Language and Gender Perspectives in Nigerian Theo-religious Contexts

While some research has been carried out on gender and religion in some parts of Africa, studies are yet to attend to how gender perspectives are expressed in the Christian theo-religious context (in Nigeria). This paper addresses this gap by investigating the gender linguistic and discoursal resources deployed by Nigerian theological seminary students to orient to gender beliefs. Two orthodox religious institutions, the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso and the Dominican Institute, Ibadan were purposively sampled. Seventy eight essays, written by all the students (72 males, 6 females) in the two institutions, on 'God and Humans' were collected. The essays were subjected to linguistic and pragma-discoursal analyses, with insights from dominance and postmodernist gender theories, discourse tracking and critical discourse analysis. Written communication in theo-religious contexts in Nigeria projects two terms: patriarchal and gender-neutral/balanced. Both male and female genders opt for patriarchal terms to refer to God and humans. Men employ the items subjectively to assert independence and, sometimes, gender superiority; women use them objectively to associate with the male group. Nominal and pronominal gender-neutral/balanced items are used by the two groups. Men either draw on the tokens exclusively to subsume women or inclusively to cover both men and women. Women engage the items inclusively by involving both groups and submissively by presuming presenting neutral tokens with patriarchal items. Gendered language used by seminary students largely reflects the traditional social and religious roles of men and women in the larger Southwestern Nigerian society. Future research can compare gendered language in the theo-religious institution with that in medical, academic or commercial institutions. It can also compare gender perspectives among male and female students in selected African and Western seminaries