Written By:
Ngozi U. Emeka-Nwobia.
Languages and Linguistics Department.
Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria
2004, Rudd 2004, Tittinen 2000) etc.
Although
Obasanjo’s speeches have been linguistically investigated (See Yusuf 2003, Adetunji
2005, 2006); none to the best of the researcher’s knowledge has examined the
perlocutionary effect of former
president Olusegun Obasanjo’s political speeches
using pragmatic principles.
Awonuga
(2005) undertook study on the linguistic features of the former president;
Olusegun Obasanjo’s broadcast to the nation on August 25, 2002. His findings
reveal a discourse characterized by the use of personal pronoun, and coupling,
strings of words, analogy, and eight types of metaphors. Similar to that of Awonuga,
is Adetunji (2006), which examined two speeches of president Obasanjo, focusing
on his use of deixis. The author demonstrated through these speeches how politicians
use rhetoric to associate and dissociate themselves from their actions. Taiwo (2007)
examined the role of metaphor in political discourse and observed that
politicians employ rhetorical strategies to achieve their political goals. He
noted that such indirect language is used by politicians when they want to talk
about “politically risky topics”, and often linked to factors like protecting
their political careers and their desire to gain political and interactional
advantage over their opponent politely. Vestermark (2007:1) linked the use of
metaphor to persuasion and propaganda in politics.
Tenuche
(2009) studies the language of politics and political behaviours with emphasis
on the rhetoric of president Olusegun Obasanjo and 2007 general elections in Nigeria.
He observes that politics is warfare. This he said in line with Obasanjo
perception of politics. He aligns with Adekanye’s (1997) opinion, which
describes Obasanjo as a Machiavellian prince in action. For like Machiavellian
and Mao se Tung, Obasanjo (noted Tenuche 2009) believes that politics is a
continuation of warfare by some means. In reference to Obasanjo, Adekanye
(1997) notes that for the Machiavellian school of thought, the act of politics
is merely an adaptation of the general rules and principles of the military
discipline and heroism laid down.
In a war
situation, the end justifies the means, and for the military, heroism lays in
winning the war at all cost and by any means as part of one’s commitment to the
pursuit of “duty”, honour and commitment. Adekanye in Tenuche (2009) observes
that for both Obasanjo and Machiavelli, politics and warfare are two sides of
the same coin. When Obasanjo uses the phrase a “do or die”, “enemies” of the
nation, “he necessary implies a zero sum conception of politics as a battle not
competition between groups or individuals unrestrained by any rule and aimed at
a total annihilation of one’s opponents”. Tenuche basically investigated that
interrelationship between language of politics that an actor uses and his
political behaviour. He observes that the two are not only dependent but also
have a casual linkage as one will almost always have an effect on the other and
vice versa. It is, however, difficult to say vividly with all accuracy which of
the two phenomena ignited a reaction from the other. (Tenuche 2009).
Olaniyi
(2009) conducted a pragmatic analysis of President Umar Yar’Adua’s inaugural
speech of 29th May 2007. He
used Lawal (2003:139) model of pragmatic analysis, which states that “a locutionary
act is the overt linguistic behaviour of a speaker, while an illocutionary act,
which may be direct or indirect, intended or unintended and conventional or
unconventional is a higher-order act”. The third and ultimate level of the
speech act is the perlocutionary or non-conventional, intended or unintended
consequences of utterances.
Olaniyi
identified 20 sample utterances from the twenty three paragraphed speeches.
Nine constative and nineteen perfomatives were recorded. This revealed that the
trend of speech act in political inaugurals reflect a great use of commissives,
followed by assertive, less use of directives, a lesser use of expressives and
least of all vindictive. This ratio of occurrence is due to the nature of the
speech and its main purpose. The inaugural speech from our analysis seems to be
meant to largely convince and assure Nigerians of good governance.
Kamalu and Agangan (2011) conducted a
Critical Discourse Analysis of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Declaration of
interest in the PDP Presidential Primaries. They observe that politicians rise
to power mainly because they can talk persuasively to voters and political
elites into accepting their views. Beard (2000:2) emphasized the importance of
studying the language of politics because it helps us to understand how
language is used by those who wish to exercise power and those who wish to keep
power.”
