LANGUAGE AND POLITICAL COMMITMENT: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI’S JUNE 12 INAUGURAL DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH
Abstract:Political discourses all over the world and among scholars
have assumed different linguistic impetus. Language and political intrigues are
inseparable concepts among the electorates and the elected political office
holders in any society. Hence, this research work was conducted to identify the
speech act features of President Muhammadu Buhari’s June 12 inaugural democracy
day speech. The paper explored the pragmatic functions of locution, illocution
and perlocutionary acts in the speech. It adopted the theoretical framework of
Speech Act as propounded by J.L. Austin (1962) and modified by John Searle in
his classification, (1969). It further looked at specific illocutionary acts
that were used in the speech; they include assertives (31%), directives (10%),
expressives (11%), commissives (46%) and declaratives (02%). Thus, the analysis
proved further that the illocutionary acts performed by Mr. President showed
the preponderance use of commissive and assertives acts which were mostly used
to convince, assert, explain, persuade and command the listeners to certain
actions. This goes a long way in showing commitment to building a better
nation. The result showed that politicians rely extensively on statements or
speeches using commissive acts to achieve their political ambitions before,
during and after electioneering campaigns. Needed to be said at this juncture,
is the fact that illocutionary acts play significant roles in political
speeches across the world