A Transitivity Analysis of the Manifestos of Two Nigerian Presidential Candidates
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53696/27753719.42151Keywords:
systemic functional linguistics, transitivity, political manifestoAbstract
Manifestos serve as a means for political leaders to execute their plans and to touch on an array of issues. This study examines the transitivity processes in the manifestos of two Nigerian presidential candidates. A content analysis approach is adopted in the study. The findings reveal that Peter Gregory Onwubuasi Obi uses more of the major process types (material, relational, and mental) than those of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The study has further established that Peter Gregory Onwubuasi employs the major process types to establish his inclination to liberate Nigeria, to show social solidarity with the citizens, and to call for good leadership. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, likewise, makes good use of the process types but more of the mental process as a trajectory for restoring systems, crusading for financial freedom, and establishing industries. With insight from transitivity, the study has provided a linguistic perspective on political discourse, demonstrating how linguistic choices in manifestos reflect the social and political intentions of political leaders.
Downloads
References
Addy, J., & Ofori, E. A. (2020). A critical discourse analysis of the campaign speech of a Ghanaian opposition leader. Theory and practice in Language Studies, 10,1279-1287.
Adjei, A. A., Ewusi-Mensah, L., & Okoh, H. (2015). Transitivity in political discourse–A study of the major process types in the 2009 state-of-the-nation address in Ghana. Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 16, 23-32.
Afful, J. B. A., & Gyasi, R. B. (2020). Schematic structure of manifesto launch speeches of three political parties. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(12), 672-690.
Ammara, U. E., Anjum, R. Y., & Javed, M. (2019). A Corpus-Based Halliday’s Transitivity Analysis of' To the Lighthouse'. Linguistics and Literature Review, 5 (2), 139-162.
Appiah, E. Y. (2015). Language, power and ideology: a critical discourse analysis of Jerry John Rawlings’ June 4 speeches (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Coast).
Bayley, P. (2004). Cross-cultural perspectives on parliamentary discourse. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse, 1-390.
Bayram, F. (2010). Ideology and political discourse: A critical discourse analysis of Erdogan’s political speech. Arecls, 7(1), 18.
Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S., & Yallop, C. (2003). Using functional grammar: An explorer’s guide.
Chu, J. B. (2021). Parrhesia, orthodoxy, and irony: A Foucauldian discourse analysis of the verbal politics of truth in the US Republican Party’s 2015–2016 presidential debates. Journal of Language and Politics, 20(6), 913-931.
Däubler, T., & Benoit, K. (2013). The empirical determinants of manifesto content. In EPSA 2013 Annual General Conference Paper (Vol. 205).
Dickson, A. G. (2023). A Stylistic Analysis of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Update on Ghana’s Enhanced Response to Covid-19 Pandemic. Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 97(2023), 1-10.
Dobson, G. (2007). The textual representation of a political paradigm shift: a critical discourse analysis of two election manifestos. Budapest: Eotvos Lorand University, 1, 99-124.
Dos Santos, L. M. (2020). The Discussion of Communicative Language Teaching Approach in Language Classrooms. Journal of Education and e-Learning Research, 7(2), 104-109.
Dunmire, P. L. (2012). Political discourse analysis: Exploring the language of politics and the politics of language. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6(11), 735-751.
Eder, N., Jenny, M., & Müller, W. C. (2017). Manifesto functions: How party candidates view and use their party's central policy document. Electoral Studies, 45, 75-87.
Ehineni, T. O. (2014). A critical discourse analysis of modals in Nigerian political manifestos. International Journal of Linguistics, 6(3), 109-117.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse & society, 3(2), 193-217.
Gyasi, R. B., & Sarfo-Kantankah, K. S. (2021). A functional analysis of Ghanaian presidential debates. Drumspeak: International Journal of Research in the Humanities, 5(3), 1-28.
Halliday, M. A. (1987). Spoken and written modes of meaning. In Comprehending oral and written language (pp. 55-82). Brill.
Halliday, M. A. (1994). Language and knowledge: The ‘unpacking’ of text. Text in education and society, 157-178.
Halliday, M. A. (2005). On matter and meaning: the two realms of human experience. Linguistics & the Human Sciences, 1(1).
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. (2013). Halliday's introduction to functional grammar. Routledge.
