Discourse of Resilience in the Anglophone Cameroon Crisis

Abstract

In the face of a traumatic event, people choose to respond in various ways. While some get stuck in the trauma, others find a means to forge ahead; working through the experience in therapy or finding other means to bounce thus making the traumatic a part of their lived experiences. The narratives of the victims of trauma in the Anglophone Cameroon Crisis show strength in the midst of adversity. One hundred and twenty (120) trauma narratives have been analyzed using convenient sampling to showcase the resilient nature of those who have been hard hit by the trauma shrouding the crisis. Data were collected using ethnographic basically semi-structured interviews, group discussions and dairy reading. The qualitative research method was used focusing on the discursive strategies of the participant in representing their resilience. Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics were used to analyze the data. This article concludes that despite the damaging effects of the on-going crisis on the mental health of the participants, using Halliday’s ideational metafunction and Dijk’s ideological square; the victims are finding a way to forge ahead with their lives acknowledging the conflict situation could get worse. This work recommends that communities and individuals should shun hate speech and choose in spite of the odds to dissociate from all warring factions and build peaceful communities.