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Studies on the use of adverbs and adjectives by nonnative speakers of English have largely focused on learner corpus. Using Hansards of British and Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper attempts to partly fill this gap by comparatively examining the use of adverbs and adjectives as intensifiers by British parliamentarians as first/native speakers of English and Ghanaian parliamentarians as second language/non-native speakers of English. Parliamentarians’ use of adverbial and adjectival intensification is consequent on parliamentary debates being truth and validity judgement, which includes speaker involvement and commitment. While both groups of MPs employ intensifiers to strengthen their convictions and arguments, it leads to exaggeration. However, the British parliamentarians use more complex adverbs and adjectives than their Ghanaian counterparts, who use simpler forms. The paper has implications for second language teaching and learning, the theory of nativisation and the characterisation of Ghanaian English.

Using parliamentary questions as data and a corpus-assisted systemic functional approach through Wordsmith Tools, this paper, with specific reference to relational processes, explores yes/no interrogatives in order to establish how MPs encode in their questions issues of attitudes, commitments, personalities and ideas of (Prime) Ministers during Ghanaian Minister’s and UK Prime Minister’s Questions. The paper finds that MPs use yes/no interrogatives with relational processes to describe (Prime) Ministers as carriers of certain attributes relating to their positions and responsibilities, while some of the questions are issue- focused. To achieve this, MPs employ two main questioning strategies: person-targeted and idea-targeted pragmatic strategies, thereby raising issues of (Prime) Ministers’ credibility and commitment to duty. The paper has implications for parliamentary questions, party politics and MPs’ and (Prime) Ministers’ duties as representatives of their constituents.

Scholars of the functional theory of campaign discourse have explored the nature of political campaign discourse, particularly presidential campaign discourse. This paper adds to the exploration and the data by analysing Ghanaian presidential debates using Benoit’s functional theory. The analysis reveals that the presidential candidates acclaimed more than they attacked and defended. Two additional functional categories – appeal and recommendation – are identified. Contrary to the assumptions of the functional theory that incumbents acclaim more than challengers, the paper finds that challengers acclaimed more than the incumbent, and that the candidates discussed more future plans/deliberative rhetoric. The study concludes that even though most of the assumptions of the theory were confirmed, there are additional persuasive strategies of presidential candidates in Ghanaian political debates such as appeal and recommendation. Thus, the study recommends that further studies extend the theory to accommodate the discourse strategies in multi-candidate campaigns since the theory emerged from several studies of two-candidate campaigns in the United States.

This paper examines how parliamentarians design their questions and flout parliamentary rules of questioning, leading to confrontations between parliamentarians (MPs) and (Prime) Ministers. A comparative corpus-assisted discourse analysis of UK Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) and Ghanaian Minister’s Questions (GMQs) indicates that GMQs are less confrontational than PMQs since Ghanaian Parliamentary Speakers prevent MPs from asking, for example, questions of opinion and argumentation, which contain strong emotions, generate attacks, accusations and counter-accusations. The paper argues that the confrontations and (counter-)attacks result from the way MPs design their questions. The paper suggests that “yobbery and public school twittishness” in PMQs could be curtailed if the Speaker would disallow questions that flout parliamentary rules of questioning as it is done in GMQs. The paper has implications for parliamentary interactions generally.