HATE SPEECHES AND POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN SELECTED TALKS OF FACEBOOK USERS AGAINST NIGERIA’S PUBLIC OFFICERS’ INSENSITIVITY

Abstract

This work examines Hate Speeches, their motivating factors, and
politeness strategies in selected talks of Nigeria’s Facebook users.
Data were collected through purposive sampling of selected
Nigerian Facebook users’ comments, using an Android Phone,
during the outbreak of Covid-19. Utilising Locher and Watts’s
(2005) Relational Theory as Framework, the data were subjected to
content analysis. Insensitivity of the Nigerian public office holders
to the plight of the Masses have been identified as the key factor that
triggered the hate speeches. The data further reveal three different
manifestations of insensitive acts by Nigerian public officers:
devilish act, infrastructural neglect and inordinate accumulation of
wealth, and marked by impoliteness features. Hate Speeches in
Selected Talks of Nigerian Facebook Users are influenced by a
shared perception of the insensitivity of Nigerian public officers to
the plight of the citizens in the discourse. Thus, there is a close link
between the hate speeches, their motivating factors and the
politeness features indexing them, the understanding of which
provide access to viable information about the feelings of Nigerians
to the insensitive acts of their leaders, which are capable of
redirecting them to good governance.