Abstract:
Child vulnerability which involves the susceptibility of a child to abuse can spring from
the interface of harmful sociocognitive factors, evident in the discourse of Anti Human
Trafficking and Child Protection Unit (AHTU) of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence
Corps (NSCDC). Previous linguistic studies on child vulnerability focused mainly on the
syntactic, semantic and sociolinguistic perspectives of interactions between security
agencies and survivors/suspects. However, little attention was devoted to pragmatic
perspectives on interactions of child vulnerability. This study was, therefore, designed to
investigate the narrative structure and identity construction in the Oyo State Command of
the NSCDC, with a view to capturing the context types, narrative structure and role identity
in the interactions.
William Labov’s Narrative Theory, complemented by Stephen Levinson’s notion of
context and M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan’s model of Contextual Configuration,
served as the framework. The descriptive design was adopted. The Oyo State Command of
NSCDC was purposively selected because of easy accessibility to participants. Four
officers of AHTU NSCDC and 53 child survivors of abuse between ages 5 and 17 years
were purposively sampled because of their availability and suitability. Fifty-three sessions
of interactions between officers of NSCDC and child survivors of abuse were audiorecorded. The data were subjected to pragmatic analysis.
The discourse was marked by two types of macro context: social context and cognitive
context. The social context demonstrated the evocation of dereliction and destitution. The
cognitive context projected four intensifying factors of abuse, namely age, poverty, naivety
and dependence; and four protractive factors, namely impuissance, stealth, intimidation
and seclusion. Both context types were marked by anaphoric and cataphoric references
projecting the children’s abusive experiences. The use of reference was evident in the use
of person, time and spatial deixis mostly, against the sparing use of discourse deixis,
suggesting injured memory of the children. The narrative structure featured Abstract (A),
Evaluation (E) and Coda (C) as optional elements, while Orientation (O), Complicating
Action (CA) and Resolution (R) were obligatory, with the catalogue: (A.) ^ O. ^ {CA. ^
[(E.)} ^ (R.) ^ (C)]. The role identity types were institutional and ad hoc. Both identity
types featured Greeting (G), Identity Presentation (IP), Narrative Evasion (NE), Trust
Establishment (TE), Participants Relationship (PR), Action Presentation (AP), Narrative
Alignment (NA), Appraisal (A) and Closing (C). The generic structure catalogues evident
in institutional and ad hoc role identity types were
[G^IP.]^NI^{NP.^(PR.)}^[(NA)^(A)^(C)] and
[G^IP^NE.]^(TE)^{PR.^AP.}^[(NA)^(A)], respectively. Institutional roles showed
officers as interrogators, who inquired and probed, and investigators, who censured and
indicted. Children, in their role as responders, recounted and answered; and as relators,
they clarified and defended. For the ad hoc role, the officers acted as confidants,
encouraging and assuring; while the children acted as confessants, revealing the details of
abusive events.
The interactions of officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps with child
survivors of abuse capture the interface of the Nigerian social structure and child
exploitation.
