A LINGUISTIC STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF TWO PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES IN THE 2011 ELECTIONS

However, in many elections, the opposition party will try to get candidate "off message" by bringing up policy or personal questions that are not related to the talking points. Most campaigns prefer to keep the message broad in order to attract the most potential voters. Unfortunately, a message        that is too narrow can alienate voters or show the candidate down with explaining details. For example in the 2008 American presidential election John McCain originally used a message that focused on his patriotism and political experience. "Country First"; later the message was charged to shift attention to his role as "The Original Maverick" within the political establishment. Barack Obama ran on a consistent, simple message of 'change' throughout his campaign. In other words, if the message is created carefully, it will assure the candidate victory at the polls.

In addition, in modern politics, the most high profile political campaigns are focused on candidates for head of state or head of government, often a President or Prime-Minister (Wikipedia). This was the situation in Nigeria in the 2011 presidential campaign.

Kessel, (1998:79) observes those substandard differences that exist between nomination politics and electoral politics. He says nomination campaigns are aimed at getting delegates but electoral campaigns are aimed at winning votes and are party wide and nationwide. This takes off fully after the acceptance speech, division is put aside, and the party is transformed into a victory rally. He further explains that the presidential candidate is joined by the vice presidential candidate, and both are joined by their families. Other party leaders, those who have held key positions and others who have sought the nominations themselves, make appearances at the presidential campaigns to symbolize the party wide support to be given the nominee.

Also important is that campaign in politics has assumed a complex dimension in recent years due to the major breakthrough in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Unlike the campaigns in the past, advances in media technology have streamlined the process, thereby giving candidates more options to reach even larger groups of constituents with very little physical effort.

This claim is further supported by Oota, (2011:1) that in advanced democracies, particularly in the United States of America, oration and conduct at debates and rallies are some of the benchmarks used to gauge the popularity of all those seeking political offices. Suffice it to say that packaging of campaigns in terms of slogans and contacts are also the main key in advanced democracies and this window of popularity and acceptability was well explored by the current president of the USA, Barack Obama through his grassroots mobilization of the people. We can say that to some extent the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan employed a similar campaign pattern, as in the neighbour to neighbour campaign advertisement and the frequent sophisticated electronic campaign.

Advertising campaign is another form of campaign which is similar to political campaign in terms of its language use. It is a planned and organized series of actions intended to achieve a specific goal, especially fighting for or against something or raising people's awareness of something. Wright (1983:8) remarks that advertising is a powerful communication force and a vital marketing tool helping to sell goods and services, image and ideas. Similarly, Roderick (1980:4) defines advertising as "a message specified by its originator, carried by a communication system intended to influence and/or inform an unknown audience.

However, military campaign tends to address a series of military or terrorist operations taking place in one area over a period, intended to achieve a specific objective. It is related to the political campaign in terms of military coup speeches and military heads of state's speeches as the purpose is political and having some elements of political language (Abaya 2008:2).

Finally, there is a common thought unit on the definitions of political, advertising, and military campaigns that is geared towards achieving a specific goal. The study of the presidential campaign speeches is concerned with the political campaign speech types, to seek votes.In particular, the linguistic stylistic analysis of the speeches of the presidential candidates of the two opposing parties, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari Rtd. of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), will be carried out.

1.5 STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

 Political campaign speeches are one of the major avenues through which the contestants vying for the various political positions in their parties and the government of the country win votes. The speeches of these candidates are conveyed through the most effective tool of communication which is language, to achieve their objectives. Apart from making attempts to garner vote and to canvass for supports, political aspirants try to make themselves understood by their listeners. Often times, misconceptions arise because of the electorate's level of education, their linguistic background, and the complex nature of language; these phenomena at times result in the aspirants loss of massive support, as the major tool the aspirants rely on is language. In view of this, there is the need to critically examine the speeches of the presidential aspirants in the 2011 election in Nigeria; since meanings are not just in the lexical entities that make up a sentence but to a very large extent, determined by the syntactic casing that houses an utterance and the context of the expression. Furthermore, Leckie-Tarry (1995:5) observes that understanding language must take into account not only the nature of the text, but also the discursive processes by which text is produced and interpreted in this regard, the speeches. Bearing this in mind, the study seeks to investigate the structure/nature of the campaign speeches that generated the specific semantic configuration that emerged and the contexts that enhanced this meaning outcome which was directed at achieving specific goals (objectives) by these politicians.

This study is therefore an attempt to answer the following questions:

a.                 How does the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic nature?

b.                 What role does context play in these presidential campaign speeches and how do the speeches vary in different contexts?

c.                  Which rhetorical and linguistic devices are most prominent in these presidential campaign speeches?

d.                 What common linguistic/stylistic traits are prevalent in these speeches?

1.6 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

It is an indubitable fact that campaign speech is an important tool employed by politicians to express views and feelings to the public with the sole intention of reshaping and redirecting the electorates' opinions to agree with their manifesto. Hence, campaign speeches are generally full of persuasion, manipulation, deception, lies, hyperbole, and ambiguity which are conveyed through a deliberate choice of words.

This study examines the presidential campaign speeches of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flag bearer, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) flag bearer, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) in the 2011 elections. It critically examines these presidential speeches within the scope of linguistic stylistics. Specifically, the research intends to achieve the following objectives:

a. To show that the language use of these presidential candidates reflect their idiosyncratic nature.

b. To project that context plays a dominant role in presidential campaign speeches.

c. To critically explore the rhetorical and linguistic devices that are prominent in these presidential campaign speeches.

d. To determine the common linguistic/stylistic features or traits that are prevalent in the speeches of these candidates.

1.7     JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY

Nigeria has witnessed one civilian government after the other since independence and the campaign speeches made by the various presidential candidates helped to determine who ruled the country at each point in time. However, the electorate was not cognizant of the linguistic stylistic significance of the campaign speeches. Therefore, there is need for this study to broaden their understanding of the varying linguistic stylistic features of the speeches. Its findings are of benefit to students of language and those who want to take part in politics, to re-awaken the consciousness of Nigerian politicians to the use of language and suggest a better way of using language to carry people along. The study is significant to the extent that though several researches have been carried out in pragmatics, critical discourse analysis  and linguistic stylistic analysis of political speeches in such areas as the language of politics, propaganda in politics, the language of political campaigns in the print media, military coup speeches, advertisement and religion, just to mention a few, hardly is there any of such research effort specifically on linguistic stylistic analysis of  Nigerian presidential campaign speeches  of 2011 elections.

1.8     SCOPE AND DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY

This research does not constitute a linguistic stylistic analysis of the campaign speeches of the 21 presidential candidates that contested the 2011 elections but, focuses on the candidates from two major opposing parties namely: Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and General Mohammed Buhari rtd; Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The choice of these parties is based on the fact that these   major parties (PDP, CPC,) have captured the majority of the electorate in the country, though CPC is more of a regional party, however, the PDP has a national outlook.

The study looks at the 2011 elections so as to make the research more current and reliable. The focus of this work is the linguistic stylistic study of the campaign speeches. It is difficult to study all the campaign speeches of the presidential candidates. As a result, the study has been restricted   to some selected speeches in the north-west and north -central zones. A total of eight (8) speeches for both candidates are examined in this research. Relevant portions of the selected speeches are extracted and analysed from the perspective of the adopted linguistic framework, which is the systemic functional linguistic approach