Documenting communicative practices of customary court proceedings: The case of Tunen native-speakers of the Ndikbiakat Canton
The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.
The aim of this project is to document the traditional communicative practices specific to customary court proceedings within the Banen community. Their language,Tunen, is a Narrow Bantu (A.44) spoken by close to 40,000 people in the Centre and Littoral Regions of Cameroon. Focus is put on customary court debates, deliberations, and judgement. Legal terms and customary law speech acts are highly endangered in this community due the lack of intergenerational transmission. Consequently, this documentation work is of utmost importance to safeguard, thanks to sound archiving, the ancestral practices peculiar to traditional courts in the Banen community.
Primary investigator: Koumassol Midinette Endurence Dissake
Project Details
Location: Cameroon, Middle Africa, Africa
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): University of Buea
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £6,800.00
Commencement Date: 01/2015
Project Status: Active
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