Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Discourse Strategies In Selected African Suicide Notes, Oluwole Sanni

Theses and Dissertations

The present study aims to investigate the discourse strategies, positioning moves, and sociological variables that characterized the selected African suicide notes. Twenty suicide notes from different African countries constituted the data for the study. The data was deductively analysed using Davis & Harre (1999) positioning theory aside being inductively analysed. The results concluded that the discourse and structural patterns of metaphor, intertextuality, pronouns, presupposition, repetition, if conditionals, and intensifiers were deployed by the African suicide completers to demonstrate agency or/and victimhood. Also, first-order, second-order, third-order, expert and moral positioning were used in the suicide notes for self and other portrayer …