Etude Pragmatique Des Formules De Demande Et D‟Excuse Chez Les Apprenants Du Niveau 400 Du Departement De Français A L‟Universite De Cape Coast

Abstract

This present work seeks to conduct a pragmatic study of request and excuse formulas among 400 level learners in the Department of French at the University of Cape Coast. The major objectives of this study are to identify the sociolinguistic variables that influence the learners‟ choice of polite formulas, to verify the strategies used by the leaners in realizing the speech acts of request and apology and to look out for the pedagogical factors that are likely to contribute to the learning of the polite markers in expressing a request and an apology. This study uses Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) theory of politeness as well as Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) proposed by Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989). The data of this study was collected through Discourse Completion Test (DCT) from sixteen level 400 French students 8 being males and 8 being females. The analyses of our study show that the students‟ choice of certain polite formulas is influenced by the sociolinguistic variables. It also revealed that the learners have little knowledge about the different strategies used in performing the acts of apology and request thereby limiting them to a particular way of realizing these speech acts. Our study further brings to the fore the role of teaching pragmatics in a FLE class in the pragmatic performance of a FLE learner. Finally, this study offers some pedagogical recommendations for educators to implement in a FLE class in order to facilitate the learners‟ mastery of the polite formulas in performing the speech acts of apology and request in French.