Décliner une offre en français au Cameroun

This study sets to examine strategies employed by Cameroonian French speakers to decline a friend's offer to lend them money, a lift from an unknown driver and a Full-time job from the boss. Using Brown and Levinson's politeness framework and data produced by a group of Cameroonian students, the study reveals offer refusal to be perceived by most of the respondents as a face-threatening act. This explains the abundant use of face-work strategies such as indirect refusals, complex structures and combinations of politeness strategies in the corpus. The study also highlights the impact of situational variables such as types of offer, social and power distance, etc., on the choice of refusal strategies as well as their functions and combinations.