Abstract
Metaphor is an important figure of speech copiously deployed in political discourse. In this study, we adopted the framework of Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) which derives from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).This framework is interested in exploring the implicit intentions of language users, the ideological configurations and the hidden power relations within socio-political and cultural contexts. It captures the ideological and conceptual nature of metaphor, and transmits truth alive into the hearts of the people by passion. The thrust of this study is the identification, analysis and interpretation of the ideological and conceptual metaphors in the speeches we studied that create a particular linguistic style, conceptualize the speakers’ experiences and transmit their ideologies for rhetoric and argumentation purposes. The corpus of this study is limited to the political speeches of Brigadier Sani Abacha in 1984 and 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida in 1985 and 1993, M.K.O. Abiola in 1993 and 1994, and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in 2013. The study reveals that the speakers use metaphors as tools to enact power and wield influence on their audience. There is further the use of metaphors for the purpose of argumentation thereby promoting self-ideologies and power asymmetric. Furthermore, the study shows that the speakers in the speeches we analysed use metaphors as a strategy to identify with the people so as to create a bond between them. Finally, our speakers use metaphors to manipulate their audience both mentally and conceptually, polarize between them and the conceived enemies, and dominate their audience; and conceal and conceptualize experience in order to reframe realities to suit their interests.
Highlights
Cognitive linguistics paid no attention to the socio-cultural situation of cognition and how it is connected to discourse
We adopted the framework of Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) which derives from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).This framework is interested in exploring the implicit intentions of language users, the ideological configurations and the hidden power relations within socio-political and cultural contexts
The essence of metaphor in political speeches is to influence the opinion of the audience through persuasion and maintain solidarity
Summary
Cognitive linguistics paid no attention to the socio-cultural situation of cognition and how it is connected to discourse. (2005) agrees to this when he says that research in critical linguistics has proven that metaphorical expressions in language about a particular domain has the capacity to reflect an underlying meaning in terms of another. Linguistic metaphors refer to metaphorical expressions, which are the surface realization of underlying conceptual metaphors .Conceptual metaphors are considered as part of the human conceptual system and emphasize the interaction between metaphor and what is being “metaphorised”. This places metaphors on different levels and ways of usage (Hanne, 2006). “metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world, and ... our everyday behaviour reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience” (Lakoff, 204)
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