A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Acceptance Speech of Prof. Charles Soludo

the Governor of Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract

Language in political speech can control and influence political action and audience confidence. This paper critically analyses the acceptance speech of Prof. Charles Soludo, the Governor Anambra State which was delivered after he was announced as the winner of the gubernatorial elections on 10^thNovember, 2021. This paper focuses on examining the linguistic features of the speech in order to determine the ideological position of the politician. The text of the speech is obtained from Premium Times Nigeria. This study adopts Fairclough and Wodak’s Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse his use of language to create identity and solidarity with the people. Our findings reveal that the governor appreciates the efforts of all as his use of pragmatic, grammatical and cohesive devices in the speech portrays hope for peace, security and good governance as he assumed the Office of Governor, Anambra State. The speech has grammatical and cohesive devices that express the ideology of the Governor. In the pronominal analysis, Soludo makes extensively use of “we/our” to denote the ideologies of inclusiveness, openness and communality. He achieved cohesion with his extensive usage of the addictive conjunction ‘and’. He emphasis on these ideologies is seen with his usage of referencing, substitution and parallelism. Our study concludes that Governor Soludo projects a form of charismatic and behooveful leadership.  We also conclude that politics plays an important role in our lives because when a good government comes in, everybody will benefit from the good governance.