Taiwo (2007) identified political lampooning
of the opposition through Newspaper advertisement as one of the major campaign
strategies of Nigerian politicians, which was greatly employed in 2007 general
elections in Nigeria.
Ayeomoni (2005) did a linguistic stylistic investigation of the language of
Nigerian political elites who are saddled with the task or business of
political leadership and those occupying various political positions like
Presidency, Head of State, Governorship, Ministry, Ambassadorship, Advisory and
other political offices. It also embraces those that are involved in practical
political practitioning and politicking either civil or military. He conceives
language as being interconnected with politics and in fact a vehicular
expression of politics; a means through which political discourses are
disseminated.
Harris
(1975:58) notes that “in politics words have a powerful effect” adding that “language
is the means by which political ideas are transmitted to the community”. Harris
claims that Disraeli is of the view that “with words we govern men”. Ranney
(1975:130) submits that four hostile newspapers were equivalent of 100,000
enemy troops on the field of battle underlining the extent to which political
language is itself a weapon.
Ayeomoni
(2005) concludes that language of the political elites in Nigeria exhibit some
unique features like preponderant use of simple declarative sentence; of simple
structural sentence from which usually felicitates easy flow and conveyance of
their intention and message. He also observes that politicians also resort to
the use of figurative and metaphoric languages when they intend to convey their
intentions or message convincingly so that the impression and intention
projected could be printed and lasting in the mind of the listener. They also
employ liberal and exaggerative rhetorics while tone is soft, mild, appealing
and inviting when they are campaigning for power. This strategy according to
Ayeomoni (2005) is used when they are trying to sell their programmes and
entrench themselves into offices.
Agbedo
(2008) did a speech act analysis of political discourse in the Nigerian print media.
He observes that in discourse analysis and pragmatics, the task of the analysis
is first to establish that there has been an utterance act. The next step would
be to determine the locution, denotation, illocution and the illocutionary
point of utterance. However, the table would have been simple and less
problematic if speakers always said what they meant and meant what they said. Toeing
the path of Osisanwo (2003:61) “ - - - is
the depth of indirection involved in much discourse, the distance between what
is said and what is meant, the multiple layers of meaning between the literal
prepositional meaning of an utterance and the act, which it performs in
context”. Agbedo subjected the utterances of two journalists, Bayo Onanuga and
Mr. Yakubu Mohammed, which they made during a reception organized in honour of
Dele Olojede of Newsday Newspaper, to speech act analysis using Austin (1962)
Felicity condition, and Grice’s (1975) co-operative principles. He examined the
illocutionary force of the speech act in the light of their peculiar types of
journalism practice as evident in the News Watch and the News Magazines. His
finding showed that the illocutionary acts deriving from their individual
speech acts failed to meet Austin’s
felicity condition. Their infelicitous speech acts equally failed to meet
Grice’s co-operative principles which participants in any communicative events
are expected to adhere to. Consequently the maxim of quality, quantity,
relevance and manner were equally violated thus giving rise to conversational
implicature.
On
negative advertising in Nigerian Newspaper, Opeibi (2006) provided a structural
and functional description of the emerging trends in negative advertising
during political campaign in Nigeria.
Oyeleye & Maiyanga (1991) explores the semantic-pragmatic principles in
analying Tafawa Balewa’s (1962) National Day Speech. In analyzing the presidential
speech, Oyeleye & Maiyanga (1991) noted Onuigbo (2005:107) employed some
speech act model and semantic principles to “foreground the meaning of Balewa’s
(1962) National Day speech” so that we can discover the implicit and explicit
nature of the language of the Nigeria
presidents”.
On
the foreign scene, research activities have been carried out on presidential
speeches/discourses. Vestermark (2007) conducted an analysis of the inaugural
speeches of four American presidents. He identifies the metaphor of “Nation as
Person”. This is similar to Lakoff’s (1995) claim that the “Nation as family
metaphor” is very common in political discourse.
