Culture-Based Metaphors in Traditional Bemba Narratives: Relevance for African Teaching Contexts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses metaphors in traditional Bemba narratives and demonstrates their thematic relevance in African literature classrooms today. Based on Sharifian's theory of cultural conceptualisations and Lakoff and Johnson's view of metaphor as a conceptual phenomenon, the article explores African cultural views relating to land, food and ubuntu. The ongoing contestation over land is revealed in the conceptual chasm between the Western “THE LAND IS MINE” versus the embodiment implicit in the indigenous metaphor, “THE LAND IS ME” and in eating and enrichment conceptualisations in African English. The traditional African worldview is founded on the kinship-in-community model, encapsulated in the term ubuntu. The article promotes an African cultural perspective by means of textual analysis of Zambian narratives, sourced by Mwelwa. In the process of the analysis, the underpinning cultural conceptualisations are interrogated with the aim of countering the continued hegemony of Western cultural values in African literature classrooms.