The Persuasive Devices in William Ruto’s Political Speeches a Relevance TheoreticThe Persuasive Devices in William Ruto’s Political Speeches a Relevance Theoretic Approach Approach

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the general effects and effectiveness of humour and rhetorical questions as persuasive strategies in selected speeches of William Ruto. The study focused on the identification and interpretation of the persuasive devices in William Ruto’s political speeches of the 2017 campaign period for the General Elections as well as after the handshake in 2018. This study argues that William Ruto is skillful in the way he uses language which enables him to persuade his audience to follow and vote for Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee coalition and at the same time dissuades them from voting for their opponents in the NASA coalition. The persuasive devices studied were humour and rhetorical questions using Relevance Theory as discussed by Clark (2013). The humorous categories identified from Ruto’s utterances were classified under irony, humorous metaphors and metonymy and further analyzed using the basic tenets of Relevance theory i.e. cognitive effects, processing effort, the cognitive and communicative principles as well as the relevance theoretic procedure to explain how the audience arrive at the correct interpretation. The cost-benefit formula was in use to show how hearers maximize relevance by creating as many assumptions using the least effort to attain optimal relevance and also showing when to stop when the most accessible interpretation has been reached. The study also identified rhetorical questions in William Ruto’s speeches using the concept of mutual manifestness. The findings were that Ruto does not use them to seek for information from his audience but to make strong statements which in most cases were meant to mock, ridicule and criticize their opponents in the NASA coalition. These rhetorical devices were sampled from a total of ten speeches downloaded from YouTube. The incongruity concept, which explains humour as emanating from a violation of the normal order of things, was also applied in identifying how humorous effects are obtained from these categories. The ideas communicated by Ruto through his utterances were seen to disagree with his audience’s expectations in relation to the political campaigns and Kenya’s politics in general, thus resulting in humour. The study revealed that Ruto is able to criticize and ridicule his opponents using humour and rhetorical questions, hence portraying them as incompetent and unreliable. Consequently, he succeeds in dissuading people from voting for them. He also uses these devices to create a trustworthy image of himself and Uhuru Kenyatta and to minimize the distance between him and the audience, thus creating rapport and succeeds in persuading them to follow and vote for them.