Abstract
This article adopts Benoit’s functional theory of campaign discourse and Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive theory (context models) in discussing two gubernatorial debate sessions in Nigeria. The selected debate sessions (Ondo Governorship Debate and Lagos Governorship Debate) are recovered from YouTube files and transcribed. However, only utterances from candidates in the two major political parties in Nigeria, namely, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) (now renamed All Progressives Congress (APC)) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), are subjected to content analysis. Context models in the aspects of discourse meaning and argumentation are also considered. Findings reveal that first, candidates’ utterances range from acclaims to attacks and defenses. Second, topics help to derive candidates’ ideologies which are further exemplified within the ambience of shared background knowledge (presupposition). Finally, candidates adopt legal/illegal jargons, explanations, statements of evidence, examples and illustrations to explicitly exemplify their mental dispositions and beliefs. We conclude by stating that candidates’ utterances were found to be relevant within the context of the debates and, by extension, the prevalent socio-political problems in Nigeria.
Keywords
Introduction
The popularity and utilitarian value of political debates have resulted in its study across the world since 1948. Choi and Benoit (2009) state that political debates serve as an opportunity for the electorate to familiarize themselves with the candidates, thus helping them make the right choice when choosing who to vote for. This informs the crucial function of political debates in ensuring a free and fair election in countries (such as Nigeria) where the democratic process is upheld. Nigeria runs a democratic government, and her culture of political debates as an electioneering campaign tool has been ongoing. The first televised Nigerian presidential debate which was organized by the Nigeria Electoral Debate Group (NEDG) took place in 1993 as part of the presidential election campaign. Nigeria has also witnessed gubernatorial debate sessions since its introduction in December 2009, and recognizing the importance of political processes, scholars have researched Nigeria’s political speeches and manifestoes in the recent past (see Adekunle, 2011; Akinbiyi, 2006; Akinwotu, 2013; Ayeomoni, 2005; Ayeomoni and Akinkuolere 2012). However, despite the crucial function of debates in the political process, Nigeria has received little or no scholarly contributions on the analysis of debates. Thus, there is the need to re-consider a progressive change in Nigeria’s politics by critically analyzing debate sessions in Nigeria’s socio-political landscape.
This study is focused on political debates in Nigeria, specifically the debate sessions organized as a campaign tool in gubernatorial elections. The study adopts Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to critically analyze the ingenuity of the debate sessions in setting the stage for producing a winning candidate and ensuring successful party politics in Nigeria. In the following sections, we briefly discuss previous studies on political communication that have used CDA and socio-cognitive theories, the theoretical frameworks on which this study is based, and then we analyze the data, discuss the findings and conclude the study.
Previous studies on the CDA of political communication
CDA, from the purview of socio-cognition, has mostly been adopted as an analytical tool for examining the speeches of highly placed political office holders. Examples include the analysis of presidents’ speeches (Horváth, n.d.; Sarfo and Krampa, 2013; Wang, 2010) and prime ministers’ speeches (Azimah, 2013; Năstase, 2011.). Although rare in the literature, CDA has also been adopted in analyzing political debates in various political cultures (see e.g. Cheng, 2016; Rashidi and Souzandehfar, 2010; Robbins-Kanter, 2016; Yang, 2013). Although researchers have generally paid more attention to presidential debates, there are scholarly contributions on non-presidential debates, but these have mainly been studied in line with the effect of debates on voters, the discourse qualities of the debates and some analyses of the debates from the purview of the functional theory of campaign discourse theory (see Airne and Benoit, 2005; Benoit et al., 2007a, 2007b; Conrad, 1993; Johnson, 1996; cf. Blais and Boyer, 1996; Blais and Perrella, 2008; Coleman, 2011; Lanoue, 1991; Paatelainen, 2016 for studies on non-American presidential debates).
The studies above have established the role of political communication in creating an opportunity for politicians in a democratic government to communicate with the citizens on their activities or plans in cases where politicians are contesting for a public office. By this nature of ‘interaction’, the electorate has enough information to involve themselves in the political issues of their country or state. This study builds on the findings of previous researchers by discussing the context of political debate sessions in Nigeria and the way debaters contest to win the confidence of the electorate. Specifically, the study addresses how the debaters communicate their ideologies, such as personal beliefs and opinions, through the situational context of the debate sessions.
Previous studies on socio-cognition in political communication
Ghachem (2015) investigates the use of agency in David Cameron’s 2010 pre-election speeches using Van Dijk’s cognitive approach alongside systemic functional linguistics. He examines the use of personal pronouns, transitivity and nominalization as discourse structures framing agency and finds that Cameron’s use of common knowledge and attitude forms a collective agency that aids in winning votes. Similarly, Abidi (2015) adopts the socio-cognitive CDA framework to examine the use of euphemisms in Tony Blair’s political discourse on the 2003 Iraqi war. He finds that Blair uses ‘euphemisms as a source of transgression to legitimize his political actions and sustain his ideological or hegemonic ends’. Furthermore, Li (2013) explores the process of political translation using the CDA models of Van Dijk and Fairclough. Findings reveal that translation ‘demonstrates a growing tendency to interact with the target readership and engages in the negotiation with the orthodox norms’. Although scholars have attended to political communication in research using socio-cognitive models, more still needs to be done, especially with relation to other forms of political communication such as televised debates.
Theoretical frameworks
This study is hinged on Van Dijk’s (2010) socio-cognitive theory and Benoit’s (2004) functional theory of campaign discourse.
The socio-cognitive approach to CDA
In describing the socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis, Van Dijk (2005) states that it ‘offers a unique and necessary interface between the macro aspects of society and the micro aspects of discourse and interaction’ (p. 87). In other words, it combines both societal and interactive details in analyzing discourse. The principle of socio-cognition is based on the mental and context models. The mental model represents the personal, episodic memory of individuals, associated with experience (Van Dijk, 2001, 2006a, 2006b), and they are an interface between the personal and social, as well as between discourse and society (Attia, 2007: 87). Features of mental models include personal knowledge, beliefs and opinions as controlled, maybe by ideologies or instances of socially shared attitudes. Mental models are ideologically biased and form the input of discourse production and comprehension (Van Dijk, 2001, 2002).
The context models, on the other hand, state that there are many aspects of meaning that can expose ideologies, and these contexts, which might be either global or local, define not only the different properties of discourse, but also the overall interactive strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other presentation (Van Dijk, 2006a). Van Dijk’s descriptions of contextual categories that are relevant in the description of discourse include domain, global actions, roles, social relations and cognitions. Of these categories, this research utilizes the importance of cognition in accounting for the ideologies, that is, the goals, knowledge and other beliefs of participants in a speech context. Aspects of meaning that can expose ideologies in context include level of description, coherence, presupposition, synonymy and contrast (Van Dijk, 2000b). Besides topics, argumentation is also used by language users to make their opinions or point of views ‘more acceptable, credible or truthful by formulating “arguments” that are purported to sustain the chosen point of view’ (Van Dijk, 2000b: 56, Argumentation, para 1). These arguments are naturally fallacies with the use of authorities, legality and illegality, evidentiality, generalization, reasonableness, examples and explanations (see Figure 1).
A description of the socio-cognitive principles of discourse analysis.
The functional theory of campaign discourse
The functional theory of campaign discourse was propounded by Benoit (2004). Although this theory was initially used to investigate political debates in the United States, its use now transcends the United States as scholars have adopted it to describe campaign discourse in other countries (Ajilore, 2015; Benoit et al., 2007c; Benoit and Sheafer, 2006; Choi and Benoit, 2009). Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse is premised on five non-linguistic axioms, and the fourth is relevant for this study; as Benoit states, ‘candidates establish preferability through acclaims, attacks and defense (2007). Benoit (2004: 8) refers to acclaims as ‘telling voters about one’s good point, stressing positive attributes or policies so as to appear preferable when being compared to other opponents’. Attacks involve ‘emphasizing the weak points or drawbacks of the opponent so as to make him look less appealing to the voters’. Finally, defense is rebutting/refuting an attack by an opponent. Benoit (2006) further states that ‘acclaims increase one’s own benefits, attacks increase an opponent’s cost and defenses can reduce one’s alleged costs’ (p. 284).
