Politeness Strategies and African Cultural Norms in Cartoon-style Videos on Nigeria’s Fuel Price Hike

Abstract

This study investigates the use of politeness strategies in Nigerian cartoon-style videos that critique fuel price hikes during President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. While cartoons have long served as vehicles for political commentary in Nigeria, their pragmatic features—particularly the deployment of politeness strategies—remain underexplored. Using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, this research examines five representative videos selected from a corpus of eight, focusing on conversational excerpts that reflect socio-political critique. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, integrating pragmatic analysis with multimodal interpretation to assess both linguistic and non-linguistic elements. The analysis reveals the prevalence of four politeness strategies: bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record strategies. Among these, bald-on-record utterances were most frequent, especially in contexts of frustration, urgency, or direct confrontation. Off-record strategies, primarily realised through sarcasm, metaphor, and humour, played a significant role in framing political critique without overt hostility. Positive politeness emerged in interactions where solidarity and familiarity were emphasised, while negative politeness appeared in deferential or apologetic responses. Findings indicate that politeness in these digital texts is contextually and culturally embedded, reflecting African norms of communal facework and expressive resistance. Contrary to Western politeness expectations, directness and sarcasm in Nigerian discourse often serve as legitimate means of protest and public engagement. The study affirms that cartoon-style videos function not merely as entertainment but as complex communicative artefacts that mediate public discourse, critique authority, and construct shared identities. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on digital pragmatics and African discourse strategies, highlighting the importance of cultural specificity in the interpretation of politeness. It recommends further exploration of multimodal politeness phenomena across digital media genres to enhance understanding of political communication in postcolonial contexts.