VEJOH - VERITAS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

Current concerns in the increasing use of slur utterances in Nigeria and globally, the dangers and threats such utterances pose and the difficulty of curbing them using legislation and criminalization motivate the need to seek alternative approaches to address hate utterances. This paper explores the nature and linguistic mechanics of slur utterances and how they can be reclaimed, using Brontsemaian hate speech acts model for the reclamation of slur utterances within the caveat of linguistic disarmament. Data for the study is a short anti-Igbo hate song on YouTube rendered in Hausa and translated into English by the researcher. The analysis which focused on a single lexical item -Inyamiri- amidst other hate-induced utterances, identified the characteristics of slur words and how they are deployed to cause harm. To neutralize, disarm and/or reclaim inyamiri in the Nigerian social media socio-cultural and political discourses, the paper suggests that the word should either be owned by those it pejoratively refers to by a process of pejoration separation reclamation or reverse the referent through the process of pejoration inseparable reclamation. Through these two processes drawn from Brontsema‘s (2004) reformulated three processes, Inyamiri can be neutralized, reclaimed, disarmed of its hurt, and the value of its harm can be reversed in the interest of the positive and collective linguistic psyche of Nigerians.

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