No abstract

Coronavirus popularly known as COVID-19 is a pandemic that stormed the globe and rendered strong nations helpless and even the world powers, powerless. Initially, the Nigerian government was reluctant to put measures in place or lock its borders until a returnee was diagnosed after he had infected some people. This necessitated several measures including total lockdown, social distancing and improved personal hygiene to forestall its spread. Moreover, Nigerians believe that the state of the nation is even worse than this pandemic and, thus, have developed mastery, especially via satire in weathering any kind of storm. It is therefore, not surprising that the Facebook has become a veritable platform where Nigerians evoke humour while exposing human foibles in their linguistic disposition, with the intention to improve the society. This study, therefore, examined the satirical devices in the Facebook posts of Nigerians with the aim of teasing out the ideologies portrayed in relation to the existing social, economic and political attitude of the people towards the pandemic. Consequently, 22 Facebook posts were purposively selected for analysis, drawing input from Horatian’s approach to satire and Fairclough’s (1995) sociocultural approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis reveals various satirical elements deployed as a subtle and effective alternative to contest power abuse, social injustice and propagate change. The study also reveals the wittiness and absurdity of satire that makes it a ready tool to unbridle people’s feelings; laden with different ideologies with the aim of relaxing tension and catalysing transformation in the society. Moreover, the import of weathering the storm becomes bare as an essential make-up of Nigerians; the tinge of humour intended in the posts relieves perceived tension and reminds the readers to take life easy, thus, making the study quite engaging.

There have been few stand-alone linguistic studies on the Covid-19 virus and the 2020 EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The present study intersects these two critical events with particular focus on the political claims made by the ruling class and the corresponding social responses in line with the contextual affordances shared by the participants. Searle’s speech act theoretic approach is adopted to analyse the pragmatic intentions of the illocutionary acts which political claims perform while Juvenalian satire is used to discuss the satirical elements embedded in the social responses in a bid to ridicule leadership follies and abuses. Three popular Nigerian online Newspapers and few comments from Facebook are selected for this study. Their selection is based on their coverage of these events, coverage of these political claims and popular readership evidenced in the social responses. In all, a total of 6 political claims and 25 social responses relevant to this study are analysed. The study revealed that the pragmatic relevance of these claims is embedded in its political functions of wielding undue influence over the populace, making promises driven by rhetoric and short of initiative and calculated reticence in response to social issues. Consequently, the social responses highlight and criticise leadership vices and the weak efforts of the government in dispensing its leadership interventions. It also fulfils communicative purposes of the contextual space, promote solidarity among the people while prompting change in the political class and the society at large.