Hidayat, D. N., Kusuma, D., Alek, A., Purwahida, R., & Defianty, M. (2020). Beauty advertisement products in forming the reality of society: a critical discourse analysis. VELES: Voices of English Language Education Society, 4(2), 191-198.
Ikechukwu-Ibe, C. J., Aboh, S. C., & Agbedo, C. U. (2021). Pragmatic Analysis of Presidential Campaign Manifestos of Muhammadu Buhari and Donald Trump. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 11(8), 952-961.
Jäger, S., & Maier, F. (2009). Theoretical and methodological aspects of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis and dispositive analysis. Methods of critical discourse analysis, 2, 34-61.
Jahn, D., & Henn, M. (2000). The ‘new ’ rhetoric of new labour in comparative perspective: A three‐country discourse analysis. West European Politics, 23(1), 26-46.
Khursanov, N. I., & Gulyamova, S. B. (2021). Linguistic classifications related to discourse and its classifications. ISJ Theoretical & Applied Science, 10(102), 825-829.
Kirvalidze, N., & Samnidze, N. (2016). Political discourse as a subject of interdisciplinary studies. Journal of teaching and education, 5(1), 161-170.
Langseth, P., Stapenhurst, R., & Pope, J. (1997). The role of a national integrity system in fighting corruption. Commonwealth Law Bulletin, 23(1-2), 499-528.
Logogye, C. (2021). Ideology And Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of President Nana Akuffo Addo’s 2018 State Of The Nation Address. European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies, 5(3).
Malghani, M., Akhtar, S., & Farooqi, F. (2019). Analysis of Political Discourse in Pakistani Party Manifestos. Global Social Sciences Review, 4(2), 318-327.
Nartey, M. (2024). An Examination of the Communicative Functions of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Inaugural Addresses. In Communication and Electoral Politics in Ghana: Interrogating Transnational Technology, Discourse and Multimodalities (pp. 57-71). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Nartey, M., & Yankson, F. E. (2014). A semantic investigation into the use of modal auxiliary verbs in the manifesto of a Ghanaian political party. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 4(3), 21-30.
Ornatowski, C. M. (2012). The idea of politics in “political” rhetoric. In Forum Artis Rhetoricae, 2(2012), 7-21.
Pearce, M. (2004). The marketization of discourse about education in UK general election manifestos. Text & Talk, 24(2), 245-265.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. Sage Publications, Inc.
Rasul, A. S. (2022). Discourse Adequacy In Translations From English Into Azerbaijani (Based On The Works Of Well-Known Writers And On Their Translations Into Azerbaijani). Problems Of The Development Of Modern Science, 34, 239.
Schäffner, C. (2004). Metaphor and translation: some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of pragmatics, 36(7), 1253-1269.
Selamat, K., Handayani, I., & Hanif, A. (2021). The Advantages of Social Solidarity to be an Ideal Leader according to Ibnu Khaldun. Alfuad: Jurnal Sosial Keagamaan, 5(1), 11-23.
Singh, R., & Bala, R. (2018). A Study: Importance of Manifestoes. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 5(3), 939-943.
Spoon, J. J. (2012). How salient is Europe? An analysis of European election manifestos, 1979–2004. European Union Politics, 13(4), 558-579.
Tenorio, E. H. (2011). Critical discourse analysis, an overview. Nordic journal of English studies, 10(1), 183-210.
Thompson, G. (2013). Introducing functional grammar. Routledge.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What is political discourse analysis. Belgian journal of linguistics, 11(1), 11-52.
Vogler, R. (2022). Degree of political attention towards tourism: An analysis of party manifestos during German federal elections. European Journal of Tourism Research, 31, 3114-3114.
Wodak, R. (2004). Critical discourse analysis. Qualitative research practice, 185, 185-204.
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2009). Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2, 1-33.
Zhao, M., & Zhang, Y. (2017). A transitivity analysis of American President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 5(5), 31-43.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Gideon Dickson Agbanyo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The authors certify that:
- if the manuscript is co-authored, they are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- the work described has not been formally published before in a registered ISSN or ISBN media, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis.
- it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- they secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere (it does not infringe on the rights of others).
- they agree to license and copyright agreement.
All articles published are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
- Authors retain copyright and other proprietary rights related to the article.
- Authors retain the right and are permitted to use the substance of the article in their own future works, including lectures and books.
- Authors grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (CC BY-NC 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post or self-archive their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
