**1. Introduction**

The Nigerian government, in 2014, enacted the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill (SSMPA), which prohibits marriage or civil union by persons of the same sex, the solemnization of such marriage in places of worship and the registration of homosexual clubs and societies. The law does not just forbid same-sex relations, but also whoever abets it in any way. As a result of this, Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people are often victims of arbitrary arrest, torture, extortion, and other grave human rights violations. For example, in 2018, The Initiative for Equal Rights and other organizations' reports show 213 human rights violations based on real or perceived sexual orientation in Nigeria. The Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) was immediately followed by high levels of violence, including mob attacks, arbitrary arrests, detention, and extortion of LGBT people by some police officers and members of the public [1].

However, as Nigeria continues to be homophobic, mainly due to cultural and religious conventions, Nigerian sexual minorities have taken to different social media platforms to build online communities, express themselves, relate with other members, find emotional and financial support, and construct their identities. Many sexual minority individuals report several purposes for internet use including creating a positive identity, finding support, and fostering a sense of community [2–4]. Twitter is one such social media platform that has provided a safe place for the LGBT community. With an annual growth rate of 4.4%, Twitter has evolved to become a very successful microblogging site in Nigeria, accounting for about 1.75 million users. Communities with a common interest are formed online. Eve [5], for instance, acknowledges that online social networking media constitute domains where everyone, including the non-elite, can engage in sociopolitical advocacies and activism, toward having real-world implications and changing their social realities. Specifically within the context of amplifying queer voices, [6] has argued that cyberspace is increasingly deployed by users to represent *gay* as an identity and cultural signifier. Many campaigns were initiated in the digital space, with members of the Nigerian queer communities taking to social media platforms to encourage conversations about LGBT existence and rights. The recent were the #EndhomophobiaInNigeria #QueerNigerianLiveMatters.

Several studies in language and gender have asserted that language is not mere words, but a system of cultural values, lifestyle, perceptions, and a worldview that assigns roles and identities to people in the society. Language plays a significant role in shaping individual identities and in distinguishing how one group is different from another group. Linguistic style and language choice, which are repertoires of linguistic forms ideologically associated with specific personas and groups, can index identity. Many approaches to the study of identity suggest that identity is not merely a psychological mechanism of self-categorization that is reflected in the individuals' social behaviors; instead, identity is composed through social action, principally through language [7]. This study, therefore, considers how the use of language by queer Nigerians indexes their identities and ultimately foregrounds their desires. Important research questions for this study are 1. What identities do queer Nigerians construct for themselves? 2. What linguistic and discursive strategies foreground these identities?

### **2. Literature review**

Although the aspects of investigations and the way researchers regarded the nonheterosexual and marginalized sexual groups vary, it is an undeniable fact that there have been numerous studies on the language of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals in particular [8–10]. The breaking point of such a conventional sociolinguistic approach was when lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer studies emerged within many academic disciplines in the late 1960s [11]. However, these studies have been in parallel with the sociopolitical challenge of the groups. This shift led to the emergence of a distinctive field Queer Linguistics that "focuses on how sexuality is regulated by hegemonic heterosexuality and how non-normative sexualities [i.e. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] are negotiated in relation to […] regulatory structures [12]."

#### *We Are Humans: Discourse Representations of Identities in the Tweets of Nigerian LGBT People DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108568*

With the influence of Queer approaches to language, the scholarly interest shifted to the linguistic construction of heteronormative and non-heteronormative discourses in specific contexts. In this context, the field has interfaces and close bounds with other discourse analytic approaches such as Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis and Feminist Linguistics [13, 14]. The radical change in the perspective of studies about the language use of gays and lesbians had its roots in the Foucauldian view of "identity" [15]. According to this view, identities are created by social relations of power; that is, they are not fixed and discovered. Therefore, the general tendency in the 1990s, when Queer Theory reshaped the sociolinguistic studies on LGBT language use, was to research how identities are realized through language rather than how gay and lesbian identity is reflected through language.

As identity is emergent, there exists the possibility that resources for identity composition in any interaction may develop from resources built up in previous interactions. In other words, these resources "may draw on structure—such as ideology, the linguistic system, or the relation between the two" [16]. The fact that identity is emergent and discursively produced is evident in situations where speakers use language that does not quadrate the social group to which they are conventionally categorized—whether biologically or culturally. This scenario is obvious in studies of transgender and cross-gender performance by [17–19]. Such studies demonstrate the emergent quality of identity in interactions in which ideologically expected mapping between language and biology or culture was violated and the essentialist preconceptions of linguistic ownership were challenged.

The Indexicality principle [20] is concerned with the mechanism by which linguistic forms are utilized to construct identity positions. Basically, the index is a linguistic form whose meaning relies on interactional contexts. Indexicality is a process involving the formation of the semiotic relationship between linguistic forms and social meanings [21, 22]. This semiotic relationship relies very much on cultural values and beliefs, or in other words, ideologies about who can produce what sorts of language in creating particular identities. According to this principle, identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including (a) overt mention of identity categories and labels; (b) implicatures and presuppositions regarding one's own or others' identity positions; (c) displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles; and (d) the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups [23]. According to both Hall and Bulcholtz, the labeling and referential categorizing of identities are the most apparent means of forming identities through talk. Another linguistic means of discursively constructing identities is through the indirect pragmatic process of implicature and presupposition regarding one's own or others' identity positions.

