Meaning Construction, Identity Representation, and Political Messaging in the Campaign Jingles of APC and SDP in the 2022 Ekiti Gubernatorial Election

Abstract

In Nigerian political campaigns, radio jingles are a pervasive and influential medium for the formation of public opinion. This study focuses on the 2022 gubernatorial election in Ekiti State, a significant off-cycle contest that served as a barometer for the subsequent 2023 national elections and reflected the evolving characteristics of Nigerian electoral politics. The study aims to investigate meaning construction, identity representation, and political messaging in the campaign jingles of the two leading parties. It specifically explores how linguistic choices are strategically deployed to construct candidate identities and reinforce competing political ideologies. The corpus consists of twelve purposively selected radio jingles broadcast by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Adopting a mixed-method design, the analysis is grounded in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to examine transitivity, mood, and modality. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to interpret the correlation of language, political power, and socio-political context. The findings reveal distinct dis- cursive strategies. APC jingles predominantly used material processes to construct their candidate as an agent of continuity and stable governance. In contrast, SDP employed relational and material processes to frame their candidate as a moral figure offering restoration and economic relief. A central finding is the symbolic contest waged through metaphor: SDP’s traditionalist “white horse” was discursively challenged by APC’s modernist “luxurious car,” signifying a deeper ideological clash. Furthermore, mood analysis showed APC favoring declarative statements to inform, with SDP using more imperative and exclamatory clauses to mobilize and evoke emotion. This study demonstrates that political jingles are complex ritualistic texts that function as subtle instruments of socio-political control. By revealing how linguistic devices manufacture consent and reframe narratives, the research shows the discursive mechanisms of power and persuasion in the contemporary African electoral sphere.