Docudharma
(2008) examined the perlocutionary force of Obama’s “moment” speech. He observed
that,
the
target of the perlocutionary force of Obama’s speech
was not the audience in the arena and not the folks
at home
watching
on TV. It was the Washington
establishment.
the intended
effect is clear even if it is not the locutionary
force of the
words Obama used. The perlocutionary force
is just as
cognitively contentful as the locutionary force.
This
is crucial to all political speeches especially inspiring
ones
like Obama’s.
Sukumi I.K. (2008) focused on
metaphorical expressions in George Bush’s speeches on Global war and terror
using speech act theory. The aim of her research was to clarify the form of
metaphorical expressions and to identify the message behind the metaphor in
George W. Bush’s speeches. She concludes that three forms of utterances
occurred in George W. Bush’s speech on Global war on Terrorism and they are,
Declarative, imperative and interrogative sentences. From her finding, the
speaker often used dead metaphor to represent his feeling about the issue of
Global war and Terror. The intentions as she noted, are often, stereotyped,
threatening, warring, showing gratitude, sadness, hatred, commanding, hope and
informing. Chantarawandi (2008) also conducted a critical discourse analysis of
George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s speeches on war on Terrorism.
Bayram
(2010) analyzed the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political
speeches. He noted that the main purpose of politician is to persuade their
audience of the validity of their political claims. Political influence may
flow from the employment of resources that shape the beliefs and behaviours of
others. Common resources include expert skills, the restriction of information,
the ability to counter favours on others or to injure them without physical
force and subtle or crude bribery.
Leeuwen
M (2010) x-rayed grammatical phenomena and rhetorical effect subjectivity in
political speeches in Dutch political landscape. His focus was a detailed
stylistic analysis of a speech that Geert Wilders and Ella Vogelaar delivered
in the Dutch lower chamber in 2007, during a debate in Islamic activation.
Using complementation constructions, Leeuwen observes that Ella Vogelaar
presented her ideas about integration as a perspective on issues which leaves
room for others view. Wilders on the other hand presented his stand point
primarily as facts with minimal room for negotiation or discussion.
In
her analysis of persuasive strategies in presidential speeches, Grice (2010)
conducted a study on Presidential communication to children. She used the
speeches of President Barack Obama in 2009, George Bush’s in 1991 and Ronald
Regan’s in1988. She observes that the speeches contain persuasive strategies.
Interestingly, the result of her study revealed that none of the presidents
appealed to anger and only one Barack Obama, appealed to pity. She discovered
that the presidents developed an image of power, authority, charisma, optimism
for future, and a positive image in their speeches.
In his contribution to the study of
presidential speeches using speech act theory, Underwood (2008) conducted a
study on recognizing Speech Act in Presidential records and analyzed them to
determine the occurrences of elicit and implicit speech acts and assertions. He
proposes a method for recognizing the speech acts in sentences.
Vladimirovna
(2011) in his work, “How Politicians Do Things with Words: International
Analysis of Pre-Election Speeches”, examined the perlocutionary effects
achieved by pre-election propaganda speech producers while actualizing such
manipulation, targets the audience. He noted that the use of manipulative
messages by politicians have some pre- planned perlocutionary effect, which is,
voting for the speech producer and his party. He considered collective
recipients instincts, peculiarity of human sensations and basic emotions as
manipulation targets. The analysis of pre-election propaganda speeches made by
politicians of different countries show that intentionally, integral texts of
the speeches consist of certain pragmatic subunits called micro texts.
Micro text according to Vladimirovna
(2011) is an “intentional sub unit used to achieve a certain contact perlocutionary
effect that is to form one definite manipulative association”. Rudyk (2007) did
a study on power relations in President Bush’s 2007 state of the union speech.
His work centered on the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels of manipulation
and the effect it has on the recipients’ mental models.
Chilton
and Schaffer (1999:212) identify a political discourse as any discourse whose
linguistic or other actions involve power or its inverse resistance. Wilson (2001:398)
describes political discourse as language used in formal and informal political
context with political actors such as politicians, political institutions,
government, political media and political supporters operating in political
environments with political goals.