Communicative action and interaction in Africa: Towards a broader picture

Abstract

This article collection showcases recent empirical research on a range of pragmatic phe nomena in different parts of the African continent. It also aims at illustrating the diversity of approaches employed to study these phenomena, bringing together experts on various languages and from different backgrounds. In particular, the articles in this collection are focused on Nigeria, Cameroon, Namibia, and South Africa, examining language use in Yorùba, isiXhosa, English, French, and Nigerian Pidgin. The studies stem from different theoretical frameworks, adopt a variety of meth odologies, and deal with a range of communicative (inter)actions. Among the approaches adopted are speech act theory, politeness theory, conversation analysis, variational prag matics, and postcolonial pragmatics, and the data stem from ethnographic field notes, discourse completion tasks, dialogue production tasks, video recordings, large machine readable corpora, and multimedia recordings. The pragmatic phenomena analysed range from discourse markers, speech acts, and opening turns to the generic structure of traditional wedding ceremonies and multimodality in media interviews. This collection thus illustrates and advocates a broad understanding of pragmatics, theo retical and methodological pluralism, and the cooperation of experts on autochthonous languages and experts on former colonial languages in order to more adequately study the complexities of communicative (inter)action in Africa