| Abstract: |
In contemporary time, there have been public outburst and criticism on the public use of inapproprate, impolite or unaccomodative expressions especially in political engagements or social responses to political events. Politicians especially, use language to vilify, incite or wip up sentiments against their opponents or perceived detractors. Such language use, presently categorized as hate speeches or incitational speeches have become the order of national discourse compelling resentment from government, individuals and legislative sanctions. It is no gainsaying that fact that such use of language has the capacity of further polarising and undermining the unity and cohesion of our country considering its
multiethnic and pluralist natural. This paper tries to evaluate some of these kind of language use which goes to demostrate the intricate impacts of language incompetence as observed among political teachers and aspirants. Six separate speeches were selected and analyzed using 3 research questions. The findings obviously confirm that impoliteness in
language use undermines unity and creates distrust, acrimony, rancour and ultimately destroys the spirit of cooperation that engender progress in a society such as Nigeria. |
EBONYI JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE
