Deixis in President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 Campaign Speech

Ugwu, Justus C. (2016) Deixis in President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 Campaign Speech. Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu.

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Abstract

Drawing on William Hank’s deictic field and Karl Buhler’s deictic centre, this paper examines the use of deixis in President Buhari’s February 6th campaign speech in the build-up to 2015 general elections in Nigeria. The paper reveals that Buhari, systematically, sets up the deictic field by issuing several person, spatial, temporal and social deictic elements in a, hitherto, plain field called “ground zero”. His deployment of deixis in the text creates a deictic field where Nigerians (the electorate) are thrust at the deictic centre and Buhari and his opponents are set in binary opposition. The placing of Nigerians at the deictic centre and the use of the person deixis “we” and “our” index a closer relationship and, thus, brings Buhari and his party closer to the deictic centre where Nigerian people assess him and his party favourably and his opponents otherwise.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions: Faculty of Management and Social Sciences
Depositing User: miss ifeoma agbo
Date Deposited: 24 Apr 2019 13:19
Last Modified: 24 Apr 2019 13:19
URI: http://eprints.gouni.edu.ng/id/eprint/1232

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