Zambezin (2003), XXX (i)Metaphors in Shona: A CognitiveApproach1N. E. MBERIDepartment of African Language* and Literature, University of ZimbalnveAbstractThis article discusses the pervasiveness of metaphors in ezvii/dm/ Shona language.It argues that metaphorical expressions are not mere ivonis, but they are part of amuch bigger way of conceptualizing tilings. Examples me given to shoiv howeveryday metaphorical expressions are based on a much larger set of conceptualmetaphors. The article takes a cognitive view ivhich sees metaphors as one of thebasic human strategies for dealing with our environment in that we use existingphysical concepts in our environment to conceptualize more abstract concepts.This kind of metaphorical extension from one domain to another plays a veryimportant role in the extension of the lexicon.IntroductionMetaphor has been studied from a number of different perspectives, fromtime immemorial. It is studied in a wide variety of disciplines including,linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, psychology and education amongothers. Some scholars have traced the study of metaphor to as far back asthe Aristotelian era. In Aristotle's well-known works Poetics and Rhetoricmost studies focus on his discussion of the place of metaphor in languageas well as its relationship with communication. For a long time the dominantview of metaphor was that it is the "exclusive domain of literary scholarsand the odd linguist who was interested in rhetoric or stylistics"(Ungererand Schmid 1996: 114). This traditional view of metaphor in which it isregarded as a linguistic phenomenon which falls largely in the realm of"poetic" or "figurative" language relegates this very important phenomenonto the level of an "ornamental device used in rhetorical style" (L'ngerer andSchmid 1996: 114).Lately many works have been written that question this traditional notionof metaphor. No attempt is made in this article to chronicle the developmentof metaphor research. This article focuses on what we call the "everydayI am indebted to Professor Rolf Theil Enderesen ot the University of Oslo and DrKristin Bakken also of the University of Oslo, for the comments and suggestionsthey made on earlier drafts of this article. Many thank?, also go to Samukele Hadebeof the University of Zimbabwe for reading an earlier version of this article.72N. E. Mberi 73metaphor" in Shona. Shona is a Bantu language spoken by about 75% ofZimbabwe's population, currently estimated at about 13 million people.We argue, in this article, that the pervasiveness of metaphor in Shona hasnot been recognised because the study of metaphor in Shona has notbenefited from the recent developments resulting from the proliferation ofworks that have taken a cognitive view of metaphor in the past 20 years orso.In our view the watershed on the metaphor research landscape is markedby the publication of two monumental works which radically changed theview of metaphor from "a device of poetic imagination and rhetoricalflourish" (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 3), to a more contemporary theory inwhich metaphor is regarded as a phenomenon that is "deeply engrained inthe cognitive processes, social acts and verbal usage"(Dirven and Paprotte1985: vii). The two monumental works are Metaphor and Thought (1979), acollection of articles edited by Ortony, and the book, Metaphors We Live By,written by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Other works that take this cognitiveapproach to metaphor include the writings of such scholars as Dirven(1985), Lakoff (1993), Lakoff and Turner (1989), Lakoff and Johnson (1999)and Fauconnier (1994) among others. One central idea running throughthese works is that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life. As Lakoff andTurner (1989: xi) put it,metaphor is a tool so ordinary that we use it unconsciously andautomatically, with so little effort that we hardly notice it. It is omnipresent:metaphor suffuses our thoughts, no matter what we are thinking about.Before we go on to discuss what has since been called the "contemporarytheory of metaphor" as the theory is called by Lakoff (1993: 202) we need tofirst of all discuss some of the assumptions of the traditional approach tometaphor and what the implications of these assumptions have been on thestudy of metaphor in Shona.Assumptions of the Traditional View of MetaphorSome of these assumptions