DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2017.v05i07.006

Pages: 686-691

In Mass Media they report in order to inform, enable the public to contemplate and attest. Generally, speech presentations can be interpreted differently depending on the situation or context. While speech acts can be well meant, they can as well result to misunderstandings or even violence. In Kenya, Saba Saba has been associated with protests and demonstrations that occur on the same day to seek political reforms in the country. On July 7th 2014, hundreds of Kenyans affiliated to the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) coalition assembled at Uhuru Park in Nairobi in order to demand for dialogue with the Jubilee government over the issues regarding insecurity and high costs of living in the country. The purpose of this study was to identify the expressions that amount to speech acts of reporting, contemplating and attesting in Kenyan newspapers in regards to Saba Saba political rally. Two leading daily newspapers were analyzed to explore the use of speech acts. Purposive sampling of 10 articles, five from each newspaper was considered. The study employed Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to analyze and interpret data. The findings indicated that the two leading Kenyan newspapers utilized speech acts to mobilize Kenyans to attend the rally through speech acts of informing, contemplating and attesting, but which also propagated war journalism instead of peace journalism.