This study adopts concrete descriptive terminologies from the Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse, but mainly uses Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive theory, an offshoot of cognition in CDA, as an analytical tool. As a subfield of discourse analysis, CDA has its implication in linguistic studies. Although CDA and Cognitive Linguistics (CL) unipolate in methods and approaches with unifying concepts, such as power, control, manipulation and ideology (Attia, 2007), the former is mainly concerned ‘with analyzing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language’ (Wodak, 2001: 2), while the latter is ‘an approach to language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive it and conceptualize it’ (Ungerer and Schmid 1996: x). This obviously reveals that CDA and CL focus on language differently. Kress (1989), Wodak (2006) and Fairclough and Wodak (2007) view CDA as social practices that are concerned with ‘individual utterances and sentences … [as] expressions of ideological discursive practices’, whereas CL practitioners consider language as a ‘mental phenomenon’ whose focus is on the human mind and expressed through conceptual metaphors and cognition (Stockwell, 2001: 512). In line with these approaches, this research provides an adequate account of discourse (i.e. a situated interaction in the context of gubernatorial debate session in Nigeria) by combining both the social and the cognitive components of discourse (Van Dijk, 2000a) to discover the debaters’ individual ideologies and social attitudes as expressed through their talk. With our juxtaposition of the CDA and CL approaches to discourse analysis, the study provides the basis for discussing the ingenuity of the selected political debates as both ‘expressions of ideologies’ and ‘expressions of mental phenomena’, thereby creating a relatively fresh construct of politicians’ ideological and mental stance and its implications for the Nigerian socio-political landscape.
Methodology
This study utilizes data from two political debates on YouTube, namely, the Ondo Governorship Debate (OGD) and the Lagos Governorship Debate (LGD) uploaded on 11 October 2012 and 3 March 2011, respectively. The former, organized by the Nigeria Elections Debate Group (NEDG), is a full-length video that runs for 2 hours 47 minutes 23 seconds (2:47:23), while the latter, organized by Channels Television, was uploaded in parts and runs for 2 hours. The first debate features Ondo state gubernatorial debaters, while the second features Lagos state gubernatorial debaters. Each video was downloaded and transcribed, and 35 utterances were selected for analysis. In each of the debate sessions, candidates from various political parties compete to win the vote of the electorate. Each participant strives to outdo the others by adopting diverse discursive strategies to acclaim meticulously on their capacity to function effectively as state governor(s), attack opponent(s) or defend their opinions. Thus, extracts from both debates have been sectioned into acclaims, attacks and defense, and in total, the study analyzes 12 acclaims, attacks and defenses each. The four candidates used in this study represent the two major political parties in Nigeria, namely, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), now All Progressives Congress (APC). The selected candidates are labeled as follows:
ACN Lagos state incumbent – Candidate 1
ACN Ondo state candidate – Candidate 2
PDP Ondo state candidate – Candidate 3
PDP Lagos state candidate – Candidate 4
Data analysis
In adopting the socio-cognitive principles of discourse analysis (as in Figure 1), mental models (ideologies) are realized through contextual features. However, this study does not utilize all the features of Van Dijk’s context models in eliciting participants’ ideologies. Only the following features of the context model that relate to this study are examined: (1) topics, (2) degree of detail, (3) contrast, (4) legality/illegality, (5) evidentiality and (6) example. The first three features are used to describe their personal agendas to the electorate, while the following three are used for argumentation. We discuss these in turn.
Topics
Van Dijk (2000b) refers to topics as ‘semantic macro-structures’ which help to draw meaning from which ideology can be realized. The importance of topics cannot be overemphasized as these present a coherent front in any discourse. Topics may be formed in written text through any medium, such as newspaper headlines and chapter titles, but in this research, topics are mostly formed through the moderator’s specific questions. Our approach to topicalization would be a selection of candidates’ personal topics from both political parties, that is, for instance, we would do an in-grouping of topics presented by the PDP candidate while he acclaims, attacks or defends himself in line with the functional theory of campaign discourse. Thus, the topics identified are personal achievement/party accomplishment, integrity and contradiction/opposition.
