Decoding the construal of change in presidential discourse

Abstract

Change causes changes in the language people use to talk about phenomena, including change itself. Such changes lead to the emergence of “new discourse practices” (Fairclough, 1992:6), which usually featurein the speeches those holding positions of power and authority make. Powerful speakers such as politicians deploy the discourse practices in question to partly influence how others react to, or perceive, what they are talking about, in mainly their own interest. This paper analyses former President John Pombe Joseph Magufuli’s maiden speech to find out how he rhetorico-linguistically construed the change he wanted to make after his ascent to the pinnacle of power. In analysing the speech, the paper draws on Norman Fairclough’s dialectical reasoning approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA as dialectical reasoning). The results show that the former president used metaphors, presupposition and other kinds of discursive strategies to critique the ominous state of the nation, provide detailed explanations about that state and tell the parliamentarians elected during the 2015 General Election and other Tanzanians that, because the state of the nation was perilous, change was inevitable and that they had to rally to his mission. It has also been found that, inasmuch as the speech focused on change, it fell short of educational renewal, for example, because real change can only occur in any society if the people therein are transformed with respect to the way they think and act.