Abstract
This paper investigates impoliteness and hostility in Nigerian online discourse, using Nairaland, the country’s most active digital forum, from 2017 to 2023as a primary case study of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) to interrogate how linguistic choices, platform norms, and interactional cues construct hostile exchanges. The study aims to explore how impoliteness strategies operate as resources for expressing hostility, shaping identity, andmediating conflict dynamicsindigital interaction. It is anchored in Culpeper’s impoliteness framework, which sees impoliteness as communicative behaviour intended to offend, enacted through strategies such as bald on-record impoliteness, sarcasm, and withholding politeness. The research adopts a qualitative design. Using purposive sampling,30 excerpts were selected, as they were sufficient to achieve analytical saturation in identifying recurrent patterns of impoliteness and hostility in discussion threads on politics, ethnicity, and religion, domains often marked by antagonism. Data were analysed through pragmatic coding with attention to context, participant roles, and the linguistic forms used to project hostility. Findings indicate that impoliteness in Nairaland discourse is expressed through both direct and indirect strategies. Direct insults, name-calling, and threats coexist with sarcasm, metaphors, mock politeness, and ad hominem attacks. These strategies function expressively by venting anger and instrumentally by reinforcing group solidarity and undermining opponents. The study shows that the impoliteness observed in Nairaland online forums is not random but deeply tied to the Nigerian’s broader socio-political climate. In examining these patterns through Culpeper’s impoliteness theory, the research demonstrates that the framework remains useful beyond the Western settings in which it was developed. Applying it to a Nigerian, digitally mediated context not only broadens its empirical reach but also reveals how cultural and political specificities shape hostile communication online. In this way, the study offers a meaningful extension of Culpeper’s model and provides evidence of its relevance in cross-cultural digital discourse.
Keywords: Impoliteness, Hostility, Culpeperian Theory, Nairaland
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2025.v01i01.013
author/Zulfaa Yushau Waziri
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 1(1) | June 2025 |
