Abstract
Employing cross-generational perspective to speech acts, this study attempts to analyze all democratic countries, at the time of elections, candidates present their political agenda, whichshould be unbiased in principle. However, we argue that political leaders influence public opinion by presenting their religious inclination to the religion of the majority. Thus, in election campaigns, religion becomes a weapon used in order to win elections and achieve political goals. Keeping this in view, our study critically evaluates language used by politicians in the electoral speeches to analyze leaders’ religious stance by applying Gee’s (2012) “Five theoretical tools” of discourse analysis. To investigate the socio-political ideologies of leaders, the researcher analysed three pre-election speeches by each of three elected politicians: Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and the former President DonaldTrump of the United States of America (USA).Although, the study discusses the use of language in the political context of three different countries of the world, the findings of the study show that religion is used as a tool by all three politicians to manipulate and turn publicopinion in theirfavor. Thus, this study concludes that all three leaders have used religion in an attempt to win votes. Further, the analysis shows that the religion of the majority is used as a tool in the speeches. Religion is an institution, and it is argued here that bias attached to minority religion leaves a negative impact on society and develops a hatred among the majority for the religion of others.Therefore, this study suggests that political leaders should take responsibility for their words to avoid chaos and unrest from spreading among the people
Sadia Irshad, Abdul Majeed, Afroz Ilyas. (2018) Use of Religion as a Tool in Politics: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Selected Electoral Speeches, The ELF Annual Research Journal, Volume 20, Issue 1.
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