Written By:
Ngozi U. Emeka-Nwobia.
Languages and Linguistics Department.
Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Political language is an instrument
used to control society with various socio-cultural backgrounds (Santoso 2003:
2). The most important thing to consider is that political language is used to refer
to the use of language by governments or political parties to encourage society
or to whip up sentiment from members of society. George Orwell says “political
language is…. designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and
to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind …. To think clearly is a
necessary first step toward political regeneration” (Wu Ju 2006: 51). This so
called “Orwellian Speec
h” refers to all kinds of words and behaviours that are not democratic and which are used by the politicians and the political class. He noted that in the western countries, when serious political scandals or great political
events happen, the government and leaders usually use political
language to hide the truth and commit fraud against the public. h” refers to all kinds of words and behaviours that are not democratic and which are used by the politicians and the political class. He noted that in the western countries, when serious political scandals or great political
Reiterating
Plato’s view in line with Shakespeare’s description in King Lear,
Awonusi (2003: 94) captures it thus;
“Get
thee glass eyes
And
like a scurvy politician seen,
To
see the thing that does not…”
Awonusi added that “….. a politician
is like the proverbial devil who an average man needs a long spoon to dine
with.” Towing same line, Hann (1989) believes that politicians cannot be
trusted or held to their words because, their language is really the act of saying
nothing. This negative perception of politics and politics practitioner
(politicians) motivated this work in order to investigate the linguistics
situation in Nigeria.
The problem which this research recognizes is the issue of the use of political
language to maneuver the populace into dancing to the tune of the politicians
without being sure of what exactly have been said. There are commentaries,
editorials, journal articles, in the print and electronic media on presidential
speeches both in Nigeria
and outside the country. These have been of little or no help to the field of
pragmatics in terms of insight they offer into the understanding of the
relationship of the language used and the meaning conveyed.
Many
scholars as a corollary have made linguistic enquiries of presidential speeches
from the stand point of stylistics and discourse analysis. There are also
linguistic investigations into former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s speeches as
would be examined in chapter two. However, not much has been carried out on the
thematic analysis, covering different thematic fields of campaign,
inauguration, corruption, economic reform and women representation; using
pragmatic principles of Speech Act Theory. It is this aspect of the problem
that this research sets out to address. The data will be subjected to pragmatic
analysis with the aim of finding out the extent to which the speech acts are
felicitous.
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