WHO IS TO BLAME FOR CORRUPTION? REGISTERBASED ANALYSIS OF RESPONSIBILITY CONSTRUCTION IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER LEAD PARAGRAPHS

Abstract

The media plays a pivotal role in shaping public understanding of corruption by assigning responsibility, attributing blame, and legitimising actors within public discourse. As the “Fourth Estate,” the press not only exposes corruption but also frames who is held accountable through its linguistic choices. This study investigates how Nigerian newspapers construct blame and responsibility in corruption issues by examining register and framing patterns in newspaper lead paragraphs, using the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Specifically, it analyses how contextual variables, Field, Tenor, and Mode, shape representations of agency and institutional authority in reports involving government officials and public institutions. Adopting a qualitative approach supported by frequency counts, the study purposively sampled 40 lead paragraphs from four Nigerian newspapers: Vanguard, The Nation, Leadership, and Daily Trust, published between January and December 2024. The findings reveal that blame attribution in corruption reporting is strongly influenced by contextual configurations: the Field is predominantly legal and institutional (30%), Tenor largely foregrounds political elites and state actors (58.8%), while Mode is uniformly formal and fact-oriented (100%). These patterns suggest a tendency to frame corruption as an institutional process rather than individual wrongdoing, thereby reinforcing existing power structures and diffusing personal accountability. The study contributes to SFL-based media discourse scholarship by demonstrating how register choices function ideologically in corruption reporting and offers insights for journalists and policymakers on the ethical implications of language use in attributing blame.