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A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis Of The Campaign Speeches Of Two Presidential Candidates In The 2011 Elections
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1.5 STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM
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 of communication
which is language, to achieve their objectives. Apart from making
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 2011 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 expression. Furthermore, Leckie-Tarry (1995:5)
observes that understanding language 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.
This study is therefore an attempt to answer the following questions:
a. How does the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic nature?
b.
What role does context play in these presidential campaign speeches and
how do the speeches vary in different contexts?
c. Which rhetorical and linguistic devices are most prominent in these presidential campaign speeches?
d. What common linguistic/stylistic traits are prevalent in these speeches?
1.6 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
It
is an indubitable fact that campaign speech is an important tool
employed by politicians 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 ambiguity which are conveyed through a deliberate choice of words.
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 2011 elections. It critically examines these presidential
speeches within the scope of linguistic stylistics. Specifically, the
research intends to achieve the following objectives:
a. To show that the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic nature.
b. To project that context plays a dominant role in presidential campaign speeches.
c. To critically explore the rhetorical and linguistic devices that are prominent in these presidential campaign speeches.
d. To determine the common linguistic/stylistic features or traits that are prevalent in the speeches of these candidates.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
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