ABSTRACT
This study examined and evaluated the manner in which the social actors in the movie series, ‘The Men’s Club’, negotiated their identities and how they deployed certain linguistic strategies to produce interpersonal effects in order to create and sustain their relationships. The study also examined how these linguistic strategies – mitigating devices, terms of respect and deference, swearing and humour are used to negotiate the identities of the actors which are often emergent and largely co-constructed.
The data for the study comprised the thirty-six episodes of the three seasons of ‘The Men’s Club’ which were collected from YouTube and transcribed using Rodney Jones five stages of entextualisation – framing, selection, summarization, resemiotizing and positioning. Only context related to the linguistic strategies and identity negotiations were selected and transcribed into text, thus enabling the analysis of the text. The choice of the data used was based on the fact that the major actors were selected to represent the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, and also because the movie series is rich when in terms of usage of the linguistic strategies for interpersonal effects. Interpersonal pragmatics coupled with the theory of identity was employed to analyze the data.
The findings of this study showed that swear words drawn from English Language, Nigerian languages and the Nigerian Pidgin such as dodoyo, daft, heck, knacking, bloody and so on are used to construct, define and display social actors’ identity. They are also used to express euphemism, disbelief, conviction and anger. It also showed that in the Nigerian context, the Nigerian Pidgins abeg, look and see function as mitigating devices. Furthermore, it also found that humour is context-sensitive as it is a means of establishing and perpetuating shared values and mutual friendliness which sustain interpersonal interactions. Again linguistic items such as oga, baba, and papa, showing deference and respect have the interpersonal effects of pacifying, esteeming, displaying social status and honouring social actors in interaction.
