An exploration of aspects of spatial metaphors in Standard Yoruba
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Date
2020
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University of Ilorin, Nigeria.
Abstract
Without doubt, meaning plays a central role in language use. However, semantic discourse on the place of metaphors generally, and spatial metaphors specifically, is a polarised one. Using native speaker’s intuition and participant observation as data elicitation tools from spatial metaphors in Standard Yorùbá, this study aligns with the position of cognitive semanticists that metaphors are not extraneous elements in language that require special skills to articulate and/or understand. Hence, this study investigates how native Yorùbá speakers use spatial metaphors as a conceptual process in mapping connections across domains and within domains. The paper is therefore, twofold. The first part takes a look at spatial metaphors and how Yorùbá speakers embed in them, cultural conceptualisations about space which facilitates the mapping of highness and lowness onto non-spatial domains. The nature of this embeddedness is such that equally produces the association of positive and negative images to these spaces respectively. The second part which focuses on a few exceptions to the rule, brings to the fore, instances where spatial metaphors in the Yorùbá Language act quite to the contrary of the general rule. Findings from this study show that spatial metaphors in the Yorùbá Language are part of the general cognition of native speakers for which they require no special knowledge for competence and performance.