- Title
- An analysis of power relations, affiliation and individuation in selected coup, secession, and inaugural speeches of Nigerian leaders, 1960-2015
- Creator
- Unegbu, Osondu Chukwuemeka
- ThesisAdvisor
- Siebörger, Ian
- Subject
- Balance of power
- Subject
- Individuation (Psychology)
- Subject
- Corpora (Linguistics)
- Subject
- Systemic functional linguistics
- Subject
- Presidents Inaugural addresses
- Subject
- Emotive (Linguistics)
- Date
- 2023-10-13
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432399
- Identifier
- vital:72867
- Identifier
- DOI 10.21504/10962/432399
- Description
- The focus of this study is the analysis of unequal power relations, affiliation, and individuation in selected coup, secession, and inaugural speeches of Nigerian leaders. The data comprises 16 speeches, which represent the total population of Nigerian presidential coup, secession ,and inaugural speeches made by Nigerian leaders from 1960 to 2015. The written text of these speeches was collected from Internet sources. Corpus Linguistics (CL), and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) were used to do a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data. Specifically, SFL’s Appraisal framework was used to analyse how the speakers coupled Ideational and Interpersonal meanings, in the Appraisal sub-systems of Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation, to realize unequal power relations, affiliation, and individuation. CL and SFL were combined using Bednarek’s three-pronged approach to discourse analysis to carry out macro-, meso-and micro-analysis of the speeches. This allowed for a perspective on the development of discourses over time (phylogenesis) and the way meaning-making resources were employed in the unfolding of individual speeches (logogenesis). Bednarek’s three-pronged approach was readapted into a four-pronged approach to allow for two levels of meso-analysis, one comparing speeches before and after the Nigeria-BiafraWarand another comparing three genres of speeches: coup, secession, and inaugural speeches. Keywords, collocates and concordance results were used to compare the different and similar features of the linguistic resources used in the pre-and post-war speeches, and the three genres of speeches. Key findings show that the inaugural speeches used civil-oriented words and expressions to reproduce unequal power relations covertly and affiliate with all Nigerians, such as: “we will create greater access to quality education”. The coup speakers used mainly militaristic words and expressions to reproduce binary power asymmetry overtly, to create in-group and out-group affiliation and individuation, using expressions such as: “You are hereby warned”. The secession speaker affiliated with Biafrans and individuated away from Nigeria with overt power asymmetry in a militaristic fashion, using expressions such as: “totally dissolved”. This study contributes to the understanding of Nigerian political discourses by unravelling the interconnectedness of the couplings of linguistic resources in coup, secession, and inaugural speeches, and Nigeria’s sociopolitical experiences over time. The study can guide political speech writers and other contributors to political discourse in choosing appropriate lexemes and clause complexes for communicating citizens during different sociopolitical periods.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2023
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (447 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Unegbu, Osondu Chukwuemeka
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | UNEGBU-PHD-TR23-264.pdf | 5 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |