Politics and Politiking Registers in Nigerian Campaigns

This paper examines the register used in politics to achieve persuasion. Politics is a psychological warfare for winning peoples’ heart to do the biddings of politicians. Propaganda is a major tool politicians deploy to fight political opponents. It is a smart way of telling people black is white and make them believe it, Propaganda itself is not possible without language (literal or figurative). Language is central to communication. In Nigeria, effective use of language is an assurance for political success. Political register helps us understand how language is used by those who wish to gain power, exercise power, and keep power. The speeches of these politicians are replete with unachievable objectives enshrined in propaganda meant for some gullible electorates. Their diction changes from that of persuasion, emotion, pity, among others to one of violence when it suits them. Politicians employ different political strategies with the aid of language to rightly convince, confuse and elicit necessary information and subsequently votes from the electorates. The theory used for this study is the Speech Act Theory. The methodology is qualitative and quantitative. A survey design is used. This study evinces that political register makes use of linguistic devices, re-branding, marketing of candidates’ and pushing the narratives to political parties to help them be on top of the game. The speeches selected are of very high quality and the messages are very successfully communicated. We propose that when a politician delivers these sorts of speeches the goal is to draw the audience to himself and convince the electorate of why they are the better candidates for the election. To achieve this, politicians use their words in subtle and careful ways that capture the attention, interest, and admiration of the listeners. These speeches employ words and varying sentence structures. The sentences employ the pronoun system to deliberately make the audience believe the speech is about them – their ideas, opinions, desires, and comradeship.