Discursive strategies in newspaper campaign advertisements for Nigeria’s 2011 elections

Abstract

This article discusses the discursive strategies used in some newspaper campaign advertisements for Nigeria’s 2011 elections with a view to unveiling the socio-political motifs and messages of the adverts. Data for the study comprised 60 full-page newspaper election campaign adverts of the two strongest political parties in the country: the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) published between February and April 2011, a period that can be referred to as the peak period of electioneering campaigns for the 2011 elections in Nigeria. The data gathered were analysed using the analytical tools of critical discourse analysis, with emphasis on Fairclough’s discourse as a social practice approach to the theory. Findings reveal that the text producers employed discursive strategies such as the metaphorization of party symbols, the use of deictic pronouns for inclusion and exclusion, deployment of rhetorical questions for persuasion, identification with the youth culture, employment of historical allusions, giving appeal to good luck, and negative other representation. In addition, the packaging of the information, graphological foregrounding, imagery, repetition and lexical choice reveal the intent of the campaign advertiser to persuade, appeal to sentiments, legitimize and delegitimize their positions in the discourse.

Keywords

Advertising critical discourse analysis election metaphor newspaper Nigeria party symbols political campaign political discourse political marketing politics power strategies

Introduction

Central to the idea of politics are such issues as power, legitimization, persuasion, struggles for dominance, and coercion. In the different kinds of discourse that one can think of as political, such as speeches, parliamentary debates, broadcast interviews, campaign speeches, advertisements, manifestos, and so forth, some of these issues clearly manifest. Since the study of discourse started shifting grounds from conversational analysis to the analysis of other forms of discourse, political discourse has become a major focus in the new cross-discipline of discourse studies. Scholars in critical discourse studies blending linguistic and social theories have argued that discourse is part of the social processes and practices (Fairclough, 2000). In any form of political discourse, for instance, language is used in a particular way such that the social actors represent aspects of the social order.

Campaign is a vital aspect of politics. In a sense of the act, that is seeing it from the point of view of marketing, it is simply an exchange of promises from the candidates for votes by the electorate (Apospori et al., 2010). However, looking at a political campaign as a discourse, it goes beyond the mere use of words to gain votes. In their bid to persuade, writers of political campaigns dwell on policy utterances which address past deeds, future plans, or general goals as well as character comments, which address personality qualities, leadership ability or ideal. Beyond these, the campaign as a discourse shapes the relations of power and struggles over power among the political actors. In this study of political campaigns, therefore, our focus is to link the discursive text with the wider social and cultural structures and processes. The overall goal is to explore how political actors engage and manipulate language to project their images as well as those of their parties. The notion of power is central to this study. Political campaigns can be seen as struggles over certain interests and the goal is the maintenance of unequal power relations and dominance.

Nigeria has since 1999 been trying to rebuild the democratic institution which was hijacked by the military, first in 1966 and later in 1983. From the period of rebirth of democracy in the country until now, four general elections have been held in the country and none of these elections can be said to have been free and fair. Each election was characterized by scales of malpractice and violence. Prior to elections, as expected, there were intense campaigns through various means by the contestants. Such means include podium speech-making and various kinds of campaigns through the electronic and print media. Opeibi (2006) has noticed an evolving pattern in campaign activities in Nigeria, which is largely negative. He termed this as ‘political macheting’. According to him, the political candidates abandoned positive, issue-focused, image-building adverts for direct attacks on their opponents. Since the goal of this research is not just to identify the discourse structures and strategies in the campaigns, it probed further into how they are used to enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce, or challenge relations of power and dominance in society (Van Dijk, 2001a: 353).

Language and politics

Politics is one of the major events that pervade every human’s social world, and language is the key creator of the social world. This therefore means that language and politics are intimately linked at a fundamental level. In fact, as Chilton (2004: 6) puts it, ‘the doing of politics is predominantly constituted in language’. Other scholars have corroborated this close link between language and politics. Awonusi (2008: 10) sees the relationship between language and politics as ‘bidirectional’ – language affects politics and politics affects language. Opeibi (2009) also sees the relationship as ‘symbiotic’. The whole essence of politics as identified by Beard (2000: 2) is the wish to gain power, exercise power and keep power, and language is the major vehicle for achieving these goals.

Scholars from two different disciplines can be clearly identified with the study of language and politics – linguists and political scientists. While each of these disciplines focuses on different issues, they have some meeting points. Politics is concerned with power: the power to make decisions, to control resources, to control other people’s behaviour, and to control their values. As Ayoade, a foremost Nigerian political scientist rightly asserts: ‘language is the conveyor belt of power. It moves people to vote, debate, or revolt. It is therefore central explanation of political stability or polarization’ (Ayoade, 1982: 724). Critical discourse analysis is the meeting point in the research of language and politics and their intersection. The critical discourse approach employs the discourse approaches to any text that could be termed political. Among other things, texts and talks of professional politicians and political institutions have been studied from these perspectives. These include debates, campaigns, interviews, manifestos, rallies, and so forth. These kinds of studies are generally classified under political discourse analysis.

