Abstract
This study investigates the role of pragmatic markers in shaping meaning, stance, and social relations in Facebook-based political interactions. Today, platforms such as Facebook have emerged as key sites for interaction, identity construction, and discourse negotiation, where users simultaneously manage public and private selves within highly visible communicative spaces. Anchored in Discourse Marker Theory of Schiffrin, 1987 and Fraser’s Pragmatic Marker Model of 1996, the research adopts a qualitative descriptive approach to analyze a political Facebook post by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and the accompanying comment threads from followers. The data, transcribed verbatim with emojis and other multimodal features preserved, were examined to identify interactional, attitudinal, and textual pragmatic markers and to interpret their communicative functions within context. Findings revealed that pragmatic markers such as vocatives, greetings, hedges, boosters, honorifics, religious expressions, emojis, hashtags, and evaluative phrases play a crucial role in negotiating politeness, expressing solidarity, managing stance, and reinforcing political and cultural identity. These markers enable participants to soften criticism, signal admiration, construct communal belonging, and align ideologically within a context of audience hybridity and context collapse typical of Facebook discourse. The study concludes that pragmatic markers function as socially meaningful resources that humanize political communication, enhance persuasive impact, and facilitate collective meaning-making in digital public spheres. It therefore highlights the importance of pragmatic analysis for understanding contemporary political discourse beyond propositional content, particularly in digitally mediated environments.
Keywords: Digital political interaction, Facebook discourse, identity construction, meaning-making, pragmatic markers,
DOI: 10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i01.002
author/Ogbuehi, P. N., &Abanji, T. M.
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 2(1) | June 2026 |
