Speech Act Analysis of Dame Patience Jonathan’s Speeches

This research work is centered on the speech act analysis of Dame Patience Jonathan. The main objectives of the work are to identify the types of speech acts in the selected Dame Patience’s speeches as well as to discover its effects on the citizens of the country. The theoretical framework adopted for data analysis is Searle’s speech act theory. For the analysis, only three speeches of Dame Patience Jonathan will be used. The speeches includes: Chibok girls speech, campaign speeches at Umuahia and Calabar. The study finds out that the speeches could have caused chauvinism and rivalry as well as proving that the then government is inept in solving the problem at hand. The findings also reveal different types of speech acts used by Dame Patience Jonathan using Searle’s speech act classification. The work identifies Declarative Speech act, Representative Speech act, Commisive speech acts and Directive speech act. The work also discovers how politicians such as Dame Patience Jonathan used language in such a way to manipulate the listeners/citizens. Furthermore, the work discusses the effect of Dame Patience Jonathan’s speeches on the people and how the people/citizens reacted to the speeches. The study recommended that if political figure wants to make a speech or address the citizens, s/he should weigh the speech and its consequence.