have already been mentioned in the introductionabove. The first assumption of the traditional view of metaphors is thatthey are seen, like all other rhetorical devices, as being deviations fromeveryday language usage and they are seen as being "parasitic on the coresemantics and literal meaning"(Fauconnier 1994: 1). This assumption isbased on the premise that "all everyday conventional language is literaland none is metaphorical"(Lakoff 1993: 04).The second assumption is that metaphors are merely a matter of words.To illustrate the point that metaphor is not just mere words Sweetser (1990:8) gives the example of the use of the word "white" to mean "honest" or"candid" rather than using the word for "purple." She argues that it is a factabout the cultural community that they see whiteness as metaphorically74 Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive Approachstanding for honesty or moral purity. She also says that this system ofmetaphorical uses of colour terms is not based on a systematic correlationbetween colours and morality in the world but is present in the speakers'linguistic and cultural models.Most students of Shona would give the following examples of metaphor:(1) Tendai ishumba pabasaTendai .i-shumba pa-basaCL.IA-Tendai COP.PRE-lion CL.16-work"Tendai is a lion at work" i.e."Tendai is a hard worker"(2) mukomana ityu inguruve yemunhumu-komana u-yu .i-nguruve ye-munhuCL.l-boy DEM-this COP.PRE-pig POSS.PRE-CL.l-person"this boy is a pig" i.e"this boy has dirty habbits"(3) murume nyu ibere remunliumu-rume u-yu i-bere re-mu-nhuCL.l-man DEM-this COP-hyena POSS-CL.l-person"this man is a hyena""this man is a coward"In the above examples, the traditional theory of metaphor simply takesthem to be a matter of language where we have a substitution of literalwords with metaphorical words. For example, the approach taken by therhetorician Richards (1936), who is cited in Hoffman and Honneck (1980: 5),identifies three things in a metaphor, the thing that is being commentedupon, the topic which he called the tenor, the thing which is used to talkabout the topic, which he called the vehicle, and the relation between thetopic and the vehicle, which he calls the ground. Using Richards's analysisthe three examples given above can then be analysed as shown in Table 1below.The traditional view of metaphor would concentrate on the principle oftransference of qualities from one thing to another, which is a result ofusing the vehicle in place of the ordinary language. In example (1) thevehicle shumba "lion" is being used in lieu of the literal language whichmight be anoshanda chaizvo pabasa "he is hardworking."In example (2) the vehicle nguruve "pig" is used in lieu of ane hutsvina"he is a very dirty person". And in example (3) the vehicle bere "hyena" isused to replace the literal language anotya chaizvo "he is a coward" oranoda nyama zvakanyanya "he likes meat a lot." According to this view,N. E. Mberi75Table 1MetaphorTopicVehicleGround(1) Tendai ishumba Tendai "a name" shumba "lion" anoshanda chaizvopabasa(2) mukomana uyu mukomana "boy" nguruve "pig"inguruveyemunhu(3) murume uyu murume "man" bere "hyena"ibere remunhu"he is hardworking""ane hutsvina""he is a dirty person"anotya chaizvo"lie is a coward"ORanoda nyamazvakanyanya"he likes meat a lot"metaphor was defined as "a novel or poetic linguistic expression where oneor more words for a concept are used outside of their normal conventionalmeaning to express a "similar concept" (Lakoff 1993: 02). This brings us tothe third assumption of the traditional approach to metaphor. There has tobe literal language first, for us to have metaphor.We argue that there are instances in Shona, in which we have metaphoricallanguage that does not seem to start from literal language. We will comeback to these assumptions later on after we have discussed the levels ofmetaphor.Levels of MetaphorIt is not possible, in this article, to discuss all levels of metaphor. By levels ofmetaphor we are referring to the following types of metaphor as wassuggested by Dirven (1985: 88) that are determined by the level of linguisticstructure that we will be looking at as shown in Table 2 below.Table 2:Levels of Linguistic Structure Type of Metaphorphono logylexi ssynt axdis coursemorpholog semanticssound metaphorword metaphorphrase metaphordiscourse metaphorSource: Dirven (1985: 88)76Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive