De l’évaluation du renouvellement des tiroirs verbaux dans la littérature camerounaise contemporaine : une lecture à partir de « Branle-bas en noir et blanc » de Mongo Beti

The use of verb tenses in French generally relies on the information each of them convey. This information does not only depend on the organisation of the French verb-tense system, but also on its usage by the speaking subject. The exploration of some francophone texts has pointed out that the use of these verb tenses has evolved. We observe a drop in the usage of some tenses and moods in favour of some others. This drop in some verb tenses raises the issue of their consideration in novel writing nowadays. As hypothesis, we consider that language evolves inexorably throughout its structures; even through the most resistant ones such as verb tenses. This study explores a Cameroonian novel at the structural level (published in the year 2000) in order to assess the presence of common verb tenses which some are today suffering from obsolescence. The novel is entitled: “Branle-bas en noir et en blanc”. The author, Mongo Beti, appears here in a new light and acts like a witness of a strongly socialised French language and that is in a process of appropriation. In the course of this process, the author seems to distance himself from his former etiquette of classical and (very) refined French language writer, as seen through the analysis of his earliest works (Mission terminée, 1957). Thus, we have the feeling that the textualisation of this novel strongly obeys to the authority of influences that gleans the triptych;
language/individual/society practically built on the supremacy of the context. We postulate that there is a linguisticliterary renewal which evolves along with a macro-context entailing the condition of the French language in the
francophonie and the reflexivity of francophone views. Throughout this work, our approach is going to be globally structural when identifying and limiting the data to analyse. When justifying the changes which are only structural at the
beginning, throughout the end of the research we are going to evaluate the contribution of cognitivism and constructivism at the level of the write-up, according to the context and the situation of linguistic appropriation - in order to portray a section of the Cameroon socio-culture. This work is likely to contribute in establishing, according to the different arrays chosen, the evolution of the Cameroonian aesthetic literary creation (the novel).