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Metaphor and Kwame Nkrumah’s construction of the unite or perish myth: a discourse-mythological analysis

ABSTRACT This article presents a discourse-mythological analysis of how Kwame Nkrumah, a pioneering Pan-African and Ghana’s independence leader, exploits metaphor to formulate and promote a univocal and an ideologically marked narrative that says Africa must necessarily unite as a confederation or be doomed forever. Using critical metaphor analysis as an analytic framework and a dataset of twenty speeches, the study focuses on the discursive construction of the Unite or Perish myth, how it is naturalized into public consciousness and the embedded ideological meaning in such discourse. The analysis demonstrates that Nkrumah systematically utilizes war, religious and journey metaphors via a (de)legitimation strategy that serves a twofold purpose of resisting colonialism and imperialism and advocating a Union Government of Africa. The persuasive force or ideological function of these metaphors is heightened by their interaction with other rhetorical tropes and schemes such as contrast and rhetorical question. By providing insight into the use of language in the service of myth, this study echoes the crucial role of metaphor in realizing the discourse goals of political speeches and, more broadly, how politics is performed and conceptualized.