Topic 1: Personal achievement/party accomplishment
The debate gives candidates the opportunity to ‘blow their trumpets’ to the public, especially to the electorate of the state they desire to govern. In doing this, they discuss their accomplishments in life, which inform the populace about their past successes and their ability to succeed when they are voted for. Discussions under this topic are usually acclaims because, as Benoit (2004) states, these ‘tell voters about one’s good points, stressing positive attributes or policies so as to appear preferable when being compared to other opponents’ (p. 8). For example, in extract 1, the incumbent (candidate 1) in the Lagos state debate discusses his achievements over the past 4 years since he became the governor of Lagos state:
Extract 1
As Van Dijk (2000a) conjectures, there are specific instances of general socially shared knowledge in discourse. Through the personal pronoun ‘we’, the incumbent (candidate 1) capitalizes on his audience’s shared knowledge to state his previous administrative achievement and the physical improvement of Lagos state. The candidate also refers to his previous managerial successes as a governor through a numerical anaphoric reference ‘four years ago’, when a similar event took place. The personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘us’ suggest that his previous achievements were engineered by him and the party, while his use of personal pronouns suggests that he orients to the personal belief that he and his party are a success. By topicalizing his achievement, he appeals to the electorate by inviting them to relate to the shared knowledge that he can succeed as governor again if he had succeeded before. In the same vein, the aspiring PDP candidate in the Lagos state debate, candidate 4, discusses his profile in extract 2 by delineating the number of years he has worked as a public officer, thus his capability to handle the governorship position if elected:
Extract 2
Like candidate 1, candidate 4 also makes acclaims with the numerical anaphoric reference ‘24 years of my life’, to create an impression to the electorate that he has long-standing experience in the civil service, which is also a government parastatal. A further strategy is his use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ for self-acclaims. He creates a success story of his achievements as a level 17 civil servant. In this case, candidate 4 does not involve his party for an obvious possible reason that he is competing to win against the ACN party which had been governing Lagos state. It is evident that both the PDP and ACN candidates promote their achievements through reference to their opinions on their personal achievements.
A few of the candidate’s utterances state the accomplishments of their parties (i.e. PDP and ACN). Candidates boast of their parties’ accomplishments, both in the administration of other states in the country and in the present state they are contesting for in cases where such a party has a history of governing the state. For instance, candidate 3 refers to some past deeds of his party’s administration in Ondo state from 2003 to 2009 and claims that the problem of flooding was solved at the time:
Extract 3
He makes specific deific reference (‘this’ and ‘that’) to the issue of water pollution, to make claims on the accomplishment of the PDP administration in solving the problem of water pollution. His referential strategy suggests his opinion on the fact – that solving the problem of water pollution is a party accomplishment, eventhough this should normally be an administrative duty.
Topic 2: Integrity
The issue of integrity in Nigeria, which is linked to questions of decency and forthrightness, is a front that every politician tries to present. Little wonder it is a topic for discussion in these debates. Discussions on integrity usually come as defensive in the debate because these are used to ‘repair face’ after being attacked by an opponent. For example, in extract 4, candidate 4’s approach to the issue of integrity is done through defense. The ACN governor, with whom he is contesting, had made accusations against him with regard to his ongoing investigation of corruption with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) administration:
Extract 4
The governor said I wanted to go back to NDDC, I didn’t go … He probed my administration to the last letter by personally, signing a petition to the EFFC. What came out of it?
To show his rectitude, the aspiring PDP candidate expresses his unblemished state of integrity by stating, ‘
I am a man of integrity, I live aboard, I am accountable, responsible
’. To further exonerate himself, he accuses his opponent of not having ‘
practice[d] their career
’ before becoming a politician. Implicitly, the PDP contestant proposes that he has unblemished integrity which his opponent cannot match. Similarly, in extract 5, candidate 3 attempts to vindicate himself of any blemish on his integrity:
Extract 5
He uses personal knowledge and the personal pronoun ‘we’ to speak about his probation when he was the chairman of Nigerian Bar Association:
Topic 3: Contradiction/opposition
In order to portray self in a good light and others in a bad light, candidates tend to attack one another, either individually or administratively. Contradiction/opposition occurs in situations where candidates attack their opposition when they are not pleased with previous actions. In extract 6, for example, candidate 1 exposes the criminal matters an opponent is involved in:
Extract 6
And for the record, really, chief Randle, since you raised this issue on this occasion, the other matter you tried to see me about was a matter which the current commissioner of environment was dealing with.
He discusses issues of the opponent pending in court and his inconsideration of Lagos residents by building his house on a canal that is flooding a part of Lagos. Also, candidate 2, in extract 7, rashly opposes the past deeds of the present administration in Ondo state by citing some projects the incumbent embarked on that he felt was not beneficial to the people:
Extract 7
My colleague from PDP made mention of settlements where people were put for employment in Ore;
To readdress the incumbent’s claims on the figures of employed persons, candidate 2 contradicts the incumbent’s claims by employing a declarative statement, ‘ It is pure deceit ’, to inform the audience of his knowledge of the incumbent’s deceitful claims.
