Metaphor In Political Cartoons: The Case Of Ghana’s Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy

Abstract

Every political party presents policies that appeal to the masses and believe to be people-centred. The media further explain these policies through various means. The media are very diplomatic in employing succinct, trouble-free, but comprehensive means to present political news. Since metaphorical language is known to provide such affordances, this study examined how the media (journalists) use metaphor in political cartoons to present the message of the introduction and implementation of Ghana’s Free Senior High School Policy. Thirteen political cartoons related to Free SHS Policy were collected from August 2017 to November 2019 for analysis using Critical Metaphor Analysis as a framework. The data were grouped under different sub-themes and analyzed qualitatively. The data analysis revealed that the cartoonists (journalists) used different conceptual source domains to present the Free SHS policy message visually. These source domains included cooking, child delivery, seriously sick person, agriculture, sports, feeding children, pasturing cattle, religious confession, and climbing a ladder to enter a container. The findings suggest that the use of these source domains could promote a better understanding of the policy among the Ghanaian people. The analysis again showed the Ghanaian linguistic landscape as very diverse (multilingualism) is a reality in the Ghanaian linguistic society (as demonstrated in the cartoons' bubble speeches).