Metonymies

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disintegration (the death instinct) within the national body could be opposed by causing the elements which constitute this body to be so tightly knit together that it could not fall apart. Indeed, Hitler's programme for the German people embodies this concept precisely.

One can then see how the adroit and deft use of metaphors by leaders can lead to phenomenal historical episodes as the ultra-nationalism created by Hitler among the Germans.

The analysis of metaphors will help in answering my research questions about the ideological perception of the military and the way they can garner support by the metaphorical configuration of their mission. The military, for example, employ metaphor of the body as an organism with parts that should work in harmony in reference to the ruling team. This justifies the need to excise or repair an organ of the body not in harmony with other parts. This can serve as an excuse to take over power from the stubborn organ especially if the person happens to be the leader. Metaphorical usage, as such, can be ideological as one tries to construct a vision of the world by way of constructing it in another with a much more convincing narrative which veils the real story. In an example given by Fairclough (2001, 100) of an article in a Scottish newspaper about the riots of 1981, the whole activity is seen as the spread of cancer which has a strong expressive value that is transferred onto the object. He maintains that the metaphorical representation of social problems as disease tend to take dominant interests to be the interests of society as a whole, and construe expressions of non-dominant interests like strikes, demonstrations etc. as undermining the health of society per se.

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general more obvious than is the case with metaphoric concepts, since it usually involves direct physical or causal associations.

Kövecses (2002, p. 148) maintains that the main function of a metonymy is to provide

“mental, cognitive access to a target entity that is less readily or easily available; typically, a more concrete or salient vehicle entity is used to give or gain access to a more abstract or less salient target entity within the same domain”. Wodak etal. (2009, 43) maintain that metonymy can be realized in these forms:

 Product for cause; for example, ‘The identity narrative channels political emotions’

 Object for the user of this object; for example, ‘The buses are on strike’.

 Place for person; for example, ‘The whole of Vienna celebrates’; or place/

building as seat of an institution for the (responsible) representatives of the institution; for example, ‘Washington is concerned. The White House has no solutions’.

 Place/building for person; for example, ‘The liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp’.

 Place for event/act (at this place); for example, ‘Vienna must not become Chicago’.

 Country for persons; for example, ‘All in all, Austria has never been so well off’; ‘Austria is World Champion’.

 Persons for country; for example, ‘We are much too small to allow disharmony in vital areas of our country’.

 Time for persons living during that time; for example, ‘The twentieth century has shaken Austria several times’.

 Institution for (responsible) representatives of the institution; for example, ‘Parliament rejected the motion’.

 Institution for events/actions; for example, ‘The success story of the Second Republic’.

Beard (2000), in a good example of the political use of metonymy to hide ideological motives, maintains that the use of a metonymy in a BBC news broadcast concerning growing tension between the USA and Iraq: ‘The White House today threatened Saddam Hussein with military action over the UN inspectors’ affair’ is ideological. The metonymy is where ‘the White House’ replaces ‘the president and his advisers’ and ‘Saddam Hussein’

replaces ‘the country/people of Iraq’. This example gives a very favourable view of the

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American stance. There is a distinct advantage for the president in not himself being mentioned. Attacking a foreign country is dangerous, not something an individual would want to be held responsible for - it is much better if the threat is reported as emerging from an impressive building which contains a suitably impressive collection of top people. On the other hand, by using Saddam Hussein to represent the country he ruled, it appears that he alone would suffer the results of the attack - innocent bystanders are not involved. In both cases actual agencies and consequences of actions are displaced.

In the Nigerian political context, for example, Ahmed (2017, 143-144) argues that former President Goodluck Jonathan uses ‘Nigeria’ in a metonymic fashion in order to screen the elitist participation in the nation’s economy as in this example:

Nigeria is now exporting cement. We are moving forward! We must produce what we consume and consume what we produce.

He argues that the use of “Nigeria” to stand for its people has the tendency of hiding the human agents behind various actions associated with Nigeria. This serves chiefly to render the dominant human forces who are responsible for such actions or who benefit from government's major policies anonymous. The statement “Nigeria is now exporting cement” makes the tag ‘Nigeria’ replace the billionaire, Aliko Dangote, the owner of Dangote Cement who is the sole cement exporter in the country. By using Nigeria as the responsible agent, Aliko Dangote remains backgrounded even though he is the primary beneficiary in the exportation of cement, and by backgrounding Dangote, President Goodluck Jonathan hopes to achieve a political credit in the drive towards bumper international trade. Similarly, in the cry of marginalization by the Nigerian elite, they argue in metonymic terms. If a few powerful individuals are not involved in a government, they complain of marginalization of their geographical location or religion or ethnic affiliation. Orkah employs this in his coup speech by talking about the marginalization of the southern part of Nigeria and the middle belt which transposes for their individual marginalization in the government of Babangida.

In conclusion, this discussion of the relational and experiential values of language along with the power of tropes in discussion has shown that language is not neutral and it can be

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employed to serve various motives. As shown here, language can create political identities, relations and notions in a given situation. In short language can construct our realities. But it is not enough, for example, to know that words create attitudes or that certain nominalizations freeze important details without knowing how this plays out in a larger global discourse. This brings us to the aspect of practical reasoning and argumentation where such micro level aspects, discussed in this segment, serve as premises in an argument for action.

