Discourse Strategies in Political Campaigns in Nigeria

Discourse Strategies in Political Campaigns in Nigeria is a scholarly publication that discusses the creative political discourse strategies used during the 1993 presidential election adjudged the best, fairest and freest ever in the annals of the history of electoral practice in Nigeria. The author examines the exciting communicative strategies that the political candidates deployed during the campaigns in seeking political power. In providing a detailed analysis, the book adopts a discursive analytic framework with insights from Systemic Functional Theory (SFT) and Semiotics. It discusses concepts such as, politics, discourse, political parties, election campaigns, and political advertising strategies in Nigerian democratic space. The author shows how the interplay of texts and illustrations demonstrates the power of election campaign discourse carefully but creatively-crafted and effectively-delivered. He explains how the use of pronouns, metaphors, allusions, synecdoche and metonymy, as well as, the Aristotelian rhetorical techniques, sound bites, three-part lists, among others can enhance the persuasive thrust of election campaigns to elicit the support of the voters.

Autorentext

Dr'Tunde Opeibi,Senior Lecturer, University of Lagos, has obtained his PhD degree in English with specialisation in Political Discourse in 2004.He is Visiting Commonwealth Fellow, Univ. of Westminster, London and has served as Senior Special Assistant to Lagos State Governor on Speech & Communication. He is the author of several publications.