Journal of
Languages and Culture

  • Abbreviation: J. Lang. Cult.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-6540
  • DOI: 10.5897/JLC
  • Start Year: 2010
  • Published Articles: 132

Full Length Research Paper

Assessing a culture of religious devotion in Cameroon: Comparing word frequencies in the corpus of Cameroon English with reference to the London/Oslo-Bergen (LOB) corpus

Daniel Nkemleke
  Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 03 November 2010
  •  Published: 31 January 2011

Abstract

 

This contribution assesses the degree of religious (Christian) devotion within the Cameroonian evangelical community, based on word frequencies from the Religious component (96,380 running words) of the Corpus of Cameroon English (CCE), and similar data from Category D (Religion) of the LOB (London/Oslo-Bergen) corpus. Overall, the study analyses 21 religious related words and notions such as faith, worship, prayer, fasting and the Christian life in Cameroon. Analysis consistently refers to similar occurrences in the LOB corpus, considered as a “representative” database of religious discourse in a typical Western society. Results reveal that an ascetic religious culture is on the rise among Christian evangelical movements in Cameroon, and that this trend provides evidence for the depth of spiritual quest within that subculture.

 

Key words: Culture, religious devotion, corpus linguistics, Cameroon English.

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This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0

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