Hashtags as Linguistic Markers of Resistance

This study examines the linguistic functions of protest hashtags in youth-led digital activism, using the 2020 #EndSARS movement in Nigeria as a case study. It addresses a gap in existing scholarship that prioritises technological affordances over linguistic agency by conceptualising hashtags as performative speech acts. Drawing on Speech Act Theory, the chapter analyses a purposive sample of 30 publicly available social media posts from Twitter (X) and Instagram using a coding framework informed by Searle's typology. The analysis demonstrates that the #EndSARS hashtags realise expressive, assertive, directive, commissive, and declarative acts, often in hybridised forms with strong illocutionary force. These hashtags function to mobilise participation, contest dominant narratives, construct a collective identity, and transform individual grievances into shared political claims. The chapter concludes that hashtag activism represents a linguistically sophisticated mode of political action within digitally networked publics.