Exploring manipulative rhetorical choices in Nigerian political speeches

Oparinde, Kunle; Rapeane-Mathonsi, Maleshoane; Mheta, Gift; Champion, Margrét GunnarsdÓttir

doi:10.1080/23311983.2020.1864913

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Finally, it is well to point out here that the findings of the current study corroborate those of Enyi and Chitulu (2015), who reported high repetition of the pronoun I in Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan's inaugural speech ;Oparinde et. al.…”

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Function Of Lexical Cohesion In Obama's And Buhari's Presidential Inaugural Speechessupporting

confidence: 91%

“…corruption/responsible and accountable governance, kidnappings/rescue, disorder/rebuild and reform, darkness/light, hopeless/increased prosperity, and abuse of office/responsible and accountable governance in his speech. As highlighted earlier (see 4.2 above), Buhari came to power when Nigeria was being faced by enormous crises under the decade-long leadership of the PDP, which was blamed for poor governance and incoherent ideological principles (Olowojolu, 2015;Katsina, 2016;Oparinde et. al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The country, which was under the leadership of the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) for over a decade, was being faced by enormous crises such as insecurity, Boko Haram insurgency, unemployment, bad economy, poverty, corruption, indiscipline, frequent power outage and uncertain future. Nigeria's plights were attributed to PDP's poor governance and incoherent ideological principles (Olowojolu, 2015;Katsina, 2016;Oparinde et. al, 2021).…”

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…His popularity largely derives from his renowned credibility, honesty, patriotism and solemn antigraft stance. This was a major factor that made Buhari succeeded in defeating the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, who ran under the Peoples' Democratic Party, and became the newly elected president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 29 th May, 2015 (Malah & Idris, 2016;Temidayo & Sotayo, 2016;Malah & Dinyo, 2021;Oparinde, 2021 et. al.).…”

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the discourse resources deployed by different presidents in their performance of the inaugural genre continue to attract scholarly attention from different research fields (of discourse analysis). These fields include, for example, Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) (see, for example, Wang, 2010;Koussouhon & Dossoumou, 2015;Sharndama, 2015;Temidayo & Sotayo, 2016;Lodhi et al 2018;Oparinde et. al., 2021), where researchers mainly investigate the utilization of linguistic devices that reflect ideology and power in inaugural speeches; Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (see, Nur, 2012;Kondowe, 2014;Enyi & Chitulu, 2015;Sameer, 2017;Chanturidze, 2018), where inquirers mostly focus on linguistic elements of Interpersonal Metafunction as employed by the speakers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-Cultural Pragmatics on Lexical Cohesion in President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches

Malah

2021

IJLLS

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Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders’ persuasion intention in their rhetoric. The purpose of this study was to cross-culturally explore President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches to examine the impact of culture on the persuasive functions of Lexical Cohesion in their rhetoric. Therefore, while drawing on Pragmatics, the study adopted a qualitative discourse analysis approach, utilised an eclectic framework of Lexical Cohesion based on Hoey (1991), Martin (1992) and Eggins (2004) to analyse Obama’s and Buhari’s first inaugural speeches. The findings indicate, on one hand, that although Obama deployed more categories and more frequencies of Lexical Cohesion than Buhari did, ‘Repetition’ (50%) was the most dominant source of Lexical Cohesion in each of the two speeches. Moreover, the most reiterated item in the two speeches were personal pronouns, where Obama mostly repeated the pronoun ‘we’, which had inclusive function, and Buhari mostly repeated ‘I’ and the exclusive ‘we’. On the other hand, the findings suggest that Obama utilised Lexical Cohesion mainly for ‘emotional appeals’, ‘audience involvement’, and ‘credibility-building strategies’; while Buhari used Lexical Cohesion for ‘emphasizing his (and his team’s) personal commitment’, ‘building his credibility’, and ‘demonizing past administrations’. Finally, in the light of these findings, the study has drawn two major conclusions: (1) that on the preponderance of repetition of personal pronouns in both the two speeches, the findings suggest that the generic conventions of the use of personalised English in the inaugural address outweigh any culture-specific discourse practices of the two communities; (2) that Obama’s strategies of emotional appeals and audience involvement that enabled him to ‘speak along with his audience’, which contrast with Buhari’s strategies of emphasizing personal commitment and audience-exclusive tone that made him to ‘speak alone’, seem to have rendered Obama’s speech more interactional and more audience-engaging than Buhari’s speech.

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Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Function Of Lexical Cohesion In Obama's And Buhari's Presidential Inaugural Speechessupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%