ApproachDirven uses the term sound metaphor to refer to this phenomenon where"given sound combinations are used in a great number of words withspecific meanings" (Dirven 1985: 88). He gives the example of thecombination sw- in English which is used in motion words that show'curved' or 'swift' action and he gives the examples of words like swewe,swing, swipe, swift, swell, swirl and szvarm. In Shona, there are verbs whichstart with the combination dh- in words like,-dhuguka, "come out or go out quickly-making some noise"-dhuma, "strike against", -dhubuka "come out quickly from small mouth(liquid)",-dhuuka, "loud explosion", -dhovhora "pierce soft object", -dhonora"constant hitting with hard object on a hard surface" where the sound /d/in this set of words meaning something making a heavy sound.2Word metaphors are those words that are used as "new vehicles foralready familiar or newly experienced tenors." In Shona, for example, the
word ziso "eye" is the vehicle of many different tenors as can be seen inTable 3 below. Two examples are given below:(4) ndiri ziso xenyundi-ri ziso re- nyu /lSG-be CL.5-eye POSS.PJIE-you, /"I am your eye" .i.e. '"1 am your informer"(5) pane ziso rakepa-ne ziso ra-keCL.16-to.be CL.5-eye POSS.PRE-him/her"where his/her eye is" .i.e."where his/her hope is"The next type of metaphor is the phrase or sentence metaphor. Dirven(1985: 90) gives Churchill's famous metaphor iron curtain as an example ofa phrase metaphor. In the case of word metaphors that we looked at above,the expressive power of metaphor comes mainly from one single word. Inphrase or sentence metaphors, the expressive power comes from more thanone vehicle. One vehicle might be more important than the other, but theyboth contribute to the expressive power of the metaphor. In Shona, suchphrase metaphors are often found in proverbs, for example:(6) imbwa nyoro Adidzo tsengi dzamatowoi Ł2. I am indebted |to Moreblessings Chitauro-Mawema for providing me with these' examples of phonological metaphor which she came across while editing DummaziuiReChiShona (1996).N. E. Mberi 77"soft dogs are the ones that chew the animal skins""quiet people can do the unexpected"In the above proverb the expressive power of imbwa nyoro "soft dogs"only comes out as a result of the combination of the two vehicles imbwa"dogs" and nyoro "soft".As for the discourse metaphors, there are many animal stories in Shonawhich are "anthropomorphized" in the same fashion as George Orwell'sAnimal Farm. It should be pointed out that any attempt to divide thesemetaphors into discrete levels will always be arbitrary because boundariesbetween these levels are fuzzy.This article focuses on word metaphors because they clearly illustrate thepervasiveness of metaphor in everyday Shona language and they also showhow metaphor plays an important role in extending the lexicon. This articlebuilds on Pongweni (1989)'s work on figurative language in Shona.Pongweni (1989) is the only "odd linguist" who started abandoning thetraditional view of metaphor and analyses metaphors in a number of Shonanovels. In our view, Pongweni (1989) does not go far enough in showingthe pervasiveness of the "everyday metaphor."The Cognitive View of MetaphorThe cognitive view of metaphor, as we have already pointed out, seesmetaphor to be much more important and widespread than what existingstudies in Shona have revealed. From a cognitive perspective metaphor is a"mapping" of the structure of a source model to target models. The metaphor"mapping" originates from cartography but is now considered as amathematical term that refers to this transference of linguistic propertiesthat are inherent in one category to another category. These linguisticproperties are given various names in the cognitive literature; some callthem "models", others call them "mental spaces" (Fauconnier 1994: 1),while others call them "domains" (Lakoff: 1993). The key issue here is thatthese mental spaces are part of language. Hence, Lakoff (1993: 203) arguesthat:the generalizations governing poetic metaphorical expressions are not inlanguage but in thought; they are general mappings across domains.These general principles which take the form of conceptual mappingsapply not just to novel poetic expressions but to much of ordinary everydaylanguage.He also adds that:The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way weconceptualize one mental domain in terms of another. The general theoryof muMnhnr is given by characterizing such cross-domain mappings.78 Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive ApproachAnd in the process, everyday abstract concepts like time, states, change,causation, and purpose also turn out to be metaphorical.Table 3 below illustrates how a single word; ziso "eye" can be usedmetaphorically in a number of ways to show how everyday language is rifewith metaphorical expressions.Table 3MetaphorLiteral TranslationMeaning-bira ziso-teya zisokupa ziso-isa ziso-buditsa zisopane ziso-tsvukisa zisosteal for eyetrap eyeto give an eyeput an eyebring out the eyewhere the eye ismake the eye redquick lookkeep gazing at somethingto look atto look at or focus on- to be on the watch out foror stern lookwhere one is looking atlook at menacinglyIn our efforts to show the pervasiveness of the "everyday metaphor" inShona we have selected a set of words denoting body-parts and another setof words denoting environmental phenomena and these are found in Tables4 and 5 below. The choice of these body-part metaphors and those that referto our physical environment comes from this cognitive view that languagestructure "is the product of our interaction with the world around us"(Heine1997: 3). Heine (1997:40) also says that the human body provides one of themost important models of expressing concepts. We use human categoriesto describe and understand non-human concepts. Because the human bodyis the most accessible to us in the world, it tends to be the most importantmodel. The other set of metaphorical expressions in Table 5 are taken fromour immediate environment.3 So the choice of these body-part andenvironmental metaphorical expressions emanates from the cognitive viewthat we use existing cognitive models in the process of metaphorical mappingfrom one source model to another. We will not be able to give all theconceptual metaphors from which we get the metaphorical expressions
listed in the Tables below. We will only analyze a few of them.3. The anthropomorphic model uses human body parts as source models and thezoomorphic model takes the animal body parts as source models while theenvironmental landmark model takes such landmarks as the river, the sky, thehouse, and others as the source models in metaphorical extension. For a detaileddiscussion of these models see Svorou (1994).N. E. Mberi79Table 4: Shona Body-part Terms as Sources of Metaphorical ExpressionsBody-part English gloss Metaphors(a) musoro headmusoro wechitima "head of train" i.e "trainengine"musoro wemba "head of family" i.e "breadwinneror "main derision maker"musoro wenyaya "head of story" i.e. "main issue"musoro wemubhedha "head of bed" i.e. "the sidewhere there one normally puts the head"musoro wechipikiri "the head of a nail" i.e. "thetop part of the nail"(b) matama cheeksmatama enzira "the cheeks of the path" i.e "edgesof the path"(c) huma foreheadhuma yechitima "the forehead of a train" i.e. "thefront face of the engine"(d) mwoyo heartmwoyo wechibage "the heart of a maize seed" i.e."the nucleus of the maize seed"-tora mwoyo "take someone's heart" i.e. "fall inlove with that person"-rasa mwoyo "throw away one's heart" i.e. "getdisheartened"(e) ziso(f) garo(g) gumbo(h) muromo(i) dumbu(j) musweeyebuttocklegmouthstomachtailziso regumbo "the eye of tht leg'' i.e "ankle"garo remugomo "the bottom of a container" i.e." the base of the container"gumbo rechigaro "the leg of a chair or stool" i.e.one of those parts of a stool or cliair that enables it tostand"muromo wegejo "the mouth of the plough" i.e."the part of the plough that cuts into the soil" or "theploitghshave"dumbu rechitima "the stomach of train" i.e. "themiddle carringes of the train"kumuswe kwechitima "the tail of a train" i.e. "thelast carriages of the train"80Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive ApproachTable 5: Shona Landmark Terms and Other Terms from Our Environmentas Sources of Metaphorical ExpressionsShona worda) dengab) nyokac)zizid) rwizie) gomof) mhepog) imbah) dikitai) mutaraEnglish glossskysnakeowlrivermountainwindhutsweata type of treeMetaphordenga remba "the sky of the house" i.e. "the roof ofthe house"nyoka yemunhu "a person who is a snake" i.e "adangerous double dealer"zizi remunhu chairo "he is a real owl" i.e. "heworks all ii:-;ht"ropa rakaita rwizi "the blood was like a river" i.e."a lot of blood was spilled"akapihwa gomo resadza " he was given amountain of