Language of Politics in Multilingual and Multi-Ethnic Nations: The Nigerian Example (original) (raw)
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It is a fact that within the last six decades, the third world nations have experienced a reconfiguration of their traditional systems of politics and governance, sociocultural formations and practices, and socioeconomic structures following their contact with the West. Unfortunately, one major aspect of the impact of this contact that is yet to produce positive effects is the role of political communication in stabilizing democratic governance. While issues that are not language-relate-such as an overambitious military, loosely defined federalism, and a weak political party system-have been treated as constituting barriers to the establishment and sustenance of viable democratic governance in Nigeria, the role of political communication in developing a strong tradition of democratic practices has been overlooked.
One message, many tongues: An exploration of media multilingualism in Nigerian political discourse
Journal of Language and Politics, 2007
The essay sets off by arguing that since the 1950s, there has been a growing enthusiasm in political advertising discourse. This was because political advertising became prominent as an effective communicative and publicity tool in the 1952 U.S. presidential election campaign when Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed its instruments to win the most prestigious and highest political post in the U.S. . Since that time, several rhetorical strategies have been adopted by politicians all over the world to cast and communicate political messages to their various audiences. Most previous research efforts appear to be in the monolingual or L1 settings (e.g Chilton and Schäffner 1997; Obeng 19997).
Revisiting the Lingua Franca Question in Nigeria: Insights from the 2015 Electioneering Campaigns
2016
This paper examined patterns and domains of the use of languages in the 2015 electioneering campaign rallies across Nigeria. Mixed method involving content and critical discourse analyses as well as oral interviews were adopted. It was observed that some dominant language(s) in some regions were solely used during rallies. In some situations, they were used alongside the English language with the ethnic/local languages used for interpretations. Our investigations also reveal that the Nigerian pidgin was used frequently across regions/zones in Nigeria. The study further identified that the dynamics in the use of languages, reflecting ethnic/cultural appeals during the campaign rallies, is an indication of regional use of languages which is believed to be more efficient than the much-talked about but failed national lingua franca issue in Nigeria.
2019
Language and politics contract a special relationship; language is specific to man and so is politics which man uses to control and dominate his environment. Language has always been a significant factor in Nigerian politics because of its role in critical domains of politics like electioneering campaigns. Language is an instrument used to shape or influence political institutions such as the legislature. The executive as well as the judiciary which are also very important political institutions have benefitted greatly from the inputs of language. Consequently this paper was premised on the assumption that language, particularly, English played a significant role in the acquisition of political power in Nigeria. This is against the backdrop of the victory of the opposition party in the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. The corpus generated for this study consisted of excerpts from the media exchange between the spokespersons of the two dominant political parties at the time of ...
Language Use in Nigerian Electoral Process
2011
Elections in Nigeria are characterised by the use of different languages, the choice of which is determined by the linguistic background of the participants. Being public events involving people from different backgrounds, these elections exemplify a 'triglottic configuration' of language use, conforming to the three tier administrative structure of Nigeria - local, state and federal. By means of unobtrusive observation of language acts during elections and inferential analysis of printed election and campaign related materials, this book demonstrates that participants exhibit considerable consciousness regarding the choice of language they make. As such, the general picture is such that the three electioneering campaign media identified (oral, print and broadcast) are fairly distinctly associated with a language type, and a given tier or level of administrative structure, resulting in a ‘complementary distribution’ of the languages used. Hence, the book argues that language...
LANGUAGEDETERMINATIONINPOLITICSTHESITUATIONINNIGERIA
Research Article, 2021
There is a popular slogan in Nigeria that ‘politicians can promise to build bridges where there is no river’ and can justify why a relationship or bilateral agreement need not be sustained. This is consequent upon language usage and determination by speakers and principal actors. This paper adopts qualitative research method to discuss major issues in language manipulation in Nigeria. It conceptualizes the key term of language and debates how language interfaces with politics, national and international relations. The study recommends that, the National Assembly should as a matter of urgency amend the Electoral Act 2010 with the provision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Judiciary empowerment to sanction politicians for language manipulation and the review of Nigeria policy on language to make provision for multilingualism at all levels of official engagement.
