A Speech Act Analysis of Language of Emotion in Governor Akeredolu's Post Owo Massacre Broadcast

Memunat Olayemi Mahmud

Citation: Memunat Olayemi Mahmud, "A Speech Act Analysis of Language of Emotion in Governor Akeredolu's Post Owo Massacre Broadcast", Universal Library of Languages and Literatures, Volume 01, Issue 01.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The attack on the worshippers of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Ogwaluwa, Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria has further revealed the state of insecurity in the Nigerian sociospace. The grisly act, referred to as Owo massacre, has attracted widespread condemnation from individuals and groups in and outside the shore of Nigeria. This paper attempts the analysis of the post Owo massacre speech of the Governor of Ondo State, Nigeria, Arakunrin Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu’s as presented in his state broadcast on Owo terror attack. The text of the Post Owo Massacre Speech of Governor Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu as contained in his state broadcast made on June 7, 2022, entitled Owo terror attack, was downloaded from the Facebook page of Oluwarotimi Akeredolu Aketi on https://fb.watch/mhM-xkaQUu/ and analysed using Speech Act Theory as propounded by J. L Austin (1962) and expatiated by John Searle (1971). The study identifies the illocutionary acts of assertive, directive, expressive and commissive; analyse the performative functions of the identified illocutionary acts and the communicative element that give effectiveness to the acts in the emotional speech and concludes that emotion dictates the choices of the communicating elements deployed in the post Owo massacre state broadcast of Arakunrin Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu.


Keywords: Arakunrin Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu; Emotion; Illocutionary Acts; Owo Massacre; Performative Functions; Speech Act; St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church

Download doi https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ullli.2024.0101004