A discourse analysis of Jega’s speeches in the Nigeria’s 2015 general elections
Keywords:
election, democratic process, conversational implicature, cooperative principleAbstract
Election is one of the democratic processes of ushering in a new government. In the conduct of election in Nigeria, the Electoral Management Body (EMB) responsible is the Independent National Electoral Commission headed by a chairman. In the last Nigeria’s general elections in 2015, the INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega made some speeches. By adopting the descriptive survey research design, this paper analyses the speeches of Jega during the 2015 general elections in order to discover the structural patterns of the speeches and their outcomes. The paper adopts the Grice’s cooperative principle and critical discourse analysis as its frameworks. From the study, the paper discovers that the structuring of the two speeches under study has four sections which include: greetings and introduction, situations at hand, problems encountered and the solutions put in place, conclusion with messages of hope and faith. It was observed that in section A that Jega fulfilled the maxim of quality in speech A but flouted this maxim in speech B thereby committing a conversational implicature. Also, the research finds out that this section fails to fulfil the maxim of manner because it fails to be brief. The paper also discovers that the outcomes of the speeches and discovers that the outcomes are positively based than negatively based.
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