ABSTRACT
This study examines how Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, and Peter Obi, presidential candidates of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Labour Party (LP), respectively,use polarisation and argumentation as aspects of critical discourse analysis in their political speeches, during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. The data consists of six speeches delivered by the presidential candidates from September 2022 to January 2023. The study adopts van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach as the theoretical framework and analyses how the candidates present themselves and their opponents in terms of their self-representation, actions, roles and evaluation. The study also analyses how Tinubu, Atiku and Peter Obi construct and support their arguments in terms of victimization and comparison toenhance their credibility.
The finding reveals that the candidates employ three strategies of polarization (positive self-representation vs. negative other-representation, identity/membership and norms and value violation) and three strategies of argumentation (victimization, comparison and evaluation) to manipulate their audience and advance political agenda. The study therefore concludes that language is a tool used by political actors to express their ideology, influence public perception and garner support.
