Grapho-Syntactic Analysis of Selected Political Speeches of Some Nigerian Heads of State

Abstract

This study investigates how the non-professional politicians: the military, when they become Heads of State, use the linguistic resources and devices of grapho-syntax to convey their political ideas and thoughts. It is therefore, a part of the objectives of this study, to find out which of the components of grapho-syntactic features are most prominent in the speeches. It is also meant to unravel the thematic roles played by these prominent features in the realization of the political intentions of the speakers. The data used for the work is based on some selected political speeches of the military Heads of State that ruled the country from 1966 to 1983. The data or speeches were analysed from the perspectives of the Linguistic stylistic approach and linguistic framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is discovered from the analysis that the language of the military political rulers is permeated with sparsely use of punctuation marks (open use of punctuation marks). This is in tune with swift and quick style they carry out their administrative duties. Besides, their language in political addresses is mainly of simple declarative sentences. This style, too, is concomitant with their simple and unbureaucratic way of governing.