Generally speaking, political discourse is a unique discourse token that reflects the dynamicity of its environment. Numerous scholars have indeed given this aspect of discourse different meanings. According to Wilson (2003: 398), ‘political discourse is concerned with formal and informal political contexts and political actors, politicians, political institutions, governments, political media, and political supporters operating in political environments to achieve political goals’. Also, Alvarez-Cáccamo and Prego-Vásquez (2003), cited in Ayoola (2008: 160), view public political discourse as ‘a form of appropriation and an inherently asymmetrical tool for power’. However, the consensus definition of this field of research can be said to be succinctly captured by Van Dijk (1998) as ‘a class of genres defined by a social domain, namely that of politics’. This definition therefore limits the concept of political discourse to the ‘professional’ realm of activities of politicians. A political discourse, according to Van Dijk (2001b), is therefore one that ‘accomplishes a political act in a political institution, such as governing, legislation, electoral campaigning, and so on’. Van Dijk notes that:

A study of the topics, coherence, arguments, lexical style, . . . of a political discourse may of course reveal much about the unique character of such a discourse, and also allows inferences about the cognitive, social and especially political functions of such discourse. (2001a: 30)

From the foregoing discussion of political discourse, it then can be conveniently said that the campaign advertisements for the 2011 Nigerian elections, which are the focus in this study, constitute political discourse. Therefore, the motivation for this study hinges on the need to describe how copywriters for newspaper campaign adverts for the 2011 Nigerian elections have effectively or otherwise presented political and social issues in their texts. It is interesting to examine how the signifying practices in the discourse reflect or demonstrate the concerns of critical discourse analysis (CDA) such as power abuse, domination and inequality. The objectives of this study are thus to:

identify the discursive features of the adverts;

discuss the features in relation to the socio-political contexts of the discourse;

foreground the aspects of the ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ in the discourse.

Political campaigns in Nigeria

Nigeria gained political independence from Britain in 1960 and since then the political terrain in the country has always been tense. Shortly after independence, the country witnessed a series of electoral and ethnic violence that led to a military coup d’état and counter-coups. The first election after independence, according to Aniekwe and Kushie (2011: 11), was shrouded in ethnicity, rancour, violence, greed and selfishness. Since then, there have been repeated cases of electoral violence in the country. It is important to note that electoral crises have always been traced to the management of political communication. Being a linguistically, culturally and ethnically heterogeneous country, utterances of key political figures have the tendency to heat up the polity and lead to electoral violence.

Just as in every other democratic setting, elections are meant to provide the platform for debate, persuasion and common rules for choosing representatives of the people who can serve in executive, legislative and other institutions of government. However, in Nigeria, most platforms for debates and other political communication are turned into platforms for verbal threats, insults, intimidation, coercion, blackmail and hate speech. Political campaigns in Nigeria, either verbal or written, are typically characterized by these uninhibited discursive behaviours. Taiwo (2010) observes that several issues shape discourse in the Nigerian political scene. According to him:

Since her independence, Nigeria has been going through different kinds of socio-political experiences, most of which can be summarized under the following: corruption and mismanagement of resources, human rights abuses, ethno-religious violence, resource related crises, highly flawed electoral process, power generation crisis, labour-related crisis, insecurity of lives and property, and so forth. (p. 173)

These issues are focused upon during electoral campaigns, particularly by the opposition, to highlight the inefficiency of the government in power.

The 2011 election in Nigeria was a crucial one, being the third election to be supervised by the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party. Prior to the elections, a number of electoral petition cases on the 2007 elections were taken to courts and judgments were given in favour of the opposition parties whose candidates had been declared winners and sworn into different offices ranging from those of the legislators to gubernatorial. This gave hope to the candidates in the opposition parties, who were determined to wrest power from the ruling party. There was therefore a high expectation on the part of the opposition that it was time for change in the country. This was clearly reflected in the campaign discourse, especially that in the print media. The last two months before the elections were characterized by media political advertisement campaigns sponsored by different groups and individuals. Most of the national daily newspapers were filled with full-page campaigns for candidates of the major political parties in the country, namely the People’s Democratic Party (PDP),¹ Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN),² All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP)³ and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).⁴ However, the major media political campaign ‘war’ was between the PDP and ACN.

Political marketing and advertising

A wide range of activities can be subsumed under political discourse. These include parliamentary debates, interviews, political broadcasts, speeches by political actors such as electoral addresses and campaign speeches, newspapers advertisements and columns, and so forth. Political campaign can be subsumed under political marketing and advertising. Political marketing, according to Harrop (1990), covers the whole area of party positioning in the electoral market. Political advertising, on the other hand, refers to the method or process by which any entity promotes its image or services with the intention of attracting further interest from people. It is interesting to note that although marketing and advertising were originally associated with the business or corporate industries, they now have relevance in almost all spheres of human life. In the political terrain, advertising is greatly deployed since the ultimate objective of parties involved in politics is to win the public over to their side.

Political parties frame themselves as products to be bought by the public, deploying unique ‘marketing’ strategies. According to Reece (2003, cited in Opeibi, 2006), ‘political advertisements entered into election campaigns around 1952 and have since grown in size and style of presentation both in the print and electronic media’. Opeibi (2006) further commented that political advertisements were not, however, popular in Nigeria until the 1990s, when Nigerian politicians became aware of their effectiveness as a persuasive strategy for canvassing support during elections. This situation perhaps can be effectively attributed to the pervasive military rule in the Nigerian nation in past years.

