Politeness in the English of Fulfulde Native Speakers in Maroua (Published)
This paper explores politeness in the English rendered by Fulfulde native speakers of Maroua. It investigates the politeness strategies they use in their English. It also examines specific ways of expressing politeness by these speakers. Insights were got from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness. Data were collected from Fulfulde native students in the department of English Language and Literature of the Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences (FALSS) in the University of Maroua. Data were elicited through discourse completion test (DCT) made up of eleven scenarios (six request scenarios and five apology scenarios) and tape recording of conversations. Three speech acts (requests, apologies and greetings) were analysed. Results show negative politeness strategies and please-request. Linguistic devices of sorry and address terms were also employed to emphasise apology. It was noticed that Fulfulde native speakers of English exhibit some culture-specific preferences in their way of expressing greetings.
Keywords: Apologies, Fulfulde Native, Greetings, Requests, Speakers of English, politeness