Speech acts

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Whatever ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer a suspect gives they are trapped into an admission of certain facts that is why sometimes defence counsels stridently object to such lines of questioning.

In the first question, whether you answer yes or no you have admitted the stabbing issue which has been backgrounded.

Presupposition is as such one important element in interpretation that positions the reader to agree with a certain view point. After all, their entire reason for living is to allow the speaker to signal that certain information is already taken for granted as shared knowledge—and if it's not, then the hearer should accommodate it post-haste into his set of background assumptions (Sedivy 2011).

Presupposition is related to the concept of an ‘ideal reader’. Discourse producers produce with interpreters in mind; those who will interpret the text and message from the point of view of the text producers (Fairclough 1989). For this reason “the event is put together with signs that indicate how it should be understood— what it “means” ” (Hatley 1982, 62). All linguistic and pragmatic choices are made to make the point of view of the text producer the preferred reading or the common sense.

So with presuppositions, it is a win-win situation. Either they are taken for granted as shared knowledge or they begin to be seen as such, henceforth. It is in this appeal to background knowledge shared by all while the case may actually not be truly so that I find the presupposition analysis important in this study especially where contentious political issues are presupposed in coup speeches.

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Speech acts are broadly divided into two, performatives and constatives by Austin (1962).

Performatives are thought of as doing an action while constatives are thought of as saying something. Regarding performatives, he maintains that

(A) They do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything at all, are not ‘true or false,’ and (B) The uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just,’ saying something (Austin (1962,5).

The essence of performatives in carrying out social actions and in changing states makes them relevant to this study. Performatives are divided into two, explicit and implicit.

Explicit performatives are unambiguous at the level of the action, the person making the action and the recipient of the action. They are thus clear on agency, action etc. Saeed (2007) maintains that explicit performatives tend to begin with a first person verb in the simple present tense, belong to a special class describing verbal activities, for example promise, warn, sentence, name, bet, pronounce and generally their performative nature can be emphasized by inserting the adverb ‘hereby’. . Thus I hereby sentence you to. . . is a classic performative doing the action of ‘sentencing’.

Implicit performatives, on the other hand, are not transparent. They perform a similar function but more indirectly. For example, ‘You are hereby sentenced to 10 years imprisonment’, is a performative but with a passive voice that does not declare who is issuing the sentence. Similarly, ‘You hereby cease to be the president’, is also a performative but without the use of the so-called performative verb which is also transitive in nature. ‘Cease’ is an intransitive verb doing the action of making one cease to occupy a position.

In enriching speech act theory, Searle’s (1976: 10–16) work delineates all acts into five, namely:

REPRESENTATIVES, which commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition (paradigm cases:

asserting, concluding);

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DIRECTIVES, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (paradigm cases:

requesting, questioning);

COMMISSIVES, which commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases: promising, threatening, offering);

EXPRESSIVES, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating);

DECLARATIONS, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra linguistic institutions (paradigm cases:

excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from employment).

Of particular significance to this study are those speech act types called declarations and directives in Searle’s taxonomy. These two are important because they deal with the positioning of roles and power asymmetries. Yule (1996) sees directives as words that change the world (i.e., the speaker causes a change in the situation) while Searle, from his taxonomy above, considers them as effecting immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and this state of affairs tends to rely on elaborate extra linguistic institutions.

These extra linguistic institutions which are glossed over deserve to be studied, and they are not thought of as extra-linguistic but as social contexts that are of ideological significance. Performatives of naming children in Hausa society, for example, are carried out by the fathers and male segment of the society, see Parris (1996). Such social contexts are sexist in the cultural marginalization of women in Africa.

Part of Bourdieu’s (1999) argument against Austin’s speech act theory, to which I also subscribe, depends on the inability of the latter to look into the institutional realms that give nuance to the acts carried out by performatives. Bourdieu (1999) argues that if there are utterances whose role is not only to 'describe a state of affairs or state some ‘fact’, but also to 'execute an action', it is because the power of words resides in the fact that they are not pronounced on behalf of the person who is only the 'carrier' of these words: “the authorized spokesperson is only able to use words to act on other agents and, through their action, on things themselves, because his speech concentrates within it the accumulated

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symbolic capital of the group which has delegated him and of which he is the authorized representative” (Bourdieu 1999, 109-110). He further contends that the most important thing to put in mind is that the success of these operations “of social magic— comprised by acts of authority, or, what amounts to the same thing, authorized acts—is dependent on the combination of a systematic set of interdependent conditions which constitute social rituals” (Bourdieu 1999, 109-110). These interdependent variables need analysis to understand the core of the issues involved. Speech acts by the military in their coup broadcasts are made based on the assumption of power asymmetries and the ideological belief in the military as a corrective and supreme institution. They use considerable number of performatives (chiefly declaratives and directives) in such cases as suspending the constitution and banning many issues against the backdrop of assuming to satisfy, or be in possession of the 'felicity conditions' to do that. It is here that the aspect of Althusser’s interpellation is achieved. A form of address is ideological by itself because it declares roles by its utterance, as if by magic, without having to spell out its source of power.

Felicity conditions should be seen as part of the institutional and extra linguistic factors that aid the successful working of performatives. In his general discussion of felicity conditions, Austin (1962, 5) maintains, among others, for an utterance to be felicitious

A.1 There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further,

A.2 the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.

