喀麦隆是中非地区的政治经济强国之一,其官方双语政策一直吸引着学界的关注,关于其政策实践和社会影响的研究成果颇丰。综观喀麦隆独立后的发展历程可以发现,其官方双语政策的实施已渐入瓶颈,收效甚微,不仅没有实现维护国家统一和民族团结的初衷,反而成为喀麦隆国内地区冲突的导火索。有鉴于此,本文将从语言冲突的视角,梳理喀麦隆官方双语政策实施现状,揭示其当前困境包含的双重内涵,即双语政策在语言地位规划上的缺失和英法语言群体在民族身份建构上的分歧。
Cameroon is one of the major political and economic power in Central Africa,and its official bilingualism has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention,generating a wealth of research on its policy implementation and social impact. Throughout Cameroon’s development course after its independence,it can be found that the implementation of its official bilingualism has reached a bottleneck with little effect. Instead of achieving the original goal of preserving national unity and solidarity,it has become a trigger for regional conflicts within the country. In view of this,a review of the current situation of its implementation is conducted from the perspective of language conflict,thus revealing the double connotation of its current dilemma:the lack of language status planning in the bilingual policy and the divergence between English and French language groups in their construction of national identity. In addition,by taking Cameroon’s current national realities and future development direction into consideration,the paper proposes strategies to cope with the current dilemma.