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A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of The Campaign Speeches of Two Presidential Candidates in The 2019 Elections
A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of The Campaign Speeches of Two Presidential Candidates in The 2019 Elections
A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of The Campaign Speeches of Two Presidential Candidates in The 2019 Elections
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 PREAMBLE
INTRODUCTION
This chapter contains the background to the study, a brief profile of the presidential
candidates in this study, a brief over view of political campaigns in Nigeria, statement of
the problem, research questions, aim, and objectives of the study, justification of the study,
scope, and delimitation of the study. Therefore, this chapter provides an insight into the
study.
The ability to communicate effectively is the hallmark of all known politicians wherefore
the use of English as an international language has made more people aware of the
Thus, Kamalu and Agangan (2007:35) state that language plays an important role in
manifesting political wills and accompanying political actions; this is the case with
political campaign, especially in Nigeria where campaign affects the electorate who are on
the receiving end. Language is therefore used in a unique way; to achieve set goals and
Language provides the individual with a tool for the exploration and analysis of his
conceptual ideas and this is what has distinguished and given man his unique position in
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the world. This is why Isa (2004:1) maintains that one of the most important functions of
of the society. She further notes that language helps man to establish social relations and
other forms of networks which only language can facilitate and which obviously makes
Sapir (1927:7) in Abaya (2009:195), Oladayo (2019:38), and Anifowoshe (2006:11) define
language is the means by which political ideas are transmitted to the community and that
However, language conveys different kinds of information relating not only to the
speaker’s beliefs but also his identity and relationship with his listeners and hearers which
re-enforce that language is vital to human experience. In other words, language serves as
Hence, Ayeni-Akeke (2008: 83), submits that “political life, like other aspects of social
“communication underlies the dynamics of political life.” In order to buttress this view, Pie
(1978:2) in Joshua (2003: 109), points out that “politics exists not only to push parties and
candidates but covers also the pushing of ideas and point of view.” So, politics involves a
advertising, canvassing, lawn sign, and so on. Behind these bits and pieces of political
power games, is language which ‘is an important aspect to political campaign and an
The language of political campaign speeches usually comprises of the use of foreign
phrases known as political jargons, three part statements, use of rhetorical questions and
pronouns to influence and impress the target audience. There is a large use of quotations
and adequate use of repetitions. The mode is manipulative, persuasive and the language is
The inability of the electorate to grasp the extent to which politicians use language in order
to manipulate, persuade and deceive them into winning their vote is the concern of this
study. This is because understanding a language could be difficult without examining fully
how such a language is being put to use. Hence, Amodu (2010:1) observes that for a long
time, particularly from the early 40s to the late 70s, the study of language concentrated
more on the language form, at the expense of how language functions as the case is in
functional linguistics and pragmatics. He goes on to say that scholars are gradually shifting
ground from paying attention on language structure to studying how language can be
functionally used in the society especially if the language has been developed. This reveals
that interest in language for communication should be viewed as a good step forward from
the narrower and still popular focus on language as grammar. This is not to undermine the
importance of the study of language structure but it is an acknowledgement of the fact that
the study of how language is being used is now receiving a greater attention and in a new
dimension.
By studying language in circumstances where all its functions and variations are taken into
identities are influenced by language. More so, words and expressions are used or omitted
to affect meaning in different ways. In political speeches during election campaigns, ideas
and ideologies need to be conveyed through language so that they are agreed upon by the
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receivers as well as by others who may read or hear parts of the speech afterwards in the
media. Thus, citizens of democratic countries have the option to go to the ballot boxes on
election days and vote for one person or one party. Whether their decision goes along with
Black, (2005) in Kulo,(2009:1) states that within all types of political system, from
autocratic, through oligarchic to democratic, leaders have relied on the spoken word to
convince others of the benefits that arise from their leadership. The study attempts to
unravel the features of language that are peculiar to the speeches of the presidential
Aristotle in Anifowose and Enemuo (1991:1) mentions that “man is by nature a political
animal.” By this, he means that the essence of social existence is politics and that two or
more men interacting with one another are invariably involved in a political relationship.
Therefore, it is evident that both language and politics intersect at the point of interaction.
