A Critical Discourse Analysis of Kenyatta’s Eighth Presidential Address on the Corona Virus Pandemic on 6 th June, 2020

This study falls in the realm of political discourse.Politics pertains to the process of struggling for power (Bayram, 2010).It is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice.In this process, language plays a crucial role, for every political action is prepared, accompanied, influenced and played by language.It is one of the vital tools that politicians use in order to shape the political thoughts of the electorates with the aim of selling their ideologies to them.Chimbarange, Takavarasha, and Kombe (2013), are of the view that the main purpose of politicians is to persuade their audience of the validity of their political claims.The ensuing political influence flows from the employment of resources that shape the beliefs and behavior of others.The above implies that politicians make efforts to convince the electorates to discard their political ideologies and hold on to theirs.A political speech could be defined as a speech associated with either struggle for power or maintenance/control of it.It is diverse because it encompasses the different forms of speeches that the politicians deliver at political forums.A presidential address given during an economic or health crisis can be taken as an example of a political speech.The aim of such a speech is not to win votes but to spell out the commitment of the government towards resolving the crisis at hand.In such a speech the president uses language to assure the citizens of his/her commitment in protecting them from the adverse effects of the crisis.Language in this context can be seen more as an embodiment of ideologies than an instrument of persuasion.The president had given other addresses during the pandemic but this speech was purposively chosen based on the situation in the country at the time.The pandemic had been in the country for about three months since the declaration of the first case.Since then, various measures had been put in place by the government to combat the spread of the virus.However, the number of cases was rising daily.The speech was given at a time when many Kenyans expected quite some major relaxations on the measures that had been undertaken to mitigate the crisis.It therefore came against a backdrop of high expectations many of which were not Abstract: Language plays a crucial role in communication in any given speech.This paper examines the linguistic choices used in President Uhuru Kenyatta"s speech as well as the covert ideology of the same, enshrined in his eighth address on the Corona virus pandemic.In carrying out the analysis, Norman Fairclough's three dimensional Analytical models of Critical Discourse Analysis theory was adopted.Following the model, the speech was subjected to description (text analysis), interpretation (processing/ analysis) and explanation (social practice and analysis).The selected corpus' ideological and persuasive components are assessed, thus revealing Kenyatta"s linguistic choices.Power relations depicted in the language used are also analysed.The results of the analysis revealed that the speech was meant to give factual reasons why a number of the measures put in place to curb the spread of the pandemic had to be retained.The ideologies revealed were mainly those of nationalism, collective responsibility in fighting the pandemic and improvement of the country"s economy.The analysis also revealed power relations between the president and his subjects.The researcher recommends that a similar study be carried out using CDA models by vanDijk and Wodak.