Research on same-sex sexualities especially from the linguistic perspective is still far behind in the African context compared with what is obtainable in the Euro-American context. This may be due to the homophobic sentiments that still pervade the African continent. In the Nigerian context, one of the few linguistic studies on same-sex sexualities is [24], which draws on various texts (interactional, literary, journalistic and cinematographic, among others) by and about the "yan daudu—Gay men," paying particular attention to how they use grammatical and rhetorical resources to claim, attribute, mitigate, or deny kinds of agency concerning sex and economic exchange. Adegbola et al. [25, 26] show how Nigerian newspapers sometimes take the moralists' stance in their reports on same-sex sexuality, strategically supporting the institutional

order against same-sex relations. Onanuga [27] considers how a Nigerian newspaper frames same-sex relations and found that is framed mainly as illegality and negativity; not acceptable to the citizens, eliciting a corrective reporting approach.

Social media has emerged as a robust medium for discourses on sexuality given its capacity to challenge mainstream narratives and empower personal views on self-expression. In Nigeria, the growing interest in homosexual expressions through online platforms is yet to receive significant research attention, although scholars are hinting at the influences of social media. For instance, [28] using keyword searches on Twitter investigates how gay Nigerians combat homophobia by using language on Twitter toward self-assertion. The study argues that in addition to harnessing agency through positive self-representation and ingroup affirmation, the digital discourses of Nigerian gay men recontextualize religion as a legitimizing tool, transforming it into a site of affirmative struggle. Analyzing blog posts and web/Facebook pages generated by Cameroonian and Nigerian gay activists [29] also measure the extent to which gay activists adopt a national/local perspective versus the level to which they adopt an international perspective in their online advocacy. Currier [30] attempts to ascertain users' willingness to express an opinion, directions of opinion, and factors affecting opinion formation. The study finds significant willingness to express opinions, propelled by "rising interest in the topic."

Generally, linguistic-oriented research on same-sex sexualities in the Nigerian context has emphasized heteronormativity. However, adequate attention has not been paid to how queer Nigerians construct their identities (not necessarily sexual identities) in their attempt to combat homophobia, especially on social media platforms. This study, therefore, considers the linguistic and discourse strategies deployed by Nigerian sexual minorities in the construction of their identities on Twitter. The significance of this study lies in the potential insights it provides into the understanding of the LGBT lives [31], especially in a homophobic environment like Nigeria, and the strategies explored in resisting homophobia. As such, other minority groups might benefit from these strategies.

### **3. Theoretical foundation**

This study adopts the Social Identity theory (SIT), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. The Social identity theory [32, 33], developed in the 1970s by Henri Tajfel, is a social psychological approach to the role of selfconception in group membership, group processes, and intergroup relations. Social identity theory defines a group cognitively—in terms of people's self-conception as group members. A group exists psychologically if three or more people construe and evaluate themselves in terms of shared attributes that distinguish them collectively from other people. The theory addresses phenomena such as prejudice, discrimination, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, intergroup conflict, conformity, normative behavior, group polarization, crowd behavior, organizational behavior, leadership, deviance, and group cohesiveness. Processes associated with important social identities include in-group assimilation and out-group exclusion.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is principally concerned with how power abuse, dominance, and inequality are discursively performed and practiced, legitimized, and contested in social or political discourses—texts or talks [34]. In CDA, texts are considered sites of struggle wherein they demonstrate vestiges of conflicting discourses and ideologies competing and struggling for power [35]. A critical approach

#### *We Are Humans: Discourse Representations of Identities in the Tweets of Nigerian LGBT People DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108568*

to discourse is chiefly interested in the analysis of unequal social encounters between individuals and groups as well as the resistance to dominance by subordinated individuals and groups. The most obvious and distinct tenet of CDA is that discourse is shaped by relations of power and ideologies and these relations constructively affect social identities, social relations, and systems of knowledge and belief of the participants in the discourse. One of the common topics of study that adopt CDA framework is the construction of identities. Perspectives on identity construction in CDA are parallel to the principles of identity studies advocated by Bulcholtz and Hall (2005).

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) provides a social semiotic theory of meaning-making, learning, and social change. SFL maintains that language and other meaning-making systems cannot be understood without an analysis of the immediate context in which it is used and developed, nor can they be understood separately from issues of power, language socialization, and ideology [36]. Butler [37] describes how language simultaneously achieves three functions in constructing meaning. The ideational metafunction constructs ideas and experiences; the interpersonal metafunction enacts social roles and power dynamics; the textual metafunction manages the how of information to make extended discourse coherent and cohesive.

The relevance of SIT, CDA, and SFL to this study is the view that "Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" [38]. Our identities, and the ways we see and represent ourselves, and our ideologies shape how we communicate, what we communicate about, how we communicate with others, and how we communicate about others. This suggests the connection of the three theories. While SIT and CDA focus on ideologies and identities, SFL provides the linguistic tools for foregrounding these features in the process of analysis. Language is commonly understood as a primary resource for enacting social identity and displaying membership in social groups, hence the use of the three frameworks. Also central to the three theories is the notion of context. The consideration of context is crucial to meaning-making in textual analysis. Just as no text can be free of context, so no text is free of ideology. In other words, to use language at all is to use it to encode particular positions and values. Many scholars working within CDA and SIT have continued to draw on SFL descriptions in their critical analyses of discourses, identifying and explaining what is foregrounded or backgrounded by the linguistic choices, and more specifically the process types and choice of mood and modality made over others [39, 40].
