EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

A Stylo-Rhetorical Analysis of Obafemi Awolowo’s

Ajewole Orimogunje Christiana Oluremi

International Journal of Asian Social Science, 2013, vol. 3, issue 1, 216-228

Abstract: This paper focusses on stylistic analysis of one selected speech of Obafemi Awolowo; a Nigerian, lawyer, philosopher and statesman. Awolowo occupied a significant position in Nigeria politics. Rhetorical communication has a special relationship with leadership and society and Nigerian leaders have adopted the medium as an effective way of making direct contact with the people. Political speeches are made by leaders to persuade, inform, correct and manipulate the audience. The text for this study is drawn from a collection of Awolowo’s speeches as contained in Voice of Courage 1981a titled “It is not life that matters but the courage you bring into it”. The speech is purposively sampled to demonstrate Awolowo’s language use as a weapon of influencing his audience. The analysis is done within the framework of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and New Rhetoric Approaches which concentrate on the examination of language forms and evaluate the ideas put forward in speech. Findings from the study show that Awolowo employed the use of the English language as a strategy of persuasion to gain the support of his audience. The analysis reveals the effectiveness of Awolowo’s language use.

Keywords: Speech; Rhetoric; Persuasion; Stylistics; Obafemi awolowo. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://archive.aessweb.com/index.php/5007/article/view/2411/3688 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:asi:ijoass:v:3:y:2013:i:1:p:216-228:id:2411

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Asian Social Science from Asian Economic and Social Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Robert Allen ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:asi:ijoass:v:3:y:2013:i:1:p:216-228:id:2411