Moses Gatambuki Gathigia

Gatambuki Gathigia, Moses, Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo and Ruth Wangeci Ndungu 2018 Foodsemic metaphors of love in Gĩkũyũ: Insights from cognitive semantics Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:2, pp. 341–358 | Article

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… read more

Gatambuki Gathigia, Moses, Ruiming Wang, Manqiong Shen, Carlos Tirado, Oksana Tsaregorodtseva, Omid Khatin-Zadeh, Ricardo Minervino and Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos 2018 A cross-linguistic study of metaphors of death Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:2, pp. 359–375 | Article

The avoidance of directly addressing human mortality indicates fear of death. This fear elicits psychological, social and religious interdictions in language such that people resort to the use of metaphors to avoid confronting death. Under the premise that metaphor is a conceptual mapping from a… read more

Gatambuki Gathigia, Moses, Ruth W. Ndung’u and Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo 2015 When romantic love in Gĩkũyũ becomes a human body part: A cognitive approach Cognitive Linguistic Studies 2:1, pp. 79–93 | Article

Studies in Cognitive Linguistics show that metaphors are fundamental to the structuring of people’s thought and language (Sweetser 1990; Kövecses 2009). It is against this backdrop that this study discusses human body parts as metaphors of conceptualizing love in Gĩkũyũ. To achieve this objective,… read more

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