Linguistic Violence on Women: Representation of Women in Ritual Killing Discourse on Nigerian Social Media Spaces

Abstract

Language can be used to represent people in a humiliating and defaming way that violates their humanity. In the discourse of ritual killing on social media, Nigerian women are often blamed for their misfortunes of victimization through ritual killing and are further abused verbally. This study analyzes the representation of linguistic violence on women through evaluating the discourses on ritual killings on Nigerian social media space. It adopts Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis and qualitative research design. After observing the social media platforms in Nigeria for a period of three months, from January-March, 2022, the researcher purposively collected twenty (20) data from Facebook and twelve (12) from Twitter, but sampled ten (10) textual data from Facebook and two (2) from Twitter. Findings indicated that women are blamed and defamed in the discursive representation of ritual killings in Nigeria. By implication, the perpetrators (mostly men) are excused and the patriarchal subjugation of women are sustained.
Keywords: linguistic violence, critical discourse analysis, violence, ritual killing, social media