Political marketing in the Congolese sociolinguistic context during the 3rd Republic legislative elections

Abstract

Congolese are characterized by constant multilingualism, active or passive depending on the speaker. With more than 250
languages in the country, the constitution classifies these languages in an official language pyramid, national languages
and ethnic / local languages. During the electoral campaign, the candidates in the legislative elections go from district to district,
villages to village, etc. to the quest for voters. This is a moment when the political discourse is intense. They must convince voters with social projects, words, for them to vote in their favor. So, there is the question of language (s) of communication with this population, since the countries that make up their constituencies do not all speak the same language, candidates must be bi- ultilingual to reach a wider audience. This recourse to the languages of the voters, is one of the linguistic strategies to the electoral communication, the candidate will thus palliate his grammar, language and native gaps by resorting to the mixture of the languages in his speech.