Language and Gender Perspectives in Nigerian Theo-religious Contexts

2009

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 li…