To win the support of the electorates, Nigerian politicians engage diverse resources during electoral campaigns. Some of these resources include political jingles. This study examines political discursive practices and their socio-cognitive functions in the political jingles of the 2015 general elections in Nigeria. This is to illuminate the politicians’ sociopolitical evaluations of the electorates. The data for this study comprise 50 political jingles of the presidential campaigns of the two major political parties in the country, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the main opposition party, the All Progressive Congress (APC). This study is anchored on linguistic and literary theoretical perspectives using Critical Discourse Analysis and Sociology of Literature, respectively, to reveal the inherent meanings in, and socio-cultural implications of, the discourse of the sampled political jingles. Data analysis identifies political jingles as face-saving, assertive and educative acts. It also notes that implicatures, names, lexemes, religious allusions, evidentiality and code-switching are ideologically employed in the political jingles to enhance the politicians’ personalities and acceptance among the electorates.
AchebeC. (1958). Things fall apart. London: Heinemann.
2.
AchebeC. (1966). A man of the people. London: Heinemann.
3.
AdegojuA. (2005). A stylistic study of the speeches of some key actors of the ‘June 12’ crisis in Nigeria (1993–1998) (PhD thesis). University of Ibadan, Ibadan.
4.
AdegojuA. (2014). Person deixis as discursive practice in Nigeria’s ‘June 12’ conflict rhetoric. Ghana Journal of Linguistics, 3(1), 45–64.
5.
AdemilokunM. (2014). Discursive features of selected political song texts of the 2011 electioneering campaign rallies in south-western Nigeria. AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2(4), 262–282.
6.
AdemilokunM. (2015). Discursive strategies in selected political rally campaigns of 2011 elections in southwestern Nigeria. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 3(1), 120–132.
7.
AduradolaR. R., & OjukwuC. C. (2013). Language of political campaigns and politics in Nigeria. Canadian Social Science, 9(3), 104–116.
8.
AniekweC. C., & KushieJ. (2011). Electoral violence situational analysis: Identifying hot-spots in the 2011 general elections in Nigeria. A report for the National Association for Peaceful Elections in Nigeria.
9.
AwonugaC. O. (1988). Political rhetoric: Awolowo’s use of language. Odu: A Journal of West African Studies, 34, 150–196.
10.
AwonusiV. O. (1996). Politics and politicians for sale: An examination of advertising English in Nigeria’s political transition programme. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 40, 108–129.
11.
AwonusiS. (2008). Language, politics and democratic development in Nigeria. The 2008 Annual Lecture of the Nigeria Academy of Letters.
12.
BarryP. (2009). Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press.
13.
BeardA. (2000) The language of politics. New York: Routledge Chapman.
14.
BerthiaumeJ. (2015). The politics of pop culture in presidential campaigns. Retrieved from http://www.uwec.edu/news/news/the-politics-of-pop-culture-in-presidential-campaigns-924/
15.
CapP. (2002). Explorations in political discourse: Methodological and critical perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.
16.
ChiltonP. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
17.
FadeyiR. (2014). 2015: No party can defeat PDP, says Jonathan. Retrieved from http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/2015-no-party-can-defeat-pdp-says-jonathan/
18.
FaircloughN. (2009). A dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis. In WodakR. & MeyerM. (Eds.), Methods of critical analysis (2nd ed., pp. 162–186). London: SAGE Publications.
19.
FaircloughI., & FaircloughN. (2012). Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students. London: Routledge.
20.
FalolaT., & HeatonM. M. (2008). A history of Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21.
KamaluI., & AganganR. (2011). A critical discourse analysis of Goodluck Jonathan’s declaration of interest in the PDP presidential primaries. Language, Discourse and Society, 1(1), 32–54.
22.
OguntoyinboD. A., (2011). One man many visions: socio-cultural issues in selected plays of Ahmed Yerima (Unpublished M.A. thesis). Lagos State University, Lagos.
23.
OhaO. (1994). Language in war situation: A stylistic study of war speeches of Yakubu Gowon and Ojukwu (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
24.
OladejiN. (1991). Language and political evolution in Africa: A case study of some Yoruba political songs. Ife Annals of the Institute of Cultural Studies, 19–35.
25.
OluchukwuA., & NzuankeS. F. (2014). Onomastics and translation: The case of Igbo→ English translation of Chi names. Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 11(3), 122–140.
26.
OmidioraJ. O. (2012). Critical discourse with Christian narrative literature (Unpublished M.A. thesis). Covenant University, Ogun.
27.
OpeibiB. O. (2009). Discourse, politics and the 1993 presidential election campaigns in Nigeria. Lagos: Nouvelle Communications.
28.
RotimiO. (1977). Our husband has gone mad again. Ibadan: UPL.
29.
SchäffnerC. (2004). Political discourse analysis from the point of view of translation studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), 117–150.
30.
TaiwoR. (2009). Legitimization and coercion in political discourse: A case study of Olusegun Obasanjo address to the PDP elders and stakeholders forum. Journal of Political Discourse Analysis, 2(2), 191–205.
31.
TaiwoR. (2010). Conceptual metaphors in Nigerian political discourse. Abraka Humanities Review, 3(1), 170–185.
32.
UsmanY. B. (1987). The manipulation of religion in Nigeria. Kaduna: Vanguard Printers and Publishers.
33.
van DijkT. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249–283.
34.
van DijkT. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London: SAGE Publications.
35.
van DijkT. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In SchiffrinD., TannenD., & HamiltonH.E. (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352–371). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
36.
van DijkT. A. (2009). Critical discourse studies—A sociocognitive approach. In WodakR. & MeyerM. (Eds.), Methods of critical analysis (2nd ed., pp. 62–86). London: SAGE Publications.
37.
WodakR. (1999). Critical discourse analysis at the end of the 20th century. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 32(1-2), 185–193.
38.
WodakR. (2002). Aspects of critical discourse analysis. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik/Journal of Applied Linguistics, 36, 5–31.
