Metaphoric Discourse and Social Context in Morountodun

Abstract

The play Morountodun represents an attempt to depict the archetypal Nigerian society in a dramatic narrative fashion. Though the drama genre is employed as a tool for depicting social situations or exposing social ills, the importance of lexico-cognitive elements in the creation of such social representation is not much considered. Thus, the goal of the paper is to explore the relationship of the metaphorical contents of the play with the social context from the point of view of cognitive metaphor and explicate their use in depicting the socio-political issues such as corruption and social injustices, inter alia, that are raised in the play. It specifically focuses on the types of metaphorisms used to represent actors and their acts as well as the relationship of the expressions in terms of social status and power. It is found that the metaphorical expressions employed are mainly satirical but principally portray contemporaneous states of affairs which are more
or less similar to those captured when the play was written a quarter of a century ago. Through mainly orientational metaphors, the play indirectly frames the actors’ perception of aspects of socio-political sphere of life in Nigeria.