Similarly, Merk (1967:13) cited in Anifowose and Enumuo (1991:1) argues that politics is
the “art of influencing, manipulating, and controlling others; which are all indubitable
Moreover, political speeches are composed by a team of professional speech writers, who
are educated in the use of persuasive language. Beard, (2001:18) in Kulo (2009:1) throws
more light, that adding rhetorical devices to a pre-composed speech may be of crucial
importance to election results. He adds that a political speech is not necessarily a success
arguments to achieve their aims of winning votes. To examine the most prominent
Many presidential candidates publicly declared their intentions but we shall look at two for
this study.
General Muhammadu Buhari was born on December, 1942 in Daura, Katsina state in the
North West zone, Nigeria. He became Nigeria’s Head of State on December 31, 1983. He
was over thrown on August 27, 1985. His administration introduced the “War Against
Indiscipline” (WAI) campaign which, despite its highhandedness, it still landed to have
created the most orderly conduct in both public and private life of the country since
independence.
Before becoming head of state, Buhari had been chairman of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Cooperation, minister of petroleum and natural resource and governor of north
eastern state of Nigeria. He was also chairman of Petroleum (special) Trust Fund under
General Sani Abacha; since 2003, Buhari has sought to become Nigeria’s civilian
president, without success. He contested in the 2003 and 2007 presidential elections under
the platform of the All Nigerian People’s Party, losing out on both occasions to the Peoples
Democratic Party candidates. He fell out of the leadership of the All Nigerian People’s
Party and succeeded in pulling out with him some of the supporters of the party which
formed the Congress for Progressive Change. He was ratified as the presidential candidate
of the party in 2019 elections. He declared that CPC is ready “to get the PDP off the backs
Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was born on Nov 20, 1957 in Otuoke, Bayelsa state south-
south zone, Nigeria. He is a Ph.D. holder in hydrobiology and fisheries. He was appointed
as Science Inspector of Education; Rivers state Ministry of Education between 1983 and
appointed Assistant Director of the defunct Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development
Commission. His desire to better the lot of the people motivated him to go into politics in
1998. Simplicity, charisma, quiet strength, and determination made him an ideal running
mate to chief D.S.P, Alamieyeseigha on the Bayelsa PDP gubernatorial ticket. They won
the elections and he served as a deputy governor from 1999 to 11, December 2000. But on
12, December 2005, he became the substantive governor of Bayelsa state. After that, fate
once again beckoned on him to a higher height. As he was busy preparing for a re-election
as a state governor, the PDP, nominated him as a running mate to the presidential
candidate, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua. On May 29, 2007; he was inaugurated as Nigeria’s
Vice- President.
In February 9, 2010, Dr. Jonathan assumed office as Nigeria’s Acting President by virtue
long absence for Medical attention in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was
Nigeria.
In April, 2019 the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan was re-elected as President,
(http://www.goodluckjonathanfor2019.com)
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A campaign is a series of actions that are intended to achieve a particular result, especially
in politics or business. Oota (2019:1) adds that campaigns are exciting events where
oratory is on display and love shared though sometimes thugs and other violent characters
The Nigerian saga of political campaigns, which has great bearing on our contemporary
situation, has its roots in the pre-independence era with the formation of political parties.
Appadorai (2003:282) states that a political party is an organised group of citizens who
hold similar political opinions and who work to get control of the government in order that
the policies in which they are interested may be carried into effect. Since the Pre-
Independence and First Republic of 1959 and 1964 respectively, political parties have
participated in political campaigns which prepared them for the general elections. But,
political parties have had their ideological differences, which were reflected in their
2004:143).
