Innocent Chiluwa

Heriot-Watt University · Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies

This study applies textual analysis and CDA to examine linguistic or discursive structures of war rhetoric with samples selected from war speeches of Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. In selecting to analyze the current war in Ukraine as a case study, the research results highlight the implications of war rhetoric by the t...

China’s extensive media presence in Africa aims to distinguish itself through the use of constructive journalism in contrast with the perceived dominance of conflict journalism by Western media outlets. However, many scholars have raised questions of consistency surrounding Chinese media’s use of constructive journalism in representing Africa (e.g....

This introduction to a Special Issue of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) – dedicated to showcasing scholarly research into the language of conflict and peace, describes the general conceptual character of language in conflict initiation as well as in peace process. It further examines the potentials of linguistic representation in the construction...

This study analyses the narrative structure of the #PantamiMustGo hashtag activism in Nigeria. Applying qualitative textual analysis, the study examines the issues that were made salient in the protests and how they were constructed. Through the analysis of narrative agency, the study finds that activists constructed Ali Pantami as a threat to nati...

This study examines aspects of online activism by women’s rights groups in Nigeria and Ghana, especially by exploring their online campaign approaches. Applying the new social movement theories and methods in linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis, the study examines and analyses how gender issues such as political participation and violence...

On October 3, 2020, members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad ( sars ) of the Nigerian Police Force arrested a young man at Wetland Hotel, Ughelli in Delta State, and later shot and killed him, and threw him out of a moving police van. In addition to eye witnesses of what happened, the video of this incident was also trending on social media. Again...

The Oduduwa secessionist group is a good reminder that Nigeria’s nationhood is still highly contested. Unfortunately, there appears to be very little or no linguistic research on the discourses produced by this emerging group of activists. This study examines Oduduwa agitators’ Facebook activism as a form of political communication in order to iden...

This article examines 25 purposively selected images of the EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The data are subjected to qualitative analysis and analyzed from a multimodal analytic approach. Findings reveal that the task of creating credibility and realities of the protests through images is divided between the verbal and the visual modes. While the vis...

Studies on Niger Delta (ND) poetry have applied stylistic and discourse analyses in exploring the metaphorical elements of the deplorable ecological condition of the region, but how these elements have been used in creating an alternative positive image of the ecology, especially in Otobotekere’s poetry, has not attracted enough scholarly attention...

The Oduduwa secessionist agitators are a group of social actors, consisting mainly of Yorubas, with the resolution of seceding Nigeria. Meanwhile, in spite of their reminder that Nigeria’s nationhood is still highly contested, there appears to be very little or no linguistic research on discourses produced by this emerging group of activists. This...

Bringing together contributions from a team of international scholars, this pioneering book applies theories and approaches from linguistics, such as discourse analysis and pragmatics, to analyse the media and online political discourses of both conflict and peace processes. By analysing case studies as globally diverse as Germany, the USA, Nigeria...

Bringing together contributions from a team of international scholars, this pioneering book applies theories and approaches from linguistics, such as discourse analysis and pragmatics, to analyse the media and online political discourses of both conflict and peace processes. By analysing case studies as globally diverse as Germany, the USA, Nigeria...

Bringing together contributions from a team of international scholars, this pioneering book applies theories and approaches from linguistics, such as discourse analysis and pragmatics, to analyse the media and online political discourses of both conflict and peace processes. By analysing case studies as globally diverse as Germany, the USA, Nigeria...

Bringing together contributions from a team of international scholars, this pioneering book applies theories and approaches from linguistics, such as discourse analysis and pragmatics, to analyse the media and online political discourses of both conflict and peace processes. By analysing case studies as globally diverse as Germany, the USA, Nigeria...

This study examines online advocacy campaigns by five women action groups in Nigeria and Ghana. Based on modern social movement theories, the study utilizes computer-mediated discourse analysis to qualitatively analyze the content of the websites and social media platforms of these groups. Findings show that social media provide women advocacy grou...

Interest in the broad subject of conflict studies by linguists and language scholars has increased over the years with the growing incidents of conflicts, wars and political violence around the world. With the understanding that language mirrors a society’s shared meaning, which enables them to make sense of the world, the study of language use (or...

This study analyses news reports of public reactions to the controversial legislators' monthly /annual income in Nigeria in 2019, which was presumed to far exceed the salaries of legislators worldwide. Data for this study are news and opinion articles published between 2017 and 2019 that represent public response to the salary scandal involving pub...

