期刊名称：Critical Approaches to Discoures Analysis across Disciplines
电子版ISSN：1752-3079
出版年度：2013
卷号：6
期号：2
页码：174-192
出版社：CADAAD
摘要：Metaphor, a pervasive cognitive phenomenon for encoding social meanings and cultural presuppositions has been implicated as a strategic linguistic tool for the media in swaying public perceptions and assuming consensus for the argument they want to project as the 'truth'. Using insights from critical discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor theory and critical metaphor analysis, this paper appraises the array of conventional metaphors used by a privately-owned Nigerian newspaper, the Guardian, to report the Nigerian Union of Teachers' strike. Our findings revealed the newspaper's apparently inadvertent ideological solidarity with the power elite, hidden under the mask of metaphors in its attempt to act out its watchdog role in the teachers' case. The study puts this ambivalence down to either a deliberate strategic recourse to formulate new as well as exploit pre-existing conceptual frames as repressive apparatus against the NUT demand for a special salary structure or to lack of awareness of the negative effects of these metaphors. The paper calls these metaphors up for scrutiny and reconceptualization in terms of creating awareness to the Nigerian reading public, the political elite, the teachers and the newspaper on the pervasiveness and negative effects of such subtle metaphors in media reporting
