A Sociolinguistics impact of Ngamambo greeting culture and Identity

Despite the increasing rate of modernity nowadays, language has always
been and is still used as an ingenious device for transmitting ideologies
from one generation to the other. This study documents and examines
the sociolinguistic importance of greetings as a fundamental interactional
ritual in Ngamambo, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken by the Mbu
people in the Mezam Division of the North West Region of Cameroon
(Eberhard et al., 2019). Greetings are indices of appropriate socialisation
that portray the relationship between the interactants and serve as a
binding fabric that holds the community together. Through an
ethnographic approach, qualitative and quantitative data were obtained
from forty (40) language consultants (20 adults and 20 youths) employing
interview and participant observation. Thirty greeting forms were
identified, recorded, and transcribed using Elan. These forms were
presented and analysed within the speech act theory (Austin, 1975) and
the linguistic anthropology approach, revealing their semantic
implications and the circumstances surrounding the salutation. The
study established that the greeting culture in Ngamambo, which
expresses the relationship between the speakers and the community’s
living and dead members, is declining due to modernity, Christianity, and
the influence of the dominant language, English, and the specific forms
reflect the Identity of the tribe and clan. The study reveals that the
Ngamambo speakers use various verbal and nonverbal greeting forms
determined by social factors such as age, religion, social status, and
location. It documents the greeting forms in the language, which are
gradually becoming endangered.

Keywords: Sociolinguistics, impact, greetings, Ngamambo, culture, and
Identity