Regional pragmatic Variation in French: A contrastive study of complaint realizations in Cameroon and France
Keywords:
complaints, mitigation, regional variation, Cameroon French, French FrenchAbstract
This study examined and compared complaints by speakers of French in Cameroon and in France. Although complaints have been extensively analyzed, to date, little attention has been devoted to complaints across regional varieties of French. The aim of this study was to fill this knowledge and research gap by analyzing strategies used by speakers of Cameroon French and Hexagonal French to complain in three situations. The study is at the intersection of variational and postcolonial pragmatics and it is based on data provided by 20 Cameroonian and 19 French university students, who were asked to fill a DCT questionnaire. The results reveal some similarities in both French varieties regarding the use of complex complaint utterances. However, many differences were found with respect to preferences for specific complaint strategies, external modifiers, internal modification devices and address terms.
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