESL use (6 items) and the future of Camfranglais (6 items).

The Analytical Research Design made use of Discourse practices collected from the phones of subjects in order to make a critical discourse analysis of data. It was not easy to get the discourses from the subjects’ phones, given that they were hesitant to reveal their privacy. The conversations were anonymized before forwarding to the researcher’s phone. Data were analyzed using content analysis, making use of the Taxonomic and cognitive Approaches to syntax following Radford (2004). Within the framework of Traditional Grammar, morpho-syntactic structures were described in terms of Taxonomy retrieved from the data. Thereafter, each of the constituents was identified in the sentence, then for each constituent, the category to which it belongs and its function were tagged. As for the cognitive, interest was in determining what the texters knew about the language which enabled them to use and understand it.

Atlas Ti 5.2 (Atlas Ti GMBH, 2006) package was used to analyze interviews, informal chats and online transcripts which helped to classify, sort and arrange the qualitative data whereby the various themes/umbrella terms were identified, and quotations developed from the discourse practices of the subjects. It helped to gather an in-depth understanding of the use of Camfranglais chats on social media, which were transferred into the word processor for analysis. The analysis was processed under the respective themes shown in table below.

Tab1 Morpho-syntactic structures in online Camfranglais discourse
Full size table

5 Results

5.1 Incomplete Sentences

As far as incomplete sentences are concerned, there were a total of 24(4.7 %) structures out of 507. Examples are as follows:

  • D1: ‘cooucou’ - my friend

  • D68: ‘je back Piole’ - I am going home

  • D74: ‘normalement man’ - it is very usual to do it

  • D111: ‘hope vraiment’ - I hope so

5.2 Wrong Word Ordering

Word order has to do with the conventional arrangement of words in a phrase, clause, or sentence. English and French both primarily use SVO word order, although French uses SOV when the object is a pronoun and VSO for questions. Nordquist (2015) posits that even though word order in English, as compared to other languages, is fairly rigid, there are a number of basic word orders which are relatively inflexible such as the SVO. The data had 13 instances of use of wrong word ordering such as the following:

  • D30: ‘tu sleep mo et tu passes une top night’ - I wish you a wonderful night

  • D63: ‘quand commot toi meme…’ - when you go…

  • D75: ‘ok moi je back chez moi. ya qoui? Go gere nor?’ - well I am returning home. What’s more? You can proceed.

5.3 Wrong Questioning

Within the framework of syntactic structures we observed that the texters made use of 39 (7.7 %) instances of wrong question ordering wherein they started yes/no questions and Wh-question with the subject such as in:

  • D2: ‘yes, c’est. hao?’ - it’s how?

  • D7: ‘la journee a ete?’ - the day was how?

  • D22: ‘tu as do kow?’ – you have done what?

  • D28: ‘tu es mo hein?’ - you are fine?

  • D34: ‘tu as school morro?’ - you have school tomorrow?

In that way the questioning word order presented differently from the standard in both English and French. Instead, it follows the pattern of indigenous languages and CPE, placing the subject before the verb.

5.4 Contractions/Shortened Forms

Contractions in English and French are usually in speech and informal writing. There are two kinds: those formed by replacing missing letters with an apostrophe and others by compressing a word without apostrophes. The texters in their Camfranglais expressions used contractions such as in the following examples:

  • D17: ‘…put sa off de ma tete qui est. un pb’ - keep me out of that

  • D18: ‘tell moi alors le pb now’ - tell me what the problem is

  • D29: ‘ok no pb’ - no problem

  • D41: ‘tu as school morro?’ - do you have school tomorrow?

We observe that the texters used contractions in a variety of ways ranging from word shortening, vowel elision, abbreviations and even clippings where the beginnings and endings of words are omitted. The use of contractions scored 36 counts out of a total of 507 structures making 7.1 %.

