A Pragma-Rhetorical Analysis of Speeches of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on COVID-19

Abstract

This study extends scholarship on COVID-19 discourse by identifying the discourse strategies in Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari’s COVID-19 speeches and the persuasive intentions each strategy serves. It examines the aptness of Buhari’s choice of words and tropes in the heat of the pandemic. It adopts Douglas Walton’s rhetorical pragmatics as theoretical anchor. Excerpts were selected using purposive sampling. The study reveals that Buhari deployed eight discourse strategies, which fall within the logos, ethos, and pathos categorisation, in his argumentation. These strategies include use of numbering, figures and dates, avoidance of courtesies, portrayal of government as proactive, deployment of negative adverbs, rolling out safety measures, acknowledgements, emphasis on collaboration, and referencing. He also deploys tropes such as repetition, pun, and personification to establish the need for compliance with COVID-19 protocols. The study recommends that further sociolinguistic analysis of COVID-19 texts would demystify linguistic barriers associated with the pandemic.