DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED HATE SPEECHES AGAINST PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI

Abstract

Politics has been part of every society since the beginning of man's civilization. Speeches at every circumstance are geared towards explaining, persuading, amusing, informing or influencing ideas. The link between language and politics has long been recognized. In every political dispensation of every human society, politicians and political players usually resort to hate speeches. In the course of doing this, there might be issues of misinterpretation. This paper investigates social media politics and hate speeches against President Muhammadu Buhari. The population of the study consists of Nigerians and international communities. The data analysed were taken from 2014 to 2023. The source of data for this study is the social media (Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and also the print media.  The participants cut across different categories of people who in some cases are not necessarily or directly the hate speakers. The study was conducted using qualitative descriptive design in order to describe the hate speeches on social media against President Buhari. The Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) perspective of Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) formed the basis for the analysis. In this paper, ten hate speeches were selected and analysed. It was found that the forms of the hate speech which manifested in the data are: accusation, insult defamation, blasphemy, slander, provocation, incitement and distribution of fake news. The findings also show that the hate speeches against President Muhammadu Buhari have great impact on his personality and government. The study recommends the need to educate the public about the negative effects of hate speech and the need to promote a culture of tolerance and respect. This will help to reduce the prevalence of hate speech in the society.