Conceptual Metaphor in Governor Soludo’s 2023 Independence Day’s Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The use of metaphor in discourses has recently become a topic of interest for linguists. Before now, metaphor has been viewed as a rhetoric device. However, the American Linguists, Lakoff and Johnson propounded a different view which holds that metaphor is not only a literary device or form of language, but also a matter of human actions and perceptions. Political discourse is always seen to be embedded with politics and influenced by ideologies, thereby making it abstract for people to grasp. This study therefore, applies Conceptual Metaphor Analysis approach, a sub-theory of Critical Discourse Analysis in Governor Soludo’s 2023 Independence Day’s speech to discover that politicians usually employ conceptual metaphors from different source domains to express their own political thought and stance tom persuade, influence and motivate the people by means of mapping concrete familiar concepts into abstract political concepts.