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Item “We Are All Migrants”: ideological construction of Xenophobia in Nigerian and South African newspaper reports(Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Alugbin, M.; Osisanwo, A.Fear and animosity towards asylum seekers and migrants have experienced a worldwide increase in recent decades, with xenophobia being the recent particular experience in South Africa. This study analyses how discursive strategies in Nigerian and South African newspaper reports ideologically frame people, actions, and events, displaying a biased portrayal influenced by prejudiced ideologies. Using Wodak’s discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, the study examines 80 news articles from two Nigerian (Nigeria Tribune and Punch) and two South African (The Times and Daily Sun) newspapers, published during the xenophobic violence of 2008 and 2015. Findings reveal a shared Pan-African ideology in both countries’ media; however, South African reports often exhibit extreme nationalist sentiments that justify attacks on foreigners, while Nigerian reports express retributive ideology, threatening retaliation and seeking legal accountability. Discursive strategies, including nomination, predication and argumentation, and substrategies of assimilation, unification, dissimilation and blame shift reveal complex ideological interplays regarding African unity, national identity, and responses to xenophobic actions. Nigerian and South African news reports employ various discursive strategies, which reflect differing national approaches to migration and xenophobia, reflecting the ongoing struggle for social cohesion within African nations. This reveals the media’s role in shaping people’s attitudes in discriminatory discourses.Item Human trafficking in nairaland digital community: A corpus-assisted critical discourse study(Sage Publications, 2024) Osisanwo, A.Human trafficking in Nigeria as a topical issue has enjoyed more sociological interrogation with very scant attention in linguistics and discourse. This paper applies a corpus-assisted critical discourse study to examine representative posts on human trafficking in Nigeria (2019 to 2022) retrieved from the Nairaland digital community. Using the Sketch Engine corpus tool and social actors representation model, this paper investigates how different constructions were deployed by participants to represent human trafficking, human traffickers and traffick victims in Nigeria. Findings suggest four constructions oriented to negativity: prostitution/commodification of sex, abuse of underage for sexual satisfaction, maltreatment of others for huge labour, dismembering of humans for occultism and health-assurance. Participants deployed role allocation, nominalisation, and others to negatively evaluate human traffickers, especially as economic usurpers, exploiters, and fraudsters, while the traffick-victims were represented as naïve, non-violent, armless, defenceless and (in)active recipients of the activities of the human traffickers. The dominant negative constructs manifested implicitly and explicitly through tagging, negative comparison, appeal to sentimentalities, and expression of detest, while the positive constructs of victims manifested through pity and appeal to humanity. Online participants attack the political class, and declare their ideological stances on human traffickers in Nigeria, making efforts to project suppressed stances.Item Problematising migration: news discourses in Nigerian newspaper(English Scholars' Association of Nigeria (ESAN), 2025) Osisanwo, A.; Oluwayemi, V.This paper examines how migration is problematised in Nigerian newspapers by identifying and discussing discursive issues and linguistic devices deployed in news discourses, drawing its data from five Nigerian newspapers. Employing theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis, Nigerian news discourses problematise migration through four discursive issues of poverty, unemployment, security and immigration. The discursive issues provide the basis for Western-driven migration and uncover migrants’ experiences in their countries of destination. The paper reveals that Nigerian newspapers give prominence to negative news reportage of migration to discourage potential migrants from irregular migration while resisting the anti-immigration policies of powerful countries.Item Security challenge in Nigeria is war:metaphorical constructions in selected Nigerian newspaper editorials(Academic Publishing Centre, 2025) Osisanwo, A.This study is designed to investigate how insecurity and connected challenges are metaphorically conceptualised in Nigerian newspapers as war, hunting, natural disasters (water and fire), economy, farming, game and purification. Following the instances of the use of metaphoric expressions in the selected Nigerian newspaper editorials on the insecurity issues in Nigeria, the study reveals that insecurity is represented as a challenge, expressed through seven salient metaphors. Security challenge is constructed as war (53.5%) through war metaphors like weapon, bloodbath to portray Nigeria as a battlefield; hunting (12.1%) through hunting metaphors like captive, target; natural disaster (11.7%) through water and fire metaphors like flow, awash; engulf, extinguish; economy (10.6%) through economy metaphors like gains, cheap; game (4.8%) through game metaphors like tackle, league; farming (4.4%) through farming metaphors like plant, fish; and purification (2.9%) through cleansing metaphors like wipe out, flush out. The seven metaphors unearthed in this paper suggest the endless destruction of people, property and communities in Nigeria by the insecurity actors, while the game and purification metaphors suggest the need for the government to tackle and wipe out the insecurity actors.Item Us and them(John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2026) Osisanwo, A.; Oji, R.K.#EndSARS protest started publicly on October 8, 2020, with teeming Nigerian youths moving from one location to the other to press home their demands, protesting police brutality among others. The protesters, especially those in Lagos, chose the Lekki Toll Gate as their protest base. The protest protracted across the country until October 20, 2020, when there were alleged shootings at the Lekki location by men in uniform believed to be from the Nigerian army. The protest and the shooting generated controversies, with the international community lending their voice to condemn the act. Existing studies on protests in Nigeria have examined #fuel fees must fall, Biafra protest, and so forth. Yet, studies have not adequately examined the #EndSARS-induced Lekki shooting. Its critical examination can confirm or refute the existing claims on protest discourse. This study, therefore, examines the newspaper narratives on the October 20 #EndSARS shooting at Lekki Toll Gate, to identify the deployed discourse issues, the pragmatic acts, identities and ideological polarisations in the discourses. Using aspects of van Dijk's model of critical discourse analysis, Mey's pragmatics acts and Voyant Tools, related narratives from two widely read Nigerian newspapers: Punch and Leadership