Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes 9781350157538, 9781350157545, 9781350157552

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B l o o m s b u r y a d va n c e s n wMETAPHOR o r l d e n g l i s h e in s

SERIES EDITOR: ALEXANDER ONYSKO

BLOOMSBURY ADVANCES IN WORLD ENGLISHES

LANGUAGE and CULTURE ACROSS WORLD ENGLISHES

Edited by Marcus Callies and Marta Degani

Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes

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BLOOMSBURY ADVANCES IN WORLD ENGLISHES Series Editor: Alexander Onysko, University of Klagenfurt, Austria Advisory Board: Umberto Ansaldo (Curtin University, Australia) Suzanne Hilgendorf (Simon Fraser University, Canada) Allan James (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) Andrew Kirkpatrick (Griffith University, Australia) Lisa Lim (Curtin University, Australia) Christiane Meierkord (University of Bochum, Germany) Salikoko Mufwene (University of Chicago, USA) Alastair Pennycook (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) Mario Saraceni (University of Portsmouth, UK) Philip Seargeant (The Open University, UK) Peter Siemund (University of Hamburg, Germany) Bertus van Rooy (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) Capturing the intense interest in research on Englishes worldwide, Bloomsbury Advances in World Englishes promotes approaches to the complexities of world Englishes from a multitude of linguistic perspectives. Responding to recent trends in socio-cognitive, critical sociolinguistic, contact linguistic and communication-based research, books in this series investigate the interactions of Englishes with other languages and add new theoretical, methodological and applied perspectives to the field. Bloomsbury Advances in World Englishes adopts an inclusive understanding of world Englishes and their interactions, which considers all dialects of English, Englishes in multilingual constellations, English-based pidgins and creoles, learner Englishes and the global spread of English as significant manifestations of Englishes in the world. Encouraging methodological and theoretical pluralism, encompassing sociolinguistics, cognitive and psycholinguistics, anthropological linguistics, historical linguistics, pragmatics, literary-linguistics and discourse analysis, this series offers an innovative insight into the manifold instantiations and usages of Englishes in the world.

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Forthcoming Titles in the Series: Research Developments in World Englishes (inaugural volume), edited by Alexander Onysko Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes, edited by Marcus Callies and Marta Degani The Societal Codification of Korean English, Alex Baratta

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Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes Edited by Marcus Callies and Marta Degani

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Marcus Callies, Marta Degani and Contributors, 2021 Marcus Callies and Marta Degani have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p.xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Rebecca Heselton All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The editors and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-5753-8 ePDF: 978-1-3501-5754-5 eBook: 978-1-3501-5755-2 Series: Bloomsbury Advances in World Englishes Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Metaphor in Language and Culture Across World Englishes Marta Degani and Marcus Callies

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Part One Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

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Important Discoveries in the Study of Metaphor in World Englishes Raymond W. Gibbs

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Comparing Large Electronic Corpora and Elicitation Techniques in Research on Conceptual Metaphor and Idioms in World Englishes: Validating the ‘Lexicon of Corruption’ in West African Englishes Marcus Callies

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Part Two Aspects of Variation and Culture-Specificity in the Use of Metaphor

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Animal-Based Metaphors of Womanhood in English Literary Works Set in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Regions of India Atula Ahuja and Jiranthara Srioutai

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Conceptualizations of eagle in Varieties of English: The Case of Nigerian English Kader Baş Keškić

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building Metaphors in Hong Kong Policy Addresses Kathleen Ahrens, Menghan Jiang and Winnie Huiheng Zeng

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Embodiment Across Englishes: The Comprehension of Metaphors in Popular Song Lyrics in Canadian, Austrian, and American English Herbert L. Colston and Carina Rasse

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Part Three Metaphor and Cultural Conceptualisations

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Genres and Text Types from a Cross-Varietal and Cognitive-Cultural Perspective: A Case Study on the Contextualisation of Classified Adverts Arne Peters and Frank Polzenhagen

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Segregation and Cooperation: Cultural Models of gender in Indian and Nigerian English Anna Finzel

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10 Cultural Metaphors of Personification in Aotearoa English Marta Degani and Alexander Onysko

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11 Transfer of Metaphorical Conceptualizations from the L1 into English: Notes on an Emerging Project Milene Mendes de Oliveira

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Index

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Figures 3.1 8.1

Cognitive processes involved in a bribe is a food gift Normalized frequencies (fn) of linguistic markers of overt persuasiveness and situated narrativity in the herbalist advertisements (items per 1,000 words) 8.2 Normalized frequencies (fn) of linguistic markers of overt persuasiveness and situated narrativity in direct advertisements and testimonials (items per 1,000 words) 9.1 Comparison of percentage-wise distribution of categories (all = all conceptualizations; WA = woman’s achievement ; MA = man’s achievement ) 9.2 Normalized frequencies per 10,000 words of the domains woman’s achievement and man’s achievement in the IndE and NigE corpus (personal achievements only) 9.3 Normalized frequencies per 10,000 words of the domains woman’s achievement and man’s achievement in the IndE and NigE corpus (familial achievements only) 9.4 Normalized frequencies per 10,000 words of the domains woman’s achievement and man’s achievement in the IndE and NigE corpus (societal achievements only) 11.1 Conceptual script of success in business negotiations by a Brazilian interviewee 11.2 brazil is an island/ brazil is a contained space 11.3 people for country 11.4 a common identity is a merger of individuals 11.5 latin america is a big container 11.6 brazil is a small container 11.7 Conceptual script of interview excerpt in Portuguese 11.8 a national identity is a container 11.9 and 11.10 brazil is an island/brazil is a contained space and brazil is a non-fitting object 11.11 brazil is a big container

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11.12 11.13 11.14 11.15 11.16

Figures

culture is food people for country a culture is a container Conceptual script of the interview excerpt in English Conceptual scripts of the interview excerpts in Portuguese (left) and in English (right)

