Political-discourse Interactions and Sustainable Peace in Nigeria

Abstract Political-discourse interactions between government officials and citizen are increasingly becoming common discourse events in Nigeria. There is seemingly nothing unfamiliar about political discourse events, but what needs clarification is the extent to which political discourse interactions foster and or enhance sustainable peace. This study, however, investigated the political discourse events of ‘The Ministerial Platforms’ and ‘National Good Governance Tours’ of Nigeria to determine how they enhance sustainable peace. Djik’s Action theory and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics served as theoretical framework. Analysis revealed that increased political-Discourse interactions between government officials and the citizenry shortened the gap between the governed and those who govern, thus bridging disharmony, disillusionment, apathy, agitations and grievances through information eliciting strategy realised through probing by questioning, Emotive embedded strategy through entreaties by pleas, Campaign strategy through agitations by direct demands and Affirmative Strategy through applauses and commendations, as what the citizenry used.
Keywords: discourse strategies, political discourse, sustainable peace