Health Discourses as Moral Communication? Linguistic Case Studies from Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon

Abstract

Abstract

The project investigates manifestations of ethics or morality– two concepts we use interchangeably – in everyday conversation by zooming in on health communication in Cameroon and Ivory Coast. It draws on constructivist and phenomenological conceptualizations of ethics by assuming that there are no moral phenomena as such, but that ethics is intimately tied to interaction. According to this view, conversationalists are ‘doing ethics’ by constantly and co-constructively bringing about the moral meaning of a state of affair or an event. Hence, doing ethics relies largely on communicative practices. With our interest in moral communication, we first aim to gain a better understanding of the still under-investigated relation between ordinary ethics and language in general. Second, and more specifically, we intend to examine some of its linguistic manifestations and thus to contribute to a description of pragmatic features in African varieties of French.