B.1 The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly andB.2 Completely.

Infelicities are committed which ‘misfire’ the acts. Infelicities in “A.1 may be called Misinvocations. The second sort-where the procedure does exist all right but can't be applied as purported-Misapplications” (Austin 1962, 17). If we look into the institutional realms, we realise that, as far as the first military coup is concerned, there are no conditions

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or conventional procedures for a political power take-over by the military. What Major Nzegwu did is “what is in effect the double crimes of treason against the state, and mutiny against the military hierarchy” (Siollun 2013, 19). This indicates the nonexistence of any convention. There may be an ideological influence from colonialism but an elaborate convention did not exist pre-the Nzegwu military coup. So as I said earlier, Nzegwu has created a template from which subsequent coup makers can copy. When the subjects do not feel that the act is ‘misinvoked’ or ‘misapplied’ in spite of constitutional provisions that legislate against mutiny, and they jubilate in affirmation of their being made ‘subjects’

then the act has become normative. The subjects have thus played a part in the circuitry of interpellation. If a curfew is declared, for instance, and people do not come. That obedience then plays a part in the material existence of martial or military ideology. Obedience in interpellation is acceptance, and this obedience is the perlocutionary effect of that declaration. Martel (2017) argues that interpellation as a circuit is projected from one site, usually, in this case, the state represented by the military “and received by individuals who then become legal subjects. These subjects in turn, in obeying, and—at least to some extent—in absorbing this subjectivity, project that authority back out to the “origin” from which it was received” (Martel 2017, 243). As we shall also see in the data analysis so many of the characteristics of the Nzegwu coup (textually and contextually) are reproduced by other coup makers and complied with by the Nigerian people. Nzegwu creates the felicity conditions that make a coup a new concept with its own peculiar dimensions. What this proves is the efficacy of analysing the institutional frameworks as speech acts sometimes form part of, or initiate, the rituals of ideological interpellation. It also proves that socio-political conditions can be forged or charted afresh. The performative as such, according to Butler (1996, 160), “is not a singular act used by an already established subject, but one of the powerful and insidious ways in which subjects are called into social being from diffuse social quarters, inaugurated into sociality by a variety of diffuse and powerful interpellations. In essence, the use of the performatives can both be inaugurative and ritualized and they can aid in the formation and sustenance of someone in a subject position.

123 3.3.4 Discourse as social practice (explanation)

The stage of explanation deals with the reproduction that connects the stages of interpretation and explanation, “whereas the former is concerned with how MR are drawn upon in processing discourse. The latter is concerned with the social constitution and change of MR, including of course their reproduction in social practice” (Fairclough 2001, 135). In essence, as soon as MR is drawn upon using interpretative procedures in discourse then that element is reproduced or transformed and the trip continues. This reproduction has dialectical effect on social structures. Fairclough argues that the stage of explanation portrays a discourse as part of a social process or a social practice that shows how it is determined by social structures, sustaining them or changing them. He further argues that these social determinants and effects are mediated by MR. Invariably social structures shape MR, which in turn shape discourses; and discourses sustain or change MR, which in turn sustain or change structures. This dialectics is what sustains world view and makes issues objectified and commonsensical. When in a military coup speech, for example, interpretative procedures like presuppositions and frames about the military as a corrective regime and politicians as the corrupt elements are cued, this leads to their reproduction in the MR. The MR then forms an opinion about the two categories which then becomes social knowledge. The military has held onto power 29 years out of the 55 years of the Nigeria’s independence. They have done this partly through the ideological construction of their mission in the psyches of Nigerians.

Similarly, Emenyeonu (1997), in a study asking journalists (respondents) about whether they agree with some of the reasons given by the military juntas for taking over power, finds that nearly half of them. In essence, even among journalists who are thought to have a measure of critical knowledge, there is a belief not only of the raison d'etre of the military in political governance being unquestioned but that the reasons they provide for taking over power are in justified. This provides an example of the strength of ideology in public realm.

Fairclough (1992) sees three issues as important in the aspect of ideology, namely: the claim that ideology has a material existence in the practices of institutions. Secondly, the claim that ideology interpellates subjects which leads to the view that one of the most

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significant ‘ideological effects’ which linguists ignore in discourse is the constitution of the subjects. Thirdly, the claim that ideological state apparatuses, i.e. institutions such as education or the media are both sites of and stakes in class struggle which points to struggle in an over discourse as a focus for an ideologically-oriented discourse analysis. Hegemony, on the other hand, is about constructing alliances and integrating rather than simply dominating subordinate classes, through concessions or through ideological means to win their consents. On the whole, Fairclough (2001, 138) summarizes three questions that one can ask of a particular discourse under investigation in the realm of explanation:

1. Social determinants: what power relations at situational, institutional and societal levels help shape this discourse?

2. Ideologies: what elements of the MR which are drawn upon have an ideological character?

3. Effects: how is this discourse positioned in relation to struggles at the situational, institutional and societal levels? Are these struggles overt or covert? Is this discourse normative with respect to MR or creative? Does it contribute to sustaining existing power relations, or transforming them?

These questions are important in understanding the overall workings and dialectics of ideology and discourse. Chiefly, we would see how power relations in Nigeria have been contested and rechannelled in consolidating military political and economic interests using the speeches.

3.4 MODIFICATION OF THE WORKINGS OF FAIRCLOUGH’S METHOD