PLEASE-REQUESTS IN CAMEROONIAN AND KENYAN PRIVATE (SOCIAL) LETTERS
PLEASE-REQUESTS IN CAMEROONIAN AND KENYAN PRIVATE (SOCIAL) LETTERS

Summary/Abstract: This article analyses please as it occurs in 300 private (social) letters written between 1990 and 1996 in Cameroon and Kenya. Findings show that please functions to mark politeness in private (social) letters but with extended modifiers, a strategy that is perhaps largely influenced by perceived social distance between the writers and the addressees. Please is also found to occur in contexts where a direct interpretation of politeness is not very evident. In both instances, however, the study argues that Cameroonian and to a lesser extent Kenyan private (social) letter writers appear to have clear choices and strategies of their own on how to make requests. These choices/strategies could be summarized essentially as the over-use of the form and function of please.

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