Political campaigns are emotive activities that rely on language to attract the attention of the public. In fact, electioneering periods in Kenya are heavily laced with idiomatic expressions such that one would be required to use the interrelatedness between language and cognition to understand the utterances of a speaker. It is against this backdrop that the present study analyzes the cognitive processes of the idiom minji na ndengũ (peas and green grams) vis-à-vis the canonized form. The idiom minji na ndengũ (peas and green grams) drew a lot of attention during the Kenyan official electioneering period (May and October, 2017) and was extensively used in both the print and social media platforms. The study is anchored in three objectives: to categorize the idiom minji na ndengũ (peas and green grams) in terms of compositionality; to establish the vital relation between the blended idiom and the canonical form; and to interpret the blend using the Conceptual Integration Theory. The study employed the descriptive research design. The study purposively sampled the blended idiom minji na ndengũ (peas and green grams) which is a blended form of the idiom two horse race. Using content analysis, the study classifies and presents a diagrammatic conceptual interpretation of new knowledge based on metaphorical mappings to illustrate the emergent structure. A general finding of this study is that political campaigns create new meanings using deliberately blended idioms of war to improve figurative competencies. Further, one needs to immerse themselves in pragmatic inference in order to reveal the meaning of a blended idiomatic expression. The findings of this study imply that whenever the provisions of grammar prove deficient in unpacking certain messages, cognitive linguists, idiom theorists and researchers should apply the postulates of Cognitive Linguistics. The study concludes that blended idioms of political campaigns achieve creativity and novelty. Further, the comprehension of blended expressions requires the understanding of pragmatic inferences of the local context. The study recommends that for a better understanding of blended idiomatic expressions, one should consider the local contexts expressed in language.

Political discourse employs colorful expressions to establish strong relationships with the audience. Speakers or writers exploit the relationship between human language and socio-political experiences to initiate creative discourses through modification of expressions. Against this background, this study sets out to investigate the meaning of modified idiomatic expressions in Kenyan political discourse. The study has two objectives: to describe the structural and lexical modification of idiomatic expressions and to interpret the modified forms using vital relations. The study employs descriptive research design. The study randomly sampled ten idioms used during the 2017 General Elections and used content analysis to establish the lexical and structural relationships between the canonical and modified expressions. The idioms were analyzed using the Conceptual Integration Theory to preserve the link between two expressions and account for the emergent meaning. The study found that Kenyan political discourse achieves figurative competencies through modified idioms. Interpretation of modified idioms requires a thorough understanding of vital relations and pragmatic inferences. Further, Cognitive Linguistics establishes backstage cognition and supplies the elements omitted by grammar. The study concludes that modified idiomatic expressions achieve contextual significance. Consumers of modified idiomatic expressions should immerse themselves in the socio-political backgrounds to unmask the emergent meaning.

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