DISCOURSE STRUCTURES AND STRATEGIES OF SELECTED ELECTIONEERING CAMPAIGNS IN THE SOUTHWEST NIGERIA (2011-2015)

Abstract

Electioneering campaigns feature a specialised political language pivotal to the decision making of the electorates. Existing studies on political campaigns have largely given attention to the styles, ideologies, metaphors, sociolinguistic approaches, with little attention paid to the discourse structure and its peculiar linguistic features. This study, therefore, examined discourse features, linguistic functions and strategies employed in selected campaigns with a view to establishing the nature of political language in Nigerian context. The study adopted Searle’s Speech Act theory and Bach and Hanish’s Mutual Contextual Beliefs. Ethnographic and survey designs were used. Data were collected from six states in the Southwest Geo-political zone: Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo through participant observation and unstructured interviews. Data consisted twelve gubernatorial political campaign speeches as well as interviews with politicians from dominant political parties (APC, PDP, LABOUR and ACCORD) across the six states between 2011-2015. These were transcribed and subjected to discourse analysis. Four common discourse structures were identified in the sampled data namely awareness, presentation of party manifestoes, introduction of aspirants and speech and support speeches. Awareness stage featured political songs to entertain, slogans, insignia and captions for awareness creation and affiliative support for the aspirants. Presentation of party manifestoes was characterised by greetings to show cultural affiliation and politeness, verbal highlight of the party’s vision, verbal condemnation of the opposition party. Introduction of aspirants and speech entailed self-promotion, elucidation of state/national problems and messianic projection. Persuasion stage witnessed projection of promises and other palliative measures and orientation on voting procedure. Four lexical features characterised the four structures: self praise and party promotion, promise, support garnering and attack and ridicule. Awareness and presentation of party manifestoes were distinguished by lexicon of self praise and party promotion, support garnering within commissive, assertive and expressive acts. Introduction of aspirants and speech highlighted lexicon of promise, support garnering and attack and ridicule situated in assertive, directive and commissive speech acts. Nine specific speech acts captured the linguistic functions namely welcoming, promising, boasting, assuring, vowing, ridiculing, requesting, persuading and appreciation. Seven strategies characterised the speeches: orientation to cultural values, evocation of religious and ethnic affinity, allusion to sacred books, affinity to political heroes, blunt condemnation of opposition achievements, defamation of character and projection of messianic figure. Electioneering campaigns in Southwest Geo-political zone of Nigeria manifest a canonical discourse structure, which deploys lexical features, speech acting and discourse strategies for persuasive effect. Discourse architecture, therefore, is a veritable tool used by the Nigerian political class to achieve political goals.