| dc.description.abstract | In Kenya, the Uhuru-Raila handshake on 9th March, 2018 elicited diverse discourse. Both the print media and the populace were replete with the discourse on it. This particular handshake ostensibly surpassed the traditional social purview of handshakes as polite greetings. Its conceptualization by Kenyans definitely eluded the precinct of handshakes as greeting occurrences hence the extensive discourse on it. This necessitates an examination of its linguistic aspects by undertaking a functional linguistic analysis of the prevailing discourse on it in Kenya‘s print media and amongst Kenyans. The study objectives are to: examine how the print media exploits lexical choices to propagate concepts on the Uhuru-Raila handshake discourse in Kenya, determine the relation between syntactic structures and social cohesion in the Uhuru-Raila handshake discourse and evaluate the effect of the Uhuru-Raila handshake on the perception of Kenyans in the handshake discourse. The study was guided by Systemic Functional Grammar theory by Halliday (1975). The theory tenets are: the ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and the textual metafunction (Halliday, 1975). The tenets were used in qualitative data analysis. The interpretation of lexical items was context based. Analytical research design was adopted in the study. Study population comprised 10 Bunge La Mwananchi (People‘s Parliaments) in Kisumu City, which was the bedrock of opposition politics in the 2017 general elections and 732 dailies covering the period between 9th March, 2018 and 9th March, 2019 (The Daily Nation and The Standard Newspaper). The research instruments considered were extraction guide and interview schedule. Validity and reliability of research instruments were guaranteed through pilot studies. Sentences and lexical items from the news reports and editorials from the dailies and responses from the respondents formed the units of analysis. Saturated sampling was used to arrive at 21 extracts from the editorial and news sections of the two dailies. Ten informants were arrived at through purposive sampling of the 10 Bunge La Mwananchi in Kisumu City. The findings were that the print media in Kenya purposely employed lexical choices to propagate diverse ideas on the handshake: agreement, conflict resolution, political co-operation, peace, harmony, attitudes, betrayal, reconciliation, threat, conspiracy, revenge, opportune moment to fight corruption, a license to form new political alliances, mitigation measure against political violence and economic growth on the Uhuru-Raila handshake; syntactic structures were intentionally configured to foster social cohesion in the country by the print media; and handshake has had significant influence on the perception of Kenyans on socio-political issues. The significance of the study are: handshake should be a key component in conflict resolution attempts in the future and the print media in any jurisdiction should intentionally configure sentences and exploit lexical choices to promote any matter of national interest. | en_US |
