Face-Threatening Acts and Face Management in MTN Cameroon Text Messages: A Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Approach

Face-threatening act is ubiquitous in every single interaction. In conversations, speakers use linguistic strategies that may cause threats to their face or hearer’s face revealing the underlying nature of face-to-face interactions. This paper explores face threats in MTN Cameroon text messages from a sociolinguistic and pragmatic approach. It is a qualitative study that grounds on Lakoff (1973), Brown and Levinson (1987) politeness theories. The data collected are 21 text messages from MTN mobile phones to which the content analysis method was applied. The findings reveal that MTN text messages, at the sociolinguistic level, embody social variables such as power and status, honorifics, solidarity, and code-switching, which distance the speaker from the recipient or socially link them, thus influencing their face positively or negatively. At the pragmatic level, face-threatening acts attack the hearer’s negative face, the speaker’s negative face and the speaker’s positive face. Face threat acts range between orders, requests, advice, compliments, and flatteries. There is an overwhelming use of directives in text messages, advertisements in particular, implying that the marketing service of MTN influences customers’ face negatively saving the face of the company. Very few messages, advice or warnings, carry markers of politeness inducing that MTN prioritises the company’s profits over customers’ ethos. The study infers that the language of MTN text messages persistently puts pressure on subscribers, imposes their choices and shows low insights of friendliness when it comes to messages of advertisement. As a result of the shortcomings observed, the researcher recommends that the marketing service reconsiders the language of the text forwarded to MTN subscribers while adopting a soft language to mitigate conflicts with customers.