English as an Instrument of Power: A Study of Literary Texts from a Social Critical Perspective

The study critically analyzed how English has been shaped and appropriated across diverse and often antagonistic social, political, and cultural arenas. This study used lyric poetry and music lyrics from across Canada and Cameroon to analyze socioeconomic issues. As said in the opening, the goal was to delve into the ambivalence of English as a ubiquitous and occasionally pervasive language, providing fertile ground for local musical interpretations and textual changes. Despite its ethnic dissimilarity and displacement, the analytic selection upheld a lack of linguistic rights, justice, antagonism, reinvention, and patriotism/local-mindedness towards its polysemy-afflicted language. The investigation uncovered a strategic, theatrical, and fruitful use of allusion, as was the role of language and culture in global and cross-cultural dissimulation. In an overtly affirmative act with its appropriation from the colonial masters, the coping mechanisms of adaptation, opposition, and promotion were compared to loan-shifting. A new ontology and the rhythmicity of soft power in the war of discourses were hinted at by the domesticates culled from texts imperiled by local and worldwide political intrigue.