A Sociolinguistic Study of Iraqi Parliamentary Electoral Campaign Slogans

Abstract

    Political slogan  is one of the most essential means that political parties and  candidates  adopt  to communicate with electorate, especially when party identification is in decline. The practice of political advertising in Iraq  started with the use of posters, handbills and printed materials. This study  aims to shed some light on how candidates and political parties communicate with their audience in Iraq .

The first  aim of the current study is to investigate slogans used  in Iraqi parliament  election ( 2014)  from a sociolinguistic perspective. The sample collected to  the study comprises  ninety slogans from different places in Iraqi provinces, to accomplish  this objective approach. The investigation of the   language functions that the slogans conveys is  another aim of the study. Moreover, it shows the linguistic (semantic, phonological, and syntactical) characteristics that identify slogans. It  also highlights  the sociopolitical features that slogans represent.