DISCOURSE TACTS IN SELECTED INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF NIGERIAN PRESIDENTS

All over the world when Presidential elections are conducted and a winner emerges, the President-elect gives an inaugural address which is used as a road map or statement of intention by the incoming government to inform the electorates and the generality of the people of the country what the new administration intends doing in the course of their tenure in office. The writers of this paper randomly selected three presidential inaugural speeches (Shehu Shagari, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari's speeches) and subjected them to Adegbija's (1995) eight discourse tacts to test the conformity of the speeches to the tacts. After analysis, findings reveal that six out of Adegbija's eight tacts were fully conformed to while two were not conformed to by the speeches. The writers conclude by recommending that Adegbija's discourse tacts be used subsequently to measure whether an inaugural speech is good or not.