A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GEN. MUHAMMADU BUHARI’S POSTELECTION SPEECHES

Abstract

Political speeches are delivered at public symposia, rallies, campaigns, debates, on radio, television, newspaper, interviews etc.  Such speeches may be delivered before elections - these are referred to as pre-election speeches; speeches are also delivered immediately after elections and are called “post-election speechesâ€; while some are delivered when there is need to address some social, economic or political issues. The 2015 general election which held in Nigeria, [and] in which General MuhammaduBuhari, the presidential candidate for the All Progressive Congress (APC) defeated the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) is a remarkable event.  This paper critically analyses two post-election speeches of General MuhammaduBuhari after he emerged winner of the election. The first is his acceptance speech as the president-elect on April 1, 2015 and the second, his inaugural speech after his swearing-in on May 29, 2015. The two speeches were downloaded from the internet. This study aims at examining the rhetorics in the language use of the speaker and the trend of the speeches. The study has relied on Fairclough and Dijk’s models for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar for analysis of data. The choice of these models is based on the fact that they are very appropriate for analysis of public speeches.  The findings demonstrate that the use of language of the speaker centres on current happenings and pervading feelings in the society. It is also revealed that his propositions and views are based on his previous experiences as a minister, a military head of state and a long-term participant in the political arena of the nation.