sadza." ie. "he was given a plate full ofsadza"musha wapinda mhepo "a wind has got into thevillage" "a quick spreading disease or problem hasgripped a village" e.g. a series ot deathsakaparadza imba yake "he destroyed his hut/house" i.e. "lie destwi/ed his family"vanorarama nedikita revamwe "those who surviveon other people's sweat" i.e. "those people whoexploit other people"nyaya yakwira mutara "this issue has climbed amutara tree" i.e. "the issue has become more difficult"Analysis of Some of the Above ExamplesWe now look at some of the examples of metaphorical language that wegave in Tables 4 and 5 to illustrate that the metaphorical language would bepart of a much bigger way of conceptualizing concepts. Take the exampleof the metaphorical language rmisoro wechitima "the head of a train" torefer to a train engine. Such an expression is not isolated. The conceptualmetaphor in this case is the TRA1N-IS-A-BODY. Out of this conceptualmetaphor, we can get a number of metaphorical expressions that are basedon this conceptual metaphor that are used in everyday language. These arenot just expressions; they are not mere words but our way of conceptualizingthings.N. E. Mberi 81In this metaphor the TRAIN-IS-A-BODY, the train is the target and thebody is the source. There is a movement from the source domain to thetarget domain. The body that is referred to here is obviously not that of ahuman being but most likely that of a reptile like a snake or it can be that ofa millipede. There are a number of other metaphorical expressions thatwould fit into this conceptual system. Some of them are found in the set ofexamples that are given in Table 4. Examples 4(c), 4(i) and 4(j) aremetaphorical expressions, which have body-parts as source domains, andthey are all coming from this conceptual metaphor where the train is abody.4 (c) huma yechitima "forehead of the train" i.e. " the front face of the train"4 (i) dumbu rechitima "the stomach of the train" i.e. "the middle carriagesof a train"4 (j) kumuswe kwechitima "the tail of the train" i.e. "the lastfeiv carriagesof a train (from the engine of the train )"A moving train is like a moving reptile or a millipede. The engine of thetrain is like the head of the body because it is the most important part of thewhole body and it pulls the rest of the body. The middle of the train iscompared to the stomach of the body. The many legs of the millipede arecompared with the many wheels of the train. The passengers and the goodsthat get into the train are like the food that gets into the stomach of the train.Hence the metaphorical expression padumbu pechitima "the stomach ofthe train" when people say, for example, motokari yakarovera padumbupechitima "the car hit the stomach of the train". So the whole set ofmetaphorical expressions are coming from this metaphor and this showswhat we have said above that metaphor should be seen "not as a propertyof language but rather as a property of our conceptual system"(Katz 1998: 4).Another metaphorical expression that we find in Table 4 involving musoro"head" is musoro wemba "head of family" i.e. "the breadunnner" or "thechief decision maker." In the Shona context, this traditionally refers to thefather of the house. The conceptual metaphor can be seen as a "mapping",FAMILY-IS-A-BODY and according to Lakoff (1993: 207) such a mapping is"a set of ontological correspondences that characterize epistemiccorrespondences by mapping knowledge" about a family onto knowledgeabout the body. In this case, the family is the topic while the body is thetenor. The "similarities" or "correspondences" in the two categories FAMILYand BODY is that a body has a head as its most important part. The fatheris the head of the family, that is, the most important member of the family.This kind of metaphorical expression is more than just language in thesense that it reflects the worldview of a whole group of people at a point in82 Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive Approachtime. In this case we are using our existing knowledge about the humanbody in order to reason about the family unit. Using the metaphoricalexpression baba musoro wemba "the father is head of the family", we arenot just substituting one word with another but it also means defining the
