A Stylistic Analysis of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Update on Ghana’s Enhanced Response to Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper analyzes President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s speech update on Ghana’s enhanced response to Covid-19 pandemic through a stylistic framework. The paper adopts a qualitative method with the aim of finding out the linguistic features ingrained in the speaker’s speech and its effect on the speech to the audience. The study reveals that the selected speech embodies a bevy of (these) linguistic elements: Graphology, syntactic features (multiple sentence, complex sentence, compound sentence), phrases, pronouns, modal verbs, coordinating conjunction and literary devices - repetition, parallel structures and simile. Consequently, the study reveals that the linguistic tools launched in the speaker’s speech help him to carry out his intention to the audience; and as well enables him to win a score of admiration from the audience during the era of COVID-19. The findings of this study have implication on formal stylistics. Thus, it contributes to knowledge on stylistic analysis of presidential speeches in Ghana and by extension, Africa. Keywords: Covid-19, language, speech, Stylistics. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/97-01 Publication date: March 31 st 2023