Genderlect and the Discursive Construction of Victims and Perpetrators in Nigerian Rape Reportage

This study explores how genderlect, or gender-specific language patterns, shapes the portrayal of victims and perpetrators in Nigerian online rape reports from 2019 to 2025. It also examines what conceptual metaphors reveal about the framing of sexual violence. The analysis centres on the pivotal June 2020 #WeAreTired movement, sparked by the rape and murder of Vera Uwaila Omozuwa and Barakat Bello, after which Nigerian governors declared a rape emergency. Drawing on Tannen’s (1990) difference theory and Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) metaphor theory, the research analyses seven online texts from five Nigerian outlets and a Nairaland repost for citizen-media comparison. It investigates how naming, framing, and metaphors construct gendered identities and power dynamics before and after the watershed event. Findings indicate tentative trends: male-authored texts tend to utilise predator, disaster, and war metaphors that dramatise perpetrator violence, while female-authored texts often focus on embodied, familial, and legal domains that highlight the survivor’s relational world, sometimes softening offensive terminology. These trends are cautiously interpreted as culturally influenced discursive patterns rather than innate differences in cognition between men and women. The study recommends gender-sensitive reporting guidelines and advocates replication with larger corpora.