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Tables 3.1 Data collection methods used in previous studies of coded language used to give and/or ask for bribes in English spoken in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria 39 3.2 Frequencies of occurrence of target expressions in the Nigerian and Ghanaian components of the GloWbE and NOW corpora (normalized frequencies per ten million words given in brackets) 43 3.3 Top ten noun collocates (lemmas) of cash and carry in the Nigerian and Ghanaian components of the NOW corpus in a span of +4 to the right of the node 46 4.1 List of literary works selected for the study 60 4.2 Distribution of source domains in the two sets of literary works 62 4.3 Cross-domain mappings between the elements of source and target domains in the Indo-Aryan works 64 4.4 Cross-domain mappings between the elements of source and target domains in the Dravidian works 68 4.5 women are bitches 70 4.6 women are birds 72 4.7 women are butterflies 73 4.8 women are cattle 74 4.9 List of words expressing positive, negative, or neutral conceptualizations 76 4.10 Distribution of mappings with positive, negative, and neutral metaphors of womanhood 78 5.1 Frequency of the search items in the ICE corpora 89 5.2 Frequency of the search items in the GloWbE 90 5.3 Fixed expressions identified in the GloWbE-NG 97 5.4 Fixed expressions identified in the GloWbE-GB 98 6.1 Hong Kong Governors’ Corpus and Hong Kong Chief Executives’ Corpus 108 6.2 Keyword in the source domain of building 109 6.3 Comparison of relative frequency of metaphorical use between different political groups 112 xi

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6.4 Number of metaphorical expressions in each category 6.5 Results of the Chi-square test for issues being discussed when the building source domain is used 6.6 Results of the Chi-square test for the time frame entailed when the building source domain is used 6.7 Results of the Chi-square test for who is being referred to when the building source domain is used 6.8 The relative frequency of metaphorical tokens of the keyword which shows a significant overuse in Governors’ speech 6.9 The relative frequency of metaphorical tokens of the keyword which shows a significant overuse in Chief Executives’ corpus 7.1 Mean values of length measures in open-ended responses and ratings of specific aspects of lyrical content 7.2 Proportion of respondents across four groups who mentioned conceptual notions or used particular words in open-ended responses for “meaning” and “feeling” questions 9.1 The domains female space and male space normalized per 10,000 words 9.2 The domains woman’s task and man’s task normalized per 10,000 words 9.3 The domains woman and man in the IndE subcorpus according to power relations and sorted by overarching conceptualizations (occurrences normalized per 10,000 words in parentheses) 9.4 The domains woman and man in the NigE subcorpus according to power relations and sorted by overarching conceptualizations (occurrences normalized per 10,000 words in parentheses)

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Contributors Kathleen Ahrens is a professor in the Department of English and the director of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is chair of the Executive Board for the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (2018-2022), former president of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities (2018–2019) and is a member of the International Advisory Board for the Metaphor Lab Amsterdam. Atula Ahuja completed her Ph.D. in Metaphor Studies from the department of English as an International Language, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok in December 2020. She is now carving her space as an independent researcher in the field. Her main interest is researching metaphor in works of fiction and poetry. Kader Baş Keškić obtained her M.A. degree at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria in 2016. She is currently a doctoral student and has been employed as a university assistant at the University of Innsbruck, Austria since 2017. Her main research interests are figurative language and thought with a focus on conceptual metaphor, World Englishes, Corpus Linguistics and discourse studies. Marcus Callies obtained his Dr. Phil. in English linguistics from the University of Marburg, Germany, in 2006. Since 2014 he has been a full professor and chair of English linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany. His main research interests are Learner Corpus Research with a focus on lexico-grammatical variation, English for Academic Purposes, teacher education, conceptual metaphor and the language of sports. Herbert L. Colston obtained his Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics/Cognitive Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, U.S., in 1995. Since 2013 he has been full professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. His main research interests are figurative and indirect language, embodiment and multimodal forms of communication. Marta Degani (Ph.D. 2006, habilitation 2012) was appointed associate professor in English language and linguistics at the University of Verona, Italy, in 2014 and xiii

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currently also holds a position as senior scientist of English linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Her current research focuses on the analysis of political discourse in the frameworks of cognitive semantics and critical discourse analysis and the study of varieties of English and language contact in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Her recent books include Framing the Rhetoric of a Leader. An Analysis of Obama’s Election Campaign Speeches (2015), The Languages of Politics. La politique et ses langages, 2 Vols, (2016, with Frassi and Lorenzetti) and He Hiringa, He Pūmanawa. Studies on the Māori Language (2014, with Onysko and King). Anna Finzel is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Potsdam, Germany. In her dissertation she examines cultural conceptualizations of gender from a variationist approach, with a focus on British, Indian and Nigerian English. Her research interests particularly include Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics, as well as the study of World Englishes, Lavender Linguistics, gender and language and multimodality. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. is an independent cognitive scientist and formerly was distinguished professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz for 35 years. He is author of numerous books, the most recent being Metaphor Wars: Conceptual Metaphor in Human Life (2017) and has been a long-time editor of the journal Metaphor and Symbol. Menghan Jiang obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2018. She is now working as a post-doctoral fellow in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University-Peking University Joint Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics. Her main research interests are Corpus Linguistics, Chinese syntax and semantics, language variation and conceptual metaphor. Milene Mendes de Oliveira is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Potsdam in Germany. Some of her areas of interest are Cultural Linguistics, World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca. Alexander Onysko is full professor in English linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria). His main research interests and publications are in the fields of World Englishes, Language Contact, Bi/Multilingualism and Cognitive Linguistics. One of his particular interests is on the application of conceptual metaphor in multilingual contexts and in Englishes in New Zealand. He is the series editor of Bloomsbury Advances in World Englishes and some of his recent

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publications include Language Contact and World Englishes (2016), “Metaphor Variation in Englishes Around the World” (2017 with Marcus Callies) and Research Developments in World Englishes (forthcoming). Arne Peters (Ph.D. 2015) is assistant professor in English linguistics at the University of Potsdam, Germany. His work within the frameworks of variationist and cognitive sociolinguistics as well as cultural linguistics focuses on L1 and L2 varieties of English worldwide, most notably those spoken in Ireland and South Africa. He contributed to these fields with two book publications: Linguistic Change in Galway City English (2016) and Cultural Linguistic Contributions to World Englishes (2017, co-edited with Hans-Georg Wolf and Frank Polzenhagen). His current research focuses on the conceptualisations of threat in Irish English and on cultural conceptualisations in Black South African English. Frank Polzenhagen (Ph.D. 2005, habilitation 2014) is professor of English linguistics at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau), Germany. Much of his work has been devoted to the study of L2 varieties of English from a cognitive-sociolinguistic and cultural-linguistic perspective. His book publications in this field include Cultural Conceptualisations in West African English (2007) and World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach (2009, with Hans-Georg Wolf). Closely related is his work on the lexicographic description of L2 varieties: He is co-editor of A Dictionary of Indian English (2017, compiled by Uwe Carls, co-edited with Peter Lucko and Lothar Peter), a comprehensive dictionary of West African English is in preparation (in collaboration with Hans-Georg Wolf and Lothar Peter). His further research areas include theories of metaphor, grammaticalisation processes, the tenseaspect system of English and critical discourse analysis. Carina Rasse is a Ph.D. student in Cognitive Linguistics at the Department of English and American Studies at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria. Her dissertation explores how poets produce and readers interpret poetic metaphors. Her main research interests are conceptual metaphors, idioms, second language acquisition and narrative engagement. Jiranthara Srioutai received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Newnham College, University of Cambridge, UK and works as assistant professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Her main

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research interests are translation studies from English to Thai and Thai to English, pragmatics and semantics. Winnie Huiheng Zeng is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her main research interests are critical metaphor analysis, corpus linguistics, political communication and language and gender.

Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank the series editor, Alexander Onysko, for his role and continued support in the initiation and completion of this volume and for publishing it in this new and exciting book series. We would also like to thank Nicole Hober of the University of Bremen, Germany, for her invaluable support in the preparation of the final book manuscript.

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Introduction: Metaphor in Language and Culture Across World Englishes Marta Degani and Marcus Callies

When compared to other long-standing research paradigms within linguistics, World Englishes (WEs) qualifies as a rather recent field of linguistic enquiry, its inception dating back to the 1980s. One of the motivating factors behind the emergence of research in WEs was the need to account for the level of formal and functional variation brought about by the diversification of English into Englishes or, in other words, to consider the nature and the relative implications of the spread of one language across the globe, including processes of acculturation. Given this broad scope, the fact that researchers have approached the object of study from multiple vantage points in the last forty years should not come as a surprise. Scholars who have given content and shape to research in WEs come from different linguistic traditions, and they do not always share the same epistemologies and interests. Among the different approaches to the study of WEs (see Bolton 2020 for an overview), three major trends or traditions can be identified. One tradition is represented by research from an applied linguistic perspective, whose major aim is exploring the implications of WEs for English Language Teaching and Learning (see, e.g., Galloway and Rose 2015; Jenkins 2000; Kirkpatrick 2007; Matsuda 2017). Researchers in this tradition share an interest in developing new pedagogical approaches and teaching practices that can legitimate the existence of multiple varieties of English going beyond inner-circle models and give recognition to the use of English either as an International Language or as a Lingua Franca. Another significant trend is that of Critical Linguistics (see, e.g., Canagarajah 2013; Phillipson 1992; Pennycook 1994, 2007; Saraceni 2015), which considers the political implications of the global spread of English (see also Blommaert 2010; Seargeant 2009), adopts an ideological discourse of resistance to the 1

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assumed linguistic imperialism and cultural hegemony of English and discusses the power of local contexts to transform the global language. Some of this research takes a critical stance towards globalization and the development of national language policies that can act to the detriment of languages other than English. In a way that is consonant with a post-colonial theoretical orientation, this research also emphasizes the capacity of indigenous cultures to suit English to their own purposes by transforming it into a local language on a global scale. A third influential dimension in research on WEs can be situated in the vast and expanding field of Sociolinguistics. This includes studies that look at English in relation to issues of language maintenance, language shift and ethnolinguistic identity (see, e.g., Ammon 2001) and, even more traditionally, research that takes a so-called feature-based approach to describing English varieties through dialectological and variationist methodologies (see, e.g., Kortmann and Schneider 2004, and the two book series Varieties of English Around the World by John Benjamins and Dialects of English by De Gruyter Mouton). This approach is also informed by research on language typology that aims at classifying varieties of English according to parameters of structural diversity (see, e.g., Kortmann, Lunkenheimer and Ehret 2020). The feature-based approach has provided the field with sound evidence for socio-linguistic variation across main national standard varieties, regional, ethnic, and social varieties, as well as contact varieties and second-language varieties of English. Here, variation is indexed chiefly in terms of sets of distinctive, though not necessarily variety-specific, phonological, morphological, and lexico-grammatical traits. Aspects of discourse and word order are also considered but appear to feature much less prominently. The compilation of electronic corpora (the International Corpus of English (ICE; Greenbaum 1996) project can be seen as a milestone for corpus-based research into WEs), recent web-based megacorpora (in particular the corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013)), and the analysis of Englishes in different modes and media has spurred this trend of research even further by providing various sources and large repertoires/collections of language use that allow for diversified and detailed linguistic descriptions of individual English varieties and facilitate cross-varietal research, thus accounting for both intraand inter-varietal variation. The vast amount of research in WEs that has been published in the last four decades has given recognition to varieties as separate voices in the Englishspeaking world, characterized by autonomous identities and embedded in individual cultural contexts. These realities seem to call for new types of

Introduction

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investigations that may disclose differences among varieties of English in subtler and deeper ways by focusing on variation in the use of figurative language and conceptual metaphor. In particular, one aspect of research in WEs that is still in its infancy and in dire need of further exploration is the role of metaphor (and figurativity more generally) as a conceptual and linguistic phenomenon that is culturally grounded and hence likely to be subject to variation in the context of varieties of English around the world. Kövecses (2005) was the first major work that explicitly put classic sociolinguistic variables and their impact on the use of linguistic metaphor on the research agenda of Cognitive Linguistics. This seminal book, however, largely considers a traditional inner-circle variety, American English, and provides examples of linguistic and cultural variation from a contrastive (English/ Hungarian) perspective. Studies on the role of metaphorical thought and language in WEs are still sparse. However, the pioneering work by Wolf and Polzenhagen, e.g. their 2009 book on cultural conceptualizations in West African Englishes, and two recent special journal issues edited by Callies and Onysko (2017), and Wolf, Polzenhagen and Peters (2017) will hopefully spark future interest in this topic. Much of the research in these publications is characterized by an emphasis on the socio-cognitive and socio-cultural dimensions of language use that is frequently informed by and generally coherent with the more recently emerging socio-cognitive turn in linguistics, i.e. Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Kristiansen and Dirven 2008; Geeraerts, Kristiansen and Peirsman 2010; Pütz, Robinson and Reif 2014). Another related research paradigm that has originally been more closely connected to Anthropological Linguistics has also started to inform research in WEs. This is the field of Cultural Linguistics as described by Palmer (1996) and explored further by Sharifian (e.g. 2011), among others. What research on metaphor in WEs essentially shares with Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics is a general interest in meaning variation, a conception of cognition as socially and culturally situated, an emphasis on cultural models of thought and cultural conceptualizations and an interest in the interplay between language, culture and ideology. So far, research on metaphor in WEs has examined specific uses of figurative language in rather few cultural settings (mostly Southern and South-Eastern Asia, and West Africa). Furthermore, it has focused on the analysis of cultural conceptualizations, cultural schemas and culture-specific lexis (Callies and Onysko 2017; Wolf, Polzenhagen and Peters 2017). Against the background of this increasing interest in metaphor in WEs, the present volume aims to advance and broaden the scope of research on figurative