roles of other members of the family. For example, the position of themother and the position of the children within that family is reasoned usingour knowledge about the body. The whole structure of the family can easilybe decoded from the mappings that we find in these metaphoricalexpressions. Metaphor as we have pointed out earlier ceases to a matter ofjust words. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 60) metaphors form "ahuge part of our conceptual system and affect how we think and what we
care about almost every waking moment."The next metaphor that we get from the metaphorical expressions inTable 4 is that which takes a STORY-IS-A-BODY as we find in the expressionmusoro wenyaya "the head of the story" .i.e. "the main issue." As we saw inthe other body metaphors above, there is a mapping from a story, whichhas episodes or events. The mapping as mentioned above involves"ontological correspondences" between our knowledge of a STORY andour knowledge of a BODY. The main correspondence in this metaphor isthe one we get from the metaphorical expression musoro wenyaya "thehead of the story" i.e. "the main issue." Other correspondences would involveother parts of the body. Take for example the last concluding episode (thatis if the episodes are arranged linearly) would correspond to the tail of thestory.There are so many metaphorical expressions involving the head that onefinds in everyday Shona language. A few of these examples are found inTable 4 above and two of these are given as examples (7) and (8) below.(7) musoro ivechipikirimu-soro we- chi-pikiri
CL.3-head POSS.PRE-CL.7-nail"head of the nail" i.e."the top part of the nail"(8) pamusoro pegomopa-mu-soro pe-gomoCL.16-CL.3-headPOSS.PRE-CL.9-hill/mountain"the head of a hill/mountain" i.e.
"the top of a hill/mountain"Metaphor and Lexicon ExtensionExamples (7) and (8) above also show us the role of metaphor in extending
the lexicon. There are no "literal" lexical items in Shona that refer to theN. E. Mberi 83concepts that are being described by the metaphorical expressions in theseexamples. The question of how people acquire labels for concepts for whichno previous designation exists or for which new designations are requiredis discussed in Heine et al (1991: 27). They list the following as some of theoptions:a) inventing new labels, that is, creating arbitrary combinations of sounds.b) borrowing from other dialects or languages,c) creating symbolic expressions such as onomatopoeia,d) composing and deriving new expressions from already existing lexicaland grammatical forms,e) extending the use of existing forms for the expression of new concepts,commonly described strategies including analogical transfer, metonymy,metaphor and the like.Heine et al (1991: 27) argue that, of all the above processes, options (d)and (e) are the most productive, especially metaphorical extension. Dirven(1985: 114) has also pointed out that "metaphorical processes seem toaccount for the greater part of meaning extension of lexical items." Belowwe provide more examples that show how the "everyday metaphor" playsan important part in the extension of the lexicon. In Table 4, in the case ofdenga remba "the sky of the hut" i.e. "roof which is example (9) below, themetaphorical language does not necessarily replace literal language. InShona, there is no term for "roof" other than the descriptive metaphoricalexpression denga remba "sky of the hut." This falsifies the assumption thatwe mentioned earlier on, that there has to be literal language that needs tobe replaced for us to have a metaphor. Other examples in this categoryinclude muromo wegejo "mouth of the plough" i.e. "the ploughshave" inexample 10 and gumbo rechigaro "the foot of the stool/chair" in example11 below.(9) denga rembadenga re-mbaCL.5-sky POSS-PRE-house/hut i.e"the sky of a house/hut" i.e."the roof of the house/hut"(10) muromo wegejomu-romo we-gejoCL.l-mouth POSS-PRE-plough"mouth of the plough" i.e."the ploughshave"(11) gumbo rechigarogumbo re-chigaroMetaphors in Shona: A Cognitive ApproachCL5-leg POSS.PRE-CLJ.stool or chnir" leg of a stool or chair" i.e."one of those ports of a stool or chair that enables it to stand"(12) huma yeshanguhuma ye-shanguCL.9-fo"rehead POSS-PRE-CL.9-shoe"the forehead of a shoe" i.e."the front part of the slwe"The metaphorical expressions that we discussed so far are from Table 4,which have to do with parts of the body. We now move on to Table 5,where the key words in the metaphorical expressions make reference toenvironmental phenomena. In that table the metaphorical expression (i)nyjya yakwira mutara "the case or issue has climbed a mutara tree", isexplained fully in example (13) below.