AN ECOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED SPEECHES ON CLIMATE CHANGE BY PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI

Abstract

Given the increasing ecological crises in Nigeria, this study
discursively investigates framings in selected speeches on Climate
Change by President Muhammadu Buhari, with a view to revealing
the discursive construal with which human subjects are framed and
projected in relation to environmental issues. The data consist of
Buhari’s speeches on Climate Change from May, 2015 to May, 2022.
The study is undergirded by Stibbe’s theoretical postulations of
‘Stories We Live By’ in ecolinguistics, with a focus on framings. The
findings reveal that President Buhari deployed discursive frames of
ecocentricism, anthropogenesis, anthropomorphism and ecofuturism – discourse structures that project Self-alignment with ecofriendliness. Sampled discursive configurations also reveal that
Buhari explicitly projects leaders of Third-world countries, including
himself, with the frame of mendicant identity, especially in matters
connected with human-to-nature relations. By analysing these
underlying discursive frames, the study argues that Buhari’s discursive
constructions instantiate the intrinsic worth of natural environments
as life-supporting and life-sustaining mechanisms, and are worthy of
immense human considerations. Discursively recognising the
intrinsic worth in nature is thus a ‘story’ deployed by Buhari to place
responsibilities of nurturing, protecting and sustaining the
environments on humans, as parts of the natural world, rather than
advocate asymmetric power relations between human and nonhuman species, and continuing ecological consumerism.