Paper long abstract:

With recorded attempts variously made to censor public engagement of the topics, sex and sexuality have always held an allure in human societies. Contemporarily however, digital technologies and social media platforms have ruptured these conservative tendencies and enabled Africans much broader and open discourses on language and identity issues. In this contribution, we explore the linguistic representations of 'government' and other discourse agents in Nigerian society today in negotiating identities and ideologies on homosexuality in Nigeria. The data for the study is a 114,000 word-corpus collected from 'Nigerian' Twitter and this was subsequently processed with Anthony's (2019) AntConc software. The quantitative corpus-linguistic analyses of hybrid new language practices was complemented by the application of the tenets of Critical Discourse Analysis since this avails the contextualisation of the analysis. The analysed narratives reveal that the government bears the brunt of ideological blame-game as it is at the receiving end of both positive and negative attributions. We identify two strains in the narratives: anti-homosexuality vs. pro-homosexuality. In the anti-homosexuality tweets, the government is charged with the necessity of toughening the stance against the queer community through requisite legislation and implementation. Conversely however, the pro-homosexuality tweets upbraid the government for failing to uphold the global standards of human rights and protect marginalised communities. One thing however is obvious: the social media continues to be a platform for marginalised communities to actively make their voices heard and this allows linguists to analyse new hybrid and controversial language practices which reflect the new hybrid and controversial identity constructions in Nigeria today.

Keywords: Linguistic Practices; Ideology; Identity; Homosexuality; Government; Twitter

Paper Download (797 KB)