The grammatical structures of figurative Language: an investigation of Kiswahili Metaphorical Constructions

Abstract

This study is an investigation of how Kiswahili metaphorical constructions are lexically, syntactically, and semantically structured. The study was library based and was to a large extent qualitative. The data were sourced from four Kiswahili literary texts: Mazrui (2003), wa Mberia (2004), Arege (2009) and wa Mberia (2011), which were purposively selected. Data was collected by reading the literary texts, identifying the metaphorical constructions there in and listing them to make it easier for classification into lexical, phrase or clause categories. The study was guided by Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) which was supplemented by Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg‟s 1995) approaches. The three theories were used as tools of analysing the data as they guided on the identification of Kiswahili metaphorical grammatical constructions in the selected literary texts, investigating and explaining how they are structured in the formation and interpretation of metaphor, and determining the extent to which they express socio-cultural context and embodied experiences of language users. It was revealed that the concepts of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Cognitive Grammar, and Construction Grammar can be utilized in the interpretation of Kiswahili metaphorical constructions. In the study it was also revealed that the verb and the noun are the two major lexical categories in the formation of Kiswahili metaphorical constructions that evoke metaphor. However, other lexical categories like the adjective, adverb, and prepositional phrases are understood and interpreted metaphorically in the context of nouns and verbs. The study further revealed that in the Kiswahili clause, the verb manifests the source domain while the target domain is manifested by the noun and its immediate constituents in a construction. Other constructions which evoke metaphor are the DO, IO, complements, and subordinate clauses in compound and complex sentences. The Kiswahili verb interacts with other constructions for metaphorical interpretation to occur. These include the noun phrase in the argument position, the adjectival phrase, noun phrase, prepositional phrase, and other complements within the predicate position. In examining the Kiswahili lexical, phrasal and clausal levels, it was revealed that meanings of constructional elements such as verbs and nouns are relativised to frames or cognitive models which include the language users‟ knowledge of their referents. This knowledge includes social cultural contexts and the encyclopaedic entries of the referents and entities targeted. Finally, the study has brought into perspective areas for future and further research which are largely on use of other construction grammar theories and on interrogation of sense relations, under Goldberg‟s Cognitive Grammar, such as antonymy, homonymy, and synonymy. The study has thus provided a pioneering research on the analysis of Kiswahili metaphorical constructions by examining how they are utilised in the building of conceptual metaphors while expressing the socio-cultural contexts and embodied experiences of language users.