LANGUAGE CHOICE IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF NIGERIAN ELECTIONS

Abstract

Nigeria is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with more than five hundred indigenous languages coexisting with English and Nigerian Pidgin. Political actors in the country constantly negotiate this multilingual landscape by strategically selecting languages that align with particular constituencies and rhetorical goals. This paper examines how English, Nigerian Pidgin, and indigenous languages are deployed in political discourse during election campaign. The paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the sociolinguistic theory of code-switching to analyse a corpus of fifty political speeches and campaign materials drawn from the 2023 general elections. This is complemented by audience perception data from two hundred respondents across Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Enugu. Findings reveal that English dominates official contexts such as televised debates and policy documents where credibility and international legitimacy are foregrounded, while Nigerian Pidgin and indigenous languages are mobilised in campaign rallies to index solidarity, grassroots belonging and ethnic authenticity. The paper contends that code-switching emerges as a strategic resource for constructing multiple identities within a single communicative event. Audience responses indicate that young urban Nigerians value the use of Pidgin as authentic and relatable, while rural audiences perceive indigenous language use as a marker of trust. The paper concludes that language choice in Nigerian politics is not incidental but constitutes a central mechanism of persuasion, identity construction and democratic participation. The study contributes to the global literature on political communication by showing how African multilingual contexts complicate dominant models of political discourse analysis.