A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF METAPHOR IN SELECTED ACCEPTANCE AND INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN AND PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF METAPHOR IN SELECTED ACCEPTANCE AND INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN AND PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

ABSTRACT

This Study analyses and discusses the pragmatical negation in selected U.S. and Nigerian presidential speeches. It first examined the process of speaking as a form of intimate and supportive relationship that serves as the cement that holds friendships, families, communities, societies, and government together. The focus is on political discourse which is closely related to power, that puts certain political-economic, and social ideas into practice. Text of acceptance and inauguration speeches of President Barak Obama of the U.S.A and President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria is selected to be the working data. Three components, Description, Interpretation, and Explanation were used as the bases for analysis and discussions.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0     BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Most of our social lives depend on speaking to one another. It is the way we form intimate and supportive relationships. The mind of one human can reach the mind of another by a process of speaking. Speaking is the cement that holds friendship, families, communities, societies, and government together (Philips, Kouji, and Kelly 1985). For any meaningful development and change to take place in a society, people must first speak out. At a formal level of interaction, there are many forms of public discourse, which among others include sermons, debates, and political speeches. Central to all public discourse is language. Language is an indispensable tool, especially in political discourse.   Schaffer   (1996:1) supports the argument, which put forward, language as an octant factor in political space. He said that any political action is prepared, accompanied, controlled, and influenced by language.

The Held of politics related to power. The power to put certain political, economic, and social ideas into practice (Bayram, 2010). For this to be established one of the effective means at the disposal of those concerned with politics and by extension power is the act of making speeches. The ultimate aim of political speeches is to persuade their audiences, especially of the validity of their political claims. However, this task is challenging because the audiences of political speeches are broad and that makes the language used within that domain to be complicated. Unlike other genres of public discourse, political speeches aim at a wider range of audiences. Hence, language in the hand of modern politicians is at risk of becoming an obfuscating rather than a means of enlightenment. This trend in the use of language by politicians made Orwell (1946) conclude that cash is a bad way. Orwell criticizes the English of his one citing examples from ng metaphors’, verbal ‘pretentious dictions, and “meaningless words. The features outlined above by Orwell are some of the ways language is used to deceive those in power. This kind of language is used to deceive. Or veli termed it as ‘Newspeak’ popularly known as ‘doublespeak”. Doublespeak is a language that pretends to communicate but does not, which makes bad seem good, negative positive. The language that avoids or shifts responsibility and conceals thoughts.

For a politician, this sort of language is risk-free. It commits the speaker to nothing. It creates no expectation in the listener beyond the dull and nauseous certainty that there will be much more to come. Clear language is of course risky to them. Speeches are undeniably part of the political state of affairs. Once someone has become a political figure, there will always be a time when he or she will be confronted to make a speech. For presidents, the task of making speeches begins from the day they are declared winner of an election and on the day of taking the oath of office. Thus, this study will do a pragmatic analysis of the negation, acceptance, and inaugural speeches of   Nigerian and US presidents.

A universal property of natural language is that every language can express negation.

Every language has some devices at its disposal to reverse the truth value of a certain sentence. However, languages may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation. Not only do the languages vary concerning the position of negative elements, but also the form of negative elements and the interpretation of negatives in utterances can deviate from what intuitively might be expected based on the context it is used. It is not only negation, that can have different interpretations based on different contexts, but also, different utterances can be subjected to different interpretations. Voltaire, quoted in Standard Encyclopedia of philosophy, “2006, supports this that: When a diplomat says ‘yes’, he means ‘perhaps’ When he says perhaps, he means to. When he says ‘no’, he is not a diplomat.’ When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’ when she says perhaps, she means “yes’ When she says yes she is not a lady These lines remind us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one says more is involved in what one means than the standard conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes”, ‘perhaps’ and ‘no’ each have a perfectly identifiable meaning, known to us. However, the lines above illustrate that it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. Thus, the more you analyze conversations like the ones above the more you come to see that it is not so much what the sentences mean that matters when we talk as how they reveal the intention and strategies of the speaker themselves (Grundy, 2008).

1.4     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

It has become common knowledge that politics is concerned with power; the power to make decisions, control resources, control people’s behavior, and often control their values. The success or failure to exercise these powers rests on the use of language. Language is unquestionable an •

an important element of politics. Language can misrepresent as well as represent realities.  The skillful use of language can improve human well-being and it can be rhetorically used to obfuscate realities.   Whenever a  politician makes use of a language,  his choice of words is not only defendant on its grammatical importance but also, more importantly, on its rhetorical effect on the audience. It is therefore believed that any linguistic element in a political speech is deliberately chosen and used rhetorically to advance political action. Thus, in political speech, no word comes accidentally. If a word is used, be assured it was planned that way. In other words, politicians exploit the possibility of linguistic choices to convey the intended meaning of a politico-pragmatic nature.

It is against this background that this study will set out to analyze the use of negation in presidential speeches.

THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

To achieve this, the following questions will be answered:

1. Do presidents make use of different modes of negation?

• If yes, do these different modes of negations have any pragmatic implications?
• In what ways is the use of negation, in presidential speeches similar or different between Nigeria and the U.S.?
  • SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Several types of research have been done on political discourse such as Fairclough, 2001; Abaya, .2011; Van Dink, 1993; Wilson, 1990 but none of this paid attention to the use of negatives in political discourse. This research, therefore, aims at filling this gap left by previous studies thereby adding fresh ideas to the existing literature on political discourse.

The study will also open up a new field of interest to both grammarians and pragmatics to exploit different functions negation performs in sentences and utterances far from the traditional function of denying the truth value of sentences and utterances. Thus, the study will be a reference material for grammarians, pragmatics, students as well as those interested in the analysis of political discourse.

• SCOPE AND DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY;

The study will analyze the speeches of acceptance and inauguration of four presidents, two from the U.S., and two from Nigeria. The study limits itself to the analysis of only four presidents due to page limitations, time constraints, and resources. The U.S. and the Nigerian presidents’ speeches were selected because the U.S. is seen as the father of democracy where political culture and ideology are maintained over the years and are replicated through their speeches, and by extension, Nigeria as an upcoming democratic state tends to model after in both the system of government and political tradition of making speeches. Thus, the countries will serve as good examples for making comparisons. A total number of eight (8) speeches will be used for the analysis. The focus of the analysis will be a pragmatic analysis of negation in the speeches paying close attention to the different modes of negatives and their pragmatic implications. Moreover, the similarities and differences will be considered. The analysis will therefore ignore any other grammatical elements in which, the choices were precipitated politically and pragmatically such as the use of pronouns, and deixis. Thus, the study will be a pragmatic one with a focus on the use of negatives in presidential speeches, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a theoretical, framework for explicating those hidden meanings embedded in the text.

• OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

This study aims at doing a pragmatic analysis of negation in presidential speeches of Nigeria and U.S. presidents. To achieve this, the study tries to achieve the following objectives:

1. To find out the different negatives presidents use in their speeches. ii. To show that, there is a pragmatic implication in the use of negatives by presidents in their speeches.

iii.      To bring out the similarities and differences in the use of negatives in presidential speeches between Nigeria and the U.S.

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF METAPHOR IN SELECTED ACCEPTANCE AND INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN AND PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA