Thesis Abstract

Language and style are the basic modes of communication and information. They centre on words and utterances and focus beyond these two aspects, that is, words and utterances. Stylistics is based mainly on the interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. A stylistic analysis of the selected election campaign speech of President Goodluck Jonathan is carried out in this research. The data used in this work to illustrate the stylistic effects on speech is the Campaign speech of President Goodluck Jonathan. The five stylistic devices identified in this research are the main elements used to prove our claim. Finally, we found that each of these elements functions well enough to contribute to the effective use of words in speech delivery. It can therefore be concluded that these elements trigger and play important roles in passing the intention of the writer or speaker across to the reader or hearer.

Thesis Overview

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Language is a fascinating study. This is because of the roles of performs. It captures all the aspects of human thought and endeavours. Language is concepts which many attempt have been made to define. To some people’s point of view, language is a means of communication. To some, it’s a way of expressing our views, ideas, wishes and emotions. But to be more specific about this definition, language is what is spoken or written; it consists of the use of word in a meaningful and agreed order. This definition makes language a rule governed activity.

The first two definitions of language by Chomsky and Cruse suggest that each speech community possess a repertive interest, world vocabulary covering the social concern, political interest, occupational interest, world view and physical environment of the people to fulfill their communicative needs and meet their interactive demands it is this inventory that constitutes the codes with which a community communicates.

Speech on the other hand is a connected discourse. It is a faculty of expressing thoughts, feelings or perceptions by articulation of word. It is spoken formerly to an audience. There are various a type of speeches out of which is the presidential speech.

This speech is the one delivered by a president to the general public or to the members of his cabinet. It can be acceptance speech, presentation speech, campaign speech and many others. Out of these speeches, our focus for this research is on campaign speech.

What is campaign speech? What are the features? What factors are to be considered in delivering the speech? What method of presentation is it going to take? All these are the questions that must be answered in explaining what a campaign speech is. This will be examined in the cause of the cause of this study.

1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The principal aim of this study is to examine the stylistic effects on the selected presidential campaign speech of President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria through the description and analysis of this speech.

In the same vein, this research will examine the difference in the use of language of the selected speech with the use of stylistic tools in analyzing the selected speeches. It will identify the have devices linguistic and literally and discuss how they have contributed to the beauty of the language use in the selected speeches.

SCOPE AND DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The research titled ‘stylistic analysis of a selected campaign speech of President Goodluck Jonathan’ is aimed at studying the use of language in the selected campaign speech of president good luck Jonathan. The areas to be covered in the stylistic analysis of this speech are phonology, morphology, cohesion, graphology and lexico- syntactic structures. The nature of this research is empirical which has to do with general and extensive study of a particular field or area. For example H.G widow son’s ‘stylistic and the teaching of literature’ are both previous works in this field. They both deal with the analysis and pedagogical treatment of literary texts from a view point of stylistics.

On the contrary, this research is unique –that is, different from other previous works because it focuses mainly on the stylistics analysis of presidential campaign speech of president good luck Jonathan and not just on stylistics analysis and this will makes readers of this work not to only look at the text of any speech what so ever, but also the context in which lies the style of language.

1.4. JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

Several works have been done on the stylistics analysis of some selected presidential campaign speeches in Nigeria in which the one selected for this research can be inclusive. But this research is necessary because not all these works were able to pin-point the main idea behind campaign speeches especially that of the president and because just few of these works are centered on campaign speeches all others are just on stylistics or stylistic analysis.

It is not this study of stylistic or stylistics analysis that borders the readers but the details, the break down (anatomy and physiology) of the given speeches. To this effect, some gaps have been left unfilled by these previous works. Gaps like detail stylistic analysis on campaign speeches the analysis of the mode by which it is delivered and many others will prove the authenticity of this research.