Topic 4: Corruption
Like integrity, the issue of corruption in Nigeria is worrisome as it reverberates among leaders. The majority of the problems in Nigeria are attributed to bad leadership and the greediness of leaders, which has warranted corruption, including fund mismanagement. Candidates attack one another by referencing instances of fund mismanagement, to let the electorate know that their opponents are not trustworthy, as in extract 8:
Extract 8
This government has no place for education. It only has a place for mega schools and mega schools in which we are spending mega bucks that can’t be accounted for. We do not need mega schools, all we needed was to have full and comprehensive renovation of our existing schools, and improve more schools so that our students would have access to schools within two to three kilometers.
When he states ‘mega bucks that cannot be accounted for’, he is invariably calling the electorate to watch out for fund misuse. Also, in extracts 9 and 10, candidates 3 and 4, respectively, question the integrity of their opponents:
Extract 9
Extract 10 We expect that in the last four years as this is a period of stock taking, can you publish for Lagosians all the projects that have been executed and
Although in extract 9 candidate 3 does not directly mention corruption, he implies it by saying the governor uses ₦4 billion as security vault. In the same vein, candidate 4, by requesting for publications of all contracts with ‘the cost attached to it’, implies that the incumbent has spent much more than expected on some government projects.
Degree of detail
As part of the linguistic resources used by candidates in the debates, they may choose the degree of detail or inclusiveness of information that they allow in their statements. Besides topics, language users have different semantic options in the representation of their mental model of an event. They have the option to give many or a few details about an event or describe it at a general level or at the level of specifics (Van Dijk, 2000b). In making claims, candidates explicitly present the goodness of their in-group, that is, individual/political party. In this study, degree of detail in utterances is described as detailed, semi-detailed or undetailed. Of the 35 utterances selected for analysis, 63% are detailed, 8% are semi-detailed and 29% are undetailed. Being detailed reveals to what extent candidates go in order to respond to questions or to what extent they reveal information about their opponents. For instance, in extract 11 the candidate reveals the depth of the information he is willing to give by stating figures to explicate the number of roads built, those about to be completed and those under construction, alongside the cost of projects:
Extract 11
We have done that; it is now on the state website … there is a state website that gives young unemployed people to put down their names and we are already putting them to jobs …
In these debates, attacking the past deed of an individual, administration or party is usually detailed.
1
In defending or giving a rebuttal, candidates are also always detailed. This is because they aim to show to the electorate that what they have been accused of is not true. In extract 12, the candidate shows the falsehood in his opponent’s attack by listing names of businesses and hotels that are springing up in Lagos which the populace also, supposedly, knows about:
Extract 12
Contrary to what my colleague has said about businesses moving out of Lagos, the numbers that we have, we are the regulators; show that more businesses have come into Lagos over the last four years than he knows. The truth is that in the last two months,
At the risk of being too detailed or not giving sufficient information about some issues, some candidates’ utterances are classified as semi-detailed – in extract 13, candidate 3 discusses his visions for a seaport within the state:
Extract 13
We border on Atlantic so
Although the candidate says exactly what he would do, even beyond the issue of developing a seaport and how it would help the state and its people, he does not refer to what is being done about the seaport presently. Hence, his utterance is categorized as semi-detailed.
Some utterances are marked undetailed – candidates sometimes decide not to give elaborate information but just go straight to the point on their decisions concerning issues. In extract 14, candidate 2 discusses what he would do for the state in the health sector:
Extract 14
I believe that our party, ACN, today, having tour round, looking at our party manifesto and what we plan to do, would take Ondo State to the next level and that next level is what we are here to do in ACN.
He does not give prior information on what is being done, but just concludes, ‘we would make sure that we revamp and we would have hospitals that would be for father, mother and child not only mother and child: that isn’t only what hospital is about’. This is also like the acclaims made by the PDP candidate in extract 8. He discusses how he would re-work the existing structure of schools rather than the mega primary schools built by the incumbent. He does not give any detailed information on these mega schools, but simply states what he intends to do. Also, he does not state how he would provide an enabling environment, but just says he would do it. These undetailed utterances are significant in that in some situations, candidates are not entirely prepared to give detailed information on how they would carry out their objectives when they get into power.
