The cultural conceptualization of jini ‘blood’ in Hausa
Keywords:
Hausa, embodiment, metaphor, metonymy, cultural conceptualizationAbstract
This paper analyses linguistic expressions that instantiate the embodied metaphors
and metonymies of the body part term jini ‘blood’ in Hausa. While Hausa is one of the most studied African languages, most of the studies, so far, have focussed on the structural aspects, hence the need for further cognitive studies of the language. The data in this paper was collected from written sources, while spoken sources have been used to validate these selected expressions. Based on the Cultural Conceptualization model (Sharifian, et. al, 2008), the body part term jini ‘blood’ is found to be extended into several conceptual domains, including the domains of life, kinship/relations, emotions, sacrifice, and character traits.
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