On Lexical Innovations in the Cameroon Media Landscape

Abstract

There is a noticeable preponderance of lexical neologisms in the Cameroonian media landscape.  This paper examines lexical innovations in the English of Cameroonians; emanating from audio visual and print media platforms. The study stemmed from the observation that the lexes in the mass media in Cameroon have varying creations   that deviate from Standard British English paradigms. This variance is sometimes glaringly enormous that it results in mutual unintelligibility between Cameroonian and non-Cameroonian speakers of English. The Usage-Based Theory constituted a basis for the identification and analysis of   innovations in comparison with standard varieties and further lexico-semantic descriptions.   The study used primary data collection procedures with video and audio recordings of news broadcasts and interviews. Diverse lexical processes such as reduplication, interference, compounding, lexical extension, eponymy amongst others were identified as lexical processes used within this context. The study concludes that these innovations continue to build and extend the corpus of Cameroon English lexicology which cannot be neglected in linguistic analysis.