Rhetorical Strategies and Ideology in Nigerian Government Minister-Citizen Interactions

Government minister-citizen interactions are political discourse events in Nigeria designed to inform people about government policies and appeal for positive responses. Previous studies have looked at political speeches, language of campaigns, manifestoes, and parliamentary debates, with little attention to these political interactions. This study therefore examinesrhetoric and ideology in these interactions using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach by drawing relevant aspects from Fairclour's (1989), and van Dijk's (1998) models. Halliday's (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) also helped in explicating rhetoric from texts. The syntheses of these models see language, discourse and power as integral concepts, and theirinterpretation with regard to context and social practice. Data were sourced from interactions of the National Good Governance Tours (NGGT) of Nigeria through live recordings. Analysis reveals simple words, short sentences and colloquial language for easy comprehension and to shorten distance between participants. Incomplete sentences and incorrect grammatical expressions also existed to show speakers as involved in thought processing and speech simultaneously. This was evidenced by self-correction and non-fluency of speech. Prevalent ideologies include Nigerians' belief that government is for personal gains; cynicism/negativism about Nigeria by Nigerians due to bad governance, infrastructural decay, religious, ethnic and political crisis, terrorism and kidnappings. There were efforts by government functionaries to promote a radical shift in the mindset of Nigerians by pointing to achievements and proposing that citizens actively participate in the governance process. Overall, the study reveals perception of Nigerians and steps by government to change them. We also see language patterns deployed to persuade.