Open Access
American Research Journal of English and Literature
ISSN (Online): 2378-9026
DOI: 10.46568/arjel
A Speech Act Analysis of Bola Tinubu’s Election Victory Speech
Abstract
Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Party became the President-elect after Nigeria’s Presidential Election which took
place in March 2023. The central goal of an election victory speech such as that of Bola Tinubu is to persuade, unify and
mobilize the audience. The speech analyzed in this study is the election victory speech delivered by the President-elect.
Selected utterances from the speech are analyzed to find out how the speaker skillfully deployed speech acts that are
germane to the psychological context of the speech, occasioned by the opponents’ claim that the election was rigged.
Hinging on two theoretical frameworks (Bach and Harnish’s Speech Act Theory as well as Stance and Engagement
theory), the study concludes that speech acts have intentional contents which are products of speaker-hearer shared
knowledge, and persuasive use of language in political speeches presupposes the use of different communicative strategies:
skillful selection and sequencing of speech acts, personal pronouns, emotional appeals, exploring speaker-hearer shared
knowledge, establishing speaker hearer bond, among other strategies.
