Critical discourse analysis demonstrates how Bawumia's speech manages post-election sentiment in Ghana, indicating emotional governance strategies.
Concession speeches are often seen as mere formalities of defeat. This study argues they are potent tools of emotional governance. Through a critical discourse analysis of Mahamudu Bawumia’s 2024 concession speech in Ghana, we demonstrate how emotive language is strategically deployed to manage post-election turbulence. In a climate of acute political tension, Bawumia’s rhetoric deliberately countered public ambivalence, despair, and animosity by invoking the counter-emotions of peace, hope, and courage. Analyzing linguistic features like pronoun choice, metaphor, deictics and modality, we show how the speech functioned not merely to concede but to perform emotional labour: reshaping public sentiment, legitimizing democratic norms, and steering his party’s narrative after loss. The study illuminates how emotional discourse in African concession speeches serves as a critical mechanism for mitigating conflict, managing disappointment, and preserving political capital in nascent democracies.
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Ganaah et al. (2026) studied this question.
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