Abstract
While sophisticated policy research too often remains unused by public administrators, constituting a critical failure for evidence-informed governance, this paper explores the proposition that a key, yet under-examined, explanation lies not only in political and institutional constraints but also in the language of the recommendations themselves. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of elite policy briefs, employing Nigeria’s National Blue Economy Strategy as a primary case and drawing selectively on Nigeria’s National Health Policy as a comparative reference, this study identifies a pervasive discourse of technocratic abstraction. The analysis demonstrates how grammatical choices, particularly the nominalisation of processes, the suppression of identifiable agents, and the attenuation of obligation through weak modality, serve to assert authority while potentially introducing cognitive and practical barriers for time-pressed executives. While such linguistic features perform important institutional functions, including consensus-building and the mitigation of political risk, their cumulative effect may contribute to implementation deferral by obscuring responsibility and diluting directive force. The paper does not advance a claim of linguistic determinism; rather, it proposes that these discursive patterns may constitute a mediating layer in the broader dynamics of policy uptake. It concludes by advancing a linguistically grounded framework for Actionable Drafting, advocating a discursive shift towards restoring agency, clarifying obligation, and sequencing action in ways that facilitate implementation.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis;
Systemic Functional Grammar; Research–Policy Gap; Policy Briefs;
Nominalisation; Transitivity; Modality; Implementation
DOI: 10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i01.018
author/Sheshi, T. D., & Alfa, B. A.
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 2(1) | June 2026 |
