IGBOSCHOLARS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF IGBO SCHOLARS FORUM, NIGERIA

Language is a social semiotic – a meaning-making resource for constructing experiences, enacting relationships and generating texts for recording such functions. It offers its users a variety of ways of expressing meanings by making choices from the plethora of alternative potential options in the linguistic system. The implication is that linguistic choices are not neutral but are motivated by the kinds of experiences and social reality being conveyed in any given situational context of human existence, of which political discourse is a typical example. This limitless meaning potential of language makes it amenable to manipulation by the political elites in naturalizing ideologies and manufacturing consent of the electorate. Focussing on former President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2011 inaugural speech, and anchoring on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar particularly the system of Transitivity, the paper critically examines how experiential meaning is constructed in different identified clause/process types paying particular attention to ideological implications and encoded human existential concerns. Analysis reveal that Relational clauses were predominantly employed to define identities, assert moral values and naturalize attributes of leadership authority while Material clauses conveyed development and collective action often masking power asymmetries. These clauses mirror existential issues in political discourse where political actors make choices to achieve spurious goals and construct human existence that seem to obfuscate the realities on ground. The study concludes that critical awareness of these subtle manipulations of language by text producers will enable text consumers to more critically interpret textual representations that border on human existential concerns in order to resist, contest and subvert personal or group ideologies presented as commonsense discourses with a view to mitigating social power abuse for harmonious coexistence.

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