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A coup speech is a veritable political discourse designed specifically to sensitize, appeal, persuade or sway the public to support the overthrow of either a civilian-cum-democratically elected government or a military regime. Hence, this book is concerned with the analysis of military coup discourse: example from Nigerian military coup announcements, within the ambit of pragmatics, revealing the thinking and ideology of coup plotters. It adopts the speech acts theory as developed by Austin (1962) and revised by Adegbija (1982) and (1999).The book demonstrates that despite their military background and format, the coup announcements have some elements of political language ingrained in them for specific purposes unlike those used by their civilian counterparts. Though the book is practically Sociolinguistics, emphasis is on both military and political discourse. Consequently, it will be an invaluable material for students of sociolinguistics, military and politicians as well.

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Abaya, Angulu Samson (PhD) is Lecturer One and teaches English Language and Linguistics at the famous Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria. He has special interest in Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, and Linguistic Stylistics.

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