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Metaphorical framing of democracy

How Nigerian military dictators and civilian leaders talk to gain legitimacy

ORCiD logo with link | The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
ORCiD logo with link | The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Published online: 16 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.25104.chi
Abstract
Military dictatorships are inherently undemocratic, yet military leaders often frame democracy metaphorically. This raises critical questions: why do they do this, and how do their framings differ from civilian leaders? Existing studies on democratic conception provide limited answers. Addressing this paradox, this study employs mapping principle and discourse-conceptual analysis to examine the metaphorical contestation of democracy in Nigerian political discourse (NPD). Using a corpus of 338 speeches by military heads of state and civilian presidents (1960–2023), the analysis reveals metaphors as tools for legitimation and pre-legitimation. Six dominant source domains (SDs), journey, building, person, plant, machine, and war, emerged across both groups, but with notable differences. Military leaders favoured journey and plant, while civilian leaders preferred building and war. Mapping principle analysis highlights how journey and building metaphors create divergent argumentative frames, functioning as strategies of rationalisation, pre-legitimation, and conceptual flip-siding, reinforcing a hegemonic, elite-controlled conception of democracy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A critical-conceptual perspective on legitimacy, democracy, and metaphor
    • 2.1Metaphors of democracy
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus creation
    • 3.2Metaphor identification procedure
    • 3.3Discourse-conceptual analysis and legitimation
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1RQ1: What metaphor source domains (SDs) are used in framing democracy in NPD, and what is their distributional pattern?
      • 4.1.1Is there any association between metaphor SDs and political cultures (military and civilian)?
    • 4.2democracy is a journey: Pre-legitimising Authoritarianism and Legitimising Arrival
    • 4.3democracy is a building: Rationalising Foundations and Consolidating Power
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • Appendix 1.Details of cited speeches
  • References
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