HOW CRUCIAL IS ATTITUDE IN SELECTING STANDARD FEATURES IN CAMEROON ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION?

Abstract

This investigation is about the attitudes of Cameroonians toward the standardisation of educationally acquired features of the postcolonial variety of English. In this light, the paper was set out to determine whether Cameroon English is the preferred language variety that its speakers would like to project pedagogically. That is why respondents were carefully selected: those with little formal education, known as holders of less than GCE Advanced A certificate; and well-educated CamE speakers, respondents with A-level education or above. The research made use of a match-guise technique, participant observation method, and questionnaire. There abound many English varieties in Cameroon, in general, and in Bamenda, in particular. However, the respondents based their choice on Cameroon English pronunciation features achieved through formal education, with a strong positive attitude. By the same token, they unanimously rejected L1-induced pronunciation forms. It was equally found that only 22 (42.31%) would like to change their local accent for foreign lects like British or American, as opposed to 30 (57.69%) who preferred the local accent. The most important finding is the consequence of the coexistence of both educated and mother-tongue influenced features that leads some respondents to exhibit a negative attitude toward CamE and long for exonormative accents: 22 (42.31%). All these results reveal one thing: the postcolonial variety of English needs standardising to quench the thirst of its users. Hastening the standardisation of CamE could, therefore, not only provide a salutary effect on users’ attitudes and promote greater linguistic consistency, but also, mainly, offer a viable solution to current linguistic and attitudinal challenges.