My stunning angel: endearment terms as strategies of gender identity construction in Facebook picture uploads in Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigates the language features deployed in the production and reproduction of gendered identities on social media with a particular focus on Facebook picture uploads. The data comprised one hundred purposively selected endearment terms on the Facebook platform. Drawing analytical insights from social constructionism, this study examines social media commentaries that accompany Facebook picture uploads by young women between the ages of 15 and 25. The study focused on the discursive and social significations that are embedded in the linguistic choices and comments people post about their friends’ Facebook picture uploads. These linguistic expressions use strategies such as neologisms, code-switching and language mixing, and draw their resources from the Nigerian linguistic ecology including comedy skits, hip-hop music and popular slang. The results indicate that endearment terms have positive and negative connotations: they may be used to construct gender identities and express politeness or “impoliteness” by being out-rightly patronising. In this way, endearment terms are sites for the enactment of emotive relationship that enables social media users to bond socially and adapt flexibly in their social networking spaces.