IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF LANGUAGE USE IN OBASANJO’S OPEN LETTER TO NIGERIANS

Abstract

Political language use can be ideologically invested to create awareness about the personalities of political leaders and office seekers. In most cases, the intention is to gain or withdraw support from the electorates. Equally, these intentions are rightly or wrongly interpreted when the masses respond positively or negatively to the desires of the speaker thereby leading to effective communication or communication failure. By hinging on Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis framework, this study examined the inherent ideologies in Obasanjo’s open letter, The Way Out: A Clarion Call for Coalition for Nigeria Movement (2018) to Nigerians. Seventeen expressions were purposively selected and subjected to descriptive qualitative analysis. The findings revealed that two dominant ideologies - persuasive and transformative - were invested in Obasanjo’s language use. Through this, the consciousness of the citizens was raised about the evils prevalent in the society which are occasioned by bad governance. The study, therefore, validated the position that language remains a veritable tool which political leaders use to achieve their various individual interests. These interests are usually clothed in the specific leader’s ideologies.