Tomorrow May Not Be Yours: Military Slang and Jargon as Linguistic Performance in Nigeria

Uwen, God’sgift Ogban; Mensah, Eyo

doi:10.1080/10228195.2022.2122540

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The generic address terms were used discursively for the ideological construction of power and dominance which masculinity propagates. It is established that these sorts of masculine terms ascribe power and authority to social superiors and establish a sense of hierarchy and inequality because everyone is not licenced to use them reciprocally given the sense of hierarchy in the Army (Uwen and Mensah, 2022). In the same vein, the generic boy(s) as used by the Army to address male and female subordinate personnel, showed aspects of the regimented linguistic norms used among participants to construct masculine identity, subordination, controlled regimentation and indexation of social distance during interactions.…”

Section: Use Of Masculine Address Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nigerian Army here, regimentally conceives masculinity as a symbolic attribute of male ruggedness, courage, and perseverance as ideologies that index the power dynamics that exist between soldiers and civilians. This is because the indexical features and ideologies of the Nigerian Army language practices are significant in the creation of a military persona and their inherent social beings (Uwen and Mensah, 2022). The choice of the heroic male persona in the tributes that form the formal discourses in funerals of members conventionally constructs the ideologies in the Army's language practices.…”

Section: Masculinisation Of Dead Personnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Officers and men and fallen heroes: The discursive construction of regimented masculinity in the Nigerian Army

Uwen,

Alruwaili

2024

Forum Linguist. Stud.

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This paper examines the use of gendered language in the Nigerian Army’s community of practice through the application of insights from language ideology and theory of masculinity. Data were generated by means of participant observation and semi-structured interviews in a one-year fieldwork involving representative sample of 18 personnel of the 6 Battalion, Ibawa and 2 Brigade, Uyo, both in Akwa Ibom State in South-eastern Nigeria. The findings show that the Nigerian Army maintains institutional gendered language practices used among its personnel in regimented functions and social events. The gendered registers occur in the soldiers’ generic use of male address terms, adaptation to male-coded voice pattern in parades, masculinisation of Army’s workout songs, and the subordination of femininity in institutional associations, all combined to construct the regimented and performative masculinisation of the profession. This practice is observed to be informed by the numerical domination of men in the profession that was originally perceived as males’; a conception that has shaped the linguistic ideology and performance of the Nigerian Army to rehearse masculine orientations. It is however recommended that the Army’s language practices should capture modern ideals of a gender sensitive world that connect to the clamour for gender equality and equal social belonging through the inclusion of feminine linguistic markers in workplaces.

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Section: Use Of Masculine Address Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Masculinisation Of Dead Personnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Officers and men and fallen heroes: The discursive construction of regimented masculinity in the Nigerian Army

Uwen,

Alruwaili

2024

Forum Linguist. Stud.

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“…The linguistic choices that express this stance and ascribe intelligence identity were derived from the participants' CofP. Uwen and Mensah [60] also demonstrate that such choices aim to exclude 'outsiders' from the vocabulary of identity that is prevalent in this community of practice. Stance here, is sufficiently established by the involvement of the stancetakers, the object of stance and stancetakers' position drawn from their knowledge of, and experiences in sexual relationships within the University social context.…”

Section: Love Induced By Good Academic Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Language use as stancetaking on motivations for romantic relationships among female undergraduates

Uwen,

Melefa,

O’Neill

2024

Environ. Soc. Psychol.

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This paper explores motivations for love as stancetaking in the discourse on romantic relationships among female undergraduates in two Universities in Southern Nigeria. Insights from Community of Practice and Appraisal Theory were used to instantiate the use of situated linguistic choices to establish the different impulses for female undergraduates’ engagement in heterosexual relationships. Data for the study were generated through (non)participant observation, informal interactions and semi-structured interviews involving a representative sample of 44 female undergraduates. The findings show that the participants utilised youth culture of sexual expressiveness to establish their motivations for love, cognitively construed as stancetaking on romantic relationships with their male sexual partners. Participants’ language use shows that the female students’ motivations for loving their male sexual partners include: high sexual performance, good academic performance, financial benefits, intention to get married in future, access to power and security, and physical attractiveness. This study, aside from establishing the increasing practice of heterosexual relationships among Nigerian university undergraduates, has also presented participants’ motivations for sexual the practices as the girls’ peculiar sexual narrations of their worldview. This also shows the creation of situated linguistic choices as outcome of ‘new’ youth expressive culture as demonstrated in the discourse of their sexual relationships and experience within the liberal university environment.

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“…They are also used to enact inclusion and exclusion, thus to keep social "outsiders" from knowing some elements of a group's internal communication. Uwen and Mensah (2022) argue that both are symbolic linguistic resources which can be manipulated to serve specific group interests. Military jargon and slang are integral components of the linguistic exigencies devised by, and used for in-group communication, tactical operations, and strategic activities of militaries globally.…”

Section: Literature Review Jargon and Slang In The Militarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Jargon and slang in the Nigerian Army are considered to make communication especially at the informal level more efficient; enhance solidarity and facilitate inclusion and exclusion. Uwen and Mensah (2022) propose that such language use sustains meaningful relationship between personnel, and provides a site to sanction the creativity of language. Access to the regimented environment of the army community of practice is usually an impediment to researchers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It's better to die before dishonour: Linguistic creativity and the negotiation of meaning in the Nigerian Army community of practice

Mensah,

Oreoluwa,

Ebong

et al. 2024

Forum Linguist. Stud.

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This article investigates emblematic language use and the negotiation of meaning with particular emphasis on generative mechanisms like jargon and slang in two Nigerian Army barracks in Calabar municipality, Cross River State, south-eastern Nigeria. The study is anchored in a linguistic ideology framework which is grounded in beliefs and values people have towards explicit and implicit language use in a particular communicative context. Drawing on qualitative ethnographic data sourced through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 30 participants who were purposively sampled, the authors argue that jargon and slang are indexical linguistic resources that enable military personnel to create diverse new meanings in the informal linguistic ecology of the army. We conclude that beyond helping to create a new linguistic convention in the barracks, jargon and slang also facilitate the construction of professional identity, enact inclusion/exclusion and sustain dominant values and professional ethos. The study focuses on ways of interpreting the specificity of the military world and the reality of dominance through the prism of these linguistic specimens. Jargon and slang, therefore, offer a firmer lens to appreciate the army’s social universe and subjectivities, and more broadly to enhance an understanding of contextually embedded social practices in the military.

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Tomorrow May Not Be Yours: Military Slang and Jargon as Linguistic Performance in Nigeria

Cited by 3 publications

References 31 publications

Officers and men and fallen heroes: The discursive construction of regimented masculinity in the Nigerian Army

Officers and men and fallen heroes: The discursive construction of regimented masculinity in the Nigerian Army

Language use as stancetaking on motivations for romantic relationships among female undergraduates

It's better to die before dishonour: Linguistic creativity and the negotiation of meaning in the Nigerian Army community of practice

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