Linguistic analysis of KP Oli’s Speeches- Why Words Matter?

The Citizens of Democratic state enjoy privilege to put their judgement in ballot box and collectively choose particularly party or person as their leader. The voting decision of any average voters rarely goes along with political ideology rather the orating skill of leader attract more people in favor. In all type of government systems from communism to democratic, the leaders have relied in spoken dialogue to convince large mass to their side.

My opinion is based on the strategic role of language, with keen focus on “Political Speech of K.P Sharma Oli, Prime Minister of Nepal” since his speech is mainly directed to persuade citizens and win trust of people. Oli articulates a lot of intentions in his speeches: sometime he informs, inspire, assure, disagree, criticize, accuse, promise, suggest, etc. And my study mainly emphasize on his promising behaviour and the use of language to express the promise and how it affect his leadership personality?

Recently we have the Prime Minister who is frequently seen promising some development initiation since electoral windfall and just few days back media covers a news that Oli vowed to improve community schools and make it par to private boarding. The speech act of making promise is the most effective strategy to drag the listeners inside speaker’s verbal influence zone. Under speech act we can analyse the way Oli has used his verbal strategy as functional unit of interaction; how tactfully the promises are produced and why people trust or distrust his words. One fact is that, his position as the Prime Minister add more credibility in his promises but the another dimension of his verbal strategy can only be explained with deep linguistic study.

In regard to political speech there is one thing that every leader should consider, the Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), it’s an approach to linguistics that view language as a social semiotic system and study the relationship of language and its function in social setting (what language does, and how it does it). The leader or any other responsible person intends to make their dialogue more persuasive by informing the citizens about their future goals. But sometime when they express innovative action plan, like Oli did by promising ‘Fire gas through pipeline or electricity through wind’, the produced dialogue was beyond the perceived social reality of common Nepali citizen. As a result the promise became matter of public criticism. However such facilities are not impossible in Nepal, but only the dialogue produced in accordance with accepted social context can get public praise. Unlike KP Oli, if we closely analyse the formal dialogue or speech of Barak Obama while expressing innovative ideas, we can notice the pattern that his verbal utterance are never involved in making direct promises as Oli frequently do with the use of words like “I will”. Even when making promises, mostly Obama make them more implicit rather than explicit, by binding himself to future actions, with use of word like “should, must or need to”. In short, his dialogues appeal the mass instead taking the responsibility himself. Obama usually choose to use mental verb ‘I believe’ instead of ‘I promise’

Use of language is crucial to any leader as it determines the success or failure of any government local and national level. Because communication build up the identity of leader among average citizens. As said by Kushand Wizdom, “Words are free. it’s how you use them that may cost you.”

Amid such context Oli should follow different linguistic approach to put forward his visions among public. In linguistic level he should make maximum use of mental verbs like ‘I believe or I think”, to establish himself as leader who give advice to government rather than taking entire responsibility by himself. Because Prime Minister himself is not the government, sometime when he is fully committed to accomplish certain promise, the bureaucratic and institutional problems comes in between. In many public speech Oli frequently uses the pronoun ‘I’ in assertive tone than the pronoun ‘we’ to highlight his effort as responsible leader with hope that making direct promise will result more social acceptance of his government. However in our current socio-political scenario; where transactional justice is still pending, Student in Dolpa have no access to school books, Earthquake victims still on sheds, tuff transportation and doomed system, making direct promises will cost his credibility as responsible leader. In seventeen year Nepal has witnessed 17 prime minister and there are many who passed their tenure without being subjected to public criticism just because of strategic use of language, they never promised anything, instead they accused and blame system. I’m not implying that the Prime Minister shouldn’t express his visions; rather he should learn some tactical linguistic method of verbal expression, to put himself away from being subjected to criticism.

We still celebrate the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., for his ‘I have a dream’, which is not yet completely fulfilled. If he had said ‘I will’ then probably that speech would not have been popular and even his leadership would have been questioned.

Speech Acts theories have always been significant breakthrough in the developments of pragmatics as a discipline. But pragmatics alone cannot be studied deeply without linking it with discourse analysis, since they are relative factors. Among many linguistic discourses, political speech is the most influential exercise of language to establish verbal dominance and control large mass of population at same time. This is because political context is a complex human activity that deserves analytical study mainly because of its crucial role in micro-management of human civilization.

Sites Consulted:

Obama Speech analysis: http://theconversation.com/trump-and-obama-have-one-surprising-thing-in-common-the-words-they-use-81309

Speech Act Theory: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2907112?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

SFL: https://www.thoughtco.com/systemic-functional-linguistics-