Abstract
This study examines the deployment of impoliteness and smear strategies in the discourse of the 2023 Nigerian general elections. The study conflates Culpeper’s Impoliteness Theory (1996, 2011) and Entman’s Framing Theory (1993) to explain how linguistic choices function both as face-threatening acts and as persuasive frames that shape public perception of political actors. The study aims to identify the lexical choices political actors utilised to express impoliteness and smear their opponents, as well as to determine the dominant impoliteness strategies used during the campaigns. The study adopts a qualitative research design and employs purposive sampling to select relevant data from campaign speeches, media reports, and social media discourse related to the 2023 elections. The dataset comprises five political utterances from key political figures. Findings reveal that politicians deliberately employed highly evaluative lexical items, derogatory labels, metaphors, sarcasm, and insinuations to delegitimise rivals and shape voter perception. Among Culpeper’s impoliteness strategies, positive impoliteness emerged as the dominant strategy, frequently used to ridicule opponents and damage their public image. The study concludes that impoliteness functioned as a strategic rhetorical resource within Nigerian electoral discourse, often shifting attention away from policy debates to personality-driven attacks.
Keywords: Framing Theory, Impoliteness, Nigerian Elections, Political Discourse, Smear, Campaigns.