Power and Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Campaign Speeches of 2023 Nigeria Presidential Aspirants

Abstract

Humans deploy the commonest social behavior, that is language, in perpetrating their social practices daily. As such, language underlies the constructed worldview of a people representing a majority, if not all part of the sociocultural and politico-economic aspects. Language could be said to represent relations of power and Ideology, exemplified in the relations of politicians to the general masses. This is manifested in the political sphere. Political discourse underscores the power relations, and ideology system obtainable in that geographical setting as well as underlines the exclusion and inclusion strategies of political actors. Thus, this study investigates the power relations and ideologies in the campaign speeches of the top three 2023 Nigerian Presidential candidates using the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, CDA, by Norman Fairclough. Adopting a qualitative analysis method of analysis, two (2) tweets per candidate, making a total of six (6) tweets, collected from Twitter are sampled for analysis. This study showed that there exist asymmetrical power relations between the less powerful and the powerful, which underscores the political ideology in Nigeria and presidential aspirants employ more of inclusive than exclusion lexemes.