Discursive Strategies for Discourse Representations of ASUU-FGN Impasse in Nigerian Newspapers

This study provided discursive strategies which Nigerian newspapers employed to convey information about ASUU-FGN impasse to the news consumers. The discursive strategies succeeded in allotting discourse representations to ASUU and FGN in both positive and negative representations. The data for the study were collected from five Nigerian newspapers: Leadership, Punch, The Guardian, The Nation and Vanguard. The researcher selected one hundred published articles about ASUU-FGN impasse in the month of June, 2024 when the industrial disharmony between the two parties was hot. The researcher purposively sampled one hundred and thirteen data from ten randomly selected articles out of the one hundred published articles for the analysis. The researcher used Van Dijk's (2006) Socio-Cognitive Model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data. The study revealed that ASUU and FGN were represented with discursive strategies with their percentage: victimisation (23%), abuse (16%), populism (13%), euphemism (12%), counterfeit (10%), consensus (9%), dramatisation (7%), metaphor (6%), disclaimer (3%), and comparison (1%). ASUU was represented as threatener (The Nation, Punch, Vanguard). sufferer (The Nation, Punch) advocate (Leadership, Punch), slammer (Vanguard), troublesome (The Nation), striker (Punch), observer (Leadership, Punch), teacher of unemployable graduates (Punch), greed (The Nation), warner (Leadership), peacemaker (The Guardian), informer (The Guardian), protester (Vanguard), the oppressed (Punch), slacker (Punch), liar (Punch). FGN was represented as renegade (Punch, The Nation), filibuster (The Guardian), oppressor (The Guardian), abandoner (Leadership), breacher (Leadership), proliferator (Vanguard), and dictator (Punch). The study concluded that naming calling arises where conflicts exists. The study therefore recommended that the two parties should imbibe ideas of honouring agreement to allow name calling cease and peace reign.