Abstract
Conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from discourse analysts taking political discourse seriously. Studies are often interested in the versatile discourse functions of metaphors; how political leaders deploy them as powerful weapons in their armory of political oratory. Therefore, this study extends the current knowledge by exploring conceptual metaphors in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric. It was guided by two major questions: (1) What types of conceptual metaphors does President Muhammadu Buhari deploy in his political rhetoric? and (2) What rhetorical functions do the Conceptual Metaphors deployed in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric perform? The study’s theoretical impetus was Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Charteris-Black’s (2009) Contemporary Model of Metaphor and Political Communication was also applied in the analysis. The speeches analyzed include: (1) Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidential Primaries Speech, (2) Muhammadu Buhari’s Acceptance Speech, (3) Muhammadu Buhari’s Victory Speech and (4) Muhammadu Buhari’s (First) Presidential Inaugural Speech. The results show that President Buhari, in his political rhetoric, mostly uses HUMAN metaphors (32%), WAR metaphors (21%) and JOURNEY metaphors (16%). Moreover, further analysis revealed that Buhari mostly uses conceptual metaphors to establish his ethical integrity, heighten emotional impact and communicate his anti-corruption and political ideologies. The study concluded that conceptual metaphors are vital resources for construction of persuasion in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric.
Highlights
Language has been a fundamental tool in political communication
It could be agreeable that this similarity suggests that WAR, HUMAN and JOURNEY metaphors are usually most effectively utilized by politicians, irrespective of culture, to achieve their persuasive goals; while the difference in source domain could be due to the difference in experience and environments/contexts of the speakers and their audience members
Kamalu and IniworiKabo, who investigated political speeches of former Nigerian Presidents – Obasanjo, Yar’adu and Jonathan – reported that the presidents use illness metaphors in making pledges, promising and undertaking to ‘heal divisions’, ‘ease the pains’ and resuscitate unity among Nigeria’s multi-ethnic and multireligious population. This difference could have resulted from party policies, priorities and ideologies as all the politicians analyzed by Kamalu and IniworiKabo belong to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), while Muhammadu Buhari belongs to the All Progressives Congress (APC)
Summary
Language has been a fundamental tool in political communication. It interacts with other modes of communication – such as pictures, music, gestures and tone of voice – to facilitate the attainment of political speakers’ communicative goals. The scholars contend that these spoken strategies typically affect thought and action; that they appeal to different emotions, and their versatile functions make them central in political communication (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Musolff, 2004; Charteris-Black, 2005) For their versatile discourse functions, conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from (cognitive) linguists and from psychologists and philosophers (Musolff, 2004; Moser, 2000). In the field of linguistics, metaphor studies have been a prolific area of tremendous advances, especially among scholars interested in political discourse This category of researchers has consistently reported that conceptual metaphors interact with political leaders’ ideologies, charisma, design of leadership style, success and power (see, for example, Charteris-Black, 2005; Mio et al, 2005; Lu and Ahrens, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2009). What rhetorical functions do the Conceptual Metaphors deployed in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric perform?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
