A Pragmatic Study of Impoliteness in the 2020 Endsars Protest in Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined impoliteness as contained in protest discourse in Nigeria with emphasis on the 2020 Endsars protest across Nigeria. Previous studies on protest discourse had concentrated on the nature of speech acts and the interactional strategies employed in protest communication. The current study investigates the nature of impoliteness employed in protest-centred communication. Data for the study were obtained from different newspaper reports published during and immediately after the 2020 Endsars protest.  The study of impoliteness seeks to shed more light on our knowledge of rapport and communication management. The paper employs Culpeper’s model of impoliteness. This is because the impoliteness model points out the inherent affront, which further enlightens us on the communicative intention in protest discourse. The data for the study were obtained from various social media platforms in the heat of the endsars protest in Nigeria. The study notes that protesters in the 2020 Endsars protest in Nigeria deliberately avoided the withheld politeness approach. This is premised on the fact that the context of the discourse under study provides no affrdances for this impoliteness method. Furthermore, the study finds that protesters often deviate from the main cause of a particular protest due to the need to commit intentinal face threatening acts. This is done by exploring situational context of a particular protest.