This study attempts to show the beneficial synergy between language and conflict studies and how ... more This study attempts to show the beneficial synergy between language and conflict studies and how conflict may be researched using methods in linguistics (i.e., discourse analysis). This I began to do in my article published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. My research interest in discourse analysis and conflict/security studies stems from the prevalence of security challenges in Nigeria; first with the rise of armed ethnic militias in the Niger Delta region in 2004. While negotiation with the militia groups was still ongoing, the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009 and became a serious national and international security concern. I was then at the University of Freiburg in Germany utilizing the Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral research fellowship, studying the role of local and international media in the Delta crisis. In 2012, I received further funding to study the activities of the Boko Haram terrorism, especially on the Internet and how terrorist groups utilized digital platforms for the purpose of youth radicalization. This study resulted in the publication: "The discourse of terror threats: Assessing online written threats by
The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed o... more The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers' use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS.
This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (I... more This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a Nigerian separatist/secessionist group that seeks a referendum for the independence of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria. The research examines discourse structures, such as language use that clearly or implicitly produces propositions of conflict and war, tribalism and hate-speech. Discursive strategies such as labelling, exaggeration, metaphor and contradiction applied by the group to produce ideological discourses of outrage are also analysed. Moreover, conflicting discourses produced by the Igbo politicians and factions of IPOB and other Biafra campaign groups are analysed in terms of their political implications to the overall self-determination efforts of the Biafra nation. The study concludes that the pragmatic implications of discourses that reflect opposing views, as well as varied ideological perspectives by group members, suggest that Biafra is a nation divided against itself and are a people incapable of the separate nation that they seek.
Festus Iyayi's literary aesthetics and social vision illustrate the complex task of the literary ... more Festus Iyayi's literary aesthetics and social vision illustrate the complex task of the literary artist in quest of social change in a modern materialist society. His critical realism depicts the exploitation and humiliation of the Nigerian worker and proposes social ideals for his social and economic emancipation. Iyayi belongs to the literature of post-colonial experience also known as the "literature of disillusionment." But rather than passively report the Nigerian socio-economic malaise, he proposes a revolutionary alternative that is people-oriented. His use of language in the novels Violence and The Contract towards achieving social change is what I call the "discourse of the praxis". This paper examines language use in the two novels to see how language in literature is saddled with social realism. This illustrates the interaction of language and social context as opposed to theoretical linguistics. This paper concludes that modern literature must be praxis-oriented in order to be relevant. The novels, Violence and The Contract indeed depict a world of oppression in its realism and suggest a hope of transcending capitalist exploitation.
Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This stu... more Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This study examines how African Christianity is negotiated and practised on the Internet. The main objectives are to investigate to what extent online worshippers in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon constitute (online) communities and how interactive the social networks of the churches are. This study shows that some important criteria for community are met by African digital worshippers. However, interaction flow is more of one to many, thus members do not regularly interact with one another as they would in offline worship. Worshippers view the forums as a sacred space solely for spiritual matters and not for sharing social or individual feelings and problems. However, the introduction of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and interactive forums is an interesting and promising new development in religious worship in Africa.
Terrorist attacks in Nigeria have generated a huge body of conversations and debates on the Inter... more Terrorist attacks in Nigeria have generated a huge body of conversations and debates on the Internet. This study investigates the contents of these online conversations on Nairaland and how such conversations exhibit stance and civic engagement in response to the attacks. Nairaland is an online community and public space that serves as a meeting place for Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora, who constantly follow-up on the events in Nigeria and participate in political debates about the country. This study argues that the frequent negative evaluations of Boko Haram and the attribution of the activities to Islam and the consistent constructions of northern Nigeria as ‘violent people’ and Islam as an ‘evil’ religion in Nairaland are potential to further worsen religious and ethnic relations in Nigeria.
This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the freque... more This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the frequently used lexical items by the Nigerian press to represent the Niger Delta militia groups and their activities. The study shows that the choice of particular vocabulary over other available options reveals value judgment that border on power, identity and socio-economic marginalization. Concordances and collocational tools are used to provide semantic profiles of the selected lexical items and collocational differences are highlighted. A list of collocates are obtained from the concordances of 'Nigerian Media Corpus' (NMC) (a corpus of 500,000 words compiled by the author). The study reveals that the negative representations of the ethnic militia are an ideological strategy to shift attention from the real issues of ethnic marginalization and exploitation of the Niger Delta -a region solely responsible for Nigeria's oil-based economy. Arguably, the over-publicised security challenges in the Niger Delta succeeds in creating suspicion and apprehension among the citizenry while the government that receive sufficient revenue from oil, do little to develop the entire country.
