Cover not available

Article published In: Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 7:2 (2024) ► pp.298–325

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Bonjour la famille!

Linguistic strategies for relationship maintenance in African online communities

 | Universitat Politècnica de València
 | Université Douala
Published online: 9 January 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00103.per
Abstract
Rooted in African postcolonial pragmatics, this research pays particular attention to the strategic use of code-switching and other linguistic strategies for relationship maintenance in instant messaging communities that constitute translanguaging spaces. To this end, by means of a quantitative and computer-mediated communication discourse analysis, we examine the naturally-occurring interactions, on WhatsApp, of a group of 74 former university classmates who studied Spanish Philology in the mid-2000s at a Cameroonian university. The close observation of the group’s interactional strategies for relationship maintenance shows that members construct their online famille – their new social space for self-presentation – by means of (1) sociolinguistic and pragmatic norms drawn from indigenisation; (2) kinship terms as forms of address, in English and Spanish in texts mainly in French; and (3) the inclusion of religious terms as a politeness strategy. The use of Spanish as the tie-sign of the group is not as relevant as initially expected.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Relational maintenance through CMC
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Method of analysis
      • 3.2.1Quantitative analysis of the corpus
      • 3.2.2Discourse analysis of language use
  • 4.Results and their interpretation
    • 4.1Quantitative results
    • 4.2Discourse analysis
      • 4.2.1Nominal address terms
        • 4.2.1.1Kinship terms as forms of address: The family
        • 4.2.1.2Social titles, friendship, and endearment terms
        • 4.2.1.3Occupation and rank titles
      • 4.2.2Religion
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (65)
References
Anchimbe, Eric A. 2008. “Come greet Uncle Eric: Politeness through kinship terms.” In De la Politesse Linguistique au Cameroun – Linguistic Politeness in Cameroon, ed. by Bernard Mulo Farenkia, 109–120. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. “On not calling people by their names: Pragmatic undertones of sociocultural relationships in a postcolony.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(6): 1472–1483. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anchimbe, Eric A., and Richard W. Janney. 2011. “Postcolonial pragmatics: An introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(6): 1451–1459. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anchimbe, Eric A., and Stephen A. Mforteh (eds.). 2011. Postcolonial Linguistic Voices. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2013. “Code-switching in computer-mediated communication.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan C. Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 667–694. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis, and Kristin Vold Lexander. 2021. “Digital polycentricity and diasporic connectivity: A Norwegian-Senegalese case study.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 25(5): 720–736. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Atanga, Lilian L. 2012. “Language choice, identity, and power in the Cameroonian parliament.” In The Linguistic and Social Context of English and Pidgin in Cameroon, ed. by Eric A. Anchimbe, 141–162. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolander, Brook, and Miriam A. Locher. 2020. “Beyond the online offline distinction: Entry points to digital discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 351, 100383. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chiluwa, Innocent. 2008. “Religious vehicle stickers in Nigeria: A discourse of identity, faith and social vision.” Discourse & Communication 2(4): 371–387. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Community and social interaction in digital religious discourse in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon.” Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 2(1): 1–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Connell, Bruce, and David Zeitlyn. 2010. “Sociolinguistic studies of West and Central Africa.” In The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World, ed. by Martin J. Ball, 203–235. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, and Kevin Pat. 2021. “Compliment responses in Hong Kong: An application of Leech’s pragmatics of politeness.” Text & Talk 41(5–6): 667–690. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Féral, Carole. 2012. “‘Parlers jeunes’: une utile invention [‘Youth language’: A useful invention]?” Langage et société 31: 21–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deumert, Ana, and Kristin Vold Lexander. 2013. “Texting Africa: Writing as performance.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(4): 522–546. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Echu, George. 2008. “Forms of address as a politeness strategy in Cameroon Pidgin English.” In De la Politesse Linguistique au Cameroun – Linguistic Politeness in Cameroon, ed. by Bernard Mulo Farenkia, 121–133. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ellison, Nicole B., Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe. 2007. “The benefits of Facebook ‘friends’: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4): 1143–1168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ellison, Nicole B., Jessica Vitak, Rebecca Gray, and Cliff Lampe. 2014. “Cultivating social resources on social network sites: Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors and their role in social capital processes.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19(4): 855–870. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feussi, Valentin. 2008. “Les pratiques de la politesse au Cameroun: Une dynamique relationnelle et contextuelle [Politeness practices in Cameroon: A relational and contextual dynamics].” In De la Politesse Linguistique au Cameroun – Linguistic Politeness in Cameroon, ed. by Bernard Mulo Farenkia, 31–46. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2019. “Introduction to analyzing digital discourse: New insights and future directions.” In Analyzing Digital Discourse, ed. by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 3–22. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herring, Susan C. 2004. “Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior.” In Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning, ed. by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling, and James H. Gray, 338–376. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. “A faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse.” Language@Internet 4(1): 1–37.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kouega, Jean-Paul. 2018. “Apology strategies in Cameroon Pidgin English.” Open Access Library Journal 5(1): 1–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lampe, Cliff, Nicole B. Ellison, and Charles W. Steinfield. 2008. “Changes in use and perception of Facebook.” In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 721–730. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Anina Kinzel, and Matteo Di Cristofaro. 2020. “The communicative modus operandi of online child sexual groomers: Recurring patterns in their language use.” Journal of Pragmatics 1551: 15–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Macharia, Stephen, Abraham Mulwo, and Jared Obuya. 2021. “Communication of social and task messages on instant messaging platforms: A netnographic study of farmers’ Whatsapp groups in Kenya.” African Journal of Education, Science and Technology 6(4): 227–294.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matenda, Stenford, Gedala M. Naidoo, and Hemduth Rugbeer. 2020. “A study of young people’s use of social media for social capital in Mthatha, Eastern Cape.” Communitas 251: 1–15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mason, Adam J., and Caleb T. Carr. 2021. “Toward a theoretical framework of relational maintenance in computer-mediated communication.” Communication Theory 32(2): 243–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Fiona. 2008. “Senegal: The emergence of a national lingua franca.” In Language and National Identity in Africa, ed. by Andrew Simpson, 79–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel. 2021. “A theory of a theory of the smartphone.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 24(5): 860–876. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel, Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyan Wang. 2021. The Global Smartphone: Beyond a Youth Technology. London: UCL Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mulo Farenkia, Bernard. 2008a. “Du vocatif au relationnel: Typologie des fonctions pragmatiques des formes de l’adresse au Cameroun. De la politesse linguistique au Cameroun [From vocative to relational: Typology of pragmatic of forms of address in Cameroon. On linguistic politeness in Cameroon].” In De la Politesse Linguistique au Cameroun – Linguistic Politeness in Cameroon, ed. by Bernard Mulo Farenkia, 85–107. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008b. “De l’admiration aux mots: Étude comparée des formules laudatives chez les anglophones et les francophones au Cameroun [From admiration to words: A comparative study of laudatory formulas among English speakers and French speakers in Cameroon].” In De la Politesse Linguistique au Cameroun – Linguistic Politeness in Cameroon, ed. by Bernard Mulo Farenkia, 161–195. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008c. “De Docteur à Docta: créativité lexicale et adresse nominale en français camerounais [From Docteur to Docta: Lexical creativity and nominal address in Cameroonian French].” Linguistica Atlantica 291: 25–49.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Pragmatique de la néologie appellative en situationplurilingue: le cas camerounais [The Pragmatics of appellative neology in a plurilingual situation: The case of Cameroon].” Journal of Pragmatics 42(2): 477–500. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019a. “Nominal address strategies in Cameroon French: Between lexical creativity and pragmatics.” In It’s Not All about You: New Perspectives on Address Research, ed. by Bettina Kluge, and María Irene Moyna, 335–353. