The externality of anger as conceptualized in Kiswahili

Abstract

This paper discusses everyday expressions of anger in Kiswahili, a Bantu language spoken in Eastern Africa. Following Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), linguistic expressions of anger, collected from both written and oral discourses, were analyzed for metaphoric and metonymic content. Our findings reveal that Kiswahili manifests some striking differences in conceptualization of anger. A notable difference is found in the locality in which anger is perceived to originate, or the conceptualized “originating locality” of anger. The onset of anger, or stage at which a person ‘becomes angry’, is depicted via predicates such as shik-w-a ‘catch.PASS’ and ingi-w-a ‘enter.PASS’. A participant is seen as having been ‘caught’ or ‘entered’ by anger, thus construing anger as an externally-originating emotion. Consequently, we propose a prototypical cognitive model that appears to reflect the anger scenario in Kiswahili.