The context of argumentation
The feature of argumentation is quite prevalent in the present discourse. Van Dijk postulates this as being inevitable in political discourse, and the present discourse is no different. Sub-features of argumentation include the recourse to legality/illegality, evidentiality, explanation as well as examples/illustrations. Since the discourse in question is a debate, arguments will inevitably ensue, and in order to create an upper hedge of argument, each aspirant will seek to mentally influence the hearers and use words and/or expressions that will create a self–other relationship. We now proceed to analyze these sub-features.
Legality/illegality as resource for argumentation
In extract 15, the incumbent, candidate 1, discusses legal/illegal action. He verbally assaults a running mate from the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP) who had attacked him when he stated that he was an irresponsible governor who could not make himself available to members of the public as and when due. In a retort, the candidate ‘bit back’ and responded that he had no business attending to a ‘criminal matter’ which was pending in court already. The noun phrase ‘a criminal matter’ suggests the legal issue which he intends to address. Rather than have the public believe that he was an insensitive and irresponsible governor during his immediate past tenure, the incumbent retracts this notion, and it is observed that the legal term of ‘criminality’ has the capacity to put his addressee in an unfavorable position with the audience. It has the capacity to negatively direct the audiences’ psychological disposition toward his opposition. Since the accused has now become the perpetrator of legal actions and the accuser of illegal activities, the prevailing question would be ‘so who is actually the irresponsible person of the two?’. He verbally and explicitly assaults his opponent, calls him a criminal and further ‘throws’ the question of morality and values (another legal term) back at him. Who was immoral when his opponent’s house was built on a drain that was blocking a canal and flooding the island? He left nothing to roost in revealing to the public that all his opponent merely accused him of was on false grounds. This is a rather serious and spontaneous resizing of the mental modeling of the hearers who, after being convinced, are likely going to judge the matter between the two candidates:
Extract 15
… the point really, is this; you have tried to see me on occasions relating a matter;
In extract 16, candidate 4 also employs the legal matter of crime by stating the offense that was perpetrated by his opponent. This is mentioned when he suggests that the ACN candidate who accuses him does not believe his decision to not return to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Candidate 4 assumes that he was being accused of a criminal offense, but to save face and defend himself he immediately uses other legal and social registers such as ‘integrity’, ‘accountable’, ‘responsible’ and ‘legal practitioner’. His face-saving registers suggest that as a practitioner, he is a man of integrity and should not be accused of crime:
Extract 16
The governor said I wanted to go back to NDDC, I didn’t go.
Similarly, candidate 4 in extract 17 defends his opponent’s accusation of not responding to a court order. He adopts the legal terms ‘lawyer’, ‘senior advocate’ and ‘court orders’ not only to defend himself against the incumbent’s accusation that he did not respond to a pending court order, but also to convince the audience that the incumbent’s legal practice and knowledge in legal issues are questionable:
Extract 17
I am not
By his utterance, he implies a motive to let the audience question the incumbent’s effectiveness in legal practice because he (the incumbent) ought to have known that court orders are served and not made verbally.
Evidentiality as argumentation
In the process of argumentation, the candidates give evidence to back up their claims and strengthen their argument. Evidences are usually stated explicitly; secrets are revealed, intentions are made known and plans are unfolded. However, evidentiality is usually more obvious or relevant in attacks and acclaims because proven evidence is used to attack an opponent as well as give claims to an individual’s impending or past, depending on the context of the utterance. In extract 18 (previously extract 1), candidate 1 gives statements of evidence to show his good deeds and prowess as an incumbent:
Extract 18
Four years ago at this kind of gathering, I offered very transparent progressive governance to Lagosians . . . the transformation has been evident in a safer security, safer state . . . we have seen improvement in education . . . radical development in infrastructure . . . job creation for young men and women.
These are specific and precise statements showing evidence of a previous productive government. His explicit statements give evidence of his previous success as a governor, and this suggests his intention to influence his audience to trust in his past leadership and his ability to continue in these productive steps. He further strengthens the force of his evidence by claiming,
Extract 19
. . . there is a state website . . . we used it to train 51,000 people in vocational skills and development skills over the last four years. We are using it also to engage them in the Lagos Resident Registration Scheme . . .