(13) nyaya yakwira mutaranyaya ya-kwir-a mu-taraCL.9-case SP-climb-FV CL.3-tree"the case has climbed a mutara tree" .i.e."the case has taken a new {difficult) dimension"The conceptual metaphor producing this metaphorical expression is,CASE-IS-A-HUMAN BEING CLIMBING. In this metaphor, the mapping isthat of a CASE that is mapped with PERSON climbing a mutara tree. Theway a case moves from a lower court to higher courts is likened to the wayin which a human being climbs a mutara tree. In a traditional Shona courtsystem, a case moves from dare remusha "village court" to dare rasadunhu"subchief's court" and then ultimately getting to dare ramambo "chief'scourt" as shown in Figure 1 below.Figure 1: The Traditional Court Hierarchy in ShonaMambo "Chief"TSadunhu "Subchief"Sabhuku "Village Head"N. E. Mberi 85The following correspondences are derived from the metaphor:i) There is vertical movement in both cases, a case moves from a lowercourt to a higher court and a person moves from the ground to the top ofa tree.ii) There are a number of obstacles in this vertical movement. It is verydifficult to climb a mutara tree. This type of tree is very difficult to climbbecause it has a bushy top, which has strong closely intertwined branchesthat do not give much room for a human being to pass through. Apartfrom the closely intertwined branches, the tree has. some very sharpthorns that also make it difficult to climb let alone the dangers of falling.It is very difficult to take a case right up to the chief's court. One has topay the court officials, the messenger of court at the various levels andthe possible punishment that the offender will have to go through aswell as the possible embarrassment of loosing the case.It should also be pointed out that the climbing image is found in everyaspect in life where success is conceptualized as going up. Those who haveachieved their goals in life have a "higher" status than those who have notachieved their goals who have a "lower status." In traditional Shona society,the highest point in the social ladder is that of the chief.In Table 5, we have the example of mhepo "wind" in the metaphoricalexpression mhepo yapinda mumusha "a wind has got into a village"which is fully explained in example (14) below:(14) mhepo yapinda mumbamhepo ya- pind-a mu-mu-shaCL.9-wind CL.9SP-enter-FV CL.18-CL.3-village"a wind has got into the village" i.e."a quick spreading disease or problem has got into the village"The conceptual metaphor from which we derive this metaphorical'expression is DISEASE-IS-A-WIND. Some of,the ontological correspondencesthat form the conceptual system of the metaphor are as follows:i) a disease spreads quickly just like the; wind moves very fast,ii) a disease causes widespread disaster within a short time, so does awind,iii) a wind is personified and it enters the village so is a disease.This goes back to the main point in this article, that metaphors are notjust mere words but they are embedded in human cognition. It is part of awhole system of thought.Metaphor and PolysemyIn our discussion of the role of metaphor in extending the lexicon, we haveso far been concentrating on the metaphorical expression of one type. We86Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive Approachhave looked at the type of lexicon extension in which metaphoricalexpressions are used in cases where we do not have existing labels asshown in examples 7 to 12 above. We pointed out, for example, that we donot have an existing term for "roof" in Shona. We therefore extend thelexicon by using the metaphorical expressions like denga remba "the sky ofthe house/hut." The other type of lexicon extension involves polysemy.The present writer, in his PhD dissertation, argues that a great deal oflexical polysemy is due to metaphorical extension. In that dissertation it isargued that multiple synchronic senses of a given word are normally related.In most cases, an account of the relationship between the senses reveals thatone of the meanings is a metaphorical extension of the other.Let us go back to example (14) above. We have already explained howthe sense mhepo "disease" is a metaphorical extension of the sense mhepo"wind." Such kind of metaphorical extension plays a very important role inlexicon extension.Another example of polysemy resulting from metaphorical extension isfound in the word nyaya which we have already looked at. In one sense itmeans "a story" as the example which we discussed earlier on when welooked at the metaphorical expression musoro wenyaya "the head of thestory" i.e. "the main issue.", In this sense it means a narration of events. Theother sense of nyaya "a case" as it is used in the example nyaya yakwiramutara "the issue has taken a neiv (difficult) dimension" that we looked at
