Conversationalization of Discourse in Tell and The News’ Representation of Nigerian General Elections

Abstract

Existing studies on media representation of elections in Nigeria did not pay adequate attention to a critical linguistic perspective on language used in reporting electoral matters. Such studies have not really examined how such ideologies could be accounted for using discourse features. Given the fact that ideologies are very crucial in elections, this study investigates the ways the cover stories in two Nigerian news magazines, Tell and The News, conversationalise the ideological pursuits of social actors in the 2003 and 2007 general elections in Nigeria. Fairclough’s model on discourse is adopted as theoretical framework. The discourse patterns that expressed ideological pursuits in the reports were generally non-neutral. The analysis shows that both magazines adopted the radical and pragmatic approaches to pattern the quotation sequence as Quoted-Process-Sayer to discursively shape the readers’ perceptions, and authenticate claims. The discourse of the stories indicated an attempt to shape the perspective of readers in elections; the magazines held the view that they are responsible for the social orientation of the electorate.