Social Media Language and the Construction of Feminist Identity Among Nigerian Young Women: A Discourse Study

This study examines how Nigerian young women deploy social media language to construct feminist identities across Twitter and Instagram platforms, exploring the discursive strategies, linguistic resources, and identity positions made available through digital feminist communities. Nigerian feminism has undergone significant transformation through digital platforms, yet the specific linguistic mechanisms through which feminist identity is constructed and negotiated in Nigerian digital spaces have not been formally investigated. The study adopts a critical discourse analysis methodology informed by identity theory and feminist language studies. A corpus of 500 social media posts from 20 self-identified Nigerian feminist accounts was compiled and analysed for discourse strategies, language variety, metaphor use, and identity positioning. The data were supplemented by interviews with ten account owners on their language choices and intended audiences. Findings reveal a productive tension between globally circulating feminist linguistic conventions and locally grounded Nigerian cultural references, with participants deploying this tension strategically to assert both cosmopolitan feminist credentials and rooted Nigerian identity. The study documents the emergence of a distinctive Nigerian digital feminist linguistic repertoire combining English, Pidgin, and Yoruba or Igbo insertions in service of ideological framing. The research contributes to feminist linguistics scholarship in West Africa and recommends the study of digital feminist discourse as a window into the evolution of gender ideologies in Nigerian society. Keywords: feminist identity, social media language, discourse analysis, Nigerian women, digital feminism.