Discursive Chain and Movement in Crisis-Driven Nigerian Political Discourse: Corpus Evidence from Herdsmen Newspaper Headlines

Abstract

A central tenet of critical discourse analysis spells that language in discourse meant for mass consumption is often permeated with a reproduction and/or a resistance of certain ideologies, assumptions, and knowledge characteristic of different social groups making up the society. One of such best scenarios is news headlines narrating crisis- driven national discourse in Nigeria, where almost all national discourses are driven by certain inherent ideologies and political power. In this paper, we propose a discourse chain principle uncovering the underlying socio-psychological idiosyncrasies of the par- ticipants (inclusive of agents and recipients) and processes in most national discourses in Nigeria. Combining concepts in corpus methods with critical discourse analysis, the paper shows a basic approach to operationalising ideologies in notational form. Apply- ing corpus analytic method to 761 herdsmen news headlines extracted from Nigerian newspapers, the present paper nicely illustrates the extent to which these news headlines move the discourse-at-hand (i.e. herdsmen crisis) to discourse-around. Such movement is performed by reproducing institutionalised ideological patterns revolving around identity politics (ethnicity), religion, question of nationhood, corruption, citizenry distrust, and political power imbalance. The paper argues that this discursive movement is often driven by a chain of discourse that defines the existence of the nationhood.