"Long live our tribal jujus" - The range of meanings of the word juju in Cameroonian English

Abstract

In the following I analyse the range of meanings of the generic term juju in Cameroonian English based on short essays which were written by students from different South-western Cameroonian communities in 1968. The analysis shows that juju has a wide range of meanings, if can denote several semantically connected phenomena: 1. a secret society, 2. a supernatural power, 3. a mask which personifies a deity, 4. a performance, in which a deity occurs (in the form of a mask), 5. an object which has supernatural powers.