Abstract
Language is an important instrument in every society. Language can be used properly, also or it can be abused or misused. It is used to cajole, intimidate, demean and degrade human dignity. In political discourse; in the name of democracy and freedom of speech, politicians are known for using vilifying language on the opponents. The primary targets of politicians’ abusive language are their political opponents, but sometime vulnerable categories of people become the recipients of this vilifying language as well. The aim of this study is to examine implicits statements in the language of politics in Sokoto. This study also examined the role played by language in politics with a specific focus on political hate speech in political discourse of Sokoto politics. The study analyses and presents a number of instances of rhetorical violence generated from contemporary politicians and their targets in Sokoto state recent times. The data used for the study were sourced from social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, and TV programme. Fairclough &Wodak (1997) Critical Discourse Analysis Theory (CDA) was used as framework, which examines power relation in discourse analysis. The research findings revealed that the use of negative language is prevalent in the politics of Sokoto. The research also showed that politicians are not only the group of people that used negative language, it was equally discovered that a number of religious clerics in the state engage themselves in hate speech, mostly politically motivated hate speech. This research also examined the implications that it usually incurs.
Keywords: Language violence, hate speech,
political discourse, Sokoto state politics
