Discourse and Lexical Strategies in Newspaper-Mediated Campaign Discourse During the 2024 Edo Gubernatorial Election

Political campaign discourse serves as a strategic medium through which political actors construct identities, negotiate ideological positions, and persuade the electorate. Despite the growing body of scholarship on Nigerian political discourse, limited attention has been devoted to discourse and lexical strategies in newspaper-mediated campaign discourse, particularly within subnational elections. This study investigates the lexical and discourse strategies employed in newspaper-mediated campaign discourse during the 2024 Edo State gubernatorial election. The study adopts a qualitative research design and is anchored on van Dijk’s Socio-cognitive Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, complemented by Halliday’s systemic functional grammar. Data comprise 40 newspaper campaign discourse extracts purposively selected from Vanguard and Punch newspapers published between May and December 2024. The findings reveal that candidates employ collectivization, number game, polarization, victimization, metaphorization, specificity, and foregrounding as discourse strategies to construct positive self-representation and negative other-presentation, frame campaign issues, legitimize political claims, and mobilize electoral support. These were lexically realized through evaluative lexicalization, action processes, lexicalization, quantification, and pronouns. The study concludes that the 2024 Edo State gubernatorial adverts are saturated with ideological undertones that incorporate local power structures and traditional institutions that reflect political competition and social beliefs.