Discourse Analysis of Interaction Engagements on Channels Television’s Politics Today

Interaction engagements in political communication are the types of activity that politicians engage in, to articulate their ideologies and manifestoes and account for their stewardship. Most of the existing studies on political discourses have focused largely on textual patterns that address forms, content and diction, almost to the exclusion of interaction engagements in television-based political interviews within the Nigerian political space. This study, therefore, investigated interaction engagements in the discourse of Channels Television’s Politics Today (CTPT) by identifying different engagements involved in by both the guests and the anchor, to describe the importance of these engagements to sustainable political development in Nigeria. The study adopted Conversation Analysis (CA) and Speech Acts Theory as frameworks. Eleven episodes of Politics Today spanning between the years 2011 and 2015, which featured major political events, were purposively selected and downloaded from the official website of Channels Television Station. The data were transcribed and subjected to content-based qualitative analysis by identifying and describing the interaction engagements in the selected data through the tenets of Conversation Analysis and by tracking the functions of the engagements through the tenets of Speech Acts Theory. Eight interaction engagements characterise the discourse of CTPT. Electioneering manifests primary elections, election campaigns and the general elections; political appointments feature criticisms; parliamentary issues describe the happenings in the National Assembly; political defection illustrates how and why politicians defect to another political party; opposition is about criticism; security covers national security challenges; corruption manifests illegal behaviour of people in authority; while economy features the relationship between production, trade and the supply of money in Nigeria. Dialogic discussion of these identified engagements by politicians and political analysts keeps the public informed of the political happenings in Nigeria. Based on this information as well, the Nigerian populace is equipped with what they need to do to ensure sustainable political development in the country.