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cjls

Articles

CJLS: VOL. 11, NO. 1, JUNE 2023

Representation of “Us” and “Them” in Atiku Abubakar’s 2023 Presidential Declaration Speech

Submitted
October 19, 2024
Published
2023-05-17

Abstract

Language is a vehicle used in expressing one’s ideology, especially when it comes to telling people to agree with your viewpoints. Politicians across the world do this and Nigeria is not an exception. There is a myriad of studies on the ideological representation of “Us” and “Them” in political, protest, conflict and religious discourses. There is, however, need for the investigation of representation of “Us” and “Them” in select presidential interests declaration leading to the 2023 general elections. This study was, therefore, designed to investigate representation of “Us” and “Them” in Atiku Abubakar’s presidential declaration speech of March 23, 2022 (downloaded from the website of Business Day).  Van Dijk’s (1998) notion of ‘ideological square’ served as theoretical anchorage for the study. The data were subjected to critical discourse analysis and revealed that Atiku Abubakar represented his party (PDP), his supporters and himself positively through “Us”, while “Them” was used to represent negatively the APC administration and their supporters who seem to be the major contenders with PDP in the 2023 presidential elections.

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