STYLISTIC REPRESENTATION OF METAPHOR AND DISCOURSE ISSUES IN EBI YEIBO’S THE FORBIDDEN TONGUE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2025/b32ssr98Keywords:
metaphorisation, source domain, target domain, political trauma, Ebi Yeibo's Forbidden TongeAbstract
Political trauma, as a form of psycho-social issue, is prevalent in human history. Extant studies have examined the discourse of trauma from psychological and medical points of view with insufficient scholarly attention paid to metaphorisation of political trauma in selected works of Nigerian writers especially Ebi Yeibo’s The Forbidden Tongue. This study, therefore, investigated metaphorisation of political trauma in Ebi Yeibo’s The Forbidden Tongue with a view to unmasking prominent source and target domains in the representation of trauma inherent in the text. While Charteris-Black’s Critical Metaphor theory served as theoretical framework, Ebi Yeibo’s The Forbidden Tongue is selected because it is trauma cum metaphor laden. Six metaphor types are identified namely: nature, human, family, animal, food, and place. Source domain “drought” and target domain “politicians” are conceptualised as ‘Politicians are the drought’ as explicated in “they are the dragons, and the drought, the hunters and the hounds”. Source domain “mother Teresa” and target domain “the Niger-Delta region” as denoted in “they forget, Mother Teresa breathed fresh air, into suffocating seas, from Calcutta’s black hole” is conceptualised as ‘politicians are merchants of power’. Source domain “upturned cockroaches” and target domain “the people” as exemplified in “like upturned cockroaches, we struggle in vain” is conceptualized as ‘the people are the upturned cockroaches”. Metaphors constitute unique semantic concepts used by Nigerian poets in projecting the traumatic experiences of the Niger Deltans in the 21st century Nigerian context.
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