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A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis Of The Campaign Speeches Of Two Presidential Candidates In The 2011 Elections
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1.7 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY
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 part in
politics, to re-awaken the consciousness of Nigerian politicians to the
use of 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 areas as the language of politics, propaganda in politics, the
language of political 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
analysis of Nigerian presidential campaign speeches of 2011 elections.
1.8 SCOPE AND DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This
research does not constitute a linguistic stylistic analysis of the
campaign speeches of the 21 presidential candidates that contested the
2011 elections but, focuses on the candidates from two major opposing
parties namely: Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, 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 2011 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.
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