A lexico-stylistic analysis of selected political speeches of John Mahama

Abstract

The study examines how the English language has been used by President John Dramani Mahama in three of his political speeches. The main focus of the study is to analyse the use of lexical items and the functions they play in political discourse from the stylistic perspective. The Linguistic and Stylistic Categories by Leech & Short (2007) and the Ideational metafunction in the Systemic Functional Grammar Theory by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) are applied as theoretical frameworks. A purely descriptive and interpretative approach is used in analysing the lexical items in terms of their frequency and meaning making. The study finds out that nouns are predominantly used to refer to various concrete and abstract plans and policies that the government wishes to carry out, while verbs, adjectives and adverbs are used respectively to indicate the kind of positive actions that are required to accomplish the plans and policies, give in-depth description of these plans and policies in order to make them comprehensive and to indicate the manner in which the government wishes to carry out these plans and policies. The study also reveals that Mahama uses simple vocabulary in order to reach his audience from different levels and backgrounds whereas the cognitive domains analysis reveals Mahama’s background as a historian who believes in the political ideologies of Nkrumah.