An exploratory study of a woman in Ekegusii through the lens of the conceptual metaphor theory

Abstract

It has been argued by linguists that language expresses a people’s way of life; this paper examines a cultural-specific metaphor in Ekegusii, an African Bantu language in Kenya. A descriptive research design was used in the collection of the metaphors from the field whereby the native respondents were asked to identify and explain terms and phrases that describe a woman in Ekegusii, describe the social-cultural values and explain the mapping processes involved. The data were analyzed by identifying qualities in the donor domains and mapping them to the recipient domain using the Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT). It is clear from the results that in Ekegusii, a woman is perceived as an object, a plant, an animal or the appropriate behavior she exhibits based on the values such as immorality, selfishness, beauty, ugliness, harshness, talking a lot, age, and faithfulness, and also, a metaphor makes our thoughts clearer, richer with imagery, and, act as a conduit between human mind and culture.