This edited book brings together a range of contributions from both established scholars and emerging voices in the fields of Discourse Analysis and Conflict Studies, arguing for a discourse approach to making sense of conflict and disagreement in the modern world. Themes explored in the volume include the language of conflict, hate speech in onlin...

“This collection presents an impressive line-up of up-to-date case studies on conflict rhetoric, covering several major world regions and assembling an equally diverse range of contributors. The perceptive analyses on display here deserve a wide hearing in the international community of discourse analysts and scholars of conflict and peace studies....

The study adopts approaches in linguistics and critical discourse analysis to interpret media speeches and public statements of the Biafra secessionist movement leader, Nnamdi Kanu, as hate speech. The study shows that hate speech in discourses produced by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra appears as language aggression, such as insults an...

In this study, we examine how Ponzi schemes with international outlooks situate themselves in the Nigerian web space. We study five Ponzi schemes that operated in Nigeria between 2016 and 2019 within the frameworks of multimodal-discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA). The websites, some of which were developed for only Nigerian us...

This study adopts a discourse analytical approach to examine the contested identity of the Igbos of the southeast of Nigeria. It analyses the significance of the social and political discourses in the media and the Internet about their claim to the Jewish ancestry and as “Biafrans” rather than Nigerians. The study highlights the implications of the...

This corpus-based discourse study briefly reviews the activities of Boko Haram and the conflict between the nomadic herdsmen and sedentary agrarian farmers of north-central and southern Nigeria. But the study focuses on the representations of the main actors in the conflict and the conflict itself in the Western media and the Nigerian press, and ex...

The Handbook of Research on Deception, Fake News, and Misinformation Online provides broad perspectives, practices, and case studies on online deception. It also offers deception-detection methods on how to address the challenges of the various aspects of deceptive online communication and cyber fraud. While highlighting topics such as behavior ana...

The collection of chapters on Twitter brought together in this volume each addresses a nexus of pressing research challenges in media and communication studies. At the core lies matters related to media consumption of reconfigured social lives with social media at their heart, new formations of citizenship, and shifts in how we go about social and...

In this volume, authors from different academic disciplines, coming from different social and political backgrounds and experiences have explored the increasing transformative potentials of Twitter for group advocacy. The chapters further illustrate how Twitter serves as a forum for spreading awareness and information on social events, as well as f...

This chapter identifies the various types and features of scam emails as a genre of computer-mediated communication. The types identified include money transfer, investment scam, inheritance claim, next-of-kin claim, charity donation scam, foreign aid scam, foreign lottery scam and email account lottery scam. The study also describes the linguistic...

This study analyses the activities of the Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA)-an armed movement of the Tuaregs of Northern Mali. Since the 2013 defeat of the Islamists with the aid of France and African forces, and the reintegration of the northern region in Mali after the declaration of the "Islamic Republic of Azawad," MNLA has maintaine...

This chapter examines the meaning, types, and practice of propaganda by two prominent terrorist groups, namely ISIS and Boko Haram, and how deception and deceptive communication form aspects of their propagandist tools. The chapter begins with the conceptual description and discussion of deception and propaganda and situate them in the research lit...

This collection of essays takes a difference approach to describing the functions and roles of Twitter in almost all human affairs. In examining the various ideas and opinions about Twitter, as well as the diverse complex users, the authors of this volume not only describe the uses and perspectives, but also introduce and explain cutting-edge and e...

This chapter examines the roles of text messaging in organizing and mobilizing protests and social unrest. It gives a general overview of the various forms of protest behaviors, showing how and why social media and ICTs have enhanced protest planning and implementation by activists around the world. The chapter reviews current knowledge in research...

The influx of religious activities and religious discourse on the Internet has made it pertinent to examine the fundamental roles of language in the expression, presentation, understanding, and advancement of any set of religious beliefs and practices. One main aspect of online religious activities that continues to arrest the attention of scholars...

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 conflic...

We live in an era when individuals, organizations and even communities constantly lie and deceive others and in turn, are lied to and deceived. Because of the pervasiveness of lying and deceptive behavior, individuals and groups frequently complain of being routinely cheated or duped. “Leaked documents detailing deception tactics, WikiLeaks and rev...

This chapter examines email business scams - a type of phishing that solicits business partnership with email account owners with the aim of defrauding them. In this category, are emails that seek assistance to transfer some money or claim some abandoned money in dormant bank accounts overseas. Through a qualitative discourse analysis of 50 samples...

Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning by Wale Adebanwi Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016. Pp. 391. $125 (hbk). - Volume 55 Issue 3 - Innocent Chiluwa

This study adopts a discourse-pragmatic analytical approach to examine the various ways youths construct themselves and their group identities, their environment and socio-economic aspirations using T-shirt messages and slogans. Two institutions of higher learning in Nigeria are examined. Findings show that T-shirts combine fashion and youth popula...

Online threats by terrorist groups are viewed as a special type of discourse that sends menacing explicit messages, expressing not only an intention to cause a direct physical harm to the threatened, but also to show a commitment to destroy public property or cause a change of system or government. This study applies critical discourse analysis wit...

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 pl...

This study applies critical discourse analysis and the appraisal framework to examine the evaluative structures of feedback comments on news reports of the mass shooting that occurred at a Navy Yard in Washington D.C. and the attack on Nairobi Westgate shopping mall in September, 2013 referred to as ‗crisis situations.' The study shows that languag...

Mobile telephony along with the Internet has enabled and enhanced new forms of human interaction by providing users with easy ways of reaching, and communicating with their loved ones regardless of distance or geographical locations. The medium has also not only become very essential to the society, but indispensable to individuals, families and so...

This study examines the features of stance in tweets downloaded from the English Twitter accounts of Boko Haram and Al Shabaab, referred to as ‘radicalist discourse’. Stance, referred to as ‘positioning’ or point of views of tweeters, is defined in terms of features such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mention and threats. These express...

The #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign on Twitter and Facebook was not only a global campaign for the release of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, but also a campaign for the rights of female children and girls to formal education. This article applies the appraisal framework and (critical) discourse analysis to examine the di...

E-mail fraud as is used in this context refers to different forms of deceptive e-mail, particularly those motivated by the intention to defraud the addressee. This article examines the common textual features of e-mail fraud as well as their forms and discursive structures with reference to some specific samples. It also gives a detailed descriptio...

This study critically examines the discourse of posts on Facebook in the ‘occupy Nigeria’ fuel subsidy removal protests. The Facebook posts are viewed as protest discourse with its ideological imprints of positive ‘we’ in-group representations and negative ‘other’ out-group constructions. With a CDA analytical approach, the study shows that Faceboo...

The #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign on Twitter and Facebook was not only a global campaign for the release of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, but also a campaign for the rights of female children and girls to formal education. This article applies the appraisal framework and (critical) discourse analysis to examine the di...

Email fraud as is used in this context refers to different forms of deceptive email, particularly those motivated by the intention to defraud the addressee. This entry examines the common textual features of email fraud as well as their forms and discursive structures with reference to some specific samples. It also gives a detailed description of...

This entry gives a general overview of the roles of mobile phone in initiating and mobilizing social protests. It is argued that text messaging had been used to mobilize civil engagement and protests ever before the prevalence of modern social media. Drawing from different social and political contexts, this entry also shows that text messaging has...

This chapter examines the practice of texting in various Christian contexts and why this practice has become so important. It shows that the adoption of mobile technology to promote and disseminate religious thoughts and practices is a form of religious shaping of technology and vice versa (Campbell, 2007). The chapter further gives a general overv...

This study critically examines the influence and power of ideology in the activities of Boko Haram – an 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 foll...

This study applies (critical) discourse analysis to examine feedback comments on news reports of the mass shooting that occurred at a Navy Yard in Washington D.C. and the attack on Nairobi Westgate shopping mall in September, 2013 referred to as ‘crisis situations.’ The study shows that language use in crisis situations is highly ideological and ex...

This study critically examines the influence and power of ideology in the activities of Boko Haram – an 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 foll...

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate identity in the social media. Mainly blogs and discussion forums, the study shows that online communication mediates social and cultural issues and that the Internet has been adapted is a medium to negotiate perceived endangered ethnic identities. This has been illustrated in...

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 netw...

This paper investigates pragmatic acts in the discourse of tweeters and online feedback comments on the activities of Boko Haram, a terrorist group in Nigeria. The tweets and comments illustrate acts used to express revolutionary feelings and reflect what people say and imply in times of crisis. Tweets about Boko Haram are speech and pragmatic acts...

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....

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...

