Lexico-syntactic analysis of antonyms in some speeches of John Dramani Mahama

Abstract

Language and politics are intertwined. This is because in order to champion political interest, politicians rely on some powerful linguistic resources to communicate with their audience. Available literature suggests that one of such linguistic resources is antonyms. However, researchers have not paid attention to the use of antonyms in political discourse, especially, in Ghana. On account of this, the present study investigated the lexico-syntactic features of antonyms in some speeches of John Dramani Mahama, a former President of the Republic of Ghana. The study is an interface between cognitive semantics and political discourse which sought to discover the lexico-syntactic features and the functional implications of the antonym pairs used in the speeches of John Dramani Mahama. The study was conducted within the framework of the Lexical Field Theory and the speeches were analysed, using the qualitative research method. Through the use of purposive sampling method, sixteen (16) political speeches of John Dramani Mahama were selected for the analysis. The study relied on Cruse’s (1986) outlined features of antonymy and Murphy’s (2003) theoretical view on context-derived antonymy to identify the antonym pairs in the speeches. The study discovered one hundred and seventy-three (173) antonym pairs in the sixteen (16) selected speeches. The outcome of the study further revealed the noun phrase pair as the largest grammatical category in the selected speeches. The study again showed that John Dramani Mahama usually uses noun antonymic pairs and the coordinated frame X and Y in his political speeches. The study concluded that John Dramani Mahama uses antonyms in his speeches to persuade his audience, establish association, inspire hope and confidence, call for patriotism and hardworking towards national development, and finally, to present his political vision to Ghanaians.