Linguistic Features and Discursive Strategies in Liberia's President Dr. George Manneh Weah's Closing Presidential Campaign Speech

Ayodele Adebayo Allagbé

Ayodele Adebayo Allagbé Département d’Anglais, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines (FLSH), Université André Salifou (UAS) de Zinder, République du Niger, Laboratoire Lettres, Education et Communication (LaboLEC) https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5398-9178

Keywords: CDA, discursive strategies, ideological power relations, presidential campaign speech, electoral period

Abstract

This paper analyzes the linguistic features and discursive strategies that Liberia’s President Dr. George Manneh Weah (henceforth, the speaker) deploys in his closing presidential campaign speech delivered on October 8th, 2023, in Monrovia, Liberia. Anchored on the theoretical insights from Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth, SFL), Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, CDA) and the descriptive mixed-method research design, the study specifically examines how the speaker employs linguistic features and discursive strategies in his speech to encode ideological power relations. The findings reveal that he uses, in varying proportions, such linguistic features as Transitivity, Theme, Modality and Vocative features in his speech. That is, each linguistic feature subsumes sub-types, which are deployed, in varying proportions, in the text. For instance, the analysis of Transitivity shows that the speaker selects all the 6 types of process, the dominant type being Material process. Likewise, he deploys the 3 types of Theme, the main type being Topical Theme. As the analysis further shows, 23 Topical Themes are marked. Again, it indicates that the speaker employs the 2 types of Modality, the predominant type being Modalization. It exudes too that the speaker uses the 2 types of Vocative, the predominant type being Familiarizers. Moreover, the findings indicate that the speaker employs such discursive strategies as Actor Description, Comparison, Examples and Illustrations, Number Game, Simile, Allusion, Hyperbole, Personification, Anastrophe, Repetition/Anaphora/Epistrophe, Parallelism, Schemes, Use of Personal Pronouns, Use of Modal Verbs and Modal Adjuncts, Foregrounding, Passivization, and Neologisms and Acronyms in his speech. The study concludes that the speaker intentionally deploys all the aforementioned linguistic features and discursive strategies to encode ideological power relations with a view to persuading or/and manipulating the electorate to vote for and elect him as a president for a second term on October 10th, 2023.

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