Metaphors President John Dramani Mahama lives by: A cognitive linguistic study of some speeches of his Excellency Mr. John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana

Abstract

The paper describes the metaphorical structure of the domains of corruption, life and death in some speeches of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana within the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), with the goal of showing the coherent conceptual organisation underlying the various expressions about the domains. The following conceptual metaphors were identified: corruption is a person, corruption is an adversary, life is a journey or life is a purposeful journey, life is a burden and death is loss of life. The analysis reveals that metaphors go beyond pointing to the similarities between entities; rather they stand as a means of organising and understanding reality and that, conceptual metaphors are grounded in the nature of our everyday interaction with the world or our social and bodily experiences.