« Bonjour, docteur […] docteur, vous allez bien ? » Approche de la conflictualité et de la coopération dans les interactions exolingues à l’université de Maroua

Abstract

This paper is based on the cultural variations of politeness. From a corpus of authentic interactions collected at the University of Maroua, the study describes the influence of cultural variations on the interpersonal relationship in the institutional environment, with salutation as the object of study. The analyses reveal the conflictual aspect of the greetings formulated by the students towards their teachers on the one hand ; on the other hand, the conciliating mechanisms, and the processes of peaceful resolution of the conflicts used by the teachers. In a multilingual and multicultural sociocultural environment, the contact of languages and cultures imposes challenges on speakers, which require plurilingual and pluricultural competence to communicate effectively. The study thus leads to a call for an intercultural approach in language teaching and learning.

Keywords

• Politeness
• multilingualism ; conflict
• cooperation and exolingual interaction