Mobilising Social Actors for Action in the Campaign Speech of President Paul Biya to the Population of the Far-North Region 29 September 2018

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VII, July 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Mobilising Social Actors for Action in the Campaign Speech of President Paul Biya to the Population of the Far-North Region 29 September 2018

Joefrey Ngha Fuh Nji, PhD
The University of Maroua

Abstract :-This paper seeks to investigate how Paul Biya uses langauge to galvanise social actors in his campaign speech to the population of the Far-North Region, to mobilise them for action during the Presidential elections on the 7th of October 2018. In this speech he makes use of praise and promise listing, nomination strategies and anthroponym to ignite hope in the people so that they can give him the necessary support on the election day. He sounds more inclusive in his discourse as realised by the use of the pronouns ‘You’, ‘We’ and ‘Us’. Meanwhile to a larger extent it is the personal pronoun ‘I’, and ‘Me’ that predominates. The discourses were mostly focused on development and revamping the area in the economic domain. The results have equally proven that Paul Biya in this campaign speech like in his end of year speeches and February 10th address to the youth is usually replete of praise and promise listing which leaves much to be desired.

Key words: Mobilisation, Social Actors, Campaign Speech, Population, Far-North Region.

I. INTRODUCTION

The focal point of this paper is Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), mainly opined and postulated by Ruth Wodak and research Associates (2001, 2006 & 2009) currently also prominently represented in, in ter alia, Lancaster-UK, Bern-Switzerland or Poznań-Poland. This approach was derived from linguistics, having its roots in, for example, linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics or linguistic discourse analysis (Reisigl, 2007:6, cited in Krzyzanowski 2010:72). They base their model on sociolinguistics in the Bernsteinian tradition, and on ideas of the Frankfurt school, especially those of Jürgen Habermas (Wodak, 2006:14), on Michael Foucault’s theory and on Wittgenstein language games (Krzyzanowski, 2010:72). DHA, tries to integrate all background information (historical background but also the original historical sources) in the interpretation of all layers of a text since research shows the impact of the context on the function, structure and content of discourse(e.g. Reisigl and Wodak 2001). The focus of DHA is on discursive and linguistic elements, social practices and their in-depth examination, not on language per se (Wodak, 2006:14-16, Wodak et al. 1999, cited in Krzyzanowski 2010:71-72).

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