Multimodal metaphors, political activism and Anglophone nationalism in Cameroon

Abstract This paper is part of a broader study of how separatist leaders from the English-speaking part of Cameroon resort to discourse in order to push for their main political goal, which is the formation of a separate state. These last few years, Cameroon politics has been characterized by an increase in secessionist sentiment amongst English-speaking citizens, thus yielding the so-called Anglophone crisis which has now turned into a full-blown conflict between armed separatists and the country’s military. The study presented here deals specifically with the use of multimodal metaphors to depict the plight of Anglophone Cameroonians and also engage them in the struggle for self-determination. Therefore, cartoons published on separatist social media pages were analyzed following approaches pertaining to cognitive linguistics and social semiotics ( Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 ; Van Leeuwen, 2005 ). This research has revealed that the cartoonist(s) resort(s) to various types of metaphor, including the journey metaphor, animal metaphors and personification.