Stylistic Vehicle Patterns of Illness as an Ideological Tool in Understanding the Speeches of Martin Luther King Junior and the Plays of Bate Besong

Abstract

The meaning of words is to be derived from the relations between words, concepts and things in the real world. Words have a representational or symbolic meaning, that is, they are about something that goes beyond the physical shape that have meanings. Any communication is only successful to the extent that the idea the hearer or the reader gets is the same idea that the speaker or writer intended the hearer or reader to get. What matters is how the world is represented, construed by means of linguistic expressions and how our reports about reality are influenced by conceptual structures inherent in our language. These structures can be metaphoric, carrying connotations as in this study. The study looks at the use of illness related diction to show the ideological outlook of Martin Luther King Junior and Bate Besong. The groupings of the metaphor vehicles portray that both Martin Luther King Junior and Bate Besong follow the discourse dynamics, showing interconnectedness of the dimensions of metaphor used in their works, unravelling vehicle patterns of systematic metaphor of illness.