DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION AND IDEOLOGY IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER REPORTS ON MIGRATION,

Abstract

Discourse representations ascribed to social actors unveil ideological orientations in newspaper reports on migration. Previous studies on migration have explored sociolinguistic, media and literary issues, with little attention paid to how discourse is used to represent social actors and convey ideologies in newspaper reportage of migration in Nigeria. This study was, therefore, designed to examine discourse representations in selected Nigerian newspaper reports on migration, in order to account for discourse issues, linguistic devices, pragmatic acts, social actors’ representations and ideologies in the reportage. Teun van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, complemented by M. A. K. Halliday’s Transitivity System of Systemic Functional Grammar and Theo van Leeuwen’s Representation of Social Actors, served as the framework. The interpretive design was adopted. Six Nigerian newspapers, which extensively reported migration news, were selected using quota sampling. Four were from the Lagos/Ibadan axis (Punch, The Guardian (TG), The Nation (TN) and The Sun (TS)) and two from the Kaduna axis (Daily Trust (DT) and Leadership). Purposive sampling was used to select 120 newspaper reports published between 2015 and 2021 on migration―20 from each newspaper. The data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Five discourse issues (DIs) were identified: security (DT, TN, TS, Leadership and Punch), human trafficking (DT, TG, TN, TS and Punch), poverty (TG, TN, TS and Punch), unemployment (DT, TN and Punch) and immigration (TN, Leadership and Punch). Five linguistic devices characterised the DIs: verbal, material, mental, relational and existential processes. Verbal, material and mental processes typified security, immigration and human trafficking, while relational and existential processes characterised poverty and unemployment. The DIs featured nine practs: conscientising, advising, informing, indicting, rebuking, warning, supporting, accusing and denying. Conscientising, advising and informing were foregrounded in security, immigration and human trafficking; indicting and rebuking in poverty and human trafficking; warning and supporting in immigration; and accusing and denying in human trafficking. The DIs and practs projected five social actors’ representations: leaders as guardians (LG), leaders as culprits (LC), migrants as criminals (MC), migrants as victims (MV) and youths as ignoramuses (YI). The only positive representation was LG (DT and Leadership). The negative representations were LC (DT, TG, TS and Punch), MC (DT, TS, TN, Punch and Leadership), MV (TG, Leadership and Punch) and YI (TG and Leadership). While LG presented self as foresighted in addressing security challenges, LC blamed leaders for the socioeconomic woes of Nigeria; MC represented crimes as migrants’ survival strategy; MV uncovered unpalatable experiences of Nigerians abroad; and YI depicted ignorance of life abroad as trigger of irregular migration. Four ideologies, conveyed in the representations of social actors, were nationalism (TS, Leadership and Punch), anti-racism (DT, TS and Punch), humanitarianism (TS, TN and Punch) and anti-despotism (TG). Nationalism embodied allegiance to one’s country. Antiracism protested inhuman treatments of Nigerians abroad. Humanitarianism argued for migrants’ humanity, while anti-despotism decried leadership irresponsibility. The selected Nigerian newspaper reports published in 2015-2021 represent migration as socioeconomically engendered through dominant negative discourse representations and ideologies.