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Paper short abstract:

I interrogate linguistic and discursive features from the Nairaland ‘Travel section’. My discussions index relocation realities as well as the affiliative aftermaths of co-belongings where the Nigerian ‘home’ is constantly contrasted with nascent ‘homing’ necessities in the new locations.

Paper long abstract:

Socioeconomic and security challenges in Nigeria have necessitated a ‘get-out-while-you-can’ mentality especially among young professionals. Mellifluously rendered in the Yoruba slang Japa, meaning ‘flee without looking back’, relocation has become an endemic pursuit with posts and threads on the topic prevalent online. I analyse the intersections of mobilities, adaptation, and language use in these emergent narratives on Nairaland. Nairaland is the foremost Nigerian forum with a community of users from within and beyond Nigeria. Users create topics to which other users contribute, with such threads going for 10s and 100s of pages. As envisioned, I interrogate the digital narratives paying attention to linguistic and discursive features which, I will argue, index the necessity (or otherwise) to relocate as well as the affiliative aftermaths of co-belongings where the Nigerian ‘home’ is constantly contrasted with nascent ‘homing’ necessities in the new locations. To do this, I cull five (5) posts from the Nairaland ‘Travel section’, with focus on generic posts (in terms of dwelling on relocation) as against those on visa processing, student and studies abroad, etc. This delimitation affords a more diverse pool of commenters. Of these, I extract comments from posts with no less than 30 pages, making an average of 150 pages. The extracts are saved in .txt format. I apply corpus analytical tools, specifically AntConc (2018), as well as Critical Discourse Analysis in discussing the data. I posit that an examination of language use within this context provides access to Nigerians’ attitudes to and perceptions of relocation.