Climate Change in Cameroon Political Discourse: A Case Study of Paul Biya’s COP21 Speech

Abstract

The management of and the concern for climate change have been occupying a growing space in public debates the recent years. The various challenges which are linked to climate change can be said to have become a global concern as there have been mobilizations from institutions and persons that work in different fields – science, politics and even arts. Frameworks have been developed over the years to enable people from all these diverse fields to meet and discuss this issue which has a direct impact on the daily life of societies all over the world. The most important of such frames is the Conference of the Parties (COP) organised by the United Nations, where people from various fields meet to discuss what is at stake and the measures that can be or should be taken in order to have a coordinated and global response to the challenges the world faces due to climate change. Language and language use are therefore relevant when when we try to figure out what is said and by whom in the debate on climate. The present paper seeks to give an insght into the political discourse on climate (change) with a special focus on Cameroon.The speech made by Paul Biya during the COP21 can thus serve as an example to identify the voices that can interact within one speech the relations between some of these voices and that of the speaker. The discursive polyphony postulated by Gjerstad (2001) can therefore be relevant in such a project. Meanwhile, it will be based here on two approaches which fall within the frame of polyphony: the ScaPoLine and the Praxématique. The theoretical challenge is therefore to view wether these two approaches can be put together and how this can be done, in a bid to narrow the scope of what a discursive polyphony can be.