Redundancy and Rhetoric: A Look at Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema’s Presidential Inaugural Speech, August 24, 2021

This article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of the strategic deployment of rhetorical redundancy within President Hakainde Hichilema’s 2021 Zambian inaugural address. Advancing beyond a conception of repetition as purely a stylistic feature, the investigation posits that deliberate lexical, thematic, and structural redundancies operate as a fundamental strategy for establishing ideological dominance. Utilising Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional analytical framework, the examination reveals how the textual reiteration of core commitments—such as “unity,” “economic restoration,” and “servant leadership”—functions to demarcate a rupture from the preceding era, appropriate legitimising historical narratives, and distil complex policy agendas for public assimilation. Consequently, these redundancies demonstrate the execution of significant social practices, aiming to normalise the new administration’s ideology and validate its authority. Thus, the speech emerges as a paradigmatic illustration of how calculated redundancy in political oratory serves as a potent instrument for ideological transformation and the solidification of a novel political consensus during periods of democratic transition.