Abstract
Studies on conceptual metaphors in gender-based proverbial discourses have gained much scholarly attention in linguistic studies. In spite of this, conceptual metaphorisations in gendered Yoruba proverbs still remain under-researched. This study seeks to fill the gap by exploring conceptual metaphorisations in gender-based Yoruba proverbs using linguistic frameworks. The data comprise 100 Yoruba proverbs on women. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis guide the analysis. The data analysis reveals that, four (4) conceptual metaphors structure women in the select proverbs: Women Are Weaklings; Women Are Evil; Women Are Whores; and, Women Are Procreants. The first three conceptual metaphors generically give women a “downward orientation”. The fourth assumedly underlines an “upward orientation”, which implicitly entails a down orientation. The downward image schema of these four metaphors indicates that, among the Yoruba, women are profiled negatively. This profiling reveals that the Yoruba’s ideological gender structure advances a hierarchical order in which women are subordinated to men.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0940/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Highlights
IntroductionTo the Yoruba proverbs are the salt of speech; their terse but forceful semantic and rhetorical import makes them an integral aspect of the Yoruba linguistic signs
This is demonstrated in the proverb: “owe lẹṣin oro, bí oro-o bá sọnù, owe la fi ńwá a” (Owomoyela, 2005, p. 12)
This study has attempted a critical examination of the metaphorisation of women in a corpus of women-inclined Yoruba proverbs using the linguistic frameworks of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA)
Summary
To the Yoruba proverbs are the salt of speech; their terse but forceful semantic and rhetorical import makes them an integral aspect of the Yoruba linguistic signs. This is demonstrated in the proverb: “owe lẹṣin oro, bí oro-o bá sọnù, owe la fi ńwá a (the proverb is the horse of speech, when speech is lost, the proverb is the means we use to hunt for it)” Yoruba proverbs could be delineated on the basis of honesty/truth, wisdom, good name, morality, religion, deity, aesthetics, rituals, music, sacrifices, occupation, diligence, perseverance, traditional education, justice, afterlife, courage/cowardice, conflict and resolution, power and leadership, and most importantly, gender (Salami 2004; Asiyanbola, 2007; Owomoyela, 2005; Daramola, 2004, 2013; Saleh, 2014; Sibanda, 2015)
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