Abstract
The present study examines the realization of complaints by Cameroonian French speakers. The data were collected, by means of discourse completion tasks (DCT) that was administered to 228 participants in Yaoundé and Douala, Cameroon. The examples were analyzed according to the following aspects: head act strategies (direct and indirect complaints) and external modifiers. With respect to head act strategies, the results show that the informants mostly preferred direct complaints in the form of expressions of disapproval and accusations, and indirect complaints in the form of expressions of disbelief and requests for repair. It was also found that the participants mostly used complex complaint utterances with a wide variety of pragmatic strategies and linguistic realizations. The analysis also reveals that the participants employed different types of external modifiers to soften or aggravate their complaints. These include preparatory acts such as exclamations, attention getters, address terms, etc., and supportive acts such as expressions of regrets, insistence acts, sarcasm, suggestions, etc. The strategies and formulas attested in the data seem to reflect the way in which Cameroon French speakers voice complaints in naturally occurring situations involving peer equality.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0917/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Highlights
The distribution of external modifiers shows that preparatory acts are the second recurrent components found in the examples (they represent 15.6% (n= 86) of the examples), while supportive acts occur 76 times (13.8%)
The results show that the respondents used of a wide variety of strategies to realize their complaints
Looking at the use of head acts, we noticed that the participants employed direct and indirect complaint strategies
Summary
“when a speaker voices a complaint, s/he expresses his/her dissatisfaction with a past or ongoing action, which is often done by asserting the negative state of affairs and by requesting repair, compensation or forbearance (...). Speakers can have several intentions at the same time when formulating their complaints, so sometimes more than just one illocution is involved.”. This perception concurs with Trosborg’s view (1995:55) that “when a complaint is issued, a directive act may be implied or added in order to make the hearer repair the damage s/he has caused, or prevent a repetition of the deplorable act.”. In the present study, is on direct complaints, which Trosborg (1995: 311-312) defines as follows:
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