The Pragmatics of Political Claims and Social Responses amidst Covid-19 and EndSARS Saga in Nigeria

Chioma Onwubiko

doi:10.36892/ijlls.v3i4.739

Abstract

There have been few stand-alone linguistic studies on the Covid-19 virus and the 2020 EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The present study intersects these two critical events with particular focus on the political claims made by the ruling class and the corresponding social responses in line with the contextual affordances shared by the participants. Searle’s speech act theoretic approach is adopted to analyse the pragmatic intentions of the illocutionary acts which political claims perform while Juvenalian satire is used to discuss the satirical elements embedded in the social responses in a bid to ridicule leadership follies and abuses. Three popular Nigerian online Newspapers and few comments from Facebook are selected for this study. Their selection is based on their coverage of these events, coverage of these political claims and popular readership evidenced in the social responses. In all, a total of 6 political claims and 25 social responses relevant to this study are analysed. The study revealed that the pragmatic relevance of these claims is embedded in its political functions of wielding undue influence over the populace, making promises driven by rhetoric and short of initiative and calculated reticence in response to social issues. Consequently, the social responses highlight and criticise leadership vices and the weak efforts of the government in dispensing its leadership interventions. It also fulfils communicative purposes of the contextual space, promote solidarity among the people while prompting change in the political class and the society at large.

Highlights

The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 threw a curveball at people’s expectations; worsened the already fragile socio-economic conditions in Nigeria and shifted everyone’s attention to public health crisis at a huge economic cost
Research Questions This study aims to examine the pragmatics of political claims and the communicative intentions of its attendant social responses as deployed by participants to argue out their stance amidst Covid-19 and EndSARS saga in Nigeria
This study examined the pragmatic functions of political claims and satirical devices embedded in the social responses in three Nigerian Newspapers and few Facebook comments amidst Covid-19 and EndSARS saga in Nigeria

Summary

Introduction

The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 threw a curveball at people’s expectations; worsened the already fragile socio-economic conditions in Nigeria and shifted everyone’s attention to public health crisis at a huge economic cost. The newspaper coverage of the Volume 3, Issue 4, 2021 political claims of how these policies were implemented, palliatives were disbursed and the government’s ineptitude towards extra judicial killings in the country, especially that of the EndSARS protesters resulted in the satirical social responses ridiculing the corrupt and nepotistic manner in which the government tackled the scourge as such, yielded no significant result; benefitting only the political elites, leaving the poor masses at their low ebb It is on this premise that the present study investigates the communicative intentions of language use by both the ruling class (political claims) and the masses (social responses) in making their stances known. Political claims with regard to this study are opinions of government, its representatives or other prominent national figures while social responses are the reactions of the public towards these political claims

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion