Abstract

This paper investigates the pragmatic acts of locution, illocution, and perlocution in President Muhamadu Buhari’s cumulative Lockdown order of the Federal Capital Territory, (Abuja), Ogun, and Lagos States during the COVID 19 pandemic on Monday, April 27, 2020. We adopt J. L. Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1969) speech act theory, using the illocutionary acts of: expressive, declaratives, assertive, directives, and commissive. The data for this paper are drawn from President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech on COVID 19 on Monday, April 27, 2020. In this study, qualitative research method is adopted; and the descriptive survey method is used for the data analysis. The study reveals that the President used more of assertive speech acts which recorded an overall frequency of 15 and (42%) to affirm, announce, report and state the damaging effect of the pandemic on human lives and economies across the globe, and the measures to be taken in protecting the lives and livelihood of Nigerians. This is followed by expressive and commissive speech acts which recorded a frequency of, 8 and (22%) each and finally directive speech act which has a frequency of 5 and (14%). The perlocutionary effects of the lockdown order on Nigerians are: hope, optimism, compliance and awareness. The percentage and frequency of speech acts are arranged on a table and presented on a pie chart.

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