5.5 Word Hybridity (Code-Mixing, Code-Switching and Fused Lects)

The mixing of words from different languages (pidgin, English, French and indigenous languages) was noticed to range from code-switching, code-mixing to fused lects. Fused lects uses words from two or more languages in a particular speech event which makes for semantic and pragmatic functions of language (Auer 1999). As far as this structure is concerned, it is a common phenomenon noticed with Camfranglais texters wherein structures derived from mixed elements from different languages such as

  • D12: ‘tw tu as put quoi pour ta head?’ - what did you put in your head

  • D14: ‘mais move twa put la greffe nor’ - remove and implant an attachment, then

  • D27: ‘tu est. dans le Ndem’ - I pity you

  • D35: Massa je suis la - well, I am fine

  • D147: A yeush je confirme le high level, per gere seulement nayor nayor - I am conscious of your status but you should be careful

This feature had a count of 205 out of 507, making a percentage score of 40.4 %. We observe that this was the hallmark of the texters’ social group membership, as Heller (1992) relates code-switching to social class behaviours. There is evidence of the structuring of the texters’ speech as they interact in their discourse situations. Sebba (1998a, b) illustrates that code-switching is all about structuring speech in interaction, which reinforces Tomasello (2003)’s Usage-based language.

5.6 Use of Digits for Words

The procedure of numeralization in the discourse of the texters consisted of a morphological change where there was the reduction of a word or phrase into a digit / numeral where one numeral lexicalizes a morpheme. The use of numerals was both morpho-syntactic and paradigmatic forming new structures with new semantic meaning. Examples from the data are as follows:

  • D108: ‘s8 3reh fine et toi?’ - I am doing fine, and you?

  • D168: ‘2 a see qoui 2 9?’ - what’s new?

  • D241: ‘good nu8 - Good night

Robert and Roussou (1999; 2003) consider the use of digits as the re-analysis of lexical material into functional material. In the case of the present study, there was the use of CPE, English, French, etc. This concept had a score of 06 (1.2 %) items.

5.7 Phonic Representation

There were altogether 34 (6.7 %) sound structures used to represent words. According to Keating (1990), phonetic representations are linguistic forms that indicate sound structures of utterances which are approximations of ‘pronounceability’, wherein grammar has both phonological and phonetic rules of which three types of representations are concerned with phonetics. Usually, there is hardly a one to one correspondence between phonic symbols and the written word. The use of phonic representation in the discourse was mainly to articulate group membership and exclude out-group; texters intentionally complicated the correspondence of letters to phonemes in a bid to cause non-group members to finding it difficult to predict the meaning from the pronunciation and spelling. This structure was observed to have been transferred from speech to texts.

  • D93: ‘KK’ (Coucou) - Sweetie

  • D107: ‘Xa di koi man?’ - How are you?

  • D110: ‘C nothing man, e go bta’ - I am fine we hope for better days

  • D117: ‘eke! C haw? Pukwa 2 tel les way kom sa?’ - why do you talk like that?

  • D123: ‘et sa m do kwa pere?’ - what about my friend?

5.8 Use of Coinages

Coinage is a process of word formation where totally new words are invented (Yule 2006). This structure followed hybridity of structures in terms of frequency of use (27.4 %). Texters were seen to use words which are quite new and void of connection to any of the lexifier languages. This implies that the youth are endowed with creativity to form structures of their own.

  • D59: ‘je go buy les small way s(stuff) qu’il me faut dans ma piol ’ - I need to buy some stuff for the house

  • D65: ‘gar (friend)… ….avec l’histoire des dos je go encore falla les go que je suis boutoucou(fool) ’ - boy! ..... I find it difficult to meet up with the demands of schooling, so I wouldn’t be involved …

  • D73: ‘T’es go louche(friend)?’ - have you seen your girlfriend?

  • D90: ‘ waiy ! (interjection) Gar je dois go nang(sleep) ! Je te waitais since…’ - Yes. So I got to go to bed now. I waited for you for a long time

The use of coinages had a count of 139 (27.4 %) out of 507, consisting of various word classes as follows:

5.8.1 Interjections

  • D90: ‘waiy’!

  • D100: ‘loooo’!

  • D104: ‘Maf’!

  • D117: ‘eke’!

  • D148: Aka’ !

  • D170: ‘Ahka’

It was noticed that there was variety in spelling of the coined forms like, ‘nor,’ ‘noh’ ‘nor’, ‘norr” nooh” for one of the interjections.

5.8.2 Nouns

  • ‘ndem’ – trouble

  • ‘mattas’– trouble, ways-stuff

  • ‘chouka’ – shoes, go/puce-girl

5.8.3 Verbs

  • ‘lep’ – allow

  • ‘nang’ – sleep

  • ‘tchop’ – eat

  • ‘mimba’ – think

  • ‘loucha’/‘nye’ – see

  • ‘fia’ – afraid

  • ‘gui’ – give

  • ‘wanda’ – surprise

  • D105: ‘wanda qu’ell disturb, nor ?’ – I am surprised, she is disturbing, isn’t she?

