Discursive strategies of framing in Nigerian and South African headlines on xenophobic violence

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: This article examines the frames built in Nigerian and South African newspaper headlines and the linguistic strategies by which they are characterised. Sixty headlines (thirty from three Nigerian newspapers – Vanguard, DailyTrust, The Sun, and thirty from three South African newspapers – Cape Times News, City Press, SowetanLIVE) on South African xenophobic violence, published between February 2017 and October 2019, were purposively sampled and analysed using insights from frame theory and critical discourse analysis. Three frames were noticed: ‘South African government as not able to check xenophobic violence’ (co-constructed by both Nigerian and South African headlines); ‘South Africans as not able to accommodate immigrant competitors’ (by Nigerian headlines); and ‘Immigration control as a means of checking xenophobia’ (by South African headlines). Frame One is typified by topoi (with lexical choices, and structural opposition) and perspectivisation (with epistemic modality and presupposition). The second is marked by intensification (with aggregation and metaphorisation) and prediction (with evaluative nouns and thematisation). The third is indexed by the topos of immigration control (with specialised vocabulary items) and predication (with emotive metaphors/adjectives and rhetorical questions). Aside from the significant addition made to media studies on xenophobia, the article sheds additional light on the often-neglected role of the media in shaping people’s ideological outlooks.