Abstract
Proverbs are a valuable part of African culture. They transmit messages of shared, communal values about different facets of life inter-generationally. In an exploration of one West-African ethnic group, the Akan, the present study investigates messages that proverbs communicate about interpersonal relationships. A total of 79 Akan proverbs that addressed romantic relationships were examined using thematic analysis. The main components of advocated values as captured in the proverbs were identified. The thematic analysis determined that Akan romantic relationships tend to lean towards a “work-it-out” approach as opposed to the “soul mate” approach typical of Western romantic relationship norms. Overall, this study demonstrates that analyzing cultural artifacts such as proverbs can teach us about cultural rules that define relationships.
Highlights
Proverbs are a valuable part of African culture
“Marriage is like a groundnut, you must crack it to see what is inside” (You need to experience something before judging it) Akan Proverb
Emblematic of the many gender roles that exist in traditional Akan communities, many of the Proverbs that focused on romantic relationships (PFRRs) focused on one of the parties in the relationship - a specific gender - even in proverbs that acknowledged both parties (e.g. A woman knows when her husband is hungry)
Summary
Proverbs are a valuable part of African culture. They transmit messages of shared, communal values about different facets of life intergenerationally. The goal of the present study is to examine cultural scripts of romantic relationships encapsulated in proverbs in the Akan, a West African ethnolinguistic group. Rather than rely on patterns identified by previous studies of romantic relationships in Western cultural settings, we take a culturally grounded, or emic, approach by examining concepts inherent in culturally constructed proverbs and sayings (e.g., Berry, 1989; Church & Lonner, 1998). This approach shares much with research in cross-cultural psychology on social axioms. Social axioms typically describe how one thing relates to another (A is related to B), and represent culturally constructed notions of how the world functions, which help to guide the behaviors of individuals within their culture
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