Today, however, political marketing is soaring high in the nation as political parties, before and during elections, deploy different kinds of adverts (billboard, television, radio, newspaper, etc.) to inform the public of their plans and mission with the aim of obtaining their votes at the polls.

One area in which electoral campaigning is gaining prominence is newspaper advertising. Newspaper advertising performs a great function in electoral campaigning. Politicians and political parties believe that it allows their ideas to reach a broad spectrum of the literate audience. Newspaper advertisements are usually highly stylized with sharp and impressive images and lettering aimed at captivating the target audience. Political campaigning through newspaper advertising creates a brand in candidates that makes them marketable. It usually gives a captivating image of the object of advertising.

Since the emergence of the re-nascent political order in Nigeria, newspapers have been greatly utilized by contesting politicians and political parties for electoral campaigning. One interesting comment that can be made about newspaper political adverts in Nigeria is that they are usually full of attacks on the opponents of those persons or political parties advertising. Apart from this distinct feature of newspaper adverts, image-boosting is a feature that generally runs through such advertisements.

Perspectives on political discourse in Nigeria

In Nigeria, especially in recent times, political discourse as an aspect of linguistic enquiry has enjoyed tremendous attention. Scholars have been, and are still, interested in how language is used in the political domain for hortatory purposes. By this, we mean that the peculiar use of language by Nigerian political players and actors to win people to their side has been a subject of interest to linguists. It is an imperative for politicians canvassing for the votes of the electorate to communicate their ideas to the people from whom they seek votes. They choose different ways to do this that will help them to achieve their ultimate goal of persuasion.

Studies on Nigerian political discourse have focused mainly on speeches of political actors in the country, such as civilians, military rulers and political office aspirants. Some of the earliest studies include those on styles and political rhetoric of Nigeria’s First Republic leaders (Ajewole-Orimogunje, 2012; Akindele, 1989; Awonuga, 1988; Oladeji, 1989); stylistic studies of military leaders’ speeches (Alo and Igwebuike, 2009; Ayeomoni, 2005a, 2005b; Oha, 1994); and discourse-pragmatic studies of political speeches (Abdulahi-Idiagbon, 2010; Adetunji, 2006, 2009; Ayoola, 2005; Babatunde and Odepidan, 2009; Okpanachi, 2009; Taiwo, 2008). Other recent studies have focused on victory and inaugural speeches (Abuya, 2012; Ayeomoni and Akinkurolere, 2012) and legislative discourse (Ayodele, 2008; Daramola, 2006). These studies have provided insights into how much of a weapon language is for its users.

Significant among the areas in which CDA is used are media discourse and political discourse. Studies that apply CDA methods to Nigerian political discourse have increased recently. Ayoola (2005) examines Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s address to the national assembly in July 2005. The analysis was situated against the socio-political context in which the speech was delivered – that of the speakers’ move to bid for a third term after spending the constitutionally required two terms in office. He notes that Obasanjo’s employment of personal deixis, emotive lexis and structure, the semantic field of war and military syntax helped him to project his message in the speech. Using another speech delivered by Obasanjo, Taiwo (2008) identifies the strategies he used in legitimizing himself and the party he represents, as well as his coercion and intimidation of opponents, thereby expressing discourse power.

In another article, Ayoola (2008: 44) argues for the employment of CDA methods for the interpretation of the meanings and elicitation of the discursive strategies in socially- and politically-based texts. In line with this submission, most studies on CDA ask questions about how discourse structures are deployed in the production of social dominance. This is premised on the fact that words are not ideologically neutral; rather, they betray our social, cultural, political and historical inclinations.

It is also important to stress that doctoral dissertations have been written on different aspects of Nigerian political discourse. Notable among these are Oha (1994), which is a stylistic study of speeches of the two notable figures in the Nigerian Civil War, Yakubu Gowon, the then military head of state, and Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military leader who led the failed secession of the Biafra Republic. Opeibi (2004) did a study on discourse analysis of the 1994 presidential election campaigns in Nigeria. From stylistic and text-linguistic perspectives, Ayeomoni (2007) did a lexical analysis of speeches of selected Nigerian military leaders.

All the studies mentioned here on Nigerian political discourse have identified pertinent linguistic features in different kinds of political speeches made by Nigerian political actors. These include their peculiar rhetorical, pragmatic, discursive and stylistic features. As noted earlier, most studies on Nigerian political discourse have focused on speeches, a specific kind of speech – addresses by political leaders. A few scholarly studies on campaign speeches also exist. In the following paragraphs, these studies will be reviewed.

In a synchronic stylistic analysis of campaign speeches during the 2007 general elections, Omozuwa and Ezejidiaku (2009) identify the stylistic devices used by the candidates. They observe that campaign speeches are embellished in rhetoric and propaganda. Repetition, promise, colloquialism, metaphor, word coinages, pidginized expressions, figurative expressions, exaggeration, abusive and vulgar utterances also characterize their diction. Other studies on Nigerian campaigns corroborate these findings. Taiwo (2007) identifies political lampooning of the opposition through newspaper advertisements as one of the major campaign strategies of Nigerian politicians during the 2007 general election in the country. Other scholars (Awonuga, 2005; Taiwo, 2010) identify the central role metaphors play in the conceptualization of issues and persons in Nigerian political discourse.

