The Metaphoricity of Corruption: Exploring Ghana’s Electoral Manifestos under the Fourth Republic
Daniel Dwamena Ofosu 
& Sanka Washew
Issue: Vol.5 No.16 Issue Article 4 pp.2734 – 2749
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20245164 | Published online 4th December, 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This study investigated the metaphoricity of the noun “corruption” in the manifestos of Ghana’s two leading parties: the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The study explored how metaphors have shaped the political narrative on corruption from 1996 to 2024 through the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Data on the word corruption from 14 manifestos were analysed for its metaphorical expressions based on the imprints of the preceding verb and other collocates. The findings revealed that corruption is metaphorically framed as war, disease, bushfire, business, and commodity. Opposition parties used these metaphors more frequently to critique incumbent governments and influence voters. The study highlights the strategic use of metaphors in shaping public perceptions of corruption, suggesting that metaphorical language serves as a powerful rhetorical tool in political discourse that influences electoral outcomes and governance narratives. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on political discourse by demonstrating how metaphorical language shapes the public’s perception of corruption.
Keywords: Corruption, Ghana, Manifesto, Metaphor, NDC, NPP
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Daniel Dwamena Ofosu is a Tutor at the Abetifi Presbyterian College of Education. His research interests span language studies, literature and curriculum development with a special focus on cognitive semantics, conceptual metaphor theory, legal and political discourse, ecocritical studies and material use in classrooms.
Sanka Washew is a Graduate Assistant at the Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). He holds an Mphil and MA in English from KNUST and the University of Cape Coast (UCC), respectively. His research interest lies in Sociolinguistics, SFL and the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in political discourse and crisis communications.
Ofosu, Daniel Dwamena & Sanka Washew. “The Metaphoricity of Corruption: Exploring Ghana’s Electoral Manifestos under the Fourth Republic ,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 5, no.16 (2024):2734 – 2749. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20245164
© 2024 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
