A Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Campaign Speeches in the 2021 Anambra State Gubernatorial Election

This study examines the campaign speeches of the four main candidates in the 2021 Anambra State gubernatorial election: Prof. Charles Soludo (APGA), Senator Andy Uba (APC), Mr Valentine Ozigbo (PDP), and Senator Ifeanyi Ubah (YPP). Existing studies have examined political campaign discourse in Nigeria, including elections in the South-East. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the linguistic features and discursive strategies employed by the four major candidates in their campaign speeches during the 2021 Anambra State gubernatorial election. The study is designed to fill this gap in scholarship. The population comprises the selected campaign speeches of the four candidates, from which twenty excerpts, five from each candidate, were purposively sampled from broadcast, newspaper, and social media sources. The study is qualitative and adopts Fairclough's three dimensional analytical framework of description, interpretation and explanation, together with, van Dijk's ideological square, to analyse data. The findings reveal that the candidates used pronominal choices, naming, credentials, metaphors, and lexical style to construct political identities. They also combined positive self-presentation with negative other-presentation, as well as ethos, pathos and logos to persuade voters. The discourse was dominated by the single ethnic context and the security crisis, which compelled candidates to assert claims to legitimacy on the basis of competence and record and not on ethnicity. The study concludes that the speeches were tools of power and persuasion, and suggests improved voter education and issue-based political campaigns.