As democracy grows: Metaphor scenarios for Democracy in Nigerian Senate Debates of the Fourth Republic

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Authors

  • Onwu Inya
This paper investigates the metaphorical framing of the concept of democracy in Nigerian Senate debates (henceforth, NSD) in a mini-corpus of 214 meta-discursive commentaries on democracy by legislators, with insight from metaphor scenario theory. Three source concepts – “erect structure”, “living organism”, “dividends” and their associate scenarios are analysed. These scenarios are exploited by legislators to effect specific argumentative and ideological conclusions, such as Nigerian democracy is weak, positive-self-presentation by legislators amongst others. The paper reveals the conceptual, evaluative and ideological structures that dominate the discourse about democratization in Nigeria, especially in the Fourth Republic, from the perspective of legislators.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMetaphor and the Social World
Volume12
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)224 - 244
Number of pages21
ISSN2210-4070
Publication statusPublished - 21.06.2022