DISCOURSE STRATEGIES IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS’ NARRATIVES IN IBADAN METROPOLIS

Abstract

While scholarly and public attention to domestic violence in Nigeria has grown considerably in recent years, limited research has examined the linguistic mechanisms through which victims construct, negotiate, and legitimise their experiences. This study, therefore, investigates the discursive strategies deployed in written narratives of domestic violence by victims in Ibadan metropolis. Drawing on van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, sixty-four (64) purposively selected narratives from an online textual survey were analysed. The study identifies seven recurrent strategies: hedging and mitigation,
passivization, pronoun shifting, metaphorical framing, polarization, negative labelling, and evidentiality. The findings reveal that these strategies are not merely stylistic features but function as discursive resources through which victims manage stigma, attribute responsibility, construct credibility, and negotiate identity within prevailing socio-cultural norms.