This study focuses on how Social Media Networks (SMN) have been used in recent times to champion social protests and resistance against oppression and political power abuse. Hence, ‘discourse of resistance’ takes a cue from the current waves of resistance and political revolutions in North Africa and the Arab world, which have been largely attribut...

This book is a discourse-pragmatic study of media language in news headlines and leads. News is viewed as discourse in action largely influenced by some unique sociolinguistic and cultural constraints. The period between 1996 and 2002 viewed in this book as very crucial in the political development of Nigeria provided an environment that made highl...

NaijaPals and Nolitics , respectively a hosting site and a discussion forum by and for Nigerians, provide an opportunity for the citizens’ social and political participation. As a hosting website with social networking and blogging activities, NaijaPals maintains an online community, with Nolitics as a discussion forum solely dedicated to social an...

Nolitics is a politically oriented discussion forum hosted by a Nigerian hosting website known as NaijaPals (or Nigerians and friends). In this forum, authors keep personal journals in which they post entries and also reply to members' entries by posting comments. Nolitics enables members analyze and criticize Nigeria's socio-political system and s...

This book is a major documentation of the discursive practices of Africans when they engage in online communication. It presents mainly linguistic perspectives on what Africans do when they interact through mobile telecommunications and the Internet. The book reveals the unique ways Africans blend their traditional communicative culture with some o...

This paper attempts to show how social and political crises are constructed, represented/mediated in the Nigerian print media news headlines. Nigeria’s leading newsmagazines and newspapers namely The News , Newswatch , Tell , The Guardian and The Punch are selected for the study. From a corpus of thirty-two news headlines being the publications of...

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 resist...

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...

This study applies the speech acts theory to the study of discourse strategies and functions of hoax email business proposals otherwise known as "419 emails" – '419' being the Nigerian term for all forms of online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in form of email 'business proposals' involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts over...

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 a...

HeydTheresa, Email hoaxes: Form, function, genre ecology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008, Pp. vii, 239. Hb. €95.00. - Volume 39 Issue 1 - Innocent Chiluwa

This study applies a sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical methodology to the study of features and manifestations of Nigerian English in computer-mediated communication, particularly informal emails. The data comprise 133 email samples consisting of messages received or sent within a seven-year period, i.e. between 2002 and 2009, from typical N...

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) to the study of discourse structures and functions of ‘419’ emails — the Nigerian term for online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in the form of online lottery winning announcements, and email ‘business proposals’ involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas....

This study examines how cultural practices and belief systems are constructed in Ońunwa performance – a popular infancy-rites ritualistic lyrics of the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria. The study applies a combination of discourse approach, ethnography, and pragmatics in the analysis of data, showing how discourse, is representational of sociocultural...

Despite global efforts and wide range of research on the need to attain a comfortable level of socio-economic development, Nigeria still ranks among the least developed countries in the world. This paper joins many others to assess some of the real issues of national development by examining the efforts of the Nigerian print media in this direction...

This study focuses on analysing the ways in which vehicle stickers construct individual and group identities, people's religious faith and social vision in the context of religious assumptions and practices in Nigeria. Data comprise 73 vehicle stickers collected in Lagos and Ota, between 2006 and 2007 and are analysed within the framework of the po...

To what extent does the distinctiveness of Nigerian English come through in text messages? In the history of the English language certain developments have left significant linguistic marks on the language. As new developments and cultural forms occur, new words and styles of expression evolve with them and spread. This is true of the new linguisti...

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 behaviour and cul- tural values. This study shows the extent to which test...

This paper shows that headlines are discourse units that are analyzable as independent texts. They are functional parts of news stories that are pragmatically encoded to underscore some special kinds of social meaning other than mere encapsulation of the body of news stories. As pragmatically rele- vant discourse type, headlines and their overlines...

Two issues that have attracted a wide range of reactions in Nigeria have been unconstitutional wielding of political power and widespread corruption. These two socio-political pandemics are closely linked and militate against national development. Although much has been written about them, not much study has been done on how media reports represent...

Advertising language has often been criticized by formal linguists as being too informal, casual and breezy. This paper views adverts of soft drinks as a discourse type which in the context of the Nigerian advertising industry performs actions. The research illustrates the pragmatics of adverts as a form of language in action showing that the inves...

Three major factors introduced the English Language in Nigeria, namely the European trade activities of the 15th Century; colonialism in the 19th century and the activities of Christian missions. Now functioning as Nigeria’s official language of government, education, commerce, religion, etc, English is said to have ceased to be a foreign language...