From Concept Formation to Cultural Identity: The Additive Case for Indigenous Language Use in Cameroonian Education and Its Implications for Cognitive Development

Language policy in Cameroon is conventionally framed around English-French official bilingualism, leaving the country’s nearly two hundred and fifty indigenous languages largely absent from serious educational debate. This paper argues that a more productive lens is the distinction between additive and subtractive language practice, and proposes the developmental costs of subtractive practice across two Cameroonian studies. Among primary school children in Bafut, subtractive bilingual children showed no cognitive advantage over monolingual peers in concept formation tasks, performing significantly worse on some classification and cognitive flexibility measures. Among secondary school adolescents in Kumbo Central Sub-Division, indigenous language use was a statistically significant positive predictor of cultural identity formation (R² = .054, β = .232, p < .001), and qualitative findings suggested this was constrained by punitive attitudes toward mother tongue use in schools. Drawing on Piaget, Vygotsky, Cummins, Erikson, and Nsamenang, the paper argues that, read together, these findings suggest a possible developmental pattern in which cognitive costs in early childhood and cultural identity costs in adolescence may be linked. Because the two studies involve different participants, this pattern is interpretive rather than longitudinal. The paper ultimately offers practical, policy, and theoretical implications for sustained, community-rooted additive language integration across Cameroonian schooling. Keywords Indigenous languageadditive bilingualismsubtractive bilingualismconcept formationcultural identity formationlanguage policyCameroon.