Language as Platform for Power and Political Control: A Critical Study of Selected Speeches of Mrs Maryam Babangida on The Better Life Programme

Abstract

The paper focused on the role of language in creating and sustaining power relations and political control. These power relations are created, enacted and legitimized by the application of certain linguistic devices. Such linguistic devices could be seen in the use of strong and mild imperatives, enactment of lexical items with negative expressive value, use of declaratives among others. An eclectic multidimensional approach was adopted in the research under the Norman Fairclough’s (1995) and Van Dilk’s (2006) perspectives. These perspectives were identified to consist of the micro and macro structures that have dialectical relationship within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). These structures were used to underscore the power of language as strategy for domination, liberalism and manipulation. The paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to underscore the role of language in creating and sustaining power relations within a defined social political context. The aim is to critically analyze the advocacy strategies adopted by Mrs. Babangida as language features and find out whether they are used as instruments of empowering women or manipulating them for political advantage. The findings reveal that the former First Lady deployed language as a platform for not only promoting asymmetrical power relations but also produced, reproduced, legitimized and maintained social structures that sustain domination and political control.