IDEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL HATE SPEECHES IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay between language and political hate speeches through speech acts and ideological analysis of hate speeches in Nigerian newspapers and social media platforms. Defining hate speech is difficult as any hurtful speech as mostly termed hate speech by Nigerian politicians thereby making the concept more complicated and cumbersome. This study exposes the social political ideologies of selected political hate speeches, and to ascertain the prelocutionary effects of hate speeches on the addresses or the reading public. Utilizing a qualitative research methodology, the study employs one hundred political hate speeches from Punch, Vanguard, Business Day and Nairaland as the population. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw a working population of thirty political hate speeches. Data were generated through critical assessment of the hate speeches from the sources by writing them out for analysis according to the year, date and source. Data were analyzed using Van Dijk Socio-Cognitive theory and Descriptive grammar by Ndimele (2008). It was discovered from the data analyzed that there are certain  predominant ideologies that are deployed in Nigeria political hate speech: one by the ruling class, another by the opposition. It was also discovered that hate speeches have perlocutionary effects on the addressee or the reading public. Ultimately, this study underscores the role of ideological innuences of political hate speeches in truncating a Nigeria latent democracy that is rooted in aesthetics, values and national unity.