Discourse on the Social Media in Nigeria

Abstract

Violence is a universal phenomenon and a serious social problem investigated from different disciplinary dimensions. Scholars have identified several types of violence in the literature, including verbal violence. This study investigates resources of violence in political campaign discourse on the social media in Nigeria. It uses data collected from social media sources on the Internet such as group WhatsApp, Online newspapers and YouTube; WhatsApp posts without sources are confirmed via downloads from the Opera Mini browser. A pragmatics analysis from the cognitive, social and cultural perspective examines the resources for constructing and interpreting violence in the interactional contexts of the discourse. The cognitive reveals the participants, processes, circumstances and logical features; the social reveals the personal identities, relationships and attitudes; and the cultural reveals the norms and values. The principles of salience and adaptability guide the relation of language to context. The conclusion states that violence discourse on the social media is an unhealthy phenomenon for political campaigns in Nigeria because of the damage it causes on the personality of the contestants, social relationships and multi-ethnic integration. A pragmatics analysis has revealed the resources for the expression of violence for social consideration and positive remedial action.