dc.description.abstract |
Presidential election campaign advertisements in Nigerian newspapers deploy multimodal
and persuasive discourse strategies, which are contextually predetermined to influence
voters’ decisions before an election. Existing linguistic studies on presidential election
campaign advertisements in Nigerian newspapers focused mainly on persuasive effects from
stylistic, metaphoric and satirical perspectives. However, little attention was paid to context
and multimodal resources used in creating the effects. This study was, therefore, designed
to investigate contextual representations in election campaign advertisements in selected
Nigerian newspapers. This was to determine context types, discourse issues, multimodal
resources and persuasive structures in the advertisements.
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's Multimodality Theory, complemented by Richard
Petty and John Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model, served as the framework. The
descriptive design was adopted. Presidential election campaign advertisements of the two
major and most popular political parties in Nigeria, All Progressives Congress (APC) and
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were purposively selected. The advertisements published
in 2015 and 2019 were purposively selected based on the transitional uniqueness of the
period. Quota sampling was used to select two newspapers from the Lagos/Ibadan axis
(Punch and Nigerian Tribune (NT)) and one from the Kaduna/Abuja axis (Daily Trust (DT)).
Quota sampling was also used to select 40 advertisements from the newspapers (10 from
DT, and 15 each from NT and Punch). The data were subjected to multimodal discourse
analysis.
Three projected context types were identified: context of victory (CV), context of defeat
(CD) and context of countering opponent’s strategies (CCOS). Context of victory involved
use of peripheral route of persuasion (PRP), which was characterised by low elaboration,
credibility issues, positive self-presentation, emotional inducements and celebrity
endorsements, requiring no critical thinking for readers’ comprehension (DT). Context of
defeat exhibited central route of persuasion (CRP) in high elaboration and logical
presentation of facts aimed at provoking critical thinking (Punch and NT), while CCOS (NT
and Punch) reflected integrated use of PRP and CRP made coherent through comparative
listing of achievements and change of slogan to reflect new realities. Seven discourse issues
were identified: leadership attributes (DT, NT and Punch), unemployment, insecurity,
poverty reduction (NT and Punch), economic problems, education and infrastructures
(Punch, DT and NT). In 2015, APC, as challenger, deployed more of CV and PRP, but as
incumbent in 2019, it used more of CD and CRP (Punch and NT). Conversely, PDP, as
incumbent in 2015, utilised CD and CRP, and as challenger in 2019, deployed CV and PRP
(Punch and NT). Eight multimodal resources were identified: written words, pictures,
drawings, typography, slogans, colours, statistical elements and logos (DT, NT and Punch).
Four persuasive structures were identified: request and explication, problem and solution,
question and answer, and quotation and question (Punch, DT and NT). These were used to
indicate information value, salience and coherence in the advertisements and to justify the
political parties’ stances on various discourse issues before the elections.
Presidential campaign advertisements in Nigerian newspapers deploy context-determined
persuasive designs meant to consolidate envisaged support, prevent likely defeat and
anticipatorily counter opponent’s strategies before an election. |
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