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language use and conceptual metaphor at the nexus of language and culture, at the same time adding to the debate on the interplay of universal and culturespecific grounding of conceptual metaphor. The book explores conceptual and linguistic metaphor, and figurative language more generally, as a characteristic of the many Englishes that have developed in an extremely diverse range of geographic, socio-historical and cultural settings around the world. In line with the interdisciplinary breadth of this endeavour, the contributions are grounded in Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Cultural Linguistics. Drawing on different research methodologies, including corpus linguistics, elicitation techniques and interviews, the chapters analyse a variety of naturalistic data and text types, such as online language, narratives, political speeches, and literary works. Examining both the cultural conceptualizations underlying the use of figurative language and the linguistic-cultural specificity of metaphor and its variation, the studies are presented in contexts of both language contact and second language use. Most of the studies collected in this volume are based on presentations delivered at the third international workshop on Metaphor in Englishes around the World, held at the University of Klagenfurt in September 2018. The volume, comprising eleven chapters, is structured into three parts that guide the unfolding of the different paths of investigation: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations (Part I), Aspects of Variation and Culture-Specificity in the Use of Metaphor (Part II) and Metaphor and Cultural Conceptualizations (Part III). Part I opens with the chapter “Important Discoveries in the Study of Metaphor in World Englishes” by Raymond Gibbs. This chapter in a sense prepares the ground for the following contributions in that it provides the reader with an overview of the benefits and potential challenges of exploring the use of metaphor in different varieties of English across the globe. Gibbs presents an assessment of and a critical reflection on the study of metaphor in WEs by concentrating on its theoretical and methodological implications for the broader and multidisciplinary field of metaphor research. Studies of metaphor in WEs are praised, among other things, for their focus on both the common generalities and specific variations in metaphor enactments since this important characterizing feature allows for the creation of theories that can account for a wide range of metaphorical experiences. This research paradigm is also valued as a welcome contribution from a psycholinguistic perspective because the amount of empirical evidence provided by research on metaphor in WEs offers important insights into the relation of metaphorical cognition to cultural

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knowledge. In this respect, the biggest challenge for scholars, according to the author, consists in trying to identify explicitly the multiple forces that are responsible for metaphorical performance. Gibbs also touches upon other aspects. In particular, he sees studies on metaphor variation in WEs as an enrichment to the recent scholarly debate on mixing metaphors, and he considers the frequent use of mixed methods by researchers working in this collective to be one of its cutting-edge practices. In the next chapter, Marcus Callies argues for methodological pluralism and a mixed-method approach in a case study on the ‘lexicon of corruption’ (i.e. linguistic surface forms that are metaphorically motivated and used to express veiled bribes) in West African Englishes. Callies compares previous findings on selected metaphorical expressions from the domain of corruption that were obtained through elicitation techniques, introspection and observation to his own results based on the investigation of two large-scale web-derived megacorpora. The study shows that many of the words and idiomatic expressions reported in previous research could not be found in the investigated corpora. This discrepancy is accounted for in terms of three possible types of explanations: data-based (i.e. recent large-scale data are not available for all West-African Englishes), historical (i.e. cultural changes in bribing practices) and personal (i.e. people not wanting to talk publicly about an illegal topic like corruption). The second part of the volume starts with Atula Ahuja and Jiranthara Srioutai’s “Animal-based Metaphors of Womanhood in English Literary Works set in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Regions of India.” The chapter is based on the assumption that while the metaphor women are animals is presumably universal, its specific instantiations are likely to be culturally dependent and affected by people’s attitudes to and beliefs about animals in a given cultural community. The authors compare and contrast specific instantiations of the metaphor women are animals in English literary works set in two distinct linguistic and cultural areas of India: the Indo-Aryan (in the North) and the Dravidian (in the South). The linguistic analysis is grounded in CMT, adopts Kövecses’ Cognitive Dimension of Socio-Cultural Variation to account for the cultural dimension of metaphor and follows the Metaphor Identification Procedure developed at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (MIPVU; Steen at al. 2010) for identifying metaphors. The findings reveal metaphorical variation in the two areas and indicate that metaphors are used chiefly with a derogatory function, especially when referring to Dravidian women. In terms of potential cultural influence, the study also postulates that the common Hinduist practice of animal worship and a closer relation to animals in the Indo-Aryan region may

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motivate the slightly less negative portrayal of women in the Indo-Aryan literary works. Furthermore, the overall metaphorical depiction of women in the literary texts does not appear to be sexually offensive as is often the case in non-Indian cultures. The study has important social and political implications. It shows how the use of animal metaphors in literature partakes in the discursive construction of the biological and social identity of women as inferior beings in the two Indian regions. The exploration of animal metaphors is expanded in the following chapter, “Conceptualizations of eagle in Varieties of English: The case of Nigerian English” by Kader Baş Keškić, which shifts the attention from India to the African continent and focuses on linguistic realizations of the generic-level metaphor a person i s an eagle . Given the multilingual status and the multicultural nature of Nigeria, Baş Keškić takes Nigerian English as a promising testing ground for exploring the potential degree of specificity in cultural conceptualizations of eagle . The study is corpus-based and the investigation of eagle expressions is carried out on selected components of the ICE and the GloWbE. In order to allow for cultural variation and specificity to emerge, data from Nigerian English and British English are compared. Baş Keškić’s findings indicate that eagle expressions as such are not unique to Nigerian English. However, they are used more frequently in this variety of English and lend themselves to metaphorical conceptualizations of a wider range of specific-level domains compared to British English. This can be taken as evidence corroborating the cultural salience of eagle among Nigerians. Other important facets of variation and cultural specificity are addressed in Chapter 5, “building Metaphors in Hong Kong Policy Addresses”, by Kathleen Ahrens, Menghan Jiang and Winnie Huiheng Zeng. The study examines political discourse and political cultures in Hong Kong English by concentrating on building metaphors. The selection of the building source domain for the investigation is particularly opportune since building metaphors are employed frequently in political speeches to promote a sense of long-term commitment to social goals. The authors intend to verify whether the use of building metaphors vary between two groups of political leaders who led the country in markedly diverse historical phases and who do not share the same cultural and ideological orientations. The focus is on policy addresses by British Governors, who ruled prior to mid-1997, and Chief Executives, who were selected to lead the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China after mid-1997. The findings show that the two groups of political leaders use the building source domain differently, with Chief Executives using it more frequently, more often, to talk

Introduction

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about future goals, and, additionally, to refer to Mainland China and the Chinese government. For a subset of keywords, further differences are identified in the priority of the mappings between source and target domains. The study demonstrates how differences in the use of the building source domain can reflect divergences in the types of political stance and cultures that political leaders intend to promote in the same variety of English, the same type of discourse, and the same text-type. Chapter 6,“Embodiment Across Englishes: The Comprehension of Metaphors in Popular Song Lyrics in Canadian, Austrian, and American English” by Herbert L. Colston and Carina Rasse sheds light on the understanding of figurative language by investigating factors that may play a role in this complex cognitive operation. Culturally specific knowledge systems have already been observed to influence directly the processing of metaphorical language, and psycholinguistic research has also highlighted the relevance of embodied processes (i.e.“embodied simulations”) in understanding both figurative and nonfigurative language. However, evidence of how culture may affect metaphorical language processing through the mediating effect of embodied simulations is still sparse. Colston and Rasse’s study explores this latter area. The authors analyze the written responses given in different usage contexts (i.e. “the different cultures or physical regions in which language users reside, including people’s collective knowledge or values”) to a survey of the metaphorical meanings of popular song lyrics. The eighty participants in the survey are speakers of English as either L1 or L2 and reside in three different locations, i.e. Canada, the United States, and Austria. Responses to the sets of open-ended, closed and rating questions posed in the survey reveal differences in the levels of figurativity among the groups of respondents and some modest cultural differences. Participants also seem to experience some degree of embodied simulation in their understanding of the song lyrics since sensory processes tied to bodily movement motivate, at least partly, the understanding of the metaphorical meanings in the lyrics. Some evidence for the influence of cultural differences on embodied simulations was also found. The third part of the volume, “Metaphor and Cultural Conceptualizations”, starts with the chapter “Genres and Text Types from a Cross-Varietal and Cognitive-Cultural Perspective: A Case Study on the Contextualisation of Classified Adverts” by Arne Peters and Frank Polzenhagen. As its title promises, this study takes a cognitive-cultural perspective to analyze so-called “classified advertisements” in Indian English and Black South African English. More precisely, the theoretical frameworks that shape this investigation are those of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics, as they have been applied to the study of

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Metaphor in Language across World Englishes

WEs. The attention is devoted to two specific text types, or genres, which are matrimonial ads published in English-medium Indian newspapers and herbalist ads issued in South African newspapers. Peters and Polzenhagen illustrate how each of these genres is characteristic of the cultural context in which it is used, and how it exhibits a distinctive path of development. As the authors explain, matrimonial ads are an imported text type, which was originally produced in Great Britain back in the seventeenth century and which were only later adopted and adapted to the Indian marriage culture. Herbalist ads, on the contrary, do not draw on any previous textual model provided by a historical input variety but were developed locally in South Africa to address specific cultural needs. The analysis is corpus-based and convincingly shows the significance of culturespecific conceptualizations in the ads. The authors show how culture-specific conceptualizations are transmitted on different levels since they find expression not only in the lexicon but also in the form and structure of the ads. The next chapter, “Segregation and Cooperation: Cultural Models of Gender in Indian and Nigerian English” by Anna Finzel, is also grounded in the theoretical principles and associated research methods of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics. Finzel cogently utilizes the notion of the cultural model to explore complex conceptual structures and make sense of the differing conceptualizations of gender in Indian English and Nigerian English. Her data consists of fifty-one sociolinguistic interviews with students in Delhi (India) and Ibadan (Nigeria). The analysis shows that the Indian cultural model of gender is based on conceptualizations motivated by the principle of segregation and the related notions of space, value and property. Differently, the Nigerian model is rooted in the principle of cooperation and informed by the concepts of nurture, care, family and procreation. Finzel also discloses differences in the general aims of the two cultural models. While the Indian model of gender aims to preserve the family honour, particularly that of the male in the family, the Nigerian model aspires to maintain family structures across subsequent generations. The exploration of figurativity in cultural conceptualizations is advanced in the following chapter, “Cultural Metaphors of Personification in Aotearoa English” by Marta Degani and Alexander Onysko. This investigation is motivated by the importance of personification in the worldview of the Māori people, the indigenous population of New Zealand. Beyond considering the cultural and symbolic relevance of personification in the Māori context, Degani and Onysko also approach this notion from a cognitive linguistic perspective and use it as a tool for their linguistic analysis. The chapter examines whether Māori bilingual

Introduction

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speakers of English and te reo Māori (the Māori language) employ personification metaphors in their English narrations of personal stories that were gathered during a story-telling task. The analyzed narratives offer a fertile ground for discussing diverse types of personification and highlighting the presence of both culturally specific and unspecific metaphorical conceptualizations. This chapter also advocates for a stronger focus on the cultural-semantic and metaphorical dimension of language in research on Englishes and, accordingly, it calls for a re-definition of the variety labelled Māori English into Aotearoa English. The final contribution in the volume is Mendes de Oliveira’s “Transfer of Metaphorical Conceptualizations from the L1 into English: Notes on an Emerging Project”. This chapter intends to fill a lacuna in scholarly research. As the author points out, comparatively little research has been carried out on the transfer of conceptual metaphors from a speaker’s L1 to their L2. The novelty of her study consists in addressing this topic from a cultural-linguistic perspective that takes into consideration how cultural content is involved in this process. In order to investigate how metaphorical conceptualizations may be subject to potential transfer, she analyses and compares excerpts from two videos featuring the famous Brazilian actor Wagner Moura who talks about the same issues in two interviews, one conducted in Brazilian Portuguese (his L1) and the other in English (his L2). Mendes de Oliveira also discusses Moura’s use of English in the interview in relation to Kachru’s definition of outer-circle Englishes and against a background of research on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Her study is innovative both in its reliance on “cultural scripts” as an apt analytical tool and in its multimodal approach since the author contemplates not only the verbal but also the gestural plane in her analysis of conceptual metaphors. Overall, the volume shows how the study of metaphor in WEs can disclose subtle facets of variation and cultural specificity. By focusing on Englishes that are spoken on five different continents (with several studies situated in Africa, Asia, and North and South America), the book also sheds light on the uniqueness of cultural conceptualizations and related worldviews that are part of these Englishes.

