CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS OF CORRUPTION IN SELECTED NEWSPAPER IN NIGERIA

1.1Background to the Study

Language is a fundamental element used by humans for the purpose of communication. There are highly technical usages of the word “language” reflecting the way the term has been figuratively applied to all forms of human endeavours, such as the language of politics, the media and the like. Language is essentially a tool for expressing social reality. It plays a communicative role in all forms of discourse. In political discourse, politicians engage in different rhetorical uses of language to achieve their political goals. One of the obvious rhetorical strategies used in political discourse is indirect language. This is made possible by the changeable nature of word meanings which, according to Warren(qtd in Taiwo 193), is negotiable and dynamic. This nature of word meaning makes it possible to assign references that are not usually found in dictionary descriptions.

Indirect language is often used when politicians have to talk about political risk topics, and often directly linked to certain factors like the protection of their careers, their desire to gain political and interactional advantage over their opponents, politeness, and so forth, (Obeng50). The concept of corruption is one abstract phenomenon that is frequently evoked by journalists in news reporting and editorials with an underlying assumption that the meaning is universally self-evident. Although scholars and journalists might work with an implicit assumption that there is a universal understanding of what constitutes corruption (Karklins 4–5), it is in fact a highly contested concept that triggers discussion and scholarly arguments. Corruption, as noted by Heidenheimer (3), has had different

meanings and expressionsthroughout thecenturies. For Carl Friedrich, it is a kind of behaviour which deviated from the norm, actually prevalent or believed to prevail in a given context, such as the political (15). Contemporary attempts to define corruption tend to cluster around a more restricted notion,that of abuse of public power for private gain. The problem of defining corruption is further complicated by the fact that the semantic universe of this concept is populated by additional related conceptswhose meaning partially overlaps corruption; such as bribery, embezzlement, favouritism and nepotism. It is believed that these concepts have almost the same magnitude of abstraction and lack universal definition as a result of the nature of the overlap within a socio cultural context (Bratu and Kazoka 6–7). However, the general assumption of corruption is that it is widespread,interwined in the society, rampart and ubiquitous. It is out of control. It thrives and it is deeply entrenched in the society.Okunrinmeta and Alabi (69) noted that corruption occurs when the moral fabric is weakened and vices such as avarice, materialism, short cut to affluence, glorification and abrogation of ill got wealth are celebrated at the expense of honesty, hard work, patriotism, community service, commitment and selfless devotion, which ought to have been taken as symbols of national pride.

News is actually a product of journalistic process, an end result of “..a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a social constructed set of categories” (Fowler 12). The media are the custodian of information on the content and structure of contemporary social reality (like corruption) and, to a great extent, decide the significance of events in the world for a given culture or social group (Ezeifeka174). The diction, the grammatical constructions, and the meanings conveyed by the media have a significant

role to play on the particular point of view a particular discursive event is to be framed. The media, therefore, can be a platform to project the dominant worldview and, in this way, control public opinion, decide what gets written, how they should be written and the effects intended by such texts.

One particular vivid form of providing images and a means by which the media achieve these feats has been credited to the use of metaphorical language. In cognitive linguistics, metaphors are understood as tools that define one conceptual domain in terms of another. They provide images that are better suited to making a thought more tangible and more striking than if it were presented directly without any sort of disguise (Ricoeur 60). Metaphors are believed to be practical tools that construct the meaning of a complex phenomenon like corruption, offering powerful templates for what corruption might look like. Because a metaphor is an emotionally impactful rhetorical device, politicians rely on it as a linguistic resource in difficult periods in their political career to sway the people to their side. The linguistic metaphors used by the politicians as reflected in the media and the conceptual metaphors resulting from such expressions are usually a reflection of the ideological leanings of such political leaders. This is evident in the review of corruption state in Nigeria conducted by Okolo in June, 2018, which placed the country 12 steps backwards comparing the result of the year 2014. This points to the fact that the use of metaphors to strangle corruption is probably on the pages of newspapers and not in context of real life. Politicians deploy these sorts of metaphors to manage difficult situations and convey problematic expressions in order to avoid conflict and command solidarity. The ubiquity of these linguistic metaphors in discourse relating to corruption and the cognitive origin of the conceptual metaphors they signal for an explanation of

conceptual metaphors necessary for understanding their role in shaping the discourse in which they are used and in encoding the ideologies associated with such discourse.