Film Language and Power Manifestation: Exploring the Place of a Woman in Victor Viyouh’s Ninah’s Dowry

More and more, the discourse of as a vehicle through which messages are communicated in film is taking centre stage. Its use necessitates an understanding not only of the vocabulary, but also of the content. Cameroon filmmakers exploit language to expound and portray how the society is still constantly faced with the problem of power manifestation and most especially, the marginalisation of women. Limits are set as to where and what a woman can say in the presence of men. Considered a cultural marginalization, a woman's words are not to be heard in public spaces where men are. As such, language in traditional settings, sets limitations for the woman in almost all aspects of life. Through a semiotic reading of Victor Viyouh's Ninah's Dowry and circumscribed by feminist criticism, this paper attempts to portray the role of the sign in promoting male domination in Cameroon. The woman is constructed by words and images as the weaker sex and subjected to the men.