Endurance Midinette Dissake Koumassol

Short Bio

She holds a PhD degree in Applied Linguistics. From 2014 to 2016, she worked on the domain of ‘Language and People with different abilities’ (Hearing Impaired Education). In 2017, in the frame of her PhD dissertation, she investigated the legal language-related problems of Cameroon courtrooms (courtroom Discourse Analysis). In 2020 she was the Principal Investigator of a Language Documentation Project, Documenting communicative practices of customary court proceedings: The case of Tunen native-speakers of the Ndikbiakat Canton, funded by the Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP). In 2018, in preparation for her documentation project, she received a language documentation training in Rabat, Morocco. Dr DISSAKE Endurence main domains of interest are Forensic Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, Multilingualism, Language Policy and Planning, and Language Documentation. She participated in various national and international conferences, among which: The First National Symposium on Cameroonian Languages; The 9th and 10th World Congress of African Linguistics; The Ninth Pan-Commonwealth Forum; The Inclusion, Mobility, and Multilingual Education Conference, etc. 

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

• Atindogbé, Gratien G. & Dissake, K. M. Endurence. (2019). Forensic Linguistics as a tool for the development of Cameroon national languages. African Study Monographs. 40(1): 23- 44. https://doi.org/10.14989/243208
  
• Dissake, K. M. Endurence & Atindogbé Gratien G. (2019). Deaf education and Language-Based Curriculum: The case of the Buea School for the Deaf. OAsis, COL’s Open Access Repository. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11599/3431
  
• Atindogbé, Gratien G. & Dissake, K. M. Endurence. (2019). Being multilingual in a bilingual environment: Implications for quality education. OAsis, COL’s Open Access Repository. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11599/3357
  

Book Chapters

• Dissake, K. M. Endurence & Atindogbé, Gratien G. (2020). Multilingualism and Cameroon courtrooms: Assessing convict’s language proficiency. In J. Good & P. P. Di Carlo (eds), African Multilingualisms (pp. 157-170). Washington DC: Lexington Books
  

Book

• Dissake, K. M. Endurence. (2021). Language and legal proceedings: Analysing courtroom discourse in Cameroon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  

Project Description

The research project “Safeguarding African customary law: The case of the customary judicial system of the Banen community” investigate the background history of African customary law and define the linguistics and non-linguistic measures used to safeguard the legal traditions of the Banen community of Cameroon after the introduction of the colonial legal system. Thus, the project contributes to the research section "Knowledges", as the customary judicial systems of the Banen community is an example of constantly transformed and relational knowledge. During the post-colonial period, several African governments have imposed the legal systems of their colonizers on their peoples. Some African legal systems could not survive this pressure, and they collapsed. Fortunately, others have found a parade, among those we count the Banen community. The Banen people are found in the Centre and Littoral Regions of Cameroon. This community acclimate its judicial system to the epistemology of their ancient colonial masters, Britain and France. In the Banen community, customary judicial proceedings are a mode of doing ethics and method of maintaining peace and justice among community members. In this way, the topic also contributes to section “Moralities”, the processes of communicating, negotiating and practising moralities are discussed.  The concepts of Reflexivity, Relationality, and Multiplicity are central to the investigation for reasons of the agents involved: law and language.