Kenya’s Post-election Consultation Discourse: An Analysis of the Discursive Strategies Adopted for Post 2007 Elections

Description

Kenya’s Post-election Consultation Discourse: An Analysis of the Discursive Strategies Adopted for Post 2007 Elections is a documentation of the role of language in the operation of a power-sharing government as a mechanism for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Conflicts arising out of disputed elections often result in the formation of coalition governments to secure peace and stability. Consequently, mechanisms such as mediation, arbitration, negotiation, and peacekeeping have been employed to restore peace in conflicting states of Africa. This work examines the language in the discourses of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga as Principals in the 2008 Kenyan Coalition Government. This volume is useful to linguists, state and non-state actors and political scientists as it reveals the extent to which the language choices of political leaders are highly restrained, personalized and mitigated.

Margaret Nasambu Barasa is currently a Senior Lecturer (Applied Linguistics) at Kisii University, Kisii Kenya, where she has served as the Dean, School of Arts and Social Sciences since June 2017. Prior to her appointment as a Dean, she served as the Chair of Department, Languages, Linguistics and Literature. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who integrates the conceptual rigours of applied linguistics with language, culture and society, discourse and gender. She is actively involved in her academic discipline, university-wide, and departmental services in addition to teaching and supervision of postgraduate students. Within her discipline, she has published widely in journals and books. Some of her best publications include Research Publishing Dictionary for Researchers, Royallite Publishers (EA) Limited (2022) and Scholarly Research: Writing it up into journals and Books, Nsemia Inc. Publishers (2022). She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Laikipia University, and a Master of Arts (English Language and Linguistics) and Bachelors (BED Arts) degrees; both from Egerton University, Kenya.