Thereafter, other successive elections in Nigeria were the 1979, 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003,
2007 and 2019. Each of these elections was not without vibrant political campaigns by the
various parties that aspired to rule the country. Some of these were transition elections
organized by military regimes that had to hand over power to a democratic civilian
government (1979,1993 and 1999) while the elections held in 1964, 1983, 2003, 2007 and
2019 were organized by incumbent civilian governments whose offices and positions were
In the 2019 elections which is the period under study, there were 63 political parties but a
total of 54 submitted candidates for various elective positions (Ogbodo, 2019:162) and
(Corcoran 2019). This is against the 9 political parties that participated in the 1959 and
1964 general elections. However, this set the stage for a tougher presidential campaign, for
no fewer than 21 political parties presented candidates for the elections. Prominent among
the 21 political parties are: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party
(ANPP), Labour Party (LP), Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA), and All Progressive
Grand Alliance (APGA). This, therefore, made the political atmosphere in Nigeria to
become undoubtedly charged and political campaigns took centre stage. Ogbodo,
(2019:162) observes that instead of parties competing to better the lot of the electorate, it
has become warfare with each party trying to defeat and if possible eliminate the
opponents.
The contest for who occupies the exalted office of the President and Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is certainly democratic (Oota,
2019:1). However, one of the major avenues which the electorate’s minds were prepared
for the elections was through the political campaigns of these various presidential
candidates. This was also the same avenue whereby these presidential candidates sold their
party manifestos and (also) made their campaign promises to the electorate. The people
then took out time to watch their candidates exhibit their understanding of the economy,
There are different kinds of campaigns, some of which are political campaign, advertising
Political campaign is vote-seeking activities: a series of events, for example rallies and
speeches that are intended to persuade voters to vote for a specific politician or party
(Encarta 2009). Also, Ayeni-Akeke, (2008:83) adds that political campaign is an important
an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific
group. The message of the campaign contains the ideas that the candidate wants to share
with the voters. The message often consists of several talking points about policy. These
points summarize the main idea of campaign and are repeated frequently in order to create
The objective of every campaign speech is to convince the electorate that they have the
blueprint for tackling the numerous challenges facing the country. For example, in Nigeria
issues like power generation and distribution, job creation, the nation’s general economic
sector delivery, security situation in the land and the fight against corruption featured
candidates. As such, language use in political campaigns has certain characteristics which
differentiate it from other varieties of language use. For instance, certain words are
repeated, the objective being to condition the minds of the electorate. However, it is noted
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that some of the features of language use are without timelines and specific strategies for
actualization.
Talking point is a succinct statement designed to persuasively support one side taken on an
issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition’s
talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy in
However, in many elections, the opposition party will try to get candidate “off message”
by bringing up policy or personal questions that are not related to the talking points. Most
campaigns prefer to keep the message broad in order to attract the most potential voters.
Unfortunately, a message that is too narrow can alienate voters or show the candidate
down with explaining details. For example in the 2008 American presidential election John
McCain originally used a message that focused on his patriotism and political experience.
“Country First”; later the message was charged to shift attention to his role as “The
Original Maverick” within the political establishment. Barack Obama ran on a consistent,
simple message of ‘change’ throughout his campaign. In other words, if the message is
In addition, in modern politics, the most high profile political campaigns are focused on
(Wikipedia). This was the situation in Nigeria in the 2019 presidential campaign.
Kessel, (1998:79) observes those substandard differences that exist between nomination
politics and electoral politics. He says nomination campaigns are aimed at getting
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delegates but electoral campaigns are aimed at winning votes and are party wide and
nationwide. This takes off fully after the acceptance speech, division is put aside, and the
party is transformed into a victory rally. He further explains that the presidential candidate
is joined by the vice presidential candidate, and both are joined by their families. Other
party leaders, those who have held key positions and others who have sought the
Also important is that campaign in politics has assumed a complex dimension in recent
(ICT). Unlike the campaigns in the past, advances in media technology have streamlined
the process, thereby giving candidates more options to reach even larger groups of
particularly in the United States of America, oration and conduct at debates and rallies are
some of the benchmarks used to gauge the popularity of all those seeking political offices.
Suffice it to say that packaging of campaigns in terms of slogans and contacts are also the
main key in advanced democracies and this window of popularity and acceptability was
well explored by the current president of the USA, Barack Obama through his grassroots
mobilization of the people. We can say that to some extent the presidential candidate of the
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan employed a
in terms of its language use. It is a planned and organized series of actions intended to
achieve a specific goal, especially fighting for or against something or raising people’s
communication force and a vital marketing tool helping to sell goods and services, image
and ideas. Similarly, Roderick (1980:4) defines advertising as “a message specified by its
unknown audience.
taking place in one area over a period, intended to achieve a specific objective. It is related
to the political campaign in terms of military coup speeches and military heads of state’s
speeches as the purpose is political and having some elements of political language (Abaya
2008:2).
