Appraisal Resources in Cyberspace Discourse on Capital Punishment and Corruption

Discourses on the public agitation to codify capital punishment for corrupt Nigerian officials are growing in cyberspace thus opening up the subject for scholarly investigation. This study, therefore, examines cyber citizens’ use of language in constructing their attitudes to the agitation, with a view to analysing dominant ideologies embedded in the discourses. Data for the study, downloaded from Nairaland forum, comprise six hundred comments from ten threads on the anti-corruption clamour. The data is subjected to qualitative analysis hinged on the appraisal theory. The study’s findings reveal upscaled lexicalised judgements of negative normality, tenacity, propriety and veracity towards not just Nigerian political elites, but also towards the Nigerian populace. The lexemes invoke the ideologies of ‘sharing the national cake’ and ‘eat yours, and let me eat mine’ embedded in Nigerians’ psyche that make all Nigerians culpable of corruption. ‘Death anxiety’ associated with capital punishment is thus promoted as the most potent affective ‘fear culture’ capable of taming corruption in corrupt individuals and societies.