Cover not available
Article published In:
Cognitive Linguistic Studies
Vol. 5:2 (2018) ► pp.341–358

Foodsemic metaphors of love in Gĩkũyũ: Insights from cognitive semantics

| Karatina University
| The Technical University of Kenya
| Pan Africa Christian University

Using the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study discusses the transfer of semantic aspects of foodsemic metaphors upon the abstraction of love. An interview schedule was administered to 48 respondents of different gender by the researchers assisted by two research assistants. The data collected were subjected to the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). 12 foodsemic metaphors which play an indispensable role in the understanding of love in Gĩkũyũ were identified. In addition, the study noted that gender is a dominant variable that provides people with lens through which they view love in Gĩkũyũ. This study concludes that metaphor is an integral component of the way people conceptualize and embody love in Gĩkũyũ. Further, foodsemic metaphors provide a way of understanding the nexus between gender and love in Gĩkũyũ.

Keywords: love, metaphor, foodsemic metaphors, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, MIPVU
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical issues
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Findings and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00024.gat
References
Aksan, M.
(2006) The container metaphor in Turkish expressions of anger. Dilve Edebiyat Dergisi / Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 3 (2), 1–20.Google Scholar
Allan, K., & Burridge, K.
(2006) Forbidden words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ansah, G.
(2010) The cultural basis of conceptual metaphors: The case of emotions in Akan and English. Papers from the Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics & Language Teaching (pp. 1–25). Lancaster University, Lancaster.Google Scholar
Barcelona, A.
(1998) The state of the art in the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and metonymy and its application to English studies. The European English Messenger, 7 (2), 45–50.Google Scholar
Barker, C., Elliott, R., & Pistrang, N.
(2004) PSY7640: Methods of clinical requirements. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Bates, B. R.
(2004) Audiences, metaphors, and the Persian Gulf War. Communication Studies, 55(3), 447–463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beall, A. E., & Sternberg, R. J.
(1995) The social construction of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12 (3), 417–438. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beneke, T.
(1982) Men on rape: What they have to say about sexual violence. New York: St. Martin Press.Google Scholar
Berscheid, E.
(2006) Searching for the meaning of “love”. In R. J. Sternberg, & K. Weis (Eds.), The new psychology of love (pp. 171–183). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
(2010) Love in the fourth dimension. Annual Review of Psychology, 611, 1–25.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E.
(2002) Cognitive processes of L2 users. In V. Cook (Ed.), Portrait of the L2 user (pp. 147–165). New York: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buss, D. M.
(1989) Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypothesis testing in 37 cultures. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 121, 1–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, L.
(2003) Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J.
(2004) Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. London: Palgrave MacMillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, P.
(2005) Manipulation, memes and metaphors: the case of Mein Kampf. In L. D. Saussure and P. Schulz (Eds.), Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century (pp. 15–44). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crespo-Fernández, E.
(2008) Sex-related euphemism and dysphemism. An analysis in terms of conceptual metaphor theory. Atlantis, Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 30 (2), 95–110.Google Scholar
(2013) Euphemistic metaphors in English and Spanish epitaphs: A comparative study. Atlantis, Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 35 (2), 99–118.Google Scholar
Dragoescu, A.
(2011) Implications of quality in food metaphors. 5th International Quality Conference, 673–678.Google Scholar
Esenova, O.
(2007) Plant metaphors for the expression of emotions in the English language. Beyond Philology, 7–21.Google Scholar
Fiddes, N.
(1991) Meat: A natural symbol. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fisher, H.
(1998) Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 91, 23–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fontecha, A. F., & Catalan, R. M.
(2003) Semantic derogation in animal metaphor: A contrastive-cognitive analysis of two male/female examples in English and Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (5), 771–797. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forceville, C.
(2002) The identification of target and source in pictorial metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics, 341, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gachara, M.
(2012) Gĩkũyũ metaphors of marriage negotiations: A cognitive linguistics perspective (Unpublished doctorate thesis), Kenyatta University, Kenya.Google Scholar
Galperin, A., & Haselton, M.
(2010) Predictors of how often and when people fall in love. Evolutionary Psychology, 8 (1), 5–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gathigia, M., & Ndũng’ũ, R.
(2011) A cognitive linguistics analysis of Gĩkũyũ euphemisms. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Publishing House Ltd.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W.
(1994) The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2008) The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R. W., & Steen, G.
