Relevance of Rapport Management in Marital Conflicts: Issues from Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown

The total lockdown in Nigeria during the second quarter of year 2020, which emanated as a strategy to control the pandemic caused by the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) generated diverse cases of marital conflicts that necessitate close examination. In this connection, the aim of this research is to investigate the rapport strategies involved in the marital conflicts depicted in a widely shared video skit on some WhatsApp platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Nigeria, with the objective to project rapport orientations and relational skills for managing marital relationships. The linguistic approach adopted for this research is Spencer-Oatey’s (2008 and 2011) [13, 14] Rapport Management, which pertains to the sub-field of Pragmatics. Rapport management perspective is viable for analyzing marital conflicts, particularly being that language is pivotal in both the construction and destruction of social relationships. Rapport management basically includes politeness/impoliteness dimensions, face sensitivities, sociality rights and obligations, as well as interactional goals. The methodology for this research is qualitative and its paradigm is interpretive. The research findings reveal that all levels of language and domains such as speech acts, topic choice, topic organization, turn-taking rights, choice of tone, use of address terms and honorifics, gestures, eye contact, proxemics and other body movements need to be properly managed because they could affect rapport between interlocutors either positively or negatively, such that marital relationships could either be enhanced, maintained or threatened.