These statements show that his tenure improved all aspects of the lives of the populace (Lagos residents). He proved through statements of evidentiality that he touched positively on education, infrastructure, job creation, vocational skills for youths, censor and town planning. He uses the discourse or conversational skill of evidentiality to attack the PDP gubernatorial aspirant who wants to take his job as governor. Candidate 1 sums up his statements of evidence by establishing that the evidence he has given makes it obvious that a PDP-led government would be futile:
Extract 20
Through the proof or ‘evidence’, the ACN candidate doubts the ability of a PDP-led government, which implies the debaters’ attempt to reveal ‘facts’ that can make the electorate support their party and reject the PDP.
Examples/illustrations for argumentation
Very closely related to explanation are candidates’ tendencies to use examples and illustrations in their utterances. This is to give a detailed description of past activities in government or their intended activities when they are elected as governors, as in extract 21:
Extract 21
We used … a state website … to train 51,000 people in vocational skills and development skills. Over the last four years. We are using it also to engage them in Lagos Resident Registration Scheme … to provide taxis for Lagosians … for over 5000 taxi drivers who are proud owners of taxis …
Discussion and conclusion
Using the two gubernatorial debate sessions held in two southwestern Nigerian states (Ondo and Lagos), this study has examined the mental and ideological processes of the debaters, as expressed through their utterances. The study uses Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive theory to gain access to the ideologies that are inherent in the utterances of the four candidates purposively selected, that is, two candidates each from ACN and the PDP. Their utterances have been discussed along Benoit’s (2007) fourth axiom in his functional theory of campaign discourse, which dictates that political campaigns often involve the speech processes of acclaims, attacks and defenses. The candidates’ utterances have shown ideologies through the topics they discussed in their acclaims, attacks and defenses, and these ideologies are further fostered through the candidates’ disposition to these topics. In the debates, speakers and the general audience construct ideologies through contextual meaning-making devices – debaters are able to ‘represent’ and control discourse, while the audience is left to ‘interpret’ the situated talk. By exposing their ideological stances and nuances, the debaters present a positive self and portray the negative other while using discursive strategies that are consistent with the hearers’ interests on the political matters raised.
The ideologies uncovered through the topics of the debaters cut through their defenses, attacks and acclaims, and we find that these are some of the most prevalent socio-political problems in Nigeria. For instance, there are prevailing problems of integrity of the politicians as well as corruption. The populace also questions their ability to ‘deliver’ when elected into office, as party members are found to contradict themselves on what their political agenda stands for. Consequently, several prominent politicians deflect from one party to another in protest against and opposition to their former affiliation. There is also the question of the success of an administration or tenure of a governor or president who serves full term, as most of them are being accused of not having fulfilled their campaign promises and of course of embezzling public funds. These form a mental disposition to the social and political realities in Nigeria’s polity, and as expected, they inform what issues need to be addressed during debate sessions. The socio-cognitive theory has offered a window through which we may access the ‘interface between the society and the micro aspects of discourse’ (Van Dijk, 2005: 87), as we have seen in the analysis of the debates. When combined with the theoretical dictates of CL, the study has shown that the realization of linguistic phenomena, such as attacks, acclaims and defenses, is deeply embedded in social realities. Therefore, our adoption of these complementary theories has proven adequate in accounting for and describing the nature of gubernatorial debate sessions in Nigeria.
We can therefore conclude that these ideologies serve as a mental framework that guides the discussions of the candidates, not minding which section of their discussions crop up. Candidates are quite detailed and extremely explicit, for instance when defending accusations of corruption, as we have seen in the analysis. Candidates also become bold when revealing evidence to support their claims, and in the process they make recourse to issues of legal and illegal action to either credit themselves or discredit their opponents. Candidates’ arguments are fierce and unyielding as they also give detailed explanations, examples and illustrations to convince the electorate that they are fit for the job of governing their states. All their utterances, however, are established on the backdrop of shared background knowledge of certain key information that is also available to the immediate and wider audience. They speak based on the assumption that the electorate can readily and mentally familiarize themselves with the issues being discussed and ways by which problems can be tackled. We recommend that future studies may consider adopting the theoretical dictates of socio-cognitive theory and the functional theory of campaign discourse in analyzing other debate sessions in other countries.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.