Cover not available
Article published In:
Cognitive Linguistic Studies
Vol. 1:1 (2014) ► pp.131–146

Cognitive models of anger in Akan

A conceptual metaphor analysis

| Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon

This paper analyses the conventional metaphorical expressions of anger in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, West Africa, in order to identify conventional conceptual metaphors of the concept in the language. Native and relatively monolingual speakers of Akan in semi-rural and rural Ghana participated in focus group discussions to generate a corpus of 23,800 words from which metaphorical expressions of anger were drawn. The analysis reveals that Akan conceptualisations of anger are based on both general metonymic and metaphorical principles that are grounded in fundamental human experiences including physiological and socio-cultural experiences. The major conventional conceptual metaphors identified in Akan are: ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER, ANGER IS A GROWING WEED, ANGER IS A BURDEN, ANGER IS A DANGEROUS THING, ANGER IS A DISEASE and ANGER IS FOOD. While Akan conceptualisation of aspects of anger are similar in some ways to Lakoff’s prototypical anger scenario, i.e., akin to the retribution stage of the prototypical anger scenario in English, it is important to mention that stages 3 and 4 of the prototypical anger scenario in English may be of no consequences at all in what appears to be the prototypical anger scenario in Akan.

Keywords: Akan, metaphor, anger, conceptualisation, cultural model
Published online: 5 August 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.1.1.06ans
References (26)
BBC World Service (
2010 14/10/2010) Language and the body. Mysteries of the brain . Podcast retrieved from [URL].
Cameron, L
(2003) Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J
(2004) Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave-MacMillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Codo, E
(2008) Interviews and questionnaires. InL. Wei & M.G. Moyer(Eds.), The Blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism (pp. 158–176). US: Blackwell Publication.Google Scholar
Deignan, A
(2005) Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Department of Linguistics University of Ghana
(Ed.) (2006) Akan dictionary: Pilot project. Accra: Combert Impressions.Google Scholar
Dzokoto, V.A., & Okazaki, S
(2006) Happiness in the eye and the heart: Somatic referencing in West African emotion lexica. Journal of Black Psychology, 32(2), 117–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koller, V
(2002) A shotgun wedding: Co-occurrence of war and marriage metaphors in mergers and acquisitions discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 17(3), 179–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Z
(1990) Emotion concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1995) American friendship and the scope of metaphor. Journal of Pragmatics, 351, 1247–1263.Google Scholar
(2000) Metaphor and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2002) Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G
(1987) Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Kövecses, Z
(Eds.) (1987) The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Martinez, F.E
(2003) Exploring figurative processing in bilinguals: The metaphor interference effect. Unpublished dissertation, University of Texas.Google Scholar
McDonough, K
(2006) Interaction and syntactic priming: English L2 speakers’ production of dative constructions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 281, 179–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maalej, Z
(1999) Metaphoric discourse in the age of cognitive linguistics, with special reference to Tunisian Arabic. Journal of Literary Semantics, 28(3), 189–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McGlone, M
(1996) Conceptual metaphors and figurative language interpretation: Food for thought? Journal of Memory and Language, 351, 544–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, A
(2004) Metaphor and political discourse. Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pragglejaz Group, Crisp, P., Gibbs, R., Deignan, A., Low, G., Steen, G. et al.
(2007) MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, E
(2010) Unrealistic scenarios, metaphorical blends and rhetorical strategies across genres. English Text Construction, 3(2), 250–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinha, C
(2007) Cognitive linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. InD. Geeraerts & H. Cuyckens(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 1666–1294). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sirvydé, R
(2006) Fancy fear: A corpus-based approach to fear metaphors in English and Lithuanian. Man of the Word (Žmogus ir oŽdis), 8(3), 81–88. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Steen, G.J
(1999) From linguistic to conceptual metaphors in five steps. InR. Gibbs, & G.J. Steen(Eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics (pp. 57–77). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Kahumburu, Monica
2016. The externality of anger as conceptualized in Kiswahili. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 14:2 ► pp. 416 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 july 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.