revealed two broad ideological polarisations (US vs THEM) and four sub-categorisations of ideological discourse structure: actor description, argument, activity and goal description, and discourse strategies, and different pragmatic acts.Item Metaphorical constructs and semiotic expressions in the BBC Yoruba Internet memes of English Premier League match results(De Gruyter Brill, 2024) Osisanwo, A.; Alugbin, M.This paper explores the deployment of metaphors in the BBC Yorubamedium football results of the English Premier League, examining how cultural metaphorical choices shape meaning in online sport discourse. Through a discourse analysis of Yoruba-medium football results, the study reveals how metaphors drawn from Yoruba cultural milieu and everyday life are used to create vivid descriptions of game events, players, and teams. The study relies on Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory, complemented by Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic approach to multimodality. Findings reveal that metaphors describe game events, teams, and players, thus, framing the contest in unique and evocative manners, drawing on cultural and shared knowledge to shape the understanding of the game in an adversarial sense. This study, therefore, argues that metaphors are deployed to convey deeper cultural meanings and values, and add creativity to match results. The findings point to the role of language and culture in shaping the experiences of football fandom in sports and media.Item Pentecostal voices and discourse perspectives to LGBTQ+ narratives in Nigeria(Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2024) Osisanwo, A.; Alugbin, M.The conformist and dissenting religious voices with various social classificatory paradigms on LGBTQ+ issues have further complicated the association between the West and others in sub- Saharan Africa. Religious leaders from the West and those of African extraction seem to already hold divergent opinions on the issue. This paper investigates Pentecostal voices and discourse perspectives of selected foremost pastors on LGBTQ+ narratives within the Nigerian space. Data were retrieved from the online versions of three widely circulated newspapers: Vanguard, The Nation, and Daily Post, focusing on the represented stances and voices of four Nigerian pastors with the largest membership within and outside the Nigerian space. The study employed a systematic approach to collect and analyse news reports, considering factors such as the pastors’ stances, sentiments conveyed, and engagement with LGBTQ-related topics. Nigerian Pentecostal pastors align their stances with foundational religious principles and embrace belief systems that shape human existence. Pentecostal pastors’ rhetoric condemns LGBTQ identities and relationships, framing them as a threat to traditional values, natural order and God’s will, which are perceived as being undermined by modern, Western influences.Item “IT’s the Devil”: responsibility allocation And negotiations In police-suspect interrogations In Ibadan, Nigeria(Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Osisanwo, A.; Adegbosin, O.Suspects employ diverse strategies to take or deny the responsibility of committing a particular crime for which they are interrogated. This paper examined how responsibilities are negotiated, to identify the strategies used to responsibilise and deresponsibilise crimes. Levinson’s Activity type and Caffi’s concepts of responsibilisation and deresponsibilisation serve as the theoretical anchors for the study. Interrogation sessions which included different case types were conducted at the Oyo State Criminal Investigation Department, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Nine strategies for (de)responsibilisation and six speech acts were identified. Suspects (de)responsibilise during interrogation to achieve personal goals of accepting or rejecting culpability.Item Impoliteness and the artefacts of satirical discourse in Pius Adesanmi’s Naija No Dey Carry Last(Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Osisanwo, A.; Adedayo, V.Within the Nigerian socio-political space, satire has been the melting pot of socio-political criticisms. Previous related studies have interrogated satire as manifested in different genres of literature. However, there is a dearth of studies on the manifestation of satire in essay-oriented expressions, especially from a discoursepragmatics outlook. This study, therefore, explores impoliteness strategies in Nigerian satirical discourse. With data retrieved from Pius Adesanmi’s Naija No Dey Carry Last, the study is guided by Culpeper’s taxonomy of impoliteness to analyse satirical commentaries from the text. Findings revealed that Adesanmi deploys different discursive strategies to communicate impoliteness. Four impoliteness strategies were realised through eight discursive strategies. These strategies are metaphorisation, negativisation, animated dialogue, animated biblical narrative, patronisation, insincere appellation, inappropriate identification, and deresponsibilisation. These strategies foreground impoliteness within the larger discourse of satire.Item "Coronavirus is enemy, formidable and opportunistic”: Pragmatic acts in selected Covid-19 political speeches in Nigeria(De Gruyter Brill, 2025) Osisanwo, A.; Abidoye, O.Political speeches are fundamental instruments used by political officeholders to address pressing social and political issues. Existing works on Nigerian political speeches regarding COVID-19 have primarily focused on the speeches of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, with limited attention paid to the COVID-19 speeches of other notable Nigerian politicians. This study, therefore, examines pragmatic acts of persuasion in selected COVID-19 political speeches of Governor Babatunde Sanwo-Olu (GBS), Dr Osagie Ehanire (DOE) and Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (PYO) on COVID-19 precautionary measures. The qualitative analysis of the data was supported by the theoretical principles of Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts. Data were purposively selected because of their significance to the study’s aim and objectives. While PYO’s speech was retrieved from his website on https://www.yemiosin bajo.ng, GBS’s speech was accessed on the Facebook page of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development (MPPUD), Lagos State. DOE’s speech was retrieved from YouTube and was later transcribed for ease of analysis. Data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Seven practs were identified in the COVID-19 speeches: assuring, advising, pleading, reporting, informing, appreciating and stating. These practs were used to strengthen listeners’ conviction, emphasise proactiveness, show exigency, encourage alertness, create awareness, sustain moral values, and spell out the reality of COVID-19, respectively. The pragmatic resources of speech act, inference (INF), reference (REF), relevance (REL), metaphor (M), shared situation knowledge SSK) and shared cultural knowledge (SCK) were utilised by the political actors to solicit compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures by Nigerian citizens.