Mood and Modality in President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2020 New Year Letter to His Compatriots

Abstract

President Buhari’s New Year letter is yet to be dissected, probably, due to its currency. His previous political speeches have been generating interests among critics. The present study is meant to contribute to this growing interest. The aim of the present study is to interrogate the deployment of the choices of mood and modalities in constructing interpersonal relationships in his letter. To achieve this aim, the analysis was placed under the crucible of Halliday’s Mood and Modality Theory (2001). Data was collected through a random sampling method from Voice of Nigeria Online Newspaper (2020). The data sampled for analysis were extracted from nine out of a total of twenty-two paragraphs: each three paragraphs were extracted from the beginning, middle and end. The reason was to account for even distribution of data. The research design of quantitative analysis was adopted to account for the frequency of occurrence. Descriptive method of analysis was adopted to account for the interpersonal meanings negotiated in the letter. The results showed that President Buhari deployed declaratives (97.9%), imperatives (2.1%); the ‘will’ modal (80%), can (15%) and shall (5%). We conclude that the varied use of these linguistic elements have implicature for different interpersonal meanings.