3.3.2 Argumentation and practical reasoning

According to van Eemeren et al. (1997, 208), argumentation employs language to justify or refute a standpoint, with the aim of securing agreement in views. “The study of argumentation typically centres on one or two objectives: either interactions in which two or more people conduct or have arguments such as discussions or debates; or texts such as speeches or editorials in which a person makes an argument”. My study falls into the second category as the speeches are monologic.

Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) draw ideas from pragma-dialectical argumentation of Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1997, 1992 ,2004), Walton (2006, 2007, 2008) and Audi (2001,2002,2009) in their works on practical reasoning (which is adopted here) that pertains to critical rationalism. Pragma-dialectics sees the use of argumentation analysis as a form of complex speech act with possibly the illocutionary force of making one believe in, and be acquiescent to, a given argument. According to Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) practical argumentation is the primary activity that is going on in political discourse and that argumentation and deliberation will strengthen the analytical power of CDA. They further maintain that “a considerable amount of research in CDA involves analysis of representations of social action, actors or various other aspects of the world (analysis of discourses) without however connecting these representations to agents’ action via agents’

practical reasoning”(Fairclough and Fairclough 2012, 86). This analysis of representation is what is shown in the micro level segment discussed earlier. If only representations are analysed, it is essentially not complete until an argumentation analysis is applied to see how these representations feed into action or the decision to take a particular line of action.

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Labelling politicians as corrupt or inept by the military and the analysis of this labelling as a form of negative/ideological profiling of a kind of social actors may not be enough until this labelling leads to a particular argument to take over power. In essence, “It is not enough for (political) textual analysis to analyze action/genres and representation/discourses and identity/styles; dialectic and rhetoric. It should analyze the relations between them, for example, the way in which particular representations (discourses) can give agents reasons for action, and how this in turn can serve particular power interests” (Fairclough and Fairclough 2016, 190).

This large scale analysis would involve seeing how the argument is woven and see how, say, alternatives to particular action have been constructed and possibly jettisoned to suit the ideological interests of the agents. Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) argue that the use of such loaded or emotional connotations should all be subject to critical questioning with a burden of proof attached. If there is no any attempt to critically question and thus set the acceptability of these definitions by the participant, if such definitions are put forward or accepted as the one and only possible way of understanding the matters in question, as uncontroversial truth, “then the dialogue in question holds the potential for deception and manipulation” (Fairclough & Fairclough 2012, 93). Meaning potentials are subverted and the texts are then objectified. It is essentially not enough for one to charge without giving evidence and proof. When nominalizations are used in making a claim against the politicians, such constructions that freeze clausal process are ways of avoiding the burden of proof. Metaphors can also be used as Circumstance or as Claims for Action.

Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) in analysing Tony Blair’s speech about the Third Way using argumentation, for instance, come to the conclusion that Blair is wrong or misleading in claiming a weighing of options. All the options he formulates are made in such a way as to favour his own conclusions. Essentially Blair is not addressing real options or alternatives but his own representations of these alleged alternatives and they are put in a rhetorically convenient way as to make his preferred option the only rational and logical alternative. Persuasive terms or definitions involve rhetorical re-descriptions of reality and are as such arguments that need to be questioned.

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Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) propose a schema of analysis different from other theorists. They argue that practical arguments take ‘goals’ and ‘circumstances’ as premises and also ‘values’ that underlie goals. ‘Circumstances of action’ are not only empirical circumstances but also social, institutional facts, duties, commitments, socially recognized values. ‘Goals’ are not also to be equated with what agents want but as imagined, future states of affairs that are compatible with various sources of normativity like desires, moral values etcetera. Invariably, there are five issues involved in the schema, namely: ‘Claim for action’: Agents presumably ought to do A, ‘Goal’ (G): Agent’s goal, i.e. a future state of affairs in which values are realized, ‘Circumstances’ (C): Agent’s context of action:

natural, social, institutional facts, ‘Means-Goal’ (M-G): if the agent does A, he will presumably achieve G, and finally ‘Values’ (V): The agent is actually concerned with or ought to be concerned with.

Figure 2: Argumentation schema with distribution of premises

With a schema like this, the whole argument in the coup speeches would be laid bare.

Representation analysis enters as premises. But these representations themselves have been analyzed. The practical reasoning analysis will only complete the analysis and see how premises are constructed on the basis of a perception that is not unproblematic. As an example, a coup is made on the basis of universal goals and values that are cherished, but

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the circumstances and means to goals may be constructed to suit the values. There are options that are more compelling and less costly than taking over power, but these options like strengthening the judiciary may be marginalized and coup d'état may be spun as the only viable option.

The Now shifting from the realm of representation and argumentation is speaker-focused i.e., what is in the speaker (production level). In the next section, we move to an audience- focused discussion i.e., what could be in the audience’s MR (the reception level) audience and how this could be manipulated in serving ideology.The production of the text "puts the focus on producers, authors, speakers, writers; the reception of the text puts the focus on interpretation, interpreters, readers, listeners” (Fairclough 2003,10).

3.3.3 Interpretation

The interpretation level is crucial because this is where textual features become real, socially operative if they are embedded in social interaction where texts are produced (Fairclough 2001, 117). A discussion of interpretation is very important as this is where common-sense assumptions are implicitly purveyed to the realm of interpretations.

Interpretation is a combination of cues from the text and the interpreter's ‘MR’ or

‘background knowledge’ or ‘interpretative procedures’ (Fairclough 2001, 118).

There are interpretative procedures in the MR that is social orders and interactional history in the MR that influence the situational and intertextual context respectively. Social orders in the society determine the institutional setting and the institutional setting determines the situational setting.