Pre-Empting and Negotiating Meaning Beyond Utterances in Cameroon English

Abstract

This investigation aimed at demonstrating that during dialogue, English-speaking Cameroonians use pre-emptive techniques to prevent more utterances from the interlocutor. In such circumstances, the listener tends to produce an utterance that does not serve as a direct response to a statement, a remark or a question from the speaker. It rather anticipates and possibly prevents the speaker from more utterances. Observably, this technique is employed by male and female speakers of English in the country and this sometimes gives different orientations to their speech. Data was gotten from twenty (20) utterances produced in real life English language communicative situations in homes, church premises, offices and university campuses involving Cameroonians of both sexes. The speech acts involving the target informants were registered in a notebook.  As concerns the theoretical framework, Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory was considered for analysis. Besides Austin, the ideas of other prominent practitioners of this theory like Martinez-Flor and Uso-Juan (2010) are used. The results show that although the listener’s pre-emptive response prevents further question(s) or statement(s) from the speaker, it does not always produce the desired outcome. In some situations, it re-orientates the dialogue and creates an atmosphere of tension and or conflict between the speaker and the listener. Finally, although women were more conspicuous in the use of pre-emptive responses during speech act, no scientific premise was established to consider this as a gender-oriented phenomenon.