PERSONAL PRONOUNS: A RHETORICAL STRATEGY IN POLITICAL SPEECHES

Abstract

Language plays a vital role in every political action. However, some electorates misconstrue the meanings of rhetorical strategies in the language used in political speeches. It is against this background that this study examined the use of personal pronouns as a rhetorical strategy in political speeches as it pertains to propaganda in the 2015 Presidential election in Nigeria. Fairclough’s (1995) Model and Analytical Framework was adopted as the theoretical framework and the methodology was qualitative. The data were drawn from print media advertisements in different national newspapers in Nigeria: The Guardian, Premium Times and Vanguard. The newspapers were published between January and March 2015 which was the most eventful period of political campaigning for the March 2015 general elections in Nigeria. The data were principally drawn from campaign speeches delivered at rallies by politicians who were members of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Content analysis was adopted for the analytical procedure of this study in analysing the data obtained against the background of the framework of analysis for the research. The results of the study revealed that personal pronouns impact the different social relationships between speakers (the politicians) and listeners (the voters). The study, therefore, concludes that politics is an unavoidable aspect of human existence where politicians use language especially personal pronouns (I, We) to change the political thoughts of the electorates.