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Article published In: Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 15:1 (2025) ► pp.27–54

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Multimodal metaphors, political activism and Anglophone nationalism in Cameroon

ORCiD logo with link | Liège University
Published online: 21 November 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.24003.ech
Abstract
This paper is part of a broader study of how separatist leaders from the English-speaking part of Cameroon resort to discourse in order to push for their main political goal, which is the formation of a separate state. These last few years, Cameroon politics has been characterized by an increase in secessionist sentiment amongst English-speaking citizens, thus yielding the so-called Anglophone crisis which has now turned into a full-blown conflict between armed separatists and the country’s military. The study presented here deals specifically with the use of multimodal metaphors to depict the plight of Anglophone Cameroonians and also engage them in the struggle for self-determination. Therefore, cartoons published on separatist social media pages were analyzed following approaches pertaining to cognitive linguistics and social semiotics (Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introducing Social Semiotics. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This research has revealed that the cartoonist(s) resort(s) to various types of metaphor, including the journey metaphor, animal metaphors and personification.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Context
  • 3.Theoretical framework
    • 3.1Nation-building and cognition
    • 3.2Conceptualizations of the nation
    • 3.3Multimodal metaphor analysis
  • 4.Data and method
    • 4.1Data collection
    • 4.2Method
    • 4.3Identification
    • 4.4Description and classification
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Journey metaphor
      • 5.1.1cameroon is a broken car
      • 5.1.2cameroon is a sinking ship/cart
    • 5.2Personification
      • 5.2.1southern cameroons is a victim of sexual assault
      • 5.2.2southern cameroons is a baby
      • 5.2.3cameroon is a corpse
    • 5.3Animal metaphors
      • 5.3.1cameroon is a predator (and southern cameroons is prey)
      • 5.3.2cameroon is a greedy rooster (and southern cameroons a chick)
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Legitimization through conventional metaphors
    • 6.2Novel metaphor: political domination is sexual abuse
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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