Current Perspectives on the Influence of Setting and Audience on Language Choices in Multilingual Cameroon

Cameroon is a dense multilingual setting in which many languages co-exist. Most of these languages are learned and are readily available for use by Cameroonians. This study probed into the complex notion of language use in a bid to ascertain in what ways context and audience influence language choice in a dense multilingual context like Cameroon. The analysis of data obtained from 100 informants in the city of Yaounde revealed that setting and audience significantly influence the language choice of a speaker and that the choice of a language reveals certain aspects of a speaker’s character, attitudes and perception of the world around them.