Discrediting moves in political campaigns

Abstract

This paper analyzes cases in which discrediting is deliberately cast over opponents in political campaigns. Discrediting is a linguistic tool in the political genre meant to tarnish opponents’ image with a singular meaning of winning an election. It falls within five categories of political genre which includes: performance of the opponent, orientation (the opponent’s position on issues), ethnicity, qualification, and mudslinging. The researcher used Brown and Levison model in which they enumerated certain qualities of utterances as discrediting or negative. The data for the article were gathered between the months of October 2014 to January 2015, with a sample of 50 online Nigeria newspapers. The newspapers comprised spoken speeches from political campaigners who belonged to two major political parties in Nigeria, namely: All People’ Congress and People’s Democratic Party. The result indicated that discrediting on personality had the highest frequency; the People’s Democratic Party surpassed the All People’s Party. In terms of benevolence, the All People’s Congress had lesser percentage when compared with the People’s Democratic Party. Keywords: Genre, discrediting, moves, discourse, campaign, election