This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the freque... more This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the frequently used lexical items by the Nigerian press to represent the Niger Delta militia groups and their activities. The study shows that the choice of particular vocabulary over other available options reveals value judgment that border on power, identity and socio-economic marginalization. Concordances and collocational tools are used to provide semantic profiles of the selected lexical items and collocational differences are highlighted. A list of collocates are obtained from the concordances of 'Nigerian Media Corpus' (NMC) (a corpus of 500,000 words compiled by the author). The study reveals that the negative representations of the ethnic militia are an ideological strategy to shift attention from the real issues of ethnic marginalization and exploitation of the Niger Delta -a region solely responsible for Nigeria's oil-based economy. Arguably, the over-publicised security challenges in the Niger Delta succeeds in creating suspicion and apprehension among the citizenry while the government that receive sufficient revenue from oil, do little to develop the entire country.
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
The questions of identity, oil exploration and development of social infrastructure resulted in s... more The questions of identity, oil exploration and development of social infrastructure resulted in serious security challenges in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Security problems worsened with the proliferation of ethnic militia groups known in the media as ‘militants,’ ‘hoodlums,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘thieves,’ etc. In the last five years, armed resistance further degenerated into serious violence, hostage taking and bombing of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta. The Nigerian government responded by deploying military troops to the region to arrest the escalating crisis. The Federal Government troops known as the ‘Joint Military Task Force’ or ‘Operation Restore Hope’ was primarily assigned to protect oil installations and restore peace in the region, however the Task Force appeared to go an extra mile, which resulted in indiscriminate killings of the ‘militants’ and civilians including women and children and destruction of property worth millions of Naira in the Niger Delta. This study a...
This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of... more This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of West African English (WAE) in digital discourse. Data comprises 23,374 posts and responses from some popular social and political online forums hosted by Nigerians (i.e. Nairaland and Naijapals); Ghanaians (i.e. Ghanaforum.com), and Sierra Leoneans (i.e. Sierra Online club and Sierra Leone Forum). These digital forums have served as social media platforms for discussions and debates on, and responses to recent socio-political events in those countries. Findings show that three varieties of WAE are evident in online discourse namely, the acrolect (high), mesolect (middle), and basilect (low), which sometimes depend on the educational level of the users. The local pidgin is also frequently used especially in the Nigerian forums. These varieties in turn reflect features that are characteristic of WAE such as (i) loan words within the standard (acrolect) variety (ii) code-switching between ...
This study examines the use of the Internet and computer-mediated communication for Christian wor... more This study examines the use of the Internet and computer-mediated communication for Christian worship in Nigeria. The seven largest and fastest growing churches in Nigeria are selected for the study, highlighting the benefits and dangers associated with online worship. The utilization of the Internet to disseminate the Christian message and attract membership across the world, and the dissemination of religious tenets and fellowship online, have resulted in the emergence of the 'Internet church' for members who worship online in addition to belonging to a local church. Most interesting is the increasing widespread claim of spiritual experience or 'miracles' through digital worship. However, there is fear that online worship endangers the offline house fellowship system, which is viewed as the reproductive organ of the local offline church. Exclusive online worshippers are also said to be susceptible to deception and divided loyalty.
The increasing usability of the internet for sending messages while the sender remains anonymous ... more The increasing usability of the internet for sending messages while the sender remains anonymous and the rise of computer literacy and in fact the control of advanced internet skills by so many people across the globe have simplified and fully incorporated online communication into ...
The International Journal of Language, Society and …, 2008
The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria brought with it a variety of English ... more The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria brought with it a variety of English that is situationally distinct and context sensitive. Thus SMS text-messages are viewed as discourses that presuppose speech events among interlocutors that share a common social ...
Nolitics is a Nigerian online political discussion forum that provides an opportunity for social ... more Nolitics is a Nigerian online political discussion forum that provides an opportunity for social interaction and political participation, through new media technologies. It is hosted by NaijaPals -a hosting website with social networking and blogging activities. Naijpals maintains an online community of bloggers with Nolitics as a discussion forum solely devoted to social and political debates. Members exchange information and engage in social analyses and criticisms of Nigeria's political performances. A total of 104 'posts' are analyzed in the framework of computer-mediated discourse analysis with insights and methods from pragmatics. Findings show that discursive/ pragmatic strategies such as modality, implicitness/implication, directive speech acts, proposition/inference and indirect speech acts function as a means of mobilizing people towards political participation e.g. voting during elections. They are also used as strategies for attacking corruption and political power abuse, initiating and practising political propaganda by politicians and as discourse tact of preventing offences. The study reveals that new media technologies not only promote political participation and governance but show that the people are hungry to be involved in political issues and questions that affect their lives. Corruption and political power abuse are identified as major banes of modern democracies, particularly the Nigerian context.
