Linguistic Representations in Selected Presidential Concession Speeches

Abstract

Defeat comes to politicians with shock and the default response of disappointment; nevertheless, its management has implications for peaceful transition, national stability, and aspirants’ democratic and public image. Extant works on election speeches have focused on different aspects of meaning in defeat concession, but have overlooked the ideational aspect of the speeches. Yet, it has the potential of revealing how losing aspirants use language in the realisation of their experiential meanings, within the context of their election defeat. Therefore, this study investigates the linguistic representation of candidates’ election defeat experience as embedded in variant themes, together with associated realities that suggest certain political postures. Using Thematics and the Transitivity system of the Systemic Functional Grammar as theoretical framework, representations were purposively taken from presidential concession speeches delivered in Nigeria and the United States, between 2012 and 2016, and subjected to linguistic analysis. The selected data are Romney’s Concession Speech (RCS), Jonathan’s Concession Speech (JCS), and Clinton’s Concession Speech (CCS), which all together comprise 2,145 word corpus and 209 clauses. The analysis identifies the prominent use of four Transitivity processes, which are Material, Relational, Mental and Verbal Processes; and these encrypt candidates’ defeat realities across nine themes: Appreciation, Concession, Good Wishes, Recalling Defeat, Closing Ranks, Inclining to Democracy, Framing, A Plea to Fight on, and Benediction. More specifically, the study reveals the actual act of concession to be a Verbalisation in a clause. The paper concludes that the ideational reading of a concession speech transcends yielding to bringing closure to an election, and includes resetting post-election narrative, renewing tarnished image, and keeping the fold together as political postures for future elections.

Keywords

• concession speech
• election defeat
• generic structure
• transitivity processes