Motivated multilingualism in Lower Fungom: Rethinking language choice through ethnographic evidence

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study investigates the motivations behind language choice among multilingual speakers in Lower Fungom, Cameroon. It asks how multilingual individuals select languages in everyday interactions and what social, emotional, and pragmatic factors drive these choices beyond institutional or prestige-based explanations. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study adopts an ethnographic approach, combining participant observation, naturalistic recordings, and semi-structured interviews collected during an extended field stay in Lower Fungom. Data and Analysis: Data include detailed field notes, sociolinguistic interviews, and one extended natural conversation excerpt. Language choices were analyzed qualitatively with attention to indexicality, emotional resonance, and social positioning. Findings/Conclusion: Findings show that language choice in Lower Fungom is highly motivated by kinship ties, social affiliation, secrecy management, emotional expression, functional communication needs, and ritual considerations. Classical models such as diglossia and domain theory fail to capture these relational nuances. Instead, speakers’ linguistic practices reveal language choice as an act of negotiation, social alignment, and affective indexing. Originality: The article proposes the concept of motivated multilingualism to account for the dynamic, context-sensitive, and socially meaningful nature of language practices in a highly multilingual African community. It extends theories of language ideology and sociolinguistic indexicality through fine-grained ethnographic evidence. Significance/Implications: This study highlights the need for sociolinguistic models that move beyond static or prestige-based frameworks to incorporate speakers’ agentive, emotional, and strategic use of multilingual repertoires. It underscores the critical role of ethnography in uncovering language practices that remain invisible in large-scale or purely quantitative studies. Limitations: The study’s findings are based on one rural multilingual community and may not generalize across all African multilingual settings.