Not So Well Campaign Speech in Swahili

Abstract The political campaign speeches can be used not only as platform to promote election manifestos of the candidates but also as communication channels imbued with creative manipulation of words, phrases, sayings and proverbial expressions to lure voters. Of interest in this study, is how some erudite public figures in Tanzania tend to interspace their political campaign speeches with proverbial elements. As campaign speeches aim to weaken political rivals, the use of subverted form of standard adage became inevitable on the process of waging verbal war to disarm opponents’ argumentative style, didactic wisdom and explanatory prowess. This paper goes beyond the exploration of standard proverbial expressions in political campaign speeches, to specifically target the deliberate modification, parody, subversion on existing proverbs and proverbial expressions in Swahili by the two major political parties of CCM and UKAWA as contested in the 2015 Tanzania general election campaigns.