Letters of Complaint and Job Applications from Cameroonian Students Formal letter writing, such as letters of complaint and student job applications, constitutes a genre in itself. Viewing genre analysis as the study of how language is used in a particular context, this non-literary genre category falls within a growing corpus of written texts that display much of what can be considered Cameroonian peculiarities in the use of 'English. The idea that genres refer to specific sociocultural contexts within which they are written is not, however, new. Braj Kachru (1988) argues that "it is inevitable that there is a fair amount of variation in the use of non-fictional genres in a number of Native contexts, particularly where dominant regional socio-cultural factors operate differently" ( p.207). Letters of complaint from students about various academic and administrative problems and job applications in Cameroon are very interesting as much of what is written is superfluous and in some cases overly formal. This superfluity, especially as seen in the opening and closing sentences of these letters, is a spillover effect of English speakers' exposure to French. Many Cameroonian linguists have observed that the dominant position of French as the official language in Cameroon has influenced both written and spoken English in various ways (Mbangwana, pp.319‑325; Simo Bobda, pp.177‑178).Theoretical BackgroundSecond according to Braj Kachru (1985), the spread of English across the world has given rise to different types of Englishes (pp.12‑13). The transportation of English into new contexts of use and its various functions in non-native contexts have brought with them new challenges of description and interpretation. Kachru (1992) argues...... half of the article...... Ofelia, & Otheguy, Ricardo (eds.), English across cultures-Culture across English: A reader in Cross-cultural communications (Berlin : Mouton de Gruyter, 1989) pp.319‑333. Myers, Greg, 'Disciplines, departments and differences' in Britt-Louise Gunnarsson and Ingegerdv Backlund (eds.), Writing in Academic Contexts (Uppsala Universitet, 1995) pp.3‑ 11.Nkemleke, Daniel, 'A study based on corpus of modal verbs in Cameroon written in English' Doctoral thesis in progress (University of Yaoundé I, 2002).Simo Bobda, Augustin, Watch your English! A Collection of Remedial Lessons in the Use of English, 2nd ed. (Yaoundé: B&K Language Institute, 2002) Swales, John, 'A genre-based approach to language across the curriculum' in Makhan Tickoo (ed.), Language across the Curriculum, Anthology Series 15 (Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, 1986 ) p.10‑22.