Department: Linguistics African and European Languages
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1
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Boko Haram’s Violent Extremism
One of the observed attributes of language is the way in which it is structured in discourse to project a group’s identity. The implication is that a group’s behaviour can be predicted by studying the patterns of language emanating from it. This paper utilizes the methodological procedure of Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the nature of the Boko Haram sect’s violent extremism as a linguistic behaviour. Its theoretical framework is a fusion of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and van Dijk and Fairclough’s Theory of Sociocognition. The analysis adopts a qualitative method in order to facilitate the classification of the basic issues in the data for text analysis into categories that make for easy analysis. The data for our analysis were derived from intermittently released video messages by the group on various online platforms. Eleven samples from nine speeches were selected and translated for analysis. The analysis involves the description, interpretation and explanation of selected aspects of the discourse events over a six year period from 2009 to early 2015. At the ideological level, the paper finds that Boko Haram’s violence is framed by two themes: an exclusivist claim to represent true Islam and grievances against the state and non-members of the sect. The paper concludes that discourse events remain viable sites for decoding predictable practices by groups.
Key words: Critical Discourse Analysis, Boko Haram, violent extremism, discourse
