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Abstract

This paper examines language policy and planning in favour of minority languages during the colonial era and immediately after. It is based on the observation that local languages in Cameroon do not seem to have the ethnolinguistic vitality necessary for their long-term survival. The situation of these languages begs the following question: Did the promotion strategies of national languages in colonial Cameroon pave the way for language attrition that is observable today or is it the language policy choice of the political authorities in independent Cameroon that has caused this language issue? This paper, which falls within the general framework of language policy and planning theories, is inspired by the critical language policy theory, more especially by the historical-structural approach and governmentality, all of them based on acquisition planning. The data to be analysed were collected from secondary sources, especially library work. One of the conclusions this paper arrived at is that, irrespective of the policies or State’s good will and efforts, local languages should be better revitalised through a bottom-up approach and thus through individual and collective efforts of community members. It takes a linguistic community to promote its language with means they can mobilise by themselves. In this case, the State would just perform the role of a regulator by creating a legislative framework for the promotion and revitalisation of languages, which already appears to be the case in today’s Cameroon.

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