Opeibi (2006) provides a structural and functional description of the emerging trends in negative advertising during political campaigns in Nigeria. He observes that Nigerian political campaign discourse is characterized by negative political advertising, particularly in newspapers. In his observation, many of the political office aspirants abandoned positive, issue-focused, image-building advertisements and engaged in rhetorical strategies of direct attacks on their opponents. In another study, also on political campaigns, Opeibi (2007) describes how these politicians engage both the exogenous English and indigenous languages alongside the pidginized version of English to drive home their messages.

Abdulahi-Idiagbon (2010), in a critical discourse analytic study of presidential campaign speeches during the 2007 presidential election in Nigeria, investigates the ideological undertones in the campaign speeches of selected presidential candidates. In his findings, he notes the manner in which the aspirants manipulated the linguistic resources to project the messages in their discourse. The styles reveal the use of connotative expressions, topicalization, passivization, persuasion and promises, euphemism and repetition to present their ideological leanings.

It is clear from all these studies that the Nigerian political class employs different innovative linguistic means during political campaigns to canvas for, assert, maintain and resist power in discourse. Of interest to the present study are print media political campaigns, which became about the most popular means of campaigning during the 2011 general election. Prior to that period, most political campaigns were done face-to-face or on the electronic media and billboards. A major feature of print media campaigns is that they are products of careful thought, exploring a possible number of historical and social issues that will persuasively convey their message. It is also pertinent to note that a number of the political parties are easily identified with some print media either by reason of ownership or other associations with some notable politicians in the country.

In the present study, CDA is brought into action in the realm of political discourse as we examine how the verbal and visual aspects of newspaper political advertisements demonstrate how politicians engage in power tussle through the print media during the 2011 election campaigns in Nigeria. This endeavour, for us, is significant in considering the fact that newspaper political advertisements are a major tool with which Nigerian political parties and politicians exercise discursive and social powers. Thus, evident in the discourse is usually the image of ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ consequent upon the goal of the discourse producers, which is to seize power at all costs. Therefore, this study attempts a critical interpretation of some political adverts for the 2011 Nigerian elections beyond the codes used in them. Since there are different approaches to CDA, this study specifically draws on Fairclough’s discourse as a social practice approach to CDA. Discourse as a social practice is significant and relevant to this study because it elucidates the notion that language use is socially determined, a reality which is reflected in the data for this study, being a political discourse. Fairclough (1989: 23) captures the social conditioning of language in the following words: ‘Linguistic phenomena are social in the sense that when people speak or listen or read or write, they do so in ways which are determined socially and have social effects.’

Methodology

Data for this study were taken from print media advertisements in three national daily newspapers in Nigeria: The Punch,⁵ The Nation⁶ and The Sun.⁷ These newspapers were published between February and April 2011. This was the peak period of electioneering campaigns in the nation for the general elections which were held in April 2011. Sixty full-page election campaign advertisements were purposively selected for this study. These advertisements were those of the two major political parties: the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and they were campaigns for presidential and gubernatorial candidates. The two parties were focused upon because they were the ones whose adverts featured most prominently in the media owing to their large and strong financial bases. Extracts from the data are presented to illustrate the discursive strategies employed in the campaign advertisements.

Findings and discussions

The data studied revealed clearly that the political parties understood the dynamics of discourse construction and control in political campaign discourse, especially in mass-mediated discourse. They are aware that the exercise of social control through discourse is the control of discourse and discourse production itself (Van Dijk, 1989). Access to a wide range of discourse platforms is in itself a form of exercise of social power. The social actors made use of those Van Dijk calls ‘the symbolic elites’, that is professional journalists and writers ‘who have relative freedom and power to decide the discourse genre within their domain of power and determine the topics, style and presentation of discourse’ (Van Dijk, 1989: 21). According to Van Dijk, these symbolic elites are skilful in manufacturing public knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, norms, values morals and ideologies. The diction of the advertisements expressed the power structures in the Nigerian socio-political terrain. A critical discourse reading of the advertisements made it possible for us to link the text with the underlying power structure and the social context of their production. While the ruling party, the PDP, was trying to establish its hegemony and legitimizing its power of incumbency, the major goal of the opposition party, was to struggle for and contest the dominance of the PDP. In trying to achieve their goals, the two major parties in the country employed different discourse strategies.

Metaphorical conceptualization of party symbols

The most visible discursive means is the metaphorical conceptualization of party symbols. Symbols are intended to enhance the image of the parties and portray their values, goals and ideals. Many times, these symbols shape the spoken and written, as well as visual, discourses that emerge in the context of campaign advertisements. The symbol of PDP is an umbrella. An umbrella is used to protect the carrier from rain or sunlight. The PDP symbol conceptualizes the party as a shield to members and supporters (PARTY-AS-SHIELD). According to Lakoff (1992), metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world and our everyday behaviour reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience. This conceptualization of the party as a shield symbolized by an umbrella is significant in the Nigerian socio-political world, where politicians hardly exhibit accountability and probity in their conduct. This metaphor helps us to understand a major aspect of the Nigerian political experience: the need for protection, by mapping the source domain – PDP (a political party) to a target domain – shield/protection. The umbrella symbolizes an entity in the domain of protection.