Finally, there is a common thought unit on the definitions of political, advertising, and
military campaigns that is geared towards achieving a specific goal. The study of the
presidential campaign speeches is concerned with the political campaign speech types, to
seek votes.In particular, the linguistic stylistic analysis of the speeches of the presidential
candidates of the two opposing parties, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari Rtd. of Congress for Progressive Change
Political campaign speeches are one of the major avenues through which the contestants
vying for the various political positions in their parties and the government of the country
win votes. The speeches of these candidates are conveyed through the most effective tool
attempts to garner vote and to canvass for supports, political aspirants try to make
themselves understood by their listeners. Often times, misconceptions arise because of the
electorate’s level of education, their linguistic background, and the complex nature of
language; these phenomena at times result in the aspirants loss of massive support, as the
major tool the aspirants rely on is language. In view of this, there is the need to critically
examine the speeches of the presidential aspirants in the 2019 election in Nigeria; since
meanings are not just in the lexical entities that make up a sentence but to a very large
extent, determined by the syntactic casing that houses an utterance and the context of the
must take into account not only the nature of the text, but also the discursive processes by
which text is produced and interpreted in this regard, the speeches. Bearing this in mind,
the study seeks to investigate the structure/nature of the campaign speeches that generated
the specific semantic configuration that emerged and the contexts that enhanced this
meaning outcome which was directed at achieving specific goals (objectives) by these
politicians.
1. How does the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic
nature?
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2. What role does context play in these presidential campaign speeches and how do the
3. Which rhetorical and linguistic devices are most prominent in these presidential campaign
speeches?
to express views and feelings to the public with the sole intention of reshaping and
redirecting the electorates’ opinions to agree with their manifesto. Hence, campaign
speeches are generally full of persuasion, manipulation, deception, lies, hyperbole, and
This study examines the presidential campaign speeches of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) flag bearer, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the Congress for Progressive Change
(CPC) flag bearer, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) in the 2019 elections. It critically
examines these presidential speeches within the scope of linguistic stylistics. Specifically,
1. To show that the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic
nature.
3. To critically explore the rhetorical and linguistic devices that are prominent in these
4. To determine the common linguistic/stylistic features or traits that are prevalent in the
Nigeria has witnessed one civilian government after the other since independence and the
campaign speeches made by the various presidential candidates helped to determine who
ruled the country at each point in time. However, the electorate was not cognizant of the
linguistic stylistic significance of the campaign speeches. Therefore, there is need for this
study to broaden their understanding of the varying linguistic stylistic features of the
speeches. Its findings are of benefit to students of language and those who want to take
language and suggest a better way of using language to carry people along. The study is
significant to the extent that though several researches have been carried out in pragmatics,
critical discourse analysis and linguistic stylistic analysis of political speeches in such
campaigns in the print media, military coup speeches, advertisement and religion, just to
mention a few, hardly is there any of such research effort specifically on linguistic stylistic
This research does not constitute a linguistic stylistic analysis of the campaign speeches of
the 21 presidential candidates that contested the 2019 elections but, focuses on the
candidates from two major opposing parties namely: Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan,
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Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and General Mohammed Buhari rtd; Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC). The choice of these parties is based on the fact that these
major parties (PDP, CPC,) have captured the majority of the electorate in the country,
though CPC is more of a regional party, however, the PDP has a national outlook.
The study looks at the 2019 elections so as to make the research more current and reliable.
The focus of this work is the linguistic stylistic study of the campaign speeches. It is
difficult to study all the campaign speeches of the presidential candidates. As a result, the
study has been restricted to some selected speeches in the north-west and north –central
zones. A total of eight (8) speeches for both candidates are examined in this research.
Relevant portions of the selected speeches are extracted and analysed from the perspective
of the adopted linguistic framework, which is the systemic functional linguistic approach.