SOCIO-LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF POINTS OF VIEW ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

The global debate on homosexuality has been dominated by arguments on social justice and human rights. Scholarly attention on the phenomenon has dwelled on these legalistic perspectives, with little attention paid to peculiar socio-linguistic and ideological values surrounding the arguments in the Nigerian context. This study was designed to investigate points of view on homosexuality as linguistically represented in selected Nigerian newspapers in order to identify the ideological presuppositions underlying the views in the Nigerian context. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar and Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory were adopted as framework, for their ideological and contextual approaches to language. A total of 130 articles: Ten editorials,20 opinion articles and 100 news reports on homosexuality from five purposively selected Nigerian newspapers (Vanguard, The Punch, The Guardian, Nigerian Tribune and The Sun) were randomly sampled. The newspapers were selected based on their preponderant coverage of the discourse of homosexuality between 2013 and 2015. Data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Points of view for and against homosexuality were identified and grouped into ideological principles ofhumanism, moralism, religious fundamentalism, secularism and culturalism. Humanistic views affirmedthe rights and dignity of humans, while moralism opposed the practice as demeaning. Religious fundamentalists upheld moral principles resisting homosexuality in Holy Books, whilesome secularists, supporting homosexuality, accentuated separation of religious injunctions from state laws. Culturalists’ views bifurcated into pro-culture and anti-culture. Pro-culturalists argued that cultural values are against homosexuality, while anti-culturalists emphasised cultural dynamism. These points of view were lexically and grammatically represented. Lexically, collocations and synonymic relations, such as ‘taboo’ and ‘abomination’, foregrounded culturalists’ view, while lexical reiteration of ‘change’ emphasised anti-culturalism. Labelling and reiteration of holy books-related words, such as ‘sin’ and ‘unscriptural’ were both used toexpress secularists’ and religious fundamentalists’ views. Moralism was articulated through reiterations of evaluative adjectives, ‘bad’, ‘wrong’ and ‘evil’. Humanists deployed equality and rights evaluative adjectives,such as ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘illegal’. Grammatically, transitivity of material processes represented homosexuals as negative actors of ‘murder’ and ‘rape’, ideologically depicting them as social threats, thus affirming the moralists’ stance. Verbal processes either supported or opposed the phenomenon. Religious fundamentalists deployed exhortatives (‘urges’, ‘warns’) to refute the practice of homosexuality; political leaders chose assertives (‘states’, ‘asserts’) to articulate their pro-culturalists’ sentiments; gay activists and international bodies used accusatives (‘condemned’, ‘blamed’) to discourage discrimination against homosexuals, endorsing anti-culturalists’ and humanists’ views. Deontic, boulomaic, epistemic and perception modalities were deployed to either support or debunk homosexuality. Deontic ‘should’ and ‘must’ expressed culturalists’ and humanists’ assertiveness; boulomaic ‘hope’ and ‘wish’, humanists’ yearnings for social acceptance of homosexuals. Epistemic ‘will’ and ‘can’ as well as perception modality ‘clearly’ foregrounded the resolute attitude of religious fundamentalists. Homosexuals appraised ‘self’ as dynamic and normal. Lexicalisation, transitivity and modality were deployed to encode divergent points of view on homosexuality, based on peculiar socio-cultural values and taboos in the Nigerian context. Thus, the socio-linguistic understanding of the discourses of homosexuality throws insight into the underlying ideological presuppositions on the phenomenon.