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019b. “Thanking in Cameroon French.” In Heritage, ed. by Daniela Turcanu-Carutiu, 137–158. London: IntechOpen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mwangi, Mary N. 2019. “The influence of Social Media on the maintenance of romantic relationships among college students: A case of undergraduate students in the United States International University-Africa.” MA thesis, University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Mwangi, Stella. 2017. “WhatsApp: The new age illusion of friendships among Kenyan young adults.” In Digital Transformation in Journalism and News Media, ed. by Mike Friedrichsen, and Yahya Kamalipour, 263–270. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ngefac, Aloysius. 2010. “Linguistic choices in postcolonial multilingual Cameroon.” Nordic Journal of African Studies 19(3): 149–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nkwain, Joseph. 2014. “Address strategies in Cameroon Pidgin English: A socio-pragmatic perspective.” In Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indigenisation, ed. by Eric A. Anchimbe, 189–205. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oyadiji, Olushola. 2020. “Politeness in the interactions of selected Nigerian news-based virtual communities.” Discourse & Communication 14(2): 175–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen. 2019. “Emoticons in relational writing practices on WhatsApp: Some reflections on gender.” In Analyzing digital discourse: New insights and future directions, ed. by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 163–189. Cham: Palgrave. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021a. “Moments of sharing, language style and resources for solidarity on social media: A comparative analysis.” Journal of Pragmatics 1801: 266–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021b. “Vamos Nassaras: cambio de código como ejemplo de la apropiación de lengua en conversaciones escritas [Go, go Nassaras: Code-switching as an example of appropriation in written conversations].” Oralia 24(1): 123–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez Sabater, Carmen. 2024. La informalización del discurso digital público: Reflexiones sobre el inglés y el español [The Informalization of Public Digital Discourse: Insights from English and Spanish]. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen, and Ginette Maguelouk Moffo. 2019. “Managing identity in football communities on Facebook: Language preference and language mixing strategies.” Lingua 2251: 32–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen, and Ginette Maguelouk-Moffo. 2020. “Online multilingualism in African written conversations: Local, global identity and alignment.” Studies in African Linguistics 49(1): 141–159. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poon, Anthony, Sarah Giroux, Parafait Eloundou-Enyegue, François Guimbretière, and Nicola Dell. 2019. “Engaging high school students in Cameroon with exam practice quizzes via SMS and WhatsApp.” In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sampietro, Agnese. 2019. “Emoji and rapport management in Spanish WhatsApp chats.” Journal of Pragmatics 1431: 109–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, Andrew. 2008. “Introduction.” In Language and National Identity in Africa, ed. by Andrew Simpson, 1–25. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spilioti, Tereza. 2011. “Beyond genre: Closings and relational work in text-messaging.” In Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media, ed. by Crispin Thurlow, and Kristine Mroczek, 67–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stark, Luke, and Kate Crawford. 2015. “The conservatism of emoji: Work, affect, and communication.” Social Media & Society 1(2): 1–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagg, Caroline. 2016. “Heteroglossia in text-messaging: Performing identity and negotiating relationships in a digital space.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 20(1): 59–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin, and Michele Poff. 2013. “Text messaging.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan C. Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 162–189. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tong, Stephanie, and Joseph B. Walther. 2011. “Relational maintenance and CMC.” In Computer-Mediated Communication in Personal Relationships, ed. by Kevin B. Wright, and Lynne M. Webb, 98–118. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsiplakou, Stavroula. 2009. “Doing (bi)lingualism: Language alternation as performative construction of online identities.” Pragmatics 19(3): 361–391.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wentker, M. 2018. “Code-switching and identity construction in WhatsApp.” In The Discursive Construction of Identities On-and Offline: Personal – Group – Collective, ed. by Birte Bös, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin, and Nuria Hernández, 109–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yus, Francisco. 2022. Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Pérez-Sabater, Carmen
2025. “Emojis are grown-up stuff”. Internet Pragmatics 8:2 ► pp. 152 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue