Delegitimisation through Evaluation: Discursive Appraisal of the National Grazing Reserve Bill in Online Media Discourse

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Authors

  • Onwu Inya
  • T. Blessing
This chapter investigates delegitimisation strategies employed by writers of online news articles for questioning the legitimacy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill, which was intended as a legislative solution to the frequent farmer-herders conflict in Nigeria. Specifically, the chapter focuses on delegitimisation as executed through evaluation resources in APPRAISAL framework (Martin & White, 2005, White, 2011). The central argument pursued in this chapter is that through text producers’ evaluative stances, they are able to delegitimise the Grazing Bill and construct the sponsors and supporters of the Bill as the out-group with negative goals, and the text producers as members of the in-group, whose goals are thus threatened (cf. Bar-Tal, 1990:67).
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationStudies in Media and Ideological Representation of Herders/Farmers' Conflict in Nigeria
Number of pages26
PublisherMalthouse Press Limited
Publication date2022
Pages65 - 90
Publication statusPublished - 2022