The use of cohesive devices in political discourse in the 2016 state-of-the-nation’s address in Ghana

Abstract

The study examined how cohesive devices have been used by President John Mahama to present the message in his State-of-the-Nation Address in 2016. The main focus of the study was the analysis of cohesive devices and their communicative implications in the address. Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory (1976) was applied as a theoretical framework to analyse the use of both grammatical and lexical cohesive devices in the address. The study discovered inter alia the use of grammatical cohesive devices such as reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction as well as lexical cohesive devices such as reiteration (repetition, synonymy, among others) and collocation. Grammatical cohesive devices such as reference and substitution are dominantly used to avoid unnecessary repetition in order to relieve his audience of boredom so that their interest will be sustained to enable them to pay attention to the address. Lexical cohesive devices such as repetition and synonymy among others are preponderantly used to emphasise the achievements of his government and the plans he hopes to carry out in the years ahead and to create simple variants for complex words so as to break down the meaning of words in the address respectively. The study affirms and concludes that the use of cohesive devices helps users of language especially politicians to convince and sway their audience to their side on various issues, subjects, or particular demands by using well-articulated and tightly knit speeches (Qudah, 2016, p. 1). The study recommends among others that the study of cohesion should be made an integral part of the English Language syllabi for teaching and learning for all levels of education.