The umbrella metaphor also conceptualizes PDP as a party that can accommodate all, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic and religious leanings. This metaphor also presents the party as a liberal, democratic, as well as a unifying body. Some of the campaigns of the party stress the symbol and equate it with the party itself. Below are some adverts sponsored by the party containing the umbrella metaphor.

√ote UMBRELLA all the way!!!

The Punch , Tuesday 12 April 2011

Come 9^th April,

Vote right, vote the umbrella

Vote Goodluck Jonathan

Sunday Sun , 3 April 2011

The use of party symbols is deliberate and instructive for voters, especially the illiterates. Party logos are important in Nigeria, where a large number of the population, especially those in the rural areas, are not literate in English, the country’s official language. Ballot papers are designed in such a way that the party logos are very prominent, and all a voter needs to do is to be able to identify the desired party’s logo and thumbprint beside it.

One way for ACN to contest this metaphor of PARTY-AS-SHIELD is to attack the umbrella logo of PDP. Drawing on the prevailing socio-economic situation in the country, the opposition sees the umbrella as an incongruous symbol – one which does not depict the reality. Below are some of the ways of contesting the symbol.

Na wa o! (Nigerian Pidgin English: I can’t believe it)

See as people dey suffer under di umbrella (imagine the way people suffer under the umbrella)

There is no better time than now to vote for leaders that actually provide the basic needs for their people

Enough is enough. It is time for change.

The Nation , 12 April 2011

The first two sentences in the advert above are written in Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE). NPE is a simplified form of English, which blends the lexemes and structures of English (the superstrate) with those of indigenous Nigerian languages (the substrates). NPE plays an important role as a lingua franca for the linguistically heterogeneous country. This is significant, as NPE is the language of the oppressed and that of identity for young and average Nigerians. The use of Pidgin is meant to target the majority of the electorate and give them a true picture of what the ruling party is doing to them. The structural packaging of information in the advertisement makes the reader inquisitive about what is to follow. The expression ‘na wa o’ means ‘it is unbelievable’. The rest of the advertisement presents the unbelievable phenomenon. The image of an incongruous symbol is complemented by the pictorial presentation of a man, a woman and their child under a torn umbrella being beaten by the rain. This further reinforces the fact that the umbrella, which symbolizes the PDP, is devoid of the expected power to shield the people from suffering.

While the umbrella for PDP depicts a party that accommodates people of diverse interests and thoughts, for the opponents, it is a ‘crooked’ (deceitful, dishonest, fraudulent) symbol. The campaign advertisement below, sponsored by the ACN, stresses this.

A crooked umbrella never makes a man straight in his ways.

Vote for integrity. Vote for Accountability. Vote for transparency

Vote for Action Congress of Nigeria.

Enough is enough. It is time for change.

The Punch , 14 April 2011

In recent times the opposition has been attacking the PDP logo, which is an indirect way of attacking the party. Some aggrieved members who left the PDP to join other parties have also joined in the attack. For instance, many newspapers in the nation reported what the leader of one of the opposition parties, who was formerly a member of the PDP, said:

We have suffered under the PDP and we are scattered under the umbrella. We believe and trust in the Accord Party [another party that emerged from the PDP] and we know that we can get the best within it and attract more development to the state.

( National Mirror , 14 January 2013)

The choice of the lexicon such as ‘crooked’, ‘suffer’, ‘scattered’ as opposed to ‘integrity’, ‘accountability’, ‘transparency’ and ‘change’, which the opposition claims to represent, further depicts how mental models of the political situation in the country are activated in the production of campaign advertisements. In many other instances, the umbrella is described by the opposition as ‘leaking’ (This Day, 29 January 2013), ‘shrinking’ (Vanguard, 16 January 2011), ‘tattered’ (Leadership, 18 February 2013), ‘broken’, ‘torn’ (The Nation, 15 February 2013), ‘full of holes’ (The Sun, 3 March 2013), and so forth.

The broom is the symbol of ACN, the major opposition party. The party identifies itself with the ability to perform a cleansing of the political mess the nation has found itself in, which is always attributed to the PDP government. This is a conceptual mapping of PARTY-AS-TRANFORMER. A prominent lexical item in the ACN advert is ‘change’, which they believe the broom symbolizes. ‘The Broom Revolution’ is one of the slogans of the party. It is common to see members and supporters of the party holding brooms during their rallies. The symbolic power of the broom for ACN is portrayed in the ACN adverts below.

LET US

SWEEP AWAY

POWER FAILURE

For 12 years, they have not been able to give us common

electricity, that the rest of the world has been enjoying!

Yet they have spent over $16billion of our money

Are we to continue to live in darkness for another 4 years? Haba!

How much longer will it take and how much more will it cost?

Have we not been patient enough?

The Punch , 12 April 2011

The local broom is an assemblage of excised mid-ribs of palm fronds which are tied together with fibre into a bundle used to brush aside accumulated filth on the floors. Sweeping with a broom is an assertion of the boundaries of one’s dwelling space and a defence of that space against the natural forces of entropy. The broom in the mental representation of an average Nigerian becomes the object through which they reject dirt, thereby restoring the environment Doris (2009). The broom metaphor is a promise of socio-political and economic renewal, and threatens swift action against corrupt political figures. Power failure is graphologically foregrounded to identify it as one of the major aspects of the socio-economic problems to tackle and brush aside.