5.8.4 Adverbs

  • D52: ‘nayor nayor’ – slowly

5.8.5 Adjectives

  • D46: ‘Elle est. mo’ – she is beautiful

5.9 Wrong Spellings

The data showed evidence of wrong or creative forms of spelling which had a count of 43(8.5 %) such as the following:

  • D166: ‘Hao’ – how?

  • D336: Gars, il... le skull’ – school

5.10 Use of Colloquialism

There was evidence of use of words or phrases that do not have formal or literary connotations, making it familiar and conversational in tone. Colloquial is usually used in speech, but we discover that the texters made use of such structures as seen as follows:

  • D6: ‘yep’ – yes

  • D145: ‘Hi, baby’ – hello baby

  • D313: ‘hahaha’

5.11 Repetition

This is the act of using a structure more than once. It has the effect of pleading, emphasis and above all, it helps to make an idea stand-out or be highlighted such as the following examples:

  • D135: ‘le chap chap’ – early

  • D135: ‘ menant menant’ – now

  • D147: ‘ nayor nayor ( gently ) sava alle’

  • D151: ‘hum j’allais wanda … . molo molo (slowly) la mater etait la et elle a nang’

  • D190: ‘cos cos’ – high heeled shoes

  • D195: ‘vrai vrai’ truly

There were 12 cases of repetition, making a 3 % count.

6 Discussion

The first aim of this chapter was to investigate the morpho-syntactic features of Camfranglais used on social media by the UB students. The results showed that the texters used a variety of morpho-syntactic structures of which two types (hybridity and coinages) scored the highest implying that texters were conscious of language use as they were capable of using features found in official languages and other languages on the one hand, and those that are very new and peculiar to the relatively new language on the other.

Our second aim was to examine the difference between Camfranglais Morpho-syntactic discourse on social media and those of other languages, especially the English Language (language of education). Findings showed that there were differences in a number of features like coinages for all word classes, incomplete sentences, wrong word ordering, code-mixing etc. We therefore conclude that just like earlier studies revealed, the use of Camfranglais on social media is characterized by the ‘bending of rules” (Ze Amvela 1989; Ewane 1989; Trudgill 2001; Niba 2007; Nchare 2010; Nweze 2013), which engendered the ungrammaticality of structures. Sentence structures follow the logic of French, English or CPE which means that this new urban language used on social media is not just a language of play and fun as earlier studies assert (Ewane 1989; Nchare 2010; Stein Kanojora 2008). There were trends of creativity which fall in line with Tomasello (2003)’s cognitive skills concept associated with language in the texters’ new forms (Table) with 205 (40.4 %). This shows that the youth too are capable of creating a language which can help to promote the much needed language diversity. What’s more, it can be a language to explain concepts, like in mathematics, to preach sermons, in political rallies or even for advertisement. More so, there is evidence that Camfranglais is not only used in Cameroon, but also out of it, especially with the prevalence of social media in the diaspora (Nchare 2010, P. 194).

7 Summary

The online discourses of Camfranglais users were examined focusing on the morpho-syntactic structures recorded from various social media platforms. Findings showed that there was evidence of the ‘bending of rules’ to achieve the objective of hiding meaning from the out-group and create membership and identity within an in-group where they carved an identity for themselves within the urban space. Through ATLAS.Ti.5.2 (Atlas Ti GMBH, 2006), it was revealed that texters departed from English and French grammatical norms through practices such as: wrong word insertion, wrong spellings, phonic representations, word inversion, shortening /contractions and use of digits for words. Syntactically, structures involved incomplete sentences, wrong word ordering, and wrong questioning. It was however observed that the texters revealed a novelty in grammatical rules of word formation. The content of their chats dwelt on youth concerns like love, academics, homosexuality, beauty, money, rape, partying, dressing, and food.

Holistically, this chapter departs from branding Camfranglais on social media as playful twist of words negatively impacting on standard languages. Giving it recognition will encourage language diversity and pluralism. Research to establish grammar rules will help enormously as Susan Shimanoff(1980), posits that communication is most successful and competent when interactants have shared rules influencing their communication process.