Discerning linguistic properties in SONA 2018

It is against the backdrop of strong sentiments that have set the social media platforms ablaze that I pull into play these few paragraphs and deduct meanings and their relevance in the context of an update to the nation. In doing so, my analysis of speech is not limited to words as the body language carrying the meanings of the statements equally matter.

At the outset, it is important to break down what SONA is. This practice has been copied from the mature democracies of the West, mainly the State of the Union Address that the President of the United States of America makes once a year to give an update to the whole nation by addressing the Congress made up of the ruling and opposition legislators. Adapted to our context and several other African nations including the Philippines and South Africa, ours is known as SONA. It achieves similar goals being to enumerate the challenges the government experienced in the preceding 12 months, the solutions that were provided to tackle those challenges, identifying opportunities and mapping the roadmap on how to achieve those outcomes as well as reporting general progress on key milestones within the same period.