Conceptual Metaphors and Ideologies in the Inaugural Speeches of Selected Nigerian Presidents

Presidential inauguration speeches reflect political agendas and ideologies of newly elected leaders. Existing linguistic studies on presidential inaugural speeches in Nigeria largely focused on persuasive effect of metaphors from the stylistic and socio-linguistic perspectives. However, little attention was paid to conceptual metaphors and ideologies used. This study was designed to investigate language use in inaugural speeches of selected Nigerian presidents with a view to determining the source domain metaphors, conceptual metaphors and ideologies projected in them. The study was conducted by adopting George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Jonathan Charteris-Black’s critical metaphor analysis as the theoretical framework, while the descriptive design was adopted. The two Nigerian presidents were purposively selected because one took over the reigns of government from the other on a different political platforms. The two Nigerian presidents were Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The study identifies three productive sources domain metaphors namely journey, building and family which were used to conceptualize socio-economic and political issues identified in the speeches in order to persuade the citizens. Some conceptual metaphors identified in the speeches were democracy as a path to development in Nigeria and Africa, democracy as a preferred path to development in Nigeria, Nigeria as a building, Nigeria as a building in progress, Nigeria as a family and African nations as members of Nigeria extended family and president Buhari as a property of all Nigerians. The ideologies underlying the speeches were: Democratic ideology concerned with entrenching democratic practices and principles, Reformist ideology concerned with improvement in governance and messianic ideology projected as a deliverer from bad governance.