The Function Of Political Speech: The Power Of Speech

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Speech is a formal talk that a person usually gives before an audience. There are different kinds of speeches but speech is usually spontaneous and often transmitted through a medium. Among other functions, speech is a useful social tool which can be used to develop relationships and convey attitudes and opinions directly (Thorne, 1997). This means that every speech is delivered for a purpose and language serves as the primary tool of expression. Hence, the ability to influence the audience depends on the speaker’s use of language to transmit his message; the power of a speech largely depends on language choices of the speaker. Political speeches are usually powerful. Politicians are noted for their ability to use language to acquire and manage …show more content…

It involves a wide and diverse set of discourses, genres, registers such as: policy papers, ministerial speeches, government press releases or press conferences, parliamentary discourse, party manifestos (or platforms), electoral speeches, and so forth (Al-Faki, 2014). Irrespective of the genre, political discourse is characterised by the fact that it is spoken or written by (or for) primary political actors — members of the government or the opposition, members of parliament, leaders of political parties, candidates in office. One important identifying variable is the actor – an important politician. Political discourse entails a formal address delivered by a politician at a political forum/gathering. In this vein, political campaign speeches delivered by aspirants to the electorates in order to win their votes serve as examples of political discourse.

The study of political discourse focuses on text and speeches of professional politicians or political institutions such as president and prime ministers and other members of government parliament or political parties both at the local, national and international levels. Thus, this study on the linguistic features of acceptance speeches of two presidential aspirants in Nigeria at the lexical and syntactic levels suffices as example of linguistic analysis of a political discourse.
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