Effectuating Acclaim Through Evaluation: An Appraisal of 2015 and 2019 Presidential Campaign Advertisements in Nigerian Newspapers

Abstract

Political Campaign advertising texts are often used by political actors to proclaim an enthralling self-image in the minds of the voters. Though extant literature reveal that linguistic investigations have been carried out on varied strategies and structures in this self-glorification exercise, hardly do we have any that has critically explored how evaluative language process is involved in the enchantment process. This study therefore examines the attitudinal evaluative strategy involved in the effectuation of such persuasion-induced discourse function in the presidential campaign advertisements of the two major political parties in Nigeria. The study draws data from ten paid advertisements published in two Nigeria newspapers - "The Guardian" and "Nigerian Tribune" - in January/ February 2015 and 2019, respectively; and subjected them to postulations from two different but relevant frameworks (Functional Theory of political campaign discourse and Appraisal Theory). The results show that attitudinal evaluative processes (i.e., Judgement, and Appreciation) were used to effectuate Acclaim discourse function in the texts. This study has exposed the link between assumptions in two different theoretical frameworks hitherto not considered related. Further study could involve looking at how evaluative language is deployed to construe attack discourse function in campaign advertisements.