earlier on. The second meaning is a metaphorical extension of the first onein the sense that when you take an issue or a case to the courts one isnormally asked to relate their story of what happened, narrating events asthey occurred. Hence the use of the word nyaya to refer to "a case" is ametaphorical extension of the word nyaya in which it means "a story". Wecould go on to give many more examples which show that a great deal ofpolysemy, not only in Shona but in many languages, is a result ofmetaphorical extension.ConclusionIn this article we argue that the pervasiveness of the "everyday metaphor"has not been recognized in Shona linguistic studies because of the traditionalview of metaphor in which it is regarded as merely a linguistic phenomenon.We take a contemporary cognitive view of metaphor which sees metaphorsnot just as words but as part of a much bigger way of conceptualizingthings.In our efforts to show that metaphors are not a property of language buta property of our conceptual system we gave examples of metaphdricalexpressions as well as the bigger conceptual metaphors from which thesemetaphorical expressions are derived. We showed that in these metaphoricalN. E. Mberi 87expressions there is a movement of one domain to another. As Swetseer(1990:145) observed, there is a pervasive "metaphorical structuring of ourinternal mental world in terms of our physical world."We used body-part metaphors and other metaphors that refer to ourenvironment to show the cognitive view of language, that we use existingcognitive models in the process of mapping from one cognitive domain toanother. We have especially focused on the ubiquitous nature of the everydaymetaphors focusing on their role in lexicon extension.ReferencesCHIMHUNDU HERBERT ed 1986 Dummazwi ReChiShonn, Harare: College Press.DIRVHN REN 1985 "Metaphor as a basic means of extending the lexicon", inDirven Ren and Wolf Paprott eds The Ubiquity of Metaphor: Metaphor inLanguage and Thought, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamin PublishingHouse.FAUCONNIEK GILLES 1998 Mental Spaces, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.HEINE BERND 1997 Cognitive Foundations of Grammar, New York/Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.HEINE, BERND, ULRIKE CLAUDI AND FRIEDERIKE HUNNEMEYER 1991Grammaticalisation: A Conceptual Framework, Chicago/London: Universityof Chicago Press.HONECK P. RICHARD AND ROBERT R. HOFFMAN 1980 Cognition and FigurativeLanguage, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.KATZ ALBERT 1998 "Figurative language and thought: A review", in Katz A. N,Cacciari C, Gibbs R.W (Jr), Turner M eds Figurative Language and Thought,New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.LAKOFF GEORGE 1993 "The contemporary theory of metaphor", in Lakoff Georgeand Mark Turner More Than a Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor,Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.LAKOFF GEORGE AND MARK JOHNSON 1980 Metaphors We Live By, Chicago/London: Chicago University Press.LAKOFF GEORGE AND MARK JOHNSON 1999 Philosophy in the Flesh: The EmbodiedMind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books.MBERI NHIRA EDGAR 2003 "The Categorical Status and Functions of AuxiliaryVerbs in Shona", Unpublished PhD dissertation.ORTONY ANDREW ed 1979 Metaphor and Thought 2nd Edition, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ORTONY ANDREW ed 1993 Metaphor and Thought 2nd Edition, Cambridge/NewYork/ Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.PONGWENI ALEC J. C. 1989 Figurative Language in Shona Discourse, Gweru: MamboPress.88 Metaphors in Shona: A Cognitive ApproachSVOROU SOTRRIA 1994 The Grammar of Space, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins Publishing Company.SWHETSER E. EVF. 1993 From Etymology to Pragmatics, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.UNGHRER FRIEDRICH AND SHMID HANS-JORG 1996 An Introduction to CognitiveLinguistics, London/New York: Longman.