References Ammon, U. (2001), The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

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Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolton, K. (2020), ‘World Englishes: Current Debates and Future Directions’, in C. L. Nelson, Z. G. Proshina and D. R. Davis (eds), The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd edn, 742–60, New York: Blackwell. Callies. M. and A. Onysko, eds (2017), Metaphor Variation in Englishes around the World, Special issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 4 (1), Amsterdam: Benjamins. Canarajah, A. (2013), Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, London: Routledge. Davies, M. (2013), Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. Available online: www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/. Galloway, N. and H. Rose (2015), Introducing Global Englishes, Abingdon: Routledge. Geeraerts, D., G. Kristiansen and Y. Peirsman, eds (2010), Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Greenbaum, S., ed. (1996), Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jenkins, J. (2000), The Phonology of English as an International Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007), World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kortmann, B. and E. W. Schneider, eds (2004), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Kortmann, B., K. Lunkenheimer and K. Ehret, eds (2020), The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Zenodo. Available online: http://ewave-atlas.org. Kövecses, Z. (2005), Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kristiansen, G. and R. Dirven, eds (2008), Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Matsuda, A. (2017), Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Palmer, G. (1996), Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics, Austin: University of Texas Press. Pennycook, A. (1994), The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2007), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (1992), Linguistic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pütz, M., J. Robinson and M. Reif, eds (2014), Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Social and Cultural Variation in Cognition and Language Use, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Saraceni, M. (2015), World Englishes: A Critical Analysis, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Seargeant, P. (2009), The Idea of English in Japan Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sharifian, F. (2011), Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Steen, G. J., A. G. Dorst, B. J. Herrmann, A. Kaal, T. Krennmayr and T. Pasma (2010), A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU , Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Wolf, H.-G. and F. Polzenhagen (2009), World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Wolf, H.-G., F. Polzenhagen and A. Peters, eds (2017), Cultural Linguistic Contributions to World Englishes, Special issue of International Journal of Language and Culture 4 (2), Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Part One

Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

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Important Discoveries in the Study of Metaphor in World Englishes Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

The study of metaphor in Englishes around the world has brought forward different empirical evidence on variation in metaphor usage and structure. This body of empirical work has significant descriptive value, but more generally may offer critical insights into how scholars think of metaphor’s role in human thought, communication, and bodily experience. My chapter explores some of the ways that research on metaphor in World Englishes bears on several methodological issues and enduring theoretical debates in the multidisciplinary study of metaphor. I pay particular importance to arguments over whether metaphor best reflects cultural, historical, linguistic, cognitive, or embodied facets of human life, and to how studies of variation in metaphor usage can contribute to broader theories of human meaning and adaptive actions in real-world contexts.

2.1 Introduction The English language exhibits great variety in the ways people talk and write over many centuries in different places around the world. Consider one small slice of this diversity by reading a short excerpt from the novel The Serial, written by Cyra McFadden (1973), which offers a satirical look at the life of one suburban couple living outside of San Francisco in the early 1970s. It sent Kate into the pits when she learned from her “friend” Martha, who seemed to get off on laying bad trips on people, that Harvey was getting it on with Carol . . . She kept her cool, since Harvey and his hang-ups were no 15

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Metaphor in Language across World Englishes longer her problem. He made his water-bed and could lie in it, although she couldn’t help wishing that both he and his Innerspace would spring a leak. McFadden 1973: 112

Many English speakers may be able to infer something of the intended meanings of the different metaphorical phrases in this excerpt, even though these words and phrases emerged at a particular time and place in the history of the English language (i.e. the coast of California, near San Francisco, in the late 1960s and into the 1970s during the “human potential movement”). Some of these idiomatic expressions remain in occasional use but are often employed in a jocular manner to signal their being outdated. The phrase “into the pits” was a common way of referring to being depressed, “get off on” refers to having some real or imagined orgasmic experience, as in getting pleasure from “laying bad trips on people,” alluding metaphorically to giving others drugs to ingest (e.g. “acid” or LSD) that leads them to have an unpleasant experience or “bad trip.” A “hang-up” relates to an obstacle that prevents one from moving in a satisfactory manner toward some desired goal. Finally, wishing that Harvey and “his Innerspace would spring a leak” alludes to “his waterbed” (a mattress filled with water that was quite popular back then), as a concrete representation of the metaphorical idea of “Innerspace,” or his private sense of how he thinks and feels, which together need to be deflated by “spring(ing) a leak.” These now clichéd metaphorical phrases varied from more standard American English speech in the early 1970s because of the particular ways these metaphors reflected an alternative world-view, or mind-set, which was fashionable back in those times. The Serial cleverly mocks this style of metaphors and, more directly, the people who spoke in this manner (i.e. individuals who were extremely “full of themselves”). My interest in these somewhat idiosyncratic metaphors lies in the ways they both reflect enduring conventional modes of metaphorical thinking and offer stylistic variations of these ideas in language. According to the standard Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) analysis, which argues for the cognitive motivation for metaphorical language use (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2010), saying that one is “in the pits” is motivated by the common conceptual metaphor sadness or depression is down (or being in some downward, or low place, such as a pit), “get off on” relates to the metaphorical themes good is moving upward and a specific state of mind is a specific location from which one, in this case, gets away or “off on.” “Keeping cool” relates to the conceptual metaphor anger is heated fluid in the bodily container

The Study of Metaphor in World Englishes

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and conveys the idea of not becoming angry, “hang-ups” emerge from the idea that problems in life are physical obstacles preventing progress toward some destination or goal , and “spring a leak” in one’s “Innerspace” surely relates to the idea that self is a container . In these ways, the semicreative metaphors employed in the above excerpt from The Serial were grounded in more familiar, conventional metaphorical concepts, some of which still have currency across a variety of World Englishes. A key characteristic of the study of metaphor in World Englishes is the attention given to both the generalities and variations in metaphor performances (Callies and Onysko 2017). Just as common metaphorical phrases in the 1970s in California exhibited both general metaphorical themes and specific variations in their conception and expression, so too does the study of metaphor in Englishes around the world reveal the delicate balance, and trade-offs, between what is common and general with what is unique and specific in metaphorical thinking, language, and action. This attention to both generality and variation in metaphor makes the study of metaphor in World Englishes particularly important in creating theories capable of capturing the wide range of metaphorical language experiences, and not solely those that reflect only general trends or specific variations. This chapter discusses why the study of metaphor in World Englishes is important for metaphor research and theory. A major focus here is on how to best make sense of metaphor variation given the often-voiced desire for theories to be all-encompassing in their explanation of how metaphor is enacted in different cultures and languages. I also highlight several other ways in which metaphor studies on World Englishes engage in cutting-edge practices in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship.

