Regional Variation in English Complaint Realizations: Evidence from Cameroon, Canada, and South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53103/cjlls.v6i2.267Keywords:
Complaint Strategies, Variational Pragmatics, Regional Variation, Postcolonial Englishes, Pragmatic ModifiersAbstract
This study compares how speakers of Cameroon English, Canadian English, and South African English perform the speech act of complaining. Using 231 responses to a Discourse Completion Task involving peer‑to‑peer and student‑to‑professor scenarios, the analysis draws on variational and postcolonial pragmatics. The results show clear cross‑varietal differences in complaint strategies, head acts, and modifiers. Peer complaints most often involve requests for behavioral change, while complaints to professors typically take the form of requests for clarification or solutions, used more frequently by Canadian and Cameroonian speakers than South Africans. External modifiers also vary: Cameroonians favor greetings, apologies, and announcements; Canadians rely more on justifications and reminders; and South Africans use more preparatory acts in asymmetrical contexts. Internal modifiers differentiate the groups as well, with Canadians using more grammatical softeners, Cameroonians relying on consultative devices, and South Africans employing a balanced mix, including collaborative markers. Intensification patterns further distinguish the varieties. Overall, the findings show that complaint behavior reflects not only situational factors like power and distance but also sociocultural norms of specific English varieties. The study underscores the importance of examining intralingual pragmatic variation across global Englishes.
References
Anchimbe, E. A., & Janney, R. W. (2011). Postcolonial pragmatics: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 1451–1459.
Barron, A., & Schneider, K. P. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425–442.
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Boxer, D. (1996). Ethnographic interviewing as a research tool in speech act analy-sis: The case of complaints. In S. M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 217–239). Mouton de Gruyter.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phe-nomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 56–324). Cambridge University Press.
Chen, Y.-S., Chen, C.-Y. D., & Chang, M.-H. (2011). American and Chinese com-plaints: Strategy use from a cross-cultural perspective. Intercultural Pragmat-ics, 8(2), 253–275.
Deumert, A. (2010). Tracking the demographics of (urban) language shift – an anal-ysis of South African census data. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(1), 13–35.
Depraetere, I., Decock, S., & Ruytenbeek, N. (2021). Linguistic (in)directness in Twitter complaints: A contrastive analysis of railway complaint interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 171, 215–233.
El-Dakhs, D. A. S., & Ahmed, M. M. (2023). A pragmatic analysis of students’ com-plaints and professors’ responses to complaints: A case study of an Egyptian private university. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2252634
El-Dakhs, D. A. S., & Ahmed, M. M. (2021). A variational pragmatic analysis of the speech act of complaint focusing on Alexandrian and Najdi Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics, 181, 120–138.
Edmondson, W. (1981). Spoken discourse: A model for analysis. Longman.
García, C. (1996). Reprimanding and responding to a reprimand: A case study of Peruvian Spanish speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 663–697.
Günthner, S. (2000). Vorwurfsaktivitäten in der Alltagsinteraktion: Grammatische, prosodische, rhetorisch-stilistische und interaktive Verfahren bei der Konsti-tution kommunikativer Muster und Gattungen. Niemeyer.
Hartley, L. (1998). A sociolinguistic analysis of face-threat and face-management in potential complaint situations. PhD dissertation. George Fox University. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/lang_fac/14/
Janney, R. W. (2009). Toward a postcolonial pragmatics. In Language in life, and a life in language: Jacob Mey, a Festschrift (pp. 203–211). Brill.
Kraft, B., & Geluykens, R. (2002). Complaining in French L1 and L2: A cross-linguistic investigation. EUROSLA Yearbook, 2, 227–242.
Laforest, M. (2002). Scenes of family life: Complaining in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(10–11), 1595–1620.
Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman.
Lochtman, K. (2022). On the intersection between variational and contrastive prag-matics: An analysis of requests for repair in complaints by German-speaking Belgians. Contrastive Pragmatics, 3(3), 426–450.
Murphy, B., & Neu, J. (2006). My grade’s too low: The speech act set of complain-ing. In S. M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 191–216). Mouton de Gruyter.
Olshtain, E., & Weinbach, L. (1987). Complaints: A study of speech act behavior among native and non-native speakers of Hebrew. In J. Verschueren & M. Bertuccelli-Papi (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective (pp. 195–210). John Ben-jamins.
Olshtain, E., & Weinbach, L. (1993). Interlanguage features of the speech act of complaining. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 108–122). Oxford University Press.
Republic of South Africa. (2023, July). Constitutional recognition of South African Sign Language (SASL).
Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (2008a). Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric lan-guages (pp. 1–32). John Benjamins.
Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (Eds.). (2008b). Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. John Benjamins.
Schneider, K. P. (2021). Variational pragmatics. In M. Haugh, D. Z. Kádár, & M. Terkourafi (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociopragmatics (pp. 663–686). Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, K. P. (2005). “No problem, you’re welcome, anytime”: Responding to thanks in Ireland, England, and the U.S.A. In A. Barron & K. P. Schneider (Eds.), The pragmatics of Irish English (pp. 101–139). Mouton de Gruyter.
Statistics South Africa. (2025). Cultural dynamics in South Africa, Census 2022 (Stats SA Report No. 03-01-84). https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/03-01-84/03-01-84.pdf
Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apolo-gies. Mouton de Gruyter.
Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interac-tion (2nd ed.). Mouton de Gruyter.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Bernard Mulo Farenkia, Shannon Landers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All articles published by CJLLS are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license permits third parties to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon the original work provided that the original work and source is appropriately cited.