In the context of most Nigerian cultures, the bundled broom is also a fighting unit – a set of individual fibres come together to accomplish a common goal – to rid the house of dirt and dust. The broom metaphor symbolizes cohesion and irresistible sweeping force. It is a political imagery that symbolizes the power to change the fortune of the nation in every ramification. For instance, the inability of the country’s power-generating company to meet the electricity demand of the nation has been a major source of concern to every Nigerian. To drive the point home, the advertisement supplied a basic fact on the energy crisis in the nation – the amount of money that had been spent in 12 years by the government in an attempt to solve the problem – $16b.

Deictic pronouns

Important contextual features of political discourse are the social roles and actions of the political figures. As noted by Obeng and Hartford (2002):

Political discourse structure is heavily impacted by the intended functions of the message. If the message is to criticize an out-group and call for an action against the group, then the discourse is often structured in such a way as to first present the outgroup’s action or message as problematic and then to suggest the right course of action the target addressees must take. (p. 7)

Principles of exclusion and inclusion are projected in the use of the deictic pronouns: first-person plural pronoun ‘we’, second-person plural pronoun ‘you’ and third-person plural pronoun ‘they’ in the campaigns. These pronouns signal the presence of more than one group in the political process. The strategic use of the pronoun ‘we’ in the campaign adverts was to co-implicate the people, thereby invoking a general collective response to major socio-economic and political issues, such as an unstable electricity supply, as seen earlier. The opposition therefore assumes the position of spokespersons for the ordinary Nigerians, as can be seen in the extracts below obtained from an ACN advert.

Are we to continue to live in darkness for another 4 years?

Have we not been patient enough?

We can make it happen.

The Punch , 21 April 2011

The use of ‘we’ here presents the opposition and the electorate as a force that has the right to ask questions and take justifiable steps to change the situation. The opposition needs the people to justify and advance their causes and disagreements with the party in power. They need to demonstrate how they and the people can present a force that will resist bad governance. The last sentence in the extract is persuasive, a signifier of hope. The use of ‘we’ here is a call for community action.

On the other hand, the use of the generic ‘you’ places the responsibility of demanding for accountability on the electorate. Every instance of ‘you’ in the following extract stands for the electorate:

They don’t really care about you and you know it . . . Up till now, they have ignored you and you have the power to decide who will be the next president of this country . . . Use your power wisely. It is your passport to the future you want . . . You can make it happen.

You have an opportunity to peacefully and democratically end 12 years of corruption . . .

The Punch, 14 April 2011

This engagement of ‘you’ presents the electorate as both the victims (people who are ignored, and not cared about) and the potential agents (who have the power and the opportunity to make the change they want happen).

In political discourse, where struggle for power and hegemony is the focus, the ‘Other’ is essential to meaning. The opposition here takes up a position in relation to the group being referred to by ‘they’. This is clearly a disaffiliative context in which the opposition makes a negative evaluation of the party in power.

They cannot do in the next 4 years what they could not do in the last 12

They don’t really care about you . . . they have ignored you. . .

. . . they have not been able to give us common electricity . . . Yet, they have spent over $16billion of our money . . .

The Punch, 14 April 2011

The clauses contain complex verb phrases with active verbs (do, give, care, spent) as the heads demonstrating what the subjects have or have not done. In four of the clauses, the verbs are negated to show what the government could not and did not do and has not been able to do. However, in the third and last clauses, the verb phrase is positive, thus depicting what the government has done, which is not in the interest of the people. The switch in the referencing pattern from ‘you’ in the first four clauses to ‘our’ and ‘us’ in the last two clauses depict a solidarity with the people. The issues being projected here are the concerns of every Nigerian, including the members of the opposition party. The deliberate fronting of the information on the next four years in the main clause is significant. The last 12 years is treated as the given, and attention is focused on the next four years which can determine the direction of the democratic practices in the country. The primary goal of these lexical and structural choices is to help the electorate to make informed choices during the elections.

Rhetorical questions

Rhetorical questions are a very powerful technique for persuasion and manipulation. An advertisement persuades by being informative. However, as stated by Valor (2005), advertising discourse adopts an informative aspect to camouflage a purely persuasive intention. The rhetorical questions are used to focus the electorate’s attention on the argument in the message, thereby enhancing the goal, which is persuasion. Consider the ACN sponsored advert below:

Are we to continue to live in darkness for another 4 years?

How much longer will it take and how much more will it cost?

Have we not been patient enough?

