📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
This study analyses the use of metaphor in dialogue drawn from selected Nollywood films produced in the South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, with a focus on cognitive linguistic mechanisms underlying metaphorical expression. Nollywood is among the world's most prolific film industries, yet its linguistic content has received insufficient academic attention from a cognitive linguistic perspective, particularly regarding how cultural knowledge systems shape metaphor use. The study adopts Conceptual Metaphor Theory as developed by Lakoff and Johnson as its analytical framework. A purposive sample of ten films produced between 2020 and 2024 was selected, and dialogic exchanges were transcribed and examined for the presence and structure of conceptual metaphors. The analysis maps the source and target domains activated in film dialogue and explores how Igbo cultural schemas inform the metaphorical mappings identified. Findings reveal that metaphors of journey, farming, and kinship are the most recurrent source domains in the selected films, reflecting the agrarian and communal cultural heritage of South East Nigerian society. The study also documents novel metaphorical expressions coined within the films that are gaining currency in everyday Nigerian speech. The research contributes to the growing literature on Nigerian cinematic language and recommends the development of Nollywood linguistic corpora for further scholarly investigation. Keywords: conceptual metaphor, Nollywood, cognitive linguistics, Igbo culture, South East Nigeria.
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