The socio-pragmatics of routine expressions in Dompo

The basic communicative mechanisms used by members of a speech communityprovide insights into their culture. Greetings, expressions of gratitude, congratulations, sympathies, and farewells all form part of the formulaic and socially specificexpressions that people understand and respond to accordingly in a community.This paper describes routine expressions in Dompo, a moribund language spokenin the North-Western corner of the Bono Region of Ghana. In 2018, four of thesix remaining speakers of Dompo provided data for this project as part of a largerdescription of the language. Presently, there are three remaining speakers of thelanguage. Some non-linguistic cues, as well as circumstances that condition theseexpressions and the underlying meanings they convey are discussed. The paperestablishes that routine expressions form an integral part of the existence of theDompo people, having social and cultural norms attached to them. With so fewnative speakers left, this paper provides a snapshot of some of the most commonand accessible conversations available at such a late stage of language shift andattrition.