A Syntactic Analysis of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Inaugural Speech

Abstract

The aim of this research was to carry out a syntactic analysis of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s inaugural speech, with a view to examining the syntactic devices employed, discussing how the syntactic devices help in the interpretation of the speech and explaining the devices in relation to the context of the speech. The inaugural speech of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu served as the data for the study. A combination of qualitative and quantitative approach was adopted in the study. The analysis of the data was done using frequency-based approach, with insights drawn from Halliday’s Systemic Functional grammar. The findings revealed the predominance of simple sentences for clarity and easy understanding as well as the strategic use of ellipsis, appositions, and substitutions to avoid unnecessary repetitions and for the purpose of emphasis. Adverbial phrases and syntactic parallelism were also employed to create unity and rhythm in the speech. The study concluded that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s language choices reinforce his political ideology, policy priorities and vision for Nigeria’s future.