Relational values of grammatical features (mood & modality)

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abstraction and reification. In my data analysis, we will see how such reification assists in the service of ideology and power.

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speaker's authority in relation to others. What is of importance here in the course of ideological analysis is the “implicit authority claims and implicit power relations”

(Fairclough 2001, 106). In relational modality, there is both deontic and epistemic power.

When a speaker makes a categorical assertion like “this change of government is the only answer”, there is an implicit epistemic claim there i.e., the ability to say the reality as it is without any form of doubt. There is also the ability to speak with authority (as a sort of an expert analyst) for, or on behalf of, the audience involved. Cap (2010, 29) argues that if legitimization is defined as enactment of the political speaker’s right to be obeyed and the linguistic justification of actions following this obedience “then the strongest pragmatic contribution to legitimization, manifested at the linguistic level, comes from the act of assertion”. Similarly, when a speaker declares that “all the people of the country will observe a curfew today”, there is an implicit deontic claim. A person that can restrict another person’s movement by a simple declaration does that on the basis of the possession of certain powers. The military in their coup speeches are known for giving such orders and making categorical assertions regarding aspects of governance and the state.

With regard to pronouns, which are the third aspect, there are also relational values.

According to Fairclough (2001), when ‘we’ is used by a leader inclusively as part of the led, it assimilates the leader to ‘the people’ and hides the social class disparities that may exist. It also forms solidarity or a ‘gang up’ on certain values and stands in the converse of an assumed binary. It lends itself to Thompson’s (1989) ideological representation in terms of unification and fragmentation. ‘We’ ‘us’ and ‘our’ are favourably disposed, while ‘they’

‘them’ and ‘their’ are the marked group in oppositional relationship. Fairclough (2001), in discussing Thatcherism, states her dilemma between balancing of authority and solidarity in the usage of inclusive ‘we’ or ‘you’ to address people. Using the former indicates solidarity and the latter, authority. It serves the ideological interests of political leaders to oscillate between various identities depending on the ideological goals they wish to achieve. It is in this context that I find the analysis of personal pronouns crucial, i.e., the ability of the analysis to possibly map out pronominal representations carried out in view of political exigencies to serve political goals that may otherwise, under other theoretical constructs, remain opaque.

108 3.3.1.5 Use of metaphors

A metaphor in the cognitive sense involves a relationship between a source domain, the source of the literal meaning of the metaphorical expression, and a target domain; the domain of the experience actually being described by the metaphor. For example, to waste time involves comparing TIME (the target domain) to MONEY (the source domain). In the metaphor represented by the Lakoffian formula, time is money (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Time is construed as a valuable asset that is possessed by human beings and can be

‘used’ in the same way that money is.

According to Fairclough (1995), metaphors are socially motivated; different metaphors may correspond to different interests and perspectives and may have different ideological loadings. Guo (2013) argues that when individual metaphors from people in power begin to be accepted by more and more people, individual cognition will turn into social cognition. Through this transformation, hegemony then tends to be instituted. According to Chilton and Lakoff (1989), metaphors belie important aspects of reality. In discussing the state-as-a-person metaphor, for example, Chilton and Lakoff further maintain that individual citizens and multi-national corporations are absent. The well-being of the state is seen as the wellbeing of the citizens and vice versa too. Flowerdew (2012, 68) maintains that

metaphor is probably the most memorable of the figures of speech of political language….Whether it is ‘the iron curtain’ of Churchill, ‘the tryst with destiny’ of Nehru, ‘the winds of change’ of Macmillan, ‘the rivers of blood’ of Powell or ‘the mother of all battles’ of Saddam Hussein, metaphor has the power to remain in the public consciousness long after its original utterance.

Koenigsberg (2007) sees the issue of metaphors in terms of role distribution in political language especially in Hitler's images. If the country is a living organism, with the people constituting the body of that organism, it would be reasonable to suggest that each individual human being constitutes a ‘cell’ in this organism. From this point of view the enhancement of the life instinct in a national body would consist of a process whereby the

‘cells’ of this body (the German people) were made to be more closely bound to one another, thus increasing the tendency of this body to hold together. That is, the forces of

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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.