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Paper short abstract:

Perceptions of multimodal apologies in Cameroon English. The data for this study were obtained from a perception questionnaire based on apology instances in selected scenes in four Cameroonian movies. These movies were produced between 2005 and 2022, making them suitable for a diachronic comparison.

Paper long abstract:

In conversation, speakers often employ a poll of strategies to communicate effectively. As a result, oral communication in its de facto form involves face-to-face communication for which multimodality occurs (see Ferrara & Hodge 2018; Mohr & Bauer 2022). This can be observed in most African societies whereby meaning negotiation among in-group members are dependent on sociocultural norms of multimodality associated with (im)politeness. Multimodal apologies, as an exemplary case, have been reported in previous studies to serve as intensifying devices that enhance the verbal apology rendered (Obeng 1999; Kasanga Lwanga-Lumu 2007). Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007), for instance in their study, demonstrated how these different forms of apologies complement each other. However, these studies only looked at apologies from a speech act production perspective. Therefore, investigating multimodal apologies in terms of their perception, i.e., how these paralinguistic means of expressing an apology are perceived by other members within the same speech community, a) seeks to fill this gap, and b) adds another methodological perspective by highlighting these decade-long sociocultural norms of apologising in both past and present. The data for this paper draw on a perception questionnaire that was administered to forty English-speaking Cameroonians. These perception questionnaires were based on apologies in selected scenes in four Cameroonian movies. These movies were produced between 2005 and 2022, making them suitable for a diachronic comparison. Since the data collection is due to take place in March of 2023, the results obtained shall be analysed in a timely manner and presented at this panel.