Won't You Come Home? Women's Linguistic Strategies in Negotiating Sexual Engagements in a Rural Context in Nigeria

Although there are studies that have investigated how urban women negotiate sexual intimacy, pleasure, and positions, how rural women negotiate sexual intimacy remains understudied. In an attempt to contribute to scholarship on African women's sexual experiences, this article examines how Bette‐Obudu women in northern Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria, negotiate sexual intimacy with their partners in romantic relationships. The ethnographic data were generated through nine‐month fieldwork exercises in five selected Bette‐Obudu communities from 20 participants who were purposively selected for this study. The women's nuanced narratives were analyzed using the conceptual lens of pragmatic context, which stipulates that contextual meaning is interpreted through shared knowledge and social conventions. The study shows that heterosexual Bette women, though constrained by cultural norms, deploy diverse communicative strategies to negotiate sexual intimacy and pleasure with their partners. Through critical linguistic analysis of the sampled women's narratives, this article deconstructs the notion of homogenization of rural women's sexuality and concludes that rural women can (re)negotiate and (re)construct their sexuality as well as redefine their passive sexual roles under conditions of patriarchal dominance and inequality.