RHETORICAL ORIENTATION AND STYLE IN THE REPRESENTATIONS OF TERROR IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER REPORTS ON BOKO HARAM

Abstract

Rhetoric, an act of persuasion, largely influences news producers’ attitude and style in reporting. Previous linguistic studies on media and terrorism in the Nigerian context have examined news at the structural and generative levels, without adequately exploring the rhetorical dimensions and style of reports on terrorism. Reporters’ rhetorical postures and strategies in the representations of Boko Haram activities were examined, with a view to establishing the persuasive functions of the Nigerian newspaper reports. Aristotelian Rhetoric, M.A.K. Halliday’s Transitivity and Harrison’s approach to the Representational Meta-function were adopted as framework. Interpretive design was used. Sixty newspaper reports were purposively selected from six randomly selected widely read newspapers: the Daily Trust (DT – 36), Weekly Trust (WT – three), Leadership (five), The Nation (TN – eight), Daily Sun (DS – six) and The Guardian (TG – two). These were published between 2010 and 2015, a period marked by high incidence of acts of terrorism. Data were subjected to critical stylistic analysis. Three Aristotelian rhetorical strategies of pathos-building (PBS), ethos-building (EBS) and logos-building (LBS) featured prominently in the representations of Boko Haram activities in the reports. The PBS was manifest in news producers’ ability to create rhetoric aimed at arousing pity. The DT and WT deployed PBS to blackmail the government on the fight against terrorism; Leadership, TN, DS and TG used PBS to describe the tactics deployed by terror perpetrators. The EBS portrayed reporters’ credibility, factuality and precision in Leadership, TN, DS and TG. The LBS persuaded the reader through the 5ws and h (what, when, where, who, why and how). A two-fold rhetorical style was identified: explanatory-exposition and argumentative-exposition. The explanatory-exposition explained the mindset of the perpetrators and the victims of attack; time, location, reason, manner and the resulting situatioSSn of the attack. Three Process types characterised by explanatory-exposition, namely mental, material and behavioural, activated the Subjects – Boko Haram, gunmen and suicide bombers in DT and WT. Government’s efforts were described in two ways: as not being enough to combat terrorist activities (DT and WT), and as being sabotaged by members of the public who interfered with terror scenes and the processes of investigation (Leadership, TN, DS, and TG). Female terrorists were framed through cultural and gender clichés as conduits of terrorism in DT and TN. The argumentative-exposition portrayed reporters’ rhetorical attitudes through nine tropes: metaphors, numbers, metonymy, amplification, hyperbole, epizuexis, epithet, allusion and apposition. Metaphors such as “guerrilla warfare” (DT) and “just the way people slaughter goats” (TN) mapped as thought and behaviour were used to portray reporters’ sympathy towards terrorists and victims, respectively. Other tropes, expressed verbally and nonverbally (via images), created a textual universe of deception, insecurity, power relations and gender frames. Visuals of attacks and bomb scenes were complemented with linguistic messages which affirmed reporters’ highly persuasive attempts to describe terror incidents. Rhetorical strategies of pathos, ethos and logos, complemented by tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, amplification, hyperbole, epizuexis and apposition, were deployed to persuade, appeal to and influence readers, as reflected in the reporters’ attitudes towards Boko Haram operations.