Language Change: Discursive Strategies in The Guardian and Vanguard Newspapers Reportage of 2023 General Election in Nigeria

The 2023 Nigerian general election reportage in print media discourse generated coinages and other linguistic variants that are non-existent in the current English lexicon. The investigation of these coinages and discursive strategies are worthy of scholarly attention. Previous linguistic studies examined the discursive patterns of campaign songs, slogans, hate speech and propaganda with scant attention on language. Therefore, this study explored language change and the discursive strategies in the news print media reportage of the 2023 general elections. Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theory and Robert Entman's framing concept served as the theoretical frameworks. A qualitative research method approach was employed. Data was extracted from the e-copies of two widely circulated newspapers in Nigeria: The Guardian, and Vanguard. Key findings revealed an extensive use of rhetoric devices, including the emergence of neologisms such as "atikulated," "Obidient," "BAT," and "Jagaban" that have evolved into political ideologies in the light of Norman Fairclough’s CDA using rhetoric devices as analytical tools . The study concluded that there are linguistic changes in media reportage of the 2023 Nigerian general election as there are new concepts, and new lexical items created and recreated to express new ideologies. The study also contributed to the linguistic inventory of the Nigerian political discourse thereby gaining global prominence