2.2 Generality vs. variability in metaphor One of the defining features of the work on metaphor in World Englishes is the degree to which metaphorical language varies from one English-speaking community to another. Scholars in this research collective differ in their respective theoretical approaches to generality and variation in metaphorical language behavior, as well as the empirical methods they employ when conducting their research (Callies and Onysko 2017). The chapters in this volume offer compelling evidence in support of this observation. For example, one analysis of English speeches given by Hong Kong colonial governors and chief executives of HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative

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Region) shows differences in the way these two groups use the source domain of buildings in policy addresses (Ahrens, Jiang and Zeng, this volume). The chief executives used building metaphors more so than the colonial governors, but these two groups also varied in their focus on time when speaking with building metaphors. Thus, the colonial governors focused more on present time (e.g. “Gradually, we are building up the habit”), compared to the chief executives who spoke more about future events (e.g. “These infrastructure developments will ... lay a new foundation”). The colonial governors also used building metaphors when talking about political events, while the chief executives spoke more about social and economic events when using building metaphors (“The strategy here ... has laid the foundation for economic restructuring and revival”). Finally, the governors were more likely to use building metaphors when speaking about the geopolitical area of Hong Kong, whereas the chief executives employed building metaphors in their talk of individuals in Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Building metaphors appear to be used quite flexibly, but differently, in Hong Kong English political discourse. A study of Canadian, Austrian, and American English speakers’ understanding of popular song lyrics also shows subtle differences in people’s understanding of its verbal metaphors (Colston and Rasse, this volume). The different cultural backgrounds of these three types of English speakers also vary given specific individual bodily positions and movements, which influences the participants’ interpretations of the verbal metaphors in the song lyrics. This work illustrates an emerging trend within metaphor studies regarding the interaction between cultural background knowledge and bodily experiences, past and present (Gibbs 2017). Cultural beliefs do not exist in isolation but often depend on many other personal, including bodily, contextual, and linguistic factors. A further example of metaphor variation comes from a study of classified advertisements for matrimonial guidance in Indian English and herbalists in South African English (Peters and Polzenhagen, this volume). The South African metaphorical discourse is far more elaborate in terms of its linguistic, functional, and formal dimensions than that seen in the Indian English adverts. This difference is likely due to a greater cultural appropriation, a form of “contextualization”, of Western-style narrative forms in South Africa than in India. There are other cases of metaphor variation across World Englishes that are interesting to consider. For example, Callies’ (2017) study of idiomatic phrases, which included food and eating terms as source domains, reveals specific variations in the ways that “to have one’s cake and eat it too” and “to bite off more

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than one can chew” are employed in different African Englishes. Güldenring’s (2017) study of anger metaphors in four Englishes used in multilingual communities in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Singapore, as well as British English, shows that close to 150 source domains are used in anger metaphors, but that five of these domains, all of which express personification, account for over 80% of these metaphors across the different versions of English examined. A somewhat similar pattern of generalities and variations is seen in a study of multimodal representations of metaphors referring to gender and homosexuality in Indian, Nigerian, and British films (Finzel and Wolf 2017). There is also a good deal of culture-specific variation in the ways particular metaphors (e.g. women are witches ) are employed within different versions of English within these films. These selected examples are illustrative of a widespread trend within cognitive and cultural linguistic studies in which there are mixtures of consistency and variations in metaphorical talk and multimodal expressions across different World Englishes. One dimension on which metaphor scholars interested in patterns of variation across World Englishes agree is in terms of either cognitive linguistic or cultural linguistic frameworks. Cognitive linguists tend to offer explanations for metaphor use in terms of widely shared conceptual metaphors and metonymies, many of which are rooted in recurrent aspects of bodily experience (e.g. image-schematic structures). For instance, CMT scholars claim that the extensive systematicity in the ways conventional expressions describe abstract concepts offers a compelling source of evidence on the prominence of conceptual metaphors in abstract thinking and language use (Gibbs 1994; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Kövecses 2010). Consider the following set of conventional expressions: (1) (2) (3) (4)

“Greta is making good progress toward her Ph.D. degree.” “John has already reached several career goals.” “David ran into a rough patch trying to solve the difficult math problem.” “Sandra was completely stuck figuring out what to do after her divorce.”

Many traditional language scholars view the expressions listed above as being “dead” metaphors, but they are not. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) argued that these expressions are conventional manifestations of an underlying conceptual metaphor in thought, namely life is a journey. This metaphor gives rise to a diverse set of mappings, such as that people leading their lives are travelers, leading a life is traveling along a path, progress made in life is progress toward some specific destination, different means of achieving in life are different paths,

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progress in life is distance covered toward some destination, stages in life are locations along the way, and helpers or counselors in life are guides along the journey (Kövecses 2010). There is now an extensive literature from Cognitive Linguistics showing that conceptual metaphors have a critical role in the creation and meaning of many conventional metaphorical expressions, novel metaphors, polysemy, certain text inferences, gesture, and other multimodal metaphorical expressive actions (Gibbs 2017; Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Several empirical studies on metaphor in World Englishes also adopt CMT as a framework for investigating how certain metaphorical schemes of thought motivate both consistency and differences in metaphor use within and across different Englishes (Ahrens, Jiang and Zeng; Finzel; Mendes de Olivera, all in this volume). A vast body of experimental research within psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience demonstrates that people actively recruit conceptual metaphorical knowledge during immediate and more reflective aspects of metaphorical thinking and verbal metaphor use (Gibbs 1994, 2017). Much of this research is consistent with proposals that conceptual metaphors are often grounded in recurring patterns of bodily experience (Gibbs 2006, 2017). These findings are often interpreted as illustrating the broad generality of embodied conceptual metaphors in human life. Despite this strong trend in metaphor scholarship, various scholars argue that there is far greater variation in both metaphorical discourse and conceptual metaphors than typically acknowledged by researchers working within CMT. First, many studies indicate that linguistic communities often rely on multiple conceptual metaphorical ideas when thinking and speaking about specific abstract concepts, such as the diverse metaphors for life and various emotion concepts (Kövecses 2005; Yu 2008). CMT scholars typically suggest that there are often multiple, even contradictory metaphors for individual abstract concepts (e.g. love can be conceptualized as a journey, a building, a natural force, magic, a plant, and so on). People use multiple metaphors in thinking about specific abstract concepts because no single metaphor explains the many complexities associated with love, for example. Nonetheless, some scholars (e.g. McGlone 2008; Murphy 1996; Pinker 2007; Veraeke and Kennedy 1996) have gone so far as to suggest that CMT can be completely rejected as a satisfactory explanation of metaphorical language, and the human conceptual system, precisely because they do not believe that individual concepts can be internally inconsistent (i.e. the individual parts of a concept must fit together like pieces of a puzzle). This is one example of how the

