Syntactic complexity and ideologies: A comparative study of the investiture speeches of Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso and Professor (Mrs) Rita Akosua Dickson

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study of the linguistic choices made at the sentence level and the nature of the syntactic structures, and the differences in the articulation of leadership ideologies enshrined in the investiture speeches of Professors Kwasi Obiri-Danso (a Former Vice-Chancellor (VC) of KNUST) and Rita Akosua Dickson (Mrs.) (the current VC of KNUST). Quirk et al.’s (1985) theory of the sentence and Fairclough’s (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) were adopted for the analysis. The analysis revealed that Professor Rita Akosua Dickson leans more towards complexity compared to Prof. Kwasi Obiri Danso. Professor Rita Akosua Dickson’s syntactic choices, such as the high number of embedded clauses, render her speech denser and more complex than that of Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso. Again, the analysis revealed five (5) distinct ideological differences in areas such as spiritual moralism, neoliberal orientation, gender representation, crisis management, and leadership authority. The differences in the speeches extend beyond syntactic choices and reflect deeper constructions of leader identity within Ghanaian higher education. The study concludes that information density and syntactic elaboration are not neutral, but are strategically deployed to project distinct leadership identities in investiture speeches. The findings have implications for discourse studies, leadership communication and gendered analyses of institutional language.