Ideology and body part metaphors in Nigerian English

Studies on Nigerian English (NE) have largely focused on the variation of NE from Standard English. Few of these have investigated metaphors in NE and none, to the best of my knowledge, has worked on ideology and metaphor. This paper fills this gap by concentrating only on body part metaphors. Metaphors related to sexual organs were sourced from Nigerian university students through oral and written interviews. Insights for analysis were drawn centrally from the theory of embodiment and critical discourse analysis. Fourteen sexual organ metaphors, which relate to two major ideological issues: the institutionalisation of gender issues and religious, social and cultural allegiances, are identified. The former relate to gender-based cultural disapproval, gender dignification and gender valuation, while the latter is tied to morality/ decency constraints, and personality/social group constraints. Metaphors have great cognitive values in Nigeria, and their understanding requires knowledge of the social and cultural context.