Linguistic Polarity and Presidential Campaigns: A Review of 2019 Town Hall Series on NTA, Nigeria
Lagos Review of English Studies A Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2021
This study investigates linguistic polarity in Nigerian presidential campaigns from a Critical Discourse Analysis theoretical framework. It focuses on language use in the socio-political domain and sets to examine polarity markers in the 2019 town hall series on NTA, Nigeria. The study evaluates matchet-market indicators exploring divergent and cross purpose ideological frames reflected in the linguistic constructions of aspirants. Using a purposive sampling method, the paper identified four political parties on the scale of prominence and participation on the editions of "The Candidate" and exploited the relevance of pronouns and language intensification to validate claims. The study shows that the first person plural pronoun we (and variant) is the most frequently used pronoun in presidential campaigns rating 76.60% compared to the third person plural pronoun they (and variant) with 23.40%. Negative remarks rated 25% while the negator-not used for specific accusations scored 29.17%. The import of pronoun is used to unravel dimensions beyond the traditional substitutionary function while language intensification strategy is used to explore the cognitive framework and emotional/attitudinal disposition concealed in the utterances of the speakers. Essentially, politics strives to reduce tensions between needs and social realities, and language a critical tool in the negotiation of power. This study therefore recommends that political aspirants inform/persuade the electorates without creating, foregrounding or intensifying divisive lines for the furtherance of democracy, good governance and national unity. Courteous use of language should be embraced regardless of political leanings.
Language Attitudes among the Political Class in Nigeria: Implications for National Development
It is an acknowledged fact that language plays pivotal roles in issues relating to national development. However, in most developing bilingual/multilingual societies, Nigeria inclusive, despite the claim to the contrary, people still cling to primordial sentiment over and above nationalistic ethos. This study seeks to examine language attitude among the political class in Nigeria, and these (attitudes) affect the country's attempt towards national integration and development. The thrust of the paper is that contrary to the widely-held view that economy and technology are the major (or main) indices of development, language issues are also of paramount importance in national growth and development. It recommends a much more proactive measure in tackling language issues in our national discourse.
The Language Challenge in Nigeria's Public Sphere
The debating activities of the public sphere stimulated the development of pre-modern Europe. So far, such activities had failed to do same for Nigeria -a country in dire need of development. This paper investigates why public discourse in Nigeria has so far failed to develop Nigeria. To do the investigation, I purposively selected eight textual exemplars from stories which three Nigerian newspapers wrote when they covered the 2005 National Political Reform Conference in Nigeria. I presented the selected textual exemplars on a text box and then subjected the texts to interpretation using the method of critical discourse analysis. When I triangulated my interpretation with comments I got when I interviewed the journalists behind the interpreted texts, I found reasons why the mass media, as presently organized, cannot constitute an appropriate arena for development-boosting public discourse in Nigeria. On this light, I suggested some re-adaptation in a way that could motivate intellectuals into fashioning credible arenas for development discourse activities.
The "Howness" Of Language As A Means Towards National Integration In Selected Nigerian Newspapers
2018
Language is the prerogative of every human being and its primary function is communication. The use of language for effective communication has been taken for granted and this has resulted sometimes to conflict situations. Integration whether at the local, state or national level cannot be attained if language users cannot and do not use language to avoid conflict. Conflict situations are detrimental to national integration and can lead to underdevelopment. Therefore to avoid these conflict situations the researcher looked at 'how' language can be used to avoid conflict and how it can be used for national integration. In order to do justice to the topic, political speeches were selected in the Saturday Vanguard and Daily Sun newspapers to show a negation of the 'howness' of language. The theory of verbal hygiene by Deborah Cameron 1995, formed the theoretical framework. This theory which looks at how language can be used in communication in order to impose order on t...