Discourse Representations Of Hate Speeches In Selected Nigerian Presidential Election Campaigns

Victoria Iyabo Francis, Richard Okwudili Ojeogwu

Abstract

Political discourses have earned a significant place in contemporary studies in Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. Extant studies on campaign speeches have investigated 2015 the discourse from stylistic, sociolinguistic, phonological, and pragmatic viewpoints with insufficient scholarly attention paid to hate speeches in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaigns. This study, therefore, investigates the representation of hate speeches in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaigns to show the prominent illocutionary force inherent in the campaign. The study adopts Systemic Functional Grammar and Speech Acts as a theoretical framework to account for form function interface. The data were gathered through the internet from some selected sites and advertorials of the two prominent presidential aspirants. The study reveals that thematic preoccupations of hate campaign speeches range from slandering, condemnation, blackmailing, disparaging statements and mudsling, as well as displaying of other party’s failure. The study concludes that hate speeches are not only injurious but also detrimental to the socio-economic, political and religious realities in a nation.

Keywords

Hate campaign, discourse representations, political discourse, Nigerian presidential election, illocutionary acts

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References

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