A Corpus-Based Pragmatic Analysis of the use of Metaphor in President UmaruYar’ Adua’s May 29th 2007 Inaugural Speech
Journal Title: IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science - Year 2019, Vol 24, Issue 1
Abstract
This study is anchored on Odebunmi‘s Pragmatic contextual model and Lakoff and Johnson‘s theory of conceptual metaphor. Various intellectual arguments have been advanced as to the role of metaphor as an important pragmatic agent. The study is a corpus based pragmatic analysis which employs the quantitative method of data selection and analysis. The study employs the antconc digital software for data selection. As a result of the context sensitive nature of this study, ten lexical items were selected from the corpora and fed into the antconc concordance software. The results were then analysed based on their respective context of occurrence. This study is informed by the fact that presidential inaugural speeches as an aspect of political discourse have continued to attract academic interest. This is not unconnected with the fact that this category of discourse is actually employed to achieve certain communicative objectives. The presidential inaugural speech of UmaruYar‘ Adua constituted the body of the data for the research. The text was subjected to a pragmametaphoric analysis. The study discovered a rich deployment of lexical items whose pragmatic and metaphoric import can only be understood when the frequency and context of occurrence are considered. The study established that the president employed pragmatic metaphors to exemplify the past, the present and the anticipated future of the country. The choice of metaphors as a pragmatic tool in describing the state of the Nigerian nation both in terms of the economy and socio-political situations of the country is equally established. The study established the use of developmental metaphor to appreciate the contributions of certain institutions to the achievements recorded across the country; historical metaphor is equally employed in describing the historical antecedents of the country as well as the effects on the Nigerian body polity, evaluative metaphor which evaluates the state of the Nigerian nation. Summarily, the study established that the metaphors used in the inaugural speeches are a function of Nigeria‘s socio-political, economic and religious context.
Authors and Affiliations
DamilolaOluseyi Fafiyebi
Keywords
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- EP ID EP446420
- DOI 10.9790/0837-2401094558.
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