NARRATION OF TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES AND COMMENTS ON RAPE BY SOCIAL MEDIA USERS

Abstract

This study focuses on the traumatic experiences of rape victims and the comments of Facebook users as they share such trauma with the public through the platform opens up by the social media. The study aims at using pragmatic analysis to examine the strategies deploy by the victims of sexual violence and the public to narrate and share their experiences with the member of the public to gain sympathy, empathy, and supports. The study engaged quantitative method of data collection. It purposively sampled and selected 12 narrations and comments of Facebook users for analysis. Three major contextual issues discussed include; victim/perpetrators blaming language, victim support language, and shared experiences of the victims and the public. Appraisal and stance theories of White & Martin (2005) and Du Bois of (2007) were used for analysis. Findings review that victims/Sexually Assaulted Persons (SAPs) deployed the attitudinal aspects of appraisal theory such affect, appreciation, and judgment to solicit supports, sympathy, and empathy from the public through the media. In doing these, the SAPs used adjectives and adverbs to externalize their pains and emotions as they take different stances from the way the society views the act of rape. This paper concludes that while victims share experiences to seek for support, many members of the public sympathizes, empathizes and support, few individual support the perpetrators of rape. The study recommends that the media and linguists should help amplify the role of language to enthuse and reshape the cultural belief about rape and gender-based violence.