Employing Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, this paper examines how Ghana’s independence leader – Kwame
Nkrumah – in his creation of the Unite or Perish myth constructed ‘the African people’ in a manner in sync with populist
performance. It argues that Nkrumah’s discourse, in its focus on the formation of a Union Government of Africa as the only means
of Africa’s peace, progress, security and survival in the post-independence era, can be characterized as a form of populist
rhetoric that presupposes an antagonistic relationship between two homogeneous social groups. To this end, the paper analyzes
three discursive strategies utilized by Nkrumah in promoting anti-establishment sentiments while celebrating or valorizing ‘the
ordinary people’: nomination and predication of social actors and actions, the construction of a man of the people image and the
exploitation of familiarity and historical memory. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of the study for political
discourse analysis in terms of the interrelationship between political myth and populist performance.
2016 “Is
populism an ideology? A refutation and a new perspective”. Political
Studies 64(15): 88–104.
Barthes, Roland
1993Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Bishop, Hywel and Adam Jaworski
2003 “ ‘We
beat ‘em’: Nationalism and the hegemony of homogeneity in the British press reportage of Germany versus England during Euro
2000”. Discourse &
Society 14(3): 243–271.
Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame
2005Kwame
Nkrumah’s politico-cultural thought and policies. An African centered paradigm for the second phase of the African
revolution. New York & London: Routledge.
Canovan, Margaret
2005The
people, key
concepts. Cambridge: Polity.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2005Politicians
and rhetoric: The persuasive power of
metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2014Analyzing
political speeches: Rhetoric, discourse and metaphor. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
De Cleen, Benjamin and Yannis Stavrakakis
2017 “Distinctions
and articulations: a discourse theoretical framework for the study of populism and
nationalism”. Javnost
Public, 1–19.
2020a “Metaphor
and Kwame Nkrumah’s construction of the Unite or Perish myth: A discourse-mythological
analysis”. Social
Semiotics 30(5): 646–664.
Nartey, Mark
2020bVoice,
agency and identity: A positive discourse analysis of ‘resistance’ in the rhetoric of Kwame
Nkrumah. Language & Intercultural
Communication 20(2): 193–205.
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak
2016The
discourse-historical approach (DHA). In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (eds.), Methods
of Critical Discourse
Studies (pp. 23–26). London: Sage.
Stanley, Ben
2008 “The
thin ideology of populism”. Journal of Political
Ideologies 13(1): 95–110.
Taggart, Paul
2000Populism. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Van Leeuwen, Theo
2008Discourse
and practice. New tools for critical discourse
analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wodak, Ruth
2001The
discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods
of critical discourse
studies (pp. 63–94). London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth
2011The
discourse of politics in action: Politics as usual. 2nd
ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wodak, Ruth
2015The
politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses
mean. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf de Cilia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart
2009The
discursive construction of national identity (2nd
ed.) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ylä-Anttila, Tuukka
2017 “Familiarity
as a tool of populism: Political appropriation of shared experiences and the case of
Suvivirsi”. Acta
Sociologica 60(4): 342–357.
Cited by (4)
Cited by 4 other publications
Liang, Linlin, Hongli Wang & Wenshu Zhang
2024. Decoding paradoxical identities: The discourse construction of left-behind children in news reports. Discourse & Communication
Nartey, Mark
2024. An Examination of the Communicative Functions of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Inaugural Addresses. In Communication and Electoral Politics in Ghana, ► pp. 57 ff.
Obeng, Samuel Gyasi & Akua Campbell
2024. Resistive Speech by Populist Ghanaian Political Actors: A Diachronic Study in Language and Liberty. In Discourse Approaches to an Emerging Age of Populist Politics [The Language of Politics, ], ► pp. 163 ff.
Kelsey, Darren
2023. Storytelling and Heroism. In Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies, ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.