This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of... more This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of West African English (WAE) in digital discourse. Data comprises 23,374 posts and responses from some popular social and political online forums hosted by Nigerians (i.e. Nairaland and Naijapals); Ghanaians (i.e. Ghanaforum.com), and Sierra Leoneans (i.e. Sierra Online club and Sierra Leone Forum). These digital forums have served as social media platforms for discussions and debates on, and responses to recent socio-political events in those countries. Findings show that three varieties of WAE are evident in online discourse namely, the acrolect (high), mesolect (middle), and basilect (low), which sometimes depend on the educational level of the users. The local pidgin is also frequently used especially in the Nigerian forums. These varieties in turn reflect features that are characteristic of WAE such as (i) loan words within the standard (acrolect) variety (ii) code-switching between the standard variety and pidgin/Krio (iii) evidence of deviants/errors characteristic of the basilect variety and (iv) linguistic creativity such as coinages, and the language style of the Internet. Findings further show that West African online communicators in English have adapted their socio-cultural nuances of language use to modern information technology.
Haraman Islamic radical group that claims responsibility for several bombing attacks in northern ... more Haraman Islamic radical group that claims responsibility for several bombing attacks in northern Nigeria. Data comprise tweets and retweets presumably produced by members of this group in their effort to promote their ideological stance and mobilize followers. Discursive content of the tweets show that the Islamic radicals adopt some existing African socio-cultural norms to champion Islamic religious ideologies that are intolerant to opposing views. The Boko Haram tweets generally reflect the positive construction of the 'we' in-group and negative representation of the 'others' who are referred to as 'infidels', and are worthy of death. This study also shows that twitter/tweeting has been used in recent times to popularize religious and political ideologies.
This study attempts to show the beneficial synergy between language and conflict studies and how ... more This study attempts to show the beneficial synergy between language and conflict studies and how conflict may be researched using methods in linguistics (i.e., discourse analysis). This I began to do in my article published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. My research interest in discourse analysis and conflict/security studies stems from the prevalence of security challenges in Nigeria; first with the rise of armed ethnic militias in the Niger Delta region in 2004. While negotiation with the militia groups was still ongoing, the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009 and became a serious national and international security concern. I was then at the University of Freiburg in Germany utilizing the Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral research fellowship, studying the role of local and international media in the Delta crisis. In 2012, I received further funding to study the activities of the Boko Haram terrorism, especially on the Internet and how terrorist groups utilized digital platforms for the purpose of youth radicalization. This study resulted in the publication: "The discourse of terror threats: Assessing online written threats by
The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed o... more The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers' use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS.
This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (I... more This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a Nigerian separatist/secessionist group that seeks a referendum for the independence of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria. The research examines discourse structures, such as language use that clearly or implicitly produces propositions of conflict and war, tribalism and hate-speech. Discursive strategies such as labelling, exaggeration, metaphor and contradiction applied by the group to produce ideological discourses of outrage are also analysed. Moreover, conflicting discourses produced by the Igbo politicians and factions of IPOB and other Biafra campaign groups are analysed in terms of their political implications to the overall self-determination efforts of the Biafra nation. The study concludes that the pragmatic implications of discourses that reflect opposing views, as well as varied ideological perspectives by group members, suggest that Biafra is a nation divided against itself and are a people incapable of the separate nation that they seek.
Festus Iyayi's literary aesthetics and social vision illustrate the complex task of the literary ... more Festus Iyayi's literary aesthetics and social vision illustrate the complex task of the literary artist in quest of social change in a modern materialist society. His critical realism depicts the exploitation and humiliation of the Nigerian worker and proposes social ideals for his social and economic emancipation. Iyayi belongs to the literature of post-colonial experience also known as the "literature of disillusionment." But rather than passively report the Nigerian socio-economic malaise, he proposes a revolutionary alternative that is people-oriented. His use of language in the novels Violence and The Contract towards achieving social change is what I call the "discourse of the praxis". This paper examines language use in the two novels to see how language in literature is saddled with social realism. This illustrates the interaction of language and social context as opposed to theoretical linguistics. This paper concludes that modern literature must be praxis-oriented in order to be relevant. The novels, Violence and The Contract indeed depict a world of oppression in its realism and suggest a hope of transcending capitalist exploitation.
Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This stu... more Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This study examines how African Christianity is negotiated and practised on the Internet. The main objectives are to investigate to what extent online worshippers in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon constitute (online) communities and how interactive the social networks of the churches are. This study shows that some important criteria for community are met by African digital worshippers. However, interaction flow is more of one to many, thus members do not regularly interact with one another as they would in offline worship. Worshippers view the forums as a sacred space solely for spiritual matters and not for sharing social or individual feelings and problems. However, the introduction of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and interactive forums is an interesting and promising new development in religious worship in Africa.
Terrorist attacks in Nigeria have generated a huge body of conversations and debates on the Inter... more Terrorist attacks in Nigeria have generated a huge body of conversations and debates on the Internet. This study investigates the contents of these online conversations on Nairaland and how such conversations exhibit stance and civic engagement in response to the attacks. Nairaland is an online community and public space that serves as a meeting place for Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora, who constantly follow-up on the events in Nigeria and participate in political debates about the country. This study argues that the frequent negative evaluations of Boko Haram and the attribution of the activities to Islam and the consistent constructions of northern Nigeria as ‘violent people’ and Islam as an ‘evil’ religion in Nairaland are potential to further worsen religious and ethnic relations in Nigeria.
This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the freque... more This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the frequently used lexical items by the Nigerian press to represent the Niger Delta militia groups and their activities. The study shows that the choice of particular vocabulary over other available options reveals value judgment that border on power, identity and socio-economic marginalization. Concordances and collocational tools are used to provide semantic profiles of the selected lexical items and collocational differences are highlighted. A list of collocates are obtained from the concordances of 'Nigerian Media Corpus' (NMC) (a corpus of 500,000 words compiled by the author). The study reveals that the negative representations of the ethnic militia are an ideological strategy to shift attention from the real issues of ethnic marginalization and exploitation of the Niger Delta -a region solely responsible for Nigeria's oil-based economy. Arguably, the over-publicised security challenges in the Niger Delta succeeds in creating suspicion and apprehension among the citizenry while the government that receive sufficient revenue from oil, do little to develop the entire country.
This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the freque... more This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics to analyse the frequently used lexical items by the Nigerian press to represent the Niger Delta militia groups and their activities. The study shows that the choice of particular vocabulary over other available options reveals value judgment that border on power, identity and socio-economic marginalization. Concordances and collocational tools are used to provide semantic profiles of the selected lexical items and collocational differences are highlighted. A list of collocates are obtained from the concordances of 'Nigerian Media Corpus' (NMC) (a corpus of 500,000 words compiled by the author). The study reveals that the negative representations of the ethnic militia are an ideological strategy to shift attention from the real issues of ethnic marginalization and exploitation of the Niger Delta -a region solely responsible for Nigeria's oil-based economy. Arguably, the over-publicised security challenges in the Niger Delta succeeds in creating suspicion and apprehension among the citizenry while the government that receive sufficient revenue from oil, do little to develop the entire country.
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
The questions of identity, oil exploration and development of social infrastructure resulted in s... more The questions of identity, oil exploration and development of social infrastructure resulted in serious security challenges in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Security problems worsened with the proliferation of ethnic militia groups known in the media as ‘militants,’ ‘hoodlums,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘thieves,’ etc. In the last five years, armed resistance further degenerated into serious violence, hostage taking and bombing of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta. The Nigerian government responded by deploying military troops to the region to arrest the escalating crisis. The Federal Government troops known as the ‘Joint Military Task Force’ or ‘Operation Restore Hope’ was primarily assigned to protect oil installations and restore peace in the region, however the Task Force appeared to go an extra mile, which resulted in indiscriminate killings of the ‘militants’ and civilians including women and children and destruction of property worth millions of Naira in the Niger Delta. This study a...
