USE OF DEIXIS IN THE 2015 ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI

USE OF DEIXIS IN THE 2015 ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background to the Study

People engage in verbally mediated interactions under specific social conditions that both constrain and enable their abilities to relate to one another and to the world. These conditions are commonly treated in the literature under the rubric of context, a term that covers phenomena as varied as the immediate interpersonal setting, face-to-face interaction, the spatial, ideological, speech communities and discursive formations.

Deixis occupies a central place in the study of context because, as William Hanks puts it, “it is the single  most obvious way in which the speech setting is embedded in language structure itself” (6). There are various definitions of the term deixis. For George Yule (99) deictic expressions generally are “bits of language which we can only understand in terms of speaker’s intended meaning”. Yule’s contention above is that the reference of such expressions cannot be determined without knowing the extra-linguistic context of the utterance (who uttered them, where? and when?). In a similar curve, Renkema sees deictic words as “words with a reference point that is speaker or writer-dependent and is determined by the speaker or writer’s position in space and time” (45).

Deictic expressions occur in all human languages and have a number of interesting features that set them apart from other communicative resources, verbal and nonverbal alike. For the purpose of this research, we are more concerned with the immediate linkage of deixis to elementary social relations of speaker, addressee, and the phenomenal context of utterance. To a large extent, these relations undergird our sense of co presence, of the givenness of objects, and of the immediacy of the spatial-temporal world in which speech takes place. In line with our contention above, Hanks asserts that “If language is basic to human sociality, deixis is basic to language in its capacity to constitute both subjects and objects” (16).

Deictic elements are broadly classified into:

• Person deixis which refers to interactants in a communicative event, such as: I, we, you, he, she, it, they.
• Place deixis referring to spatial relations in a communicative event, such as: here, there, this place, that place; and
• Temporal deixis referring to time relations in a communicative event, such as: now, then, today, yesterday, tomorrow.

The overriding interest of the present researcher is to investigate how politicians manipulate deictic words, as linguistic resources, in their attempt to construct and convey their identities, those of their parties and opponents within political speeches.

Campaign is a vogue word in the register of politics and usually refers to series of organized activities of a politician to convince the electorate to vote for him to win an election. Jaworski, Adam is credited  with the view that “A campaign is a planned set of activities that people carry out over a period of time in order to achieve something such as social or political change”(40). Jaworski’s contention above aligns with the researcher’s view that a campaign is a series of actions intended to achieve a particular result relating to politics or social improvement.

Campaign speeches have been found to be veritable tools in the hands of politicians in their attempts to market political manifestoes to the public, with the sole aim of influencing the electorate to agree with their political agenda of being voted into power. In a similar vein, politics and political participation have been identified in terms of the ideas and activities relating to gaining and using power in a country or polity. In this process, language plays a vital role. The centrality of language in political activities owes its explanation to the fact that political actions are articulated, influenced and played through the instrumentality of language. An understanding of the deictic nuances of a text facilitates the understanding of its rhetorical intent.

This study is, particularly, interested in investigating the deictic nuances in President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 campaign speeches in order to reveal the reality of his intentions. The researcher has, therefore, embarked on a study of the use of deixis in President Buhari’s 2015 campaign speeches. The choice of Buhari’s campaign speeches is informed by the position he occupies. In relation to his position as the standard bearer of his party, APC (All Progressives Congress), it is within the ambit of logic to say that his language use and linguistic choices serve as the interface between his political party and the people, embodying the aspirations, norms, philosophy and persuasions of the party he represents.

In the context of this investigation, we examined how feelings, emotions, as well as the ideological beliefs of individuals or groups are conveyed through the manipulation of deictic elements. This aligns with our earlier contention that language and politics are social events that are inextricably interwoven. Fairclough notes that “our everyday lives are persuasively textually mediated” (78). Consequently, there is need for language awareness, showing the nature of texts and interrogating whose interests are represented.

In his painstaking effort to subject the deictic elements found in President Buhari’s campaign speeches to critical analysis and in order to reveal the reality of his intentions, the researcher drew inspiration from the ideological significance of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with special interest in William Hanks’ Deictic Field (DF) and Karl Buhler’s Deictic Centre.

Scholars of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) persuasion hold the view that every language use is ideologically motivated; that all linguistic usages encode different ideologies resulting from their different situations and purposes. This linguistic field takes interest in how the choices of words, sentences and utterances we make are not mere arbitrary choices but choices conditioned by the positions we advance. Prominent scholars of this theoretical orientation are Michael Foucault, Norman Fairclough, Roger Fowler, and Ruth Wodak, among others.

President Muhammadu Buhari who is the incumbent president of Nigeria and a retired Nigerian Army major general, was the Head of State from 31 December, 1983 to 27 August, 1985 after taking over power in a military coup d’état. He made futile attempts to win the position of civilian president in 2003 and 2007 and was defeated by Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’Adua respectively. Finally he came back into full politics in 2015 with promises to fight corruption in Nigeria and eventually defeated Goodluck Jonathan. He was sworn in on May 29, 2015. Buhari’s speeches are therefore well thought out, imbued with political experience, and therefore very useful for the analysis of political language.

Three of Buhari’s speeches have been selected for analysis of his use of deixis or deictic expressions. The first is his speech at the All Progressive Congress (APC) primaries on December 10, 2014 to choose a flag bearer. In this speech, generally described as “emotional’’, Buhari explained why he is the right candidate to bring about change in Nigeria.

The second one is a full text of the speech given by General Buhari at the Eagle Square during his formal declaration for the presidency. The third speech is a full text of the speech given by General Buhari with the Organised Private Sector in Lagos.

 

1.2     Statement of the Problem  

The electorate and the general public attach a lot of importance to presidential speeches. This is because it is through these speeches that new presidents reveal their economic packages and political strategies. Presidents – elect convey their ideologies through the instrumentality of deictic personal pronouns. In political speeches, personal pronouns are often used as a form of address, either to refer to the audience, the speaker or the opponent. According to Wilson (1990:46) in Adegoju (46), apart from referential function, it has been discovered that politicians tend to “manipulate pronouns to develop and indicate their ideological positions on specific issues’’.

Presidential speeches may not be fully understood by the majority of the general public without the speeches being subjected to linguistic analysis. This, according to Adetunji (179), is because the speeches contain:

…overt and covert ways in which political leaders project themselves or/their positions, persuade, coerce, and convince their audience to accept their judgements, and how they can reject and exempt themselves from actions which they consider disagreeable.

 

Adetunji (178) asserts that the use of linguistic parameters for interpreting political language is fairly recent enterprise and cites Wilson (1990) as having cited Geis (1987) as “the first complete textbook written by any linguist on political language’’. He adds that ever since, linguists have given considerable attention to political discourse.

Although, from available literature, a lot of researches have been done on investigating political language, the researcher has not seen any on Buhari’s use of deixis in political or campaign speeches. This being the case, this study seeks to look at Buhari’s employment of deixis or indexical in his three mutually related speeches. The researcher’s main interest is to investigate how politicians manipulate deictic words or expressions, as linguistic resources, in their attempts to construct and convey their identities, those of their parties and opponents within political speeches.

• Purpose of the Study

The general purpose of this study is to investigate politicians’ use of deictic expressions in persuading their audiences to agree to their political views and ideas.

Specifically, this study attempts to:

1. Identify the deictic expressions in selected speeches of Muhammadu Buhari before the 2015 presidential elections.
2. Analyze how Muhammadu Buhari manipulated deixis in conveying his political ideologies.
3. Investigate the import of deixis in persuading the electorate into voting for him.

• Significance of the Study

The result of this study will provide an insight to all Nigerians into the antiques used by politicians in their speeches to persuade the electorate to view issues from the politician’s point of view. It will help the general public to be politically conscious and take cognizance of the fact that politicians, often, say what they do not mean and mean what they do not say.

This study is also significant in showing the impact of deixis in political speeches. This work will also give researchers an insight into linguistic analysis of political speeches. Students of linguistics will also find this study very useful in terms of the meaning, types and use of deictic expressions.

• Scope and Limitations of the Study

This research work covers the use of deixis in three campaign speeches of General Muhammadu Buhari. The speeches are:

1. Gen Buhari’s “emotional” speech during the presidential primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on December 10, 2014 to choose a flag bearer for the 2015 elections;
2. APC Will Rescue Nigeria from PDP Stranglehold – Buhari, Being the Full Text of the Speech Given by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at the Eagles Square during his Formal Declaration for the Presidency on October 15, 2014; and
3. GMB MEANS BUSINESS – FULL TEXT OF BUHARI’S SPEECH TO THE ORGANISED PRIVATE SECTOR IN LAGOS ON 2^ND FEBRUARY, 2015.

They show how Buhari employed linguistic devices, especially deixis, in convincing his party members, on one hand, and the majority of Nigerians on the other hand, that he was the best candidate to occupy the presidential seat.

It has however, not been possible, principally on account of time and space, for us to include other political speeches made by President Buhari such as the Independence speech of October 1, 2015 since the researcher wanted to subject the data so far selected to a holistic investigation.

 

USE OF DEIXIS IN THE 2015 ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI

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