(1999) Metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glucksberg, S.
(2001) Understanding figurative language. From metaphor to idiom, Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guthrie, M.
(1967) The classification of Bantu languages. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall.Google Scholar
Györi, G.
(1998) Cultural variation in the conceptualisation of emotions: A historical study. In A. Athanasiadou & E. Tabakowska (Eds.), Speaking of emotions: Conceptualisation and expression (pp. 99–124). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R.
(1996) Love and sex: Cross-cultural perspectives. New York: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Hinnerová, K.
(2007) Food as a transcultural metaphor: Food imagery and ethnocultural identities in contemporary multicultural women writing in Canada. Unpublished Diploma Thesis of Masaryk University of Brno.Google Scholar
Hoorweg, J., & Niemeyer, R.
(1980) Preliminary studies on some aspects of Kikuyu food habits. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 91, 139–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jankowiak, W. R., & Fisher, E. F.
(1992) A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31(2), 149–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kleparski, G. A.
(2008) The joys and sorrows of metaphorical consumption: Mozarellas, prostisciuttos, muttons and yum-yum girls – foodsemy with a romance accent, z e s z y t y n a u k owe uniwersyteturzeszowskiego, seria filologicznastudiaanglicaresoviensia 51, 45–59.Google Scholar
Kolodny, N.
(2003) Love as valuing a relationship. The Philosophical Review, 112 (2), 135–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1991) Happiness: A definitional effort. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 6 (1), 29–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2000) Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture and the body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2002) Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2006) Language, mind, and culture: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2010) Metaphor and culture. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 2 (2), 197–220.Google Scholar
Knowles, M., & Rosamund, M.
(2006) Introducing metaphor. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Krennmayr, T.
(2008) Using dictionaries in linguistic metaphor identification. In N. L. Johannesson & D. C. Minugh (Eds.), Selected Papers from the 2006 and 2007 Stockholm Metaphor Festivals (pp. 97–115). Stockholm: Department of English, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Kunda, Z.
(1990) The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 1081, 480–498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1990) The invariance hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas? Cognitive Linguistics, 1 (1), 39–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed.) (pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(1999) Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., and Turner, M.
(1989) More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leakey, L. S.
(1977) The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London: Academie Press.Google Scholar
Li, X.
(2010) Conceptual metaphor theory and teaching of English and Chinese idioms. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1 (3), 206–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liebowitz, M. R.
(1983) The chemistry of love. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Maalej, Z.
(2004) Figurative language in anger expressions in Tunisian Arabic: An extended view of embodiment. Metaphor and Symbol, 19 (1), 51–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mbaabu, I.
(1996) Language policy in East Africa: A dependency theory perspective. Nairobi: Educational Research Publication.Google Scholar
Molek-Kozakowska, K.
(2014) Coercive metaphors in news headlines: A cognitive-pragmatic approach. Brno Studies in English, 40 (1), 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moustakas, C.
(1994) Phenomenological research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mugane, J. M.
(1997) A paradigmatic grammar of Gikuyu. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
O’Brien, R. D.
(1998) Fats and oils: Formulating and processing for applications. Lancaster, PA: Technomic Publishing Co., Inc.Google Scholar
Oliver, M., & Hyde, J.
(1993) Gender differences in sexuality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 1141, 29–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pockenpaugh, N., & Poleman, C.
(1996) Nutrition: Essential and diet therapy (8th ed.). Philadelphia: WB Saunders.Google Scholar
Rozin, P.
(1996) Towards a psychology of food and eating: From motivation to module to model to marker, morality, meaning, and metaphor. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 51, 18–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, E., & Steen, G.
(2008) Metaphor in literature. In R. W. Gibbs Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 232–246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G.
(2007) Finding metaphor in grammar and usage. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G. et al.
(2010) A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From mip to mipvu . Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Manen, M.
(1990) Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Yang, R.
(2008) A holographic study of metaphors concerning love in Chinese. Intercultural Communication Studies, 17 (1), 90–101.Google Scholar
Yu, N.
(1998) The contemporary theory of metaphor: A perspective from Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Yang, Kun, Jinqiu Guo & Xu Wen
2021. Eating we live by. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 8:1 ► pp. 204 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.