A Discourse Analysis of New Year Messages of the Leaders Of the Two Major Political Parties in Ghana

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studies into political speech genres continue to attract the attention of scholars and researchers. Yet, the New Year Message (NYM) remains largely under-researched. Using Genre Theory, the present study explored the NYMs of John Dramani Mahama as President and Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo-Addo as Opposition Leader, from 2012 to 2016, focusing on their move structure, lexico-grammatical features, and rhetorical strategies. The data for the study were accessed online and analysed qualitatively. Regarding the schematic structure of the NYMs analysed, generally, the data revealed a seven-move structure for NYMs of John Dramani Mahama and eight-move structure for the NYMs of Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo, with some of the moves realized with steps. The study also revealed some noticeable differences and similarities in the schematic structure of the NYMs of the two rhetors. Further, each of the moves was characterized by certain linguistic features, including formulaic greetings, evaluative lexis, prepositional phrases, complex noun phrases, extraposition, imperative clauses, declarative clauses, etc. The study also revealed some rhetorical strategies as characterizing the NYMs analysed: metaphor, parallelism, anastrophe, parenthesis, apposition and antithesis. The findings of the study contribute to scholarship on NYMs and political discourse, in general. The study also has implications for genre theory and may serve as a useful material for politicians and political communicators.