Towards a Pragmatic Theory of French-Nigerian Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication between French-speaking and Nigerian interlocutors in professional, diplomatic, and commercial contexts generates distinctive pragmatic misalignments rooted in divergent communicative norms, speech act conventions, and politeness strategies, yet no comprehensive pragmatic theory has been developed to account for the specific patterns of French-Nigerian intercultural communication. This study develops a pragmatic theory of French-Nigerian intercultural communication, drawing on cross-cultural pragmatics, Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, and Spencer-Oatey's rapport management framework. The empirical component employs a multi-method design combining discourse completion tasks (n=180 Nigerian and francophone African participants), analysis of recorded professional interaction data from six Nigeria-francophone Africa workplace contexts, and retrospective verbal report interviews (n=40) following recorded interaction events. Pragmatic variables analysed include request strategies, refusal formulations, indirect speech act comprehension, and face-threatening act mitigation strategies. Results identify five systematic patterns of pragmatic divergence between Nigerian and francophone interlocutors: differential directness norms in business request formulation, contextual interpretation differences in silence as communicative act, asymmetric use of formality markers across hierarchical relationships, divergent conventions for expressing disagreement in meeting contexts, and different pragmatic norms for opening and closing telephone conversations. The developed theory, designated the Intercultural Pragmatic Alignment Model, provides a structured account of French-Nigerian communication divergence and convergence processes. Keywords: intercultural communication, pragmatics, French-Nigerian, relevance theory, rapport management