Rhetorical Strategies and Appraisal Markers in Online Civic Engagement of the Yoruba Nation Secessionist Agitation on Nairaland

Abstract

This study examines rhetorical strategies and appraisal markers in the engagement of the Yoruba Nation (YN) secessionist agitation in Nairaland. Adopting the appraisal framework and Fairclough’s notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity as a theoretical anchorage, analysis unveils historical and biblical allusion, proverbs and adages, rhetorical questions, code alternation and pidgin as prominent rhetorical practices and intertextual and interdiscursive resources that index cognitive positioning and ideological evaluations of the agitation and related social actors. While the anti-YN participants express negativity and ideological dissociation from the secessionist course, the pro-YN participants express positivity, solidarity and ideological alignment with the separatist agitation. As the secessionist movement generates concerns about ethnic synergy and national integration, participants take advantage of a heterogeneous virtual space to influence other online participants’ ideological positions on whether to sustain patriotic spirit to strive continually towards Nigeria’s nationhood or to join the vociferous call for the nation’s geo-ethnic dismemberment and ultimately secession.