N°021_Vol.4_18

Introduction: It is a well-known fact that every national aspires to social and economic welfare which is contingent on leadership quality and an intelligible use of language to align the stakeholders.  This denotes the significant role of language in fostering the improvement of the vital aspects of society. When narrowed to politics specifically, the use of language appears to serve selfish interests from various scholars’ perspectives. In this line, Chilton (2004) views “political discourse in terms of some social group or elite exploiting, controlling or distorting language in order to preserve its own position” (p.198). While Bayram (2010) holds it responsible for preparing, accompanying, influencing and unfolding every political action. In the same vein, Kientega (2025) corroborates that “politicians use language in specific ways to achieve ends” (p.1); insinuating that they use the language in a subtle manner to meet their interests. Such a malicious use of language is regarded by Van Dijk (2006) as manipulation, which simply put, refers to politicians making the lay people trust and enact in their interest to the detriment of the latter’s own interests.

This political approach featuring political leaders subtly seeking electors’ support to gain power for their opaque interest is prevalent in many countries around the world. These countries include Burkina Faso, a West African country where the ‘Mouvement du Peuple pour le Progrès’ (MPP) led by Roch Marc Christian Kabore (RMCK) was running for second presidential term after a controversial first one in 2020. As a matter of fact, prior to the election in question, the Burkinabè citizens had experienced many political upheavals and military leadership embedded with several coups from 1966 to 2014, which led to the desire for peaceful power alternation among the populace. However, the 2020 electoral context and its paradoxical outcome raise suspicion of an influential use of language by the protagonists. RMCK’s regime encountered security issues and accusations of bad governance during his first term. Despite this situation he was enthusiastically re-elected in 2020. His re-election was followed by popular demonstrations which led to his eviction two years later portraying disillusionment among the populace (Kientega, 2025).

Such an incongruence between the support for the MPP candidate and the demonstrations that followed combined with the existing research gap regarding the campaign discourse of a political party that has already exercised power constitutes the incentives for this study. In other words, the situation requires a closer look at the influential elements in the electoral campaign discourse by leaders of the party.  This study aims to investigate three (3) electoral campaign rally discourses delivered in 2020 by RMCK to determine the influence of the campaign discourses in his 2020 re-election. More specifically, the study strives to decipher the discursive strategies used by the MPP during the 2020 electoral campaign on the one hand and reveal their manipulative nature on the other hand. To meet such a purpose this Critical Discourse Analysis study endeavours to answer the research questions below through Van Dijk’s (2006) Socio cognitive approach:  what are the discursive moves used by the MPP during 2020 electoral campaign? To what extent did these discursive moves influence the outcome of the 2020 election? To address these questions, we formulate the following hypotheses: The MPP used several discursive moves during the 2020 electoral campaign. The discursive moves used influenced the outcome of the 2020 election.