This contribution explores rhetorical features in 207 abstracts submitted for four international conferences in Yaounde (Cameroon), Regensburg (Germany) and Birmingham (UK). Relevant text features are retrieved from the corpus via concordance software and results are discussed in the light of their frequency of occurrence. Furthermore, the abstracts are manually scanned to determine recurrent schematic patterns. Findings show that rhetorical choices and recurrent "moves" in the abstracts submitted for the Regensburg-Birmingham conferences are more attuned to the expectations of community discourse practices than those of the Yaounde-Cameroon conferences.

This paper analyses some 99 job applications and 239 student complaint letters collected over a period of five years. The investigation focuses on two broad aspects of these letters: firstly, opening and closing statements; and secondly, internal discourse strategies. Findings reveal that apart from a general uncertainty as to which of the complimentary closes (Yours sincerely or Yours faithfully) should be selected for letters beginning 'Dear + Sir' and 'Dear + a name', job applications and students' complaint letters are fast developing distinctive linguistic and discourse characteristics of their own in Cameroon.

This contribution discusses three variables of structure, citation practice, and role relationships in research articles in Cameroon English, within the background of conventional practice in the discourse community. Data is taken from 40 papers published in 7 issues of 4 journals from two state universities in Cameroon; and corroborated with a similar database from three universities in Europe. Findings indicate that articles written by Cameroonian academics display a number of differences from what is known in the literature. First, more than 80% of 40 research article introductions analysed do not situate the research in the context of ongoing discussion in the field; thereby ignoring an essential Move category in the CARS (Create-a-Research-Space) model (Swales 1990). Second, while in-text citations align with the general pattern of integral and non-integral, there exist subtle differences in citation language forms; with the outcome that Cameroonian authors do not often use various options within these two broad categories. Further, reader engagement and solidarity claim, which are often achieved through the use of devices such as inclusive pronouns and directives, are not common place. This downplays the role of the reader in the text-an often less coveted rhetorical practice in the discipline.

One of the major characteristics of English in non-native settings is that it exists alongside indigenous languages and most people who study English here come to the language classroom with knowledge of at least an L1. Because the rhetorical structure of the L1 of these learners is not the same as that of English, what is written in these settings often exhibits features that do not meet the expectation of a typical western mind. This study analyses the structural configuration and some syntactic features that characterise students’ essays in a formal academic situation in Cameroon. The corpus is composed of 104 essays written by two batches of students (2002/2003, 2003/2004 academic years) in the department of English of the Ecole Normale Supérieure Yaoundé. Findings reveal that the structure of most essays examined does not follow the strict logical sequence that is characteristic of the typical English essay. And this may well reflect the narrative style that is foreign to the English native speaker. Again, there is a general tendency of register “mixing” in most of the essays. The article concludes that expository writing in Cameroon may well constitute a fruitful area of research into aspects of “nativization” of cohesion and rhetorical strategies of English in the “Outer Circle”.