The pragmatics of ‘Mouth’ metaphors in Akan

Abstract

The paper addresses the semantic shifts, extensions and metaphorical use of ano ‘mouth’ in Akan (a Ghanaian language). It focuses attention on the semantic patterns and pragmatic nature of the metaphor and its usage in a variety of contextual features. In Akan, the body part expressions and bodily functions have extended meanings that still have some relationship with the original words. The body parts thus act as the productive lexical items for the semantic and metaphoric derivation. I will consider the body part ano from its physical and cognitive representations. The paper also looks at the positive and negative domains of ano, ‘mouth’ expressions. The data are taken from Akan literature books, the Akan Bible and recorded materials from radio discussions. The paper illustrates that there is a strong relation between a people’s conceptual, environmental and cultural experiences and their linguistic systems. Key terms: cognitive semantics, semantic change, pragmatics, metaphor, body-part language