“Speaking like a White Person”: Ideologies about Accent among Cameroonian Immigrants in Paris

This article describes the personal experiences of Cameroonian immigrants in Paris about accent differences through an analysis of their ideologies on the act of whitiser. This neologism is defined by them as the act of “speaking like a white person” or, in other words, “speaking French without an accent”. Many speakers define this practice as a form of accommodation, which consists in adapting one’s way of speaking to French or non-Cameroonian interlocutors by imitating their accents, while a few speakers define it as the imitation of the French accent by a Cameroonian talking with another Cameroonian in Cameroon and associate highly negative values to the practice. Most of the times it is perceived as a form of assimilation, a denial of one’s origins and as the expression of an inferiority complex inherited from colonization. Therefore, the speakers have ambivalent opinions about this practice, thus revealing a tension between their ambivalent desire to identify with the group of “White” or “French” people and their desire to emancipate from postcolonial power relations between the French and the Cameroonian people. They invest the category “White” with variable social meanings, depending on the interactional contexts.