Engagement Markers as Identity Construction Mechanisms in Boko Haram Response Texts

Abstract

The social violence associated with the Boko Haram (BH) sect in sub-Saharan Africa, is mainly sustained by the construction of symbolic identities through the rhetorical use of words and performative acts. The BH discourse has attracted humanistic attention from both linguistic and non-linguistic angles. The linguistic category, being more related to this study, has utilised stylistic, pragmatic, and discourse analytical tools in exploring (social) media representations of the radical group and its activities. Regrettably, this linguistic effort has not fully accommodated the actual speeches of the group, much less exploring the rhetorical strategies utilised for identity construction. The present study identifies the engagement markers deployed in BH response texts and explores ways they are utilised to construct identities that are capable of inducing acts of violence in the target audience. To achieve this, five translated full-transcript speeches of the BH leader, Abubakar Shekau, were purposively sampled (from Pulse.ng, a Nigerian online magazine), subjected to descriptive and quantitative discourse analysis, with insights from a combination of interpersonal metadiscourse and sociocultural linguistics. Four engagement markers (viz. pronominals, rhetorical questions, modals, and imperatives) manifest in data. These are observably connected to eight rhetorical goals associated with the response texts: allusion to divine authority/support, appeal to emotion, blunt condemnation, disassociation from attribute, issue of warning/threat, unshielded exposition, fake politeness, and (in)direct refutation. The findings have provided a linguistic understanding of the violence-inducing potency of the response texts, which had hitherto been neglected in linguistic research on religious extremism.