This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of... more This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of West African English (WAE) in digital discourse. Data comprises 23,374 posts and responses from some popular social and political online forums hosted by Nigerians (i.e. Nairaland and Naijapals); Ghanaians (i.e. Ghanaforum.com), and Sierra Leoneans (i.e. Sierra Online club and Sierra Leone Forum). These digital forums have served as social media platforms for discussions and debates on, and responses to recent socio-political events in those countries. Findings show that three varieties of WAE are evident in online discourse namely, the acrolect (high), mesolect (middle), and basilect (low), which sometimes depend on the educational level of the users. The local pidgin is also frequently used especially in the Nigerian forums. These varieties in turn reflect features that are characteristic of WAE such as (i) loan words within the standard (acrolect) variety (ii) code-switching between ...
This study examines the use of the Internet and computer-mediated communication for Christian wor... more This study examines the use of the Internet and computer-mediated communication for Christian worship in Nigeria. The seven largest and fastest growing churches in Nigeria are selected for the study, highlighting the benefits and dangers associated with online worship. The utilization of the Internet to disseminate the Christian message and attract membership across the world, and the dissemination of religious tenets and fellowship online, have resulted in the emergence of the 'Internet church' for members who worship online in addition to belonging to a local church. Most interesting is the increasing widespread claim of spiritual experience or 'miracles' through digital worship. However, there is fear that online worship endangers the offline house fellowship system, which is viewed as the reproductive organ of the local offline church. Exclusive online worshippers are also said to be susceptible to deception and divided loyalty.
The increasing usability of the internet for sending messages while the sender remains anonymous ... more The increasing usability of the internet for sending messages while the sender remains anonymous and the rise of computer literacy and in fact the control of advanced internet skills by so many people across the globe have simplified and fully incorporated online communication into ...
The International Journal of Language, Society and …, 2008
The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria brought with it a variety of English ... more The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria brought with it a variety of English that is situationally distinct and context sensitive. Thus SMS text-messages are viewed as discourses that presuppose speech events among interlocutors that share a common social ...
Nolitics is a Nigerian online political discussion forum that provides an opportunity for social ... more Nolitics is a Nigerian online political discussion forum that provides an opportunity for social interaction and political participation, through new media technologies. It is hosted by NaijaPals -a hosting website with social networking and blogging activities. Naijpals maintains an online community of bloggers with Nolitics as a discussion forum solely devoted to social and political debates. Members exchange information and engage in social analyses and criticisms of Nigeria's political performances. A total of 104 'posts' are analyzed in the framework of computer-mediated discourse analysis with insights and methods from pragmatics. Findings show that discursive/ pragmatic strategies such as modality, implicitness/implication, directive speech acts, proposition/inference and indirect speech acts function as a means of mobilizing people towards political participation e.g. voting during elections. They are also used as strategies for attacking corruption and political power abuse, initiating and practising political propaganda by politicians and as discourse tact of preventing offences. The study reveals that new media technologies not only promote political participation and governance but show that the people are hungry to be involved in political issues and questions that affect their lives. Corruption and political power abuse are identified as major banes of modern democracies, particularly the Nigerian context.
This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of... more This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of West African English (WAE) in digital discourse. Data comprises 23,374 posts and responses from some popular social and political online forums hosted by Nigerians (i.e. Nairaland and Naijapals); Ghanaians (i.e. Ghanaforum.com), and Sierra Leoneans (i.e. Sierra Online club and Sierra Leone Forum). These digital forums have served as social media platforms for discussions and debates on, and responses to recent socio-political events in those countries. Findings show that three varieties of WAE are evident in online discourse namely, the acrolect (high), mesolect (middle), and basilect (low), which sometimes depend on the educational level of the users. The local pidgin is also frequently used especially in the Nigerian forums. These varieties in turn reflect features that are characteristic of WAE such as (i) loan words within the standard (acrolect) variety (ii) code-switching between the standard variety and pidgin/Krio (iii) evidence of deviants/errors characteristic of the basilect variety and (iv) linguistic creativity such as coinages, and the language style of the Internet. Findings further show that West African online communicators in English have adapted their socio-cultural nuances of language use to modern information technology.
Haraman Islamic radical group that claims responsibility for several bombing attacks in northern ... more Haraman Islamic radical group that claims responsibility for several bombing attacks in northern Nigeria. Data comprise tweets and retweets presumably produced by members of this group in their effort to promote their ideological stance and mobilize followers. Discursive content of the tweets show that the Islamic radicals adopt some existing African socio-cultural norms to champion Islamic religious ideologies that are intolerant to opposing views. The Boko Haram tweets generally reflect the positive construction of the 'we' in-group and negative representation of the 'others' who are referred to as 'infidels', and are worthy of death. This study also shows that twitter/tweeting has been used in recent times to popularize religious and political ideologies.
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