Cover not available
Article published In:
International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 3:2 (2016) ► pp.189–215

Fixed expressions and culture

The idiomatic MONKEY in common core and West African varieties of English

This case study examines variation in idiomatic fixed expressions (FEs) in British and West African varieties of English. Using a corpus of newspapers containing FEs with the source domain monkey, I contrast those expressions shared by both varieties — the Common Core — with those found only in the African sources. In so doing, I seek to illuminate to what extent uniquely African cultural influences have affected idiomatic language use in these ‘New Englishes’ beyond the mere adoption of British expressions. The corpus contains 24 FEs, of which 8 belong to the Common Core and 16 classify as potentially new African ones. The analysis of the FEs reveals that West African speakers make use of a much broader spectrum of main meaning foci (Kövecses 2010) when instantiating the human behavior is monkey behavior metaphor than do their British counterparts. This wider system of associated commonplaces (Black 1954) can be linked to the African natural environment on the one hand and to broader cultural influences on the other, including power and corruption issues as well as African models of community and kinship (Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). On a more global level, this paper lends evidence to the importance of cultural conceptualizations (Sharifian 2011) as a further dimension of variation in the study of World Englishes.
Keywords: World Englishes, fixed expressions, metaphor, Africa, idioms, proverbs, cognition, animal metaphors


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 17 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.3.2.03fie
References (44)
Achebe, C. (1958). Things fall apart. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Adegbija, E. (2003). Idiomatic variation in Nigerian English. In P. Lucko, L. Peter, & H.-G. Wolf (Eds.), Studies in African varieties of English (pp. 41–56). Frankfurt (Main): Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Awiapo, T. (2009). Monkeys play by sizes: An African proverb. Catholic Relief Services. Retrieved August 19, 2009 from [URL]Google Scholar
Bello, U. (2012). The semantics of ‘the dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood’. Sahara Reporters. Retrieved May 18, 2012 from [URL]Google Scholar
Bennett, D., & Ross, C. (2011). Fulani of the highlands: Costs and benefits of living in national park enclaves. In V. Sommer & C. Ross (Eds.), Primates of Gashaka: Socioecology and conservation in Nigeria’s biodiversity hotspots (pp. 231–266). New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Black, M. (1954). Metaphor. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 551, 273–294.
Cienki, A. (2007). Frames, idealized cognitive models, and domains. In D. Geerarets & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 170–187). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dirven, R. (1994). Metaphor and nation: Metaphors Afrikaners live by. Frankfurt (Main): Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Doyle, C.C. (2007). Collections of proverbs and proverb dictionaries: Some historical observations on what’s in them and what’s not (with a note on current ‘gendered’ proverbs). In P. Skandera (Ed.), Phraseology and culture (pp. 181–203). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1982). Frame semantics. In The Linguistic Society of Korea (Ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm [Selected papers from SICOL-1981]. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Foley, W.A. (1997). Anthropological linguistics: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kachru, B.B. (1983). The indianization of English: The English language in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. (1992). Teaching World Englishes. In B.B. Kachru (Ed.), The other tongue. English across cultures (2nd ed.) (pp. 355–365). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kouega, J.-P. (2007). A dictionary of Cameroon English usage [Contemporary studies in descriptive linguistics 10]. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lovejoy, A.O. (1936). The Great Chain of Being. A study of the history of an idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lucko, P. (2003). Is English a ‘killer language’? In P. Lucko, L. Peter, & H.-G. Wolf (Eds.), Studies in African varieties of English (pp. 151–165). Frankfurt (Main): Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Moon, R. (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A corpus-based approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Norrick, N.R. (1985). How proverbs mean: Semantic studies in English proverbs. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Owomoyela, O. (2005). Yoruba proverbs. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Palmatier, R.A. (1995). Speaking of animals: A dictionary of animal metaphors. Westport: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Polzenhagen, F., & Wolf, H.-G. (2007). Culture-specific conceptualisations of corruption in African English: Linguistic analyses and pragmatic applications. In F. Sharifian & G.B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied cultural linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication (pp. 125–168). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quinn, N., & Holland, D. (1987). Culture and cognition. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural model in language and thought (pp. 3–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmied, J.J. (1991). English in Africa: An Introduction. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Shank, R., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sharifian, F. (2003). On cultural conceptualisations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 187–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language [Cognitive linguistic studies in cultural contexts 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2015). Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 473–492). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sheppard, J.M. (2012). Cracking the code: The confused traveler’s guide to Liberian English. Berlin, Wis.: Sheppard’s Books.Google Scholar
Skandera, P. (2003). Drawing a map of Africa: Idiom in Kenyan English. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
. (Ed.) (2007). Phraseology and culture in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2003). Linguistic diversity and biodiversity: The threat from killer languages. In C. Mair (Ed.), The politics of English as a world language: New horizons in postcolonial cultural studies (pp. 31–52). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Spears, R.A. (1997). Straight from the horse’s mouth: And 8,500 other colorful idioms. Lincolnwood: NTC Publishing.Google Scholar
Taylor, A. (1931). The proverb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tillyard, E.W.M. (1963). The Elizabethan world picture. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Turner, M. (2007). Conceptual integration. In D. Geerarets & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 377–418). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weinrich, H. (1976). Sprache in Texten. Stuttgart: Klett.Google Scholar
Wolf, H.-G., & Polzenhagen, F. (2009). World Englishes: A cognitive sociolinguistic approach [ACL applications of cognitive linguistics 8]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Baranyiné Kóczy, Judit
2024. Chapter 11. A cultural linguistic study of embodied Hungarian proverbs representing facial hair. In Proverbs within Cognitive Linguistics [Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 16], ► pp. 298 ff. DOI logo
Callies, Marcus
2024. Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs. World Englishes 43:3 ► pp. 471 ff. DOI logo
Callies, Marcus & Folajimi Oyebola
2024. Pidgin English proverbs as a source of structural nativization in Nigerian English. World Englishes DOI logo
Latić, Denisa, Frank Polzenhagen, Hans‐Georg Wolf & Arne Peters
2024. A research bibliography for world Englishes and Cultural Linguistics. World Englishes 43:3 ► pp. 523 ff. DOI logo
Keškic, Kader Bas
2023. Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes. In Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 103], ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Eve J.
2021. essentials and valuables. In Cultural-Linguistic Explorations into Spirituality, Emotionality, and Society [Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 14], ► pp. 238 ff. DOI logo
Tamimy, Mohammad & Rahman Sahragard
2021. Americans’ cultural attitudes to group work: Insights from the proverbs. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT 9:3 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2017. Cultural Linguistics [Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 8], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 october 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.