Impoliteness Strategies In X Posts of Some Supporters of Parties During The 2023 Presidential Campaigns In Nigeria

This study examines impoliteness strategies in the X (formerly Twitter) posts of political party supporters during the 2023 Nigerian presidential campaigns and accounts for the contextual factors underlying impoliteness. It explores how impoliteness functions in political discourse and party-related communication on social media. The study adopts Culpeper’s (1996) five impoliteness strategies to qualitatively analyse 9 purposively selected posts on X attributed to supporters of the three major political parties during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria: All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Labour Party (LP). The findings indicate that impoliteness was used to discredit political opponents and support the image of the preferred parties and candidates. The posts identify contextual factors such as power struggle, political affiliation, ethnicity, and cultural sensitivity.