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mere presence of variation in metaphorical language when talking of abstract ideas is interpreted by some as being contrary to the goal of discovering broad generalizations about the relations between metaphorical language and abstract thought. Scholars working on metaphor in World Englishes do not view variation as necessarily repudiating the basic tenets of CMT. Indeed, some CMT scholars see variation in metaphor as part of the foundation for human metaphorical thinking and linguistic expression. The cognitive linguistic research on crosscultural conceptual metaphors reveals, for instance, that two languages may share a conceptual metaphor, but that specific linguistic manifestations of these metaphors can illustrate subtle differences in the cultural-ideological background in which conceptual metaphors function. To take one example, Kövecses (2005) examined linguistic instantiations of the classic love is a journey metaphor in American English and Hungarian. The English expression “Look how far we have come” uses the word come, while the equivalent Hungarian employs jut meaning “get to a place after experiencing difficulties.” The English expression “We’ll have to go our separate ways” uses we in the subject position, while its equivalent Hungarian uses “our road that separates.” Decisions about relationships appear to be made by internal considerations of active agents in English, while relationships are more influenced by external considerations in Hungarian (e.g. the fork in the road is forcing the agents to go on their separate ways). These subtle differences reflect cultural-ideological traditions, with American English adopting a more active stance in regard to relationships, and life more generally, while Hungarian embraces a more fatalistic attitude toward relationships and life events. In this case, different instantiations of a single conceptual metaphor in two languages reflect and constrain the ways individuals in different cultures reason about an abstract target domain. This cross-linguistic analysis provides a perfect case of how what is general in metaphorical thinking and language (i.e. specific conceptual metaphors) is always situated within varying social, ideological, and cultural contexts. The mutually dependent interaction of embodied cognition with culture gives rise to very specific instances of culturally defined conceptual metaphors, those that shape how we distinctly think and talk about our experiences. More generally, CMT research has observed variation across languages and cultures in the ways different topics (e.g. love relationships, emotions, the self) are expressed via metaphor (Yu 2006). The work on metaphor in World Englishes adds to these earlier studies by demonstrating how metaphorical talk about certain topics or

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events also varies within a single language (e.g. English) in different cultural contexts and communicative situations. A different theoretical perspective embraced by some other World Englishes scholars is that of Cultural Linguistics. One broad characterization of this theoretical approach states: “Cultural Linguistics engages with features of human languages that encode or instantiate culturally constructed conceptualisations encompassing the whole range of human experience. Another way of saying this is that many features of human languages are entrenched or embedded in cultural conceptualisations” (Sharifian 2017: 2). Many cultural linguistic studies have, indeed, explored the ways that culture shapes people’s metaphorical talk of their experiences and the world around them. Cultural linguists studying metaphor in World Englishes see variation in metaphor and attribute these to non-cognitive factors, such as cultural and social forces (Baş Keškić; Mendes de Oliveira; Peters and Polzenhagen; all in this volume). My impression is that cultural linguists, as well as some cognitive sociolinguists, are sometimes more hesitant to explain systematic language behaviors in terms of embodied, cognitive structures as are cognitive linguists. This difference between scholars embracing the cognitive linguistic or cultural linguistic perspectives in studies of metaphor in World Englishes may, perhaps, merely be a matter of emphasis. Still, an underlying problem in the debates over metaphor variation is that scholars have contrasting ideas on the relations between cognition, embodiment, and culture. Some view the elements of this triad as being entirely separate (Steen 2008), while others suggest that they are mutually dependent (Gibbs 2017). The different ways that scholars interpret variation in metaphorical language within the study of metaphor in World Englishes, and elsewhere, mirror other long-standing debates on variation in language use. For example, within linguistic Pragmatics, popular theories such as relevance theory, seek broad generalities in the ways people draw pragmatic inferences in everyday talk (e.g. via the principle of optimal relevance and other related axioms), including metaphorical meanings (Sperber and Wilson 2008). But other theorists, more closely associated with sociolinguistic perspectives on pragmatics, see variation in language use and pragmatic inferencing as being entirely motivated by local socio-cultural concerns, such as sociopragmatic interactional principles (Spencer-Oatley and Jiang 2003). Not surprisingly, the emphasis on broad universal aspects of meaning-making, compared to specific variations and differences, gives rise to quite different theories of linguistic Pragmatics.

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Psycholinguistic studies on metaphor understanding mostly focus on detailing and explaining broad generalizations and pay little attention to variability in metaphor performance, including individual, linguistic, and cultural differences. These studies also typically downplay the importance of how the experimental task that participants must engage in (e.g. reading a story one line at a time, pressing a button when each line has been understood, priming experiments, moving window studies where people read sentences one word at a time, and so on) influence both the data obtained and the ultimate theory advanced given the findings. This portrayal of psycholinguistic studies on metaphor use and understanding is somewhat consistent with how variation is treated within Cognitive Linguistics given its emphasis on broad generalizations about the cognitive motivations for metaphorical language and meaning. Most psycholinguists and cognitive linguists aim to characterize universal minds with far less interest in individual and cultural variation in metaphor use. There has, nonetheless, been a recent upsurge in interest in psycholinguistics with variation in metaphor use. This research has generally demonstrated that the results one obtains in experimental studies on metaphor comprehension and interpretation typically depend on who the people are, the language materials used, the specific tasks that people are asked to engage in, as well as the methods for analyzing different types of behavioral and neuroscience data (Gibbs and Colston 2012). A relatively recent strand of work in psycholