Abstract

Political actors in Nigeria negotiate political campaigns with the use of linguistic resources to express their ideological positions. They project the ideologies of their respective parties during political campaigns. Studies on political discourse have explored rhetorical cues in inaugural speeches to the neglect of hate campaigns in Nigerian Presidential Elections. This paper engages the pragmatics of hate campaigns with a view to describing the pragmatic strategies of hate campaigns in the selected Presidential campaign speeches. The study is premised on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. Campaign speeches of Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2015 electioneering constitute the data for the study. The data were collected from print and online sources. The speeches were selected from Punch, Tribune, The Guardian, The Nation, Vanguard Newspaper and Daily Trust. Data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. In a bid to enhance their social acceptance, loyalty, political credibility and self-image, presidential candidates resorted to self justification, amplifying political ineptitude, expressing intellectual weakness, amplifying intellectual ineptitude, making recourse to history, branding, blaming, spinning, counter discourse and rhetorical questions. These strategies were engaged in order to discredit and threaten the face of their opponents. The study reveals that the Nigerian political scene during electioneering is tense and cloudy as political actors pose series of face-threatening acts to their fellow political opponents in a bid to secure political posts.