MILITARY (POLITICAL) DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Political discourse analysis is both about political discourse analysis and about the analysis being a critical enterprise (van Dijk, 1998). PDA or critical political discourse analysis deals especially with the reproduction of political power, power abuse or domination through political discourse, including the various forms of discursive dominance” (van Dijk 1998, 11). Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) further add that political discourse analysis should approximate to the concerns of political theory that is both descriptive and normative. This concern with normative standards would make discourse analysis not only be critical for its sake but critical for the sake of radical normative changes or standards, or what Wodak (2001, 64) would call “a prognostic critique”.

According to Chilton (2004), the doing of politics is the doing of language. Language is an integral tool of politics. Political campaigns, parliamentary debates, media interviews, inaugural speeches are all done with language. There is a competition for advantage between opponents and language is an effective tool in this regard. In my case it relates to the power of a group taking over a government to be able to assert its authority while repealing it and establishing a new one. Van Dijk (1998) believes that once we have

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analyzed the particular properties of political contexts, political discourse analysis in many respects will be like any other kind of discourse analysis. The specifics of political discourse analysis therefore, he maintains, should be aligned with the relations between discourse structures and political context structures. “Thus, whereas metaphors in classroom discourse may have an educational function, metaphors in politics will function in a political context, for instance in the attack on political opponents, the presentation of policies or the legitimation of political power” (Van Dijk 1998, 24). Let us now identify the broad features of coup speeches as aspects of political language.

Military coup speeches are aspects of political discourse. Their essence lies in their performative declarative powers i.e., both being used in ending a government and in starting another one. The speech is used also in establishing laws and repealing others.

Bodies are formed and new subjects are also formed. Future projections and imaginaries are established. The language used here falls in the realm of what Chilton (2004) calls

‘coercion’ or coercive use of language. Chilton argues that this is one of the strategies through which Habermasian Validity Claims are overridden whether obviously or covertly.

Coercion is partly linguistic and partly dependent on the utterer's resources and power.

Some examples of this are speech acts backed by legal, extra-legal and physical sanctions and use of deontic and epistemic modals. Coercion is extremely important in my analysis as it relates to interpellation and the formation of subjects, governance and the removal of other regimes. The Habermasian claim of rightness, for example, has relational significance for it places the speaker or utterer with both deontic and epistemic powers and clearly hails the audience. Appearing out of the blue to ‘declare a state of emergency’, as an example, is made on the backdrop of the claim of the rightness to speak in the way and manner done. Acquiescence to any actions, pronouncements or declarations like this shows that the validity claim of rightness has not been challenged and it has ungrudgingly been accepted.

Secondly, for coup speeches to gain legitimacy through the ideological apparatus, they have to discredit the outgoing regime. This act of discrediting serves as the raison d'être of the coup itself. Their legitimacy as such is on the basis of the deflation of governmental legitimacy of the incumbent regime. This negation can be made by exaggeration or

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hyperbole, contrivance and or assumption or presupposition to advance selfish political motives. This brings us to the second method of overriding validity claims, i.e., legitimization and deligitimization. Legitimization here talks about the ways a government portrays its positive face in other to be obeyed. All attempts are made to legitimize its actions for the purpose of being accepted. Deligitimization, on the other hand, refers to the ways others or perceived are presented negatively using speech acts of blaming, criticizing insulting etc. and the techniques in the use of difference and boundaries. The military employ these tactics in self-presentation and the presentation of the enemy. Coup speeches exist on the notion of presence of absence as we shall in the representation of the political class in data analysis. They are made on the twin backdrops of self-legitimation and other deligitimization. They are formed with binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This also relates to the van Dijk’s (2005, 33) ideological square:

1. Emphasize our good properties/actions 2. Emphasize their bad properties/actions 3. Mitigate our bad properties/actions 4. Mitigate their good properties/actions.

Linguistic strategies are employed that play a role in this demarcation of interests. Good properties of the in-group are emphasized through iconic active processes “I/we did this or that”, or through positive hyperboles “we can sacrifice our lives for the nation”, etc.

Negative or bad properties are mitigated through euphemisms, passivisations, nominalizations etc. The out-group can also be described in dysphemisms or hyperboles, and their good side can be understated through understatements or negative euphemisms or the like. George Orwell (2015, 1), in his 1946 article: ‘Politics and the English Language’, bemoans the ‘badness’ of the English language due to the fact that meaning is made vague and fuzzy. This is obviously so because in political language vagueness can be an end in itself especially where the in-group may be involved and see that as face saving tactics. Orwell argues that:

...political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question- begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no

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more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.

This Orwellian example is a classic case of mitigating an in-group’s bad actions for ideological reasons. This is also demonstrated in the coup speeches.

Thirdly, there is the aspect of information control both qualitatively and quantitatively which is highly crucial with the military. In my discussion of discourse access, I have raised the issue of discourse control. There is a code of secrecy in the military in Nigeria which hamstrings information flow. In fact, this secrecy, as argued by Abaya (2008), makes research in the area quite scanty and difficult. Chilton (2004) maintains that secrecy and inadequate information flow are a way of quantitative misrepresentation. The first act of a coup plot, as we shall see, is to control the mass media especially the broadcasting or electronic media. Control over flow of information is crucial to the success of the coup for their will be no access to a counter narrative by people who may be opposed to the coup.

And in the life of the regime many decrees are enacted to muzzle the press. A good example of this is the decree 4 of the Buhari administration (see 2.2.2 for more on this). Qualitative misrepresentation, on the other hand, includes various kinds of strategies like omission, verbal evasion and denial, euphemism, implicit meaning and the subjective representation of reality. Access to discourse and control over discourse together make both qualitative and quantitative (mis)representation easy for the military in power.

In conclusion, a military coup speech is a sub-class of political language that has performative powers and that uses strategies of both qualitative and quantitative mis/representations in promoting the ideological interests of the coup makers. All Habermasian validity claims are overridden here which proves that the speeches are ideologically saturated and need a thorough critical disambiguation of issues. Coercive language and misrepresentation impinge on the claims to uttering a propositional truth and to be speaking sincerely. Coercion also impinges on the claim to rightness: i.e. the claim to be normatively right to utter what one is uttering. A military coup is a political aberration, so any military officer that emerges and claims the rights to order people around and to take over government without constitutional sanction is impinging on the claim to rightness. Lastly, a speech that is obfuscating and that has a vague representation of issues

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may be impinging on the claim to understandability, i.e. that what the speaker utters is intelligible within the scope of the exchange. Tropes used in a language may displace meaning as well within the scope of the exchange and deliberately promote ideological interests. All these issues make coup speeches political texts that deserve an analysis of a critical kind.