2025 Volume 45 Pages 24-48
This paper offers a new way of conceptualising the style and perceivable populist communicative performances from a non-Western perspective. It uses the dialectical-relational version of critical discourse analysis to examine political candidates’ rhetorical tropes and performative acts to register the aspect of stance-taking, blame attribution, and populist communicative style in Nigeria. The findings suggest that specific styles and rhetoric are dependent on social and self-style identities that fit into unique socio-cultural spaces. The anti-establishment populist rhetoric of the antagonistic association between the establishment politicians and a fictive multitude, “the people”, demonstrates the construction of “otherness” exploited to gain political support. The paper concludes that the exploitation of referent object “the people” as the mobilising currency, which is a universal populism ideal, did not result in electoral success in Nigeria. Howbeit, certain socio-political, historical or cultural, and post-colonial constructs affects populist outcomes especially in heterogeneous African societies.
