DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI’S DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH, 2019

Abstract

Language and context play vital roles in discourse especially in political discourse. The language of politics is not the language of ordinary everyday conversations. Politicians make use of unique discourse analysis that set their speeches apart from other discourses. The data for this work was got from the Democracy Day Speech of President Muhammadu Buhari (2019). The theoretical framework for this research is Austin’s Speech Act theory (1962), also speech vocatives, personal pronouns and flashback/allusions were used in the analysis. From the findings it was discovered that President Muhammadu Buhari in his 2019 Democracy Day Speech, used illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, speech vocatives, personal pronouns and flashback/allusions in his speech which qualifies it as a political speech. Conclusively we can say that speech act theory plays an important role in the analysis of any speech and this has been evidenced in the research carried out in this work.