Language and Cognitive Impediments in Political Campaign Speeches: Issues and Challenges in Political Communication

The contemporary political communication has shifted emphasis from traditional confines of predicting voting outcomes through opinion polls to other areas like the impact of language on political campaigns and other available sources where the electorate receive political information. Moreover, there were areas of political communications in the past to which efforts had been least directed in terms of empirical study, particularly from the perspectives of language and communication disciplines such as semantics, pragmatics, literacy and linguistic barriers in political accessibilities. In that light, this paper wants to look at the use of PR/Advertising in Nigeria's political environment, rhetorical prowess to unconventional political language in campaigns, its contents and barriers to citizens' understanding of political narratives The study was generated from the researchers' participatory observations and the timeline was between 2007 and 2012 Elections in Akwa Ibom State, South-South of Nigeria.