Resistance and Resilience: (De) Constructing a Language Ideology in Longue Longue’s ‘Ayo Africa’

Abstract

This study intends to demonstrate by using the lyrics of ‘Ayo Africa’ by Longue Longue that indigenous languages and other voices are rising and asserting their relevance to singularise themselves and at the same time, questioning the ideology of the heretofore ‘dominant’ language and discourse by giving it a Cameroonian rendition. The fact that every language carries with it an ideology and owing to the fact that there exist an intimate link between language and literature – in both written and oral forms, this study also demonstrates that the Cameroonian singer-Longue Longue, through language appropriation and resilience to mother tongue evoke sentiments of nationalism that suggest a rethinking of what ideology and language should govern the Cameroonian postcolonial space in this globalised era. Resistance and deconstruction are dominant practices of colonial and postcolonial discourses with the one fighting to assert herself in the face of the other in the global context of today characterised by the collapse of national boundaries, challenges in governance, conflict, proliferation of languages and the unpopularity of the dominant language and discourse. New historicism is employed in this study because it transcends; cultural, sociological, linguistic and anthropological disciplines, and also because pop music is part of the culture of the people. This study through the observation and interview methods, will lean on the hypothetical contention that; in Longue Longue’s ‘Ayo Africa’, indigenous language(s) (pidgin and/ Douala) that singularises the Cameroonian person, is indispensable to govern the Cameroonian postcolonial space.

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