Examining Semantic Relations in Patience Jonathan’s 2015 Campaign Speeches

This paper examines the semantic relations at the sentence level in two of Patience Jonathan’s 2015 Campaign Speeches. The meaning of a sentence can be altered by a word, a sentence or a previously uttered word or sentence. Meaning exemplifies language use which is replete with different types of denotative and connotative utterances. The paper analyses her speeches at Delta and Akwa Ibom states showing such meaning relations as presupposition, entailment, paraphrases and analyticity. Using the truth conditional theory of semantics propounded by Davidson Donald, the paper considers the conditions for which sentences are given truth value. It also draws out the locutionary meaning of words that constitute sentences and the role of the context. The paper discovers that intended meanings can be inferred using different meaning relations. It therefore concludes that a sentence is true if and only if it satisfies the condition for it to be true in every situation.