A Government of BIG men or A Government of BIG ideas? YOU CHOOSE

Brain Drain or Brain Gain? YOU CHOOSE

The Nation , 14 April 2011

The first question, a polar question, allows the people to think ahead about the next four years – the political period specified by the constitution. The second one, a two-in-one wh-question, emphasizes the time and cost of change. The third, a polar question, puts the electorate to task on the elasticity of their patience. The last two questions are alternative questions, which offer the electorate a closed choice within two alternatives – an obviously negative idea and an extremely positive one. Politicians in Nigeria are regarded as ‘big men’ because of their disposition to the office they occupy and the manner in which they amass wealth from the state’s coffers. They often ride in expensive cars, usually in convoys with siren, and their security men harass and assault anybody who stands in their way. This picture of a typical Nigerian politician is contrasted with that of an ideal politician with ideas which are deployed to build the state and improve the welfare of the people. The expression ‘big man’ in NE means a man of influence and wealth. Sometimes, it connotes an oppressor – people who have wealth and influence to oppress the less-privileged. The expression YOU CHOOSE is graphologically foregrounded at the end of the questions to stress the importance of choice. All the rhetorical questions are meant to generate both an immediate covert response of reflections and an ultimate overt one of the decision on who to eventually vote for.

What is it going to be?

A party that flatters you with empty promises or a party willing to stand up and make things happen

A party that castrates your hopes or a party whose actions keep your hope alive

A party that manipulatively holds you captive or a party that willingly helps you reach our potential as a nation

The Nation , 14 April 2011

To further underscore the importance of choice, some options are presented with a lead wh-question – What is it going to be? In each of the clauses presenting two alternatives, the ideal and the non-ideal kinds of party are presented with the non-ideal being fronted, again, presenting them as the given information (shared or mutual knowledge of the existing political context) and the ideal as the new information – what is to be noted as the focus of the advertiser’s message.

Identifying with the youth culture

It is very clear from some of the campaign adverts that there is an awareness of the emerging youth culture in the digital and information age. The youths in Nigeria, as elsewhere, are deeply immersed in the ubiquitous influence of the apparatus of the digital age. The effects of these are evident in the vocabulary, the de-emphasizing of syntactic rules and respelling. An appeal to this youth culture is clearly seen in the next campaign advert.

L L

New dispensation. New opportunities. New frontiers

Soon, Nigeria’s Youth

will laugh out loud

Only one president understands your language

Sunday Sun , 27 March 2011

Recognizing the social power that can be derived through social media, well before the active commencement of the political campaign for the 2011 elections, many of the political actors registered their presence on Facebook. In contemporary times, the social media have been identified as the key to major protests leading to democratic changes all over the world. According to Taiwo (2012), the social media is engaged for the purpose of expressing power in public discourse. The presidential candidate of PDP identified with the youth and even claimed to be the only president that understands their language. One of the most popular and purposefully stylized expressions in the digital media is the acronym lol (laugh out loud). It is a common acronym for laughter. It is often accompanied with a smiley face. This acronym is clearly foregrounded to enhance this identity. Beyond the discourse of identity being presented in this campaign advert, repetition of the adjective new is used to counter the picture of the PDP that the opposition may be trying to present – that of a party to be discarded due to non-performance in the last 12 years of being in power.

In another ACN sponsored campaign advert titled ‘Letter to Our Young People’, written on 14 April 2011, the candidate of ACN, Nuhu Ribadu, and his running mate, Fola Adeola, addressed young people using the typical persuasive means to sensitize them to the need to use their power through the ballot box to effect the change they desired.

Don’t be fooled. They cannot do in the next 4 years what they could not do in the last 12 . . . They don’t really care about you, and you know it. Up till now, they have ignored you and now you have the power to decide who will be the next President of this country. Use the power wisely. It is your passport to the future you want for yourselves and your family. Your peers all across the Middle East are taking the courageous stand to take their countries back and set them on the paths of freedom and social justice. With your vote, your vigilance and diligence, Nigeria will be transformed. You can make it happen. We can make it happen. Together a new Nigeria is possible. The time is now.

The Punch , 14 April 2011

This advert is a direct invitation to the youth to deploy their electoral power. The traditional polarization in politics is reflected in the choice of personal pronouns. However, this time around, it is between ‘they’ (the ruling party) and ‘you’ (the youth). The opposition distanced itself initially from the discourse. The opening clause is an attention-grabber – ‘Don’t be fooled’. The natural question to ask is ‘by whom?’. The clause has an unexpressed agent which can be subsequently understood as the reference ‘they’. The referent can be arrived at by the reader through inference as the ruling party. The only other prominent pronoun in the text is ‘you’ referring to the electorate. The advert stresses three things the youths need to contribute – their vote, vigilance and diligence. These ‘instruments’ are fronted to stress their importance for the transformation of Nigerian political culture. As in an earlier discourse, there is a switch from ‘you’ to ‘we’ to express solidarity with the youth and see everyone doing it together. Even though the campaign advert is written, its style is speech-like, in the manner of a direct address to a group of people the writer refers to as ‘you’ all the way through.

The allusion to the Arab Spring, spearheaded by the youth in the Arab nations, was meant to serve as an inspiration to Nigerian youth. The use of imperative sentences, such as ‘Use the power wisely’, is meant to encourage the youths to legitimately and peacefully exercise their socially enabled power to secure their future. The text is used to create the sense of being victims of power abuse in the youths and the need to challenge their oppressor’s superiority through their votes. Dreaming of leaving the country for greener pastures is seen as accepting the oppressor’s superiority and their (the youth’s) own inferiority. The advert, drawing on the knowledge of the political terrain in the country, also stressed that voting is not enough. It must be accompanied by other actions that are pragmatic, such as monitoring the votes and ensuring that they count.

Historical allusions

An understanding of history is important in politics. Historical allusions are powerful expressions and means of creating flashbacks in texts. The allusion in the following extract is implicit. It can only be arrived at by inference and knowledge of what the Western Region of Nigeria stood for at some point in the political history of the country.

Wise Wise West!

‘The entire South-West is too important, too sophisticated and too educated . . .’

. . . and wise people of the West know one man who possesses the same enviable qualifications for the transformation of Nigeria . . .

The Punch , 27 February 2011

The foregrounding of ‘West’ is to strike the readers’ interest and draw attention to that part of Nigeria which was the target of the advert. Describing the South-West as ‘too important, too sophisticated and too educated’ underscores the place of South-West in the nation’s politics. In the early 1960s, the expression ‘Wild Wild West’ was quite popular as a reference to the political turmoil that followed elections in the late 1960s in the country. The violence was characteristically referred to as ‘Operation Wetie’. ‘Wetie’ is a blend of English and Yoruba expressions which means ‘wet him or her’. It signifies the act of setting political opponents and their properties ablaze. This post-electoral violence in South-West Nigeria eventually culminated in the first military intervention in the country. Rather than use the popular expression ‘Wild Wild West’, the advertisement used the expression ‘Wise Wise West’, which is a euphemistic way of referring to the South-West. Since the advert was meant to woo the southwestern electorate who appeared then to be the bride for the PDP in the electoral arena, it had to be coded in a mild and inoffensive form. An analysis of the political terrain then showed that the PDP was not sure of the complete support of the South-West. The advert drew on what the South-West is well known for (being at the forefront in sophistication, education and innovation in the country), to achieve its persuasive intent.

Appeal to good luck

The socio-cultural world of Nigerians accepts successes that seem to happen by chance. Most Nigerians believe in getting favour, fortune and good luck even when it is not rightly deserved. It is not uncommon in the country for people to receive what they do not merit and even celebrate it. The idea of good luck and fortune is promoted by the political as well as the religious institutions in the country. Drawing on this knowledge of the political and religious beliefs and values of the people, the symbolic elites put up several campaign adverts to sell the PDP candidate, the incumbent president of the country, whose name coincidentally happens to be ‘Goodluck’.

The opposite of GOODLUCK is BADLUCK.

BADLUCK!

GOD, ALLAH, FORBID BADLUCK

MASSIVELY VOTE

GOODLUCK

The Nation , 14 April 2011

The word ‘luck’ is like a magical word to Nigerians. Luck can either be good or bad. The contrast of these two sides of luck in the advert appeals to the cultural sentiments of an average Nigerian. In his speech while declaring his intention to contest for the presidency under the platform of the ruling party, Goodluck Jonathan was quoted as saying:

I am Goodluck Jonathan; I was not born rich; I had no shoes, no schoolbags, I carried my books in my hands; I had no car to take me to school; some days, I had only one meal; I never imagined I would be where I am today; if I could make it, you can make it and I will never, never let you down.

This speech sends some signals to Nigerians that good luck had worked for the president in his political career. He got to every position through what an average Nigerian will describe as ‘good luck’. He started as a deputy governor of his state, Bayelsa State. He later became governor after the former governor was impeached. He was the vice president and became president when President Umaru Yar’adua died. The first election he would campaign for was the 2011 election. His name is a metaphorical representation of what most Nigerians would desire – good luck. His candidature became a major issue in the spiritual circle as many religious leaders felt, given his miraculous rise to the position of the number one citizen of the country, ‘he must have been chosen by God to lead Nigeria’.

Conclusion

Selected political campaign advertisements in Nigeria have been subjected to a critical discourse study, and our findings have shown that they are platforms for discursive power expression as well as platforms for legitimizing and delegitimizing. The application of critical discourse analytic theory, with emphasis on Fairclough’s discourse as a social approach to CDA, for the analysis of the data, allowed a revelation of the different discursive strategies deployed by the political advert producers to appeal to the audience, and the social meanings and messages embedded in the semiotic resources. The article reveals that the major strategies used in the discourse are the conceptual metaphorization of party symbols, selective deployment of deictic pronouns for persuasion, the use of rhetorical questions, identification with the youth culture, historical allusions and appeals to good luck. However, the study reveals that there is not as much negative political campaigning in newspaper political advertising as there used to be in the past. We conclude that political advertising as a genre of political discourse in Nigeria continues to employ creative discursive resources for the amplification of socio-political meanings and messages.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Mohammed Ademilokun is a doctoral student in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, where he also teaches English Language. He was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at Five Colleges, Massachusetts in the USA in the 2009–2010 session. He has published articles in Papers in English and Linguistics and International Journal of Language Studies. He has also contributed chapters to books. His areas of research interest are discourse analysis, applied linguistics and multimodal semiotics.

Rotimi Taiwo, PhD, currently teaches at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His research focus has been on critical discourse analysis and text-linguistics. He was a Humboldt scholar and researcher at the University of Freiburg (September 2008–August 2009). He is the author of Language and Mobile Telecommunication in Nigeria: SMS as a Digital Age Lingual-cultural Expression (OAU Press, 2012) and the editor of Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction Volumes I & II (IGI Global, New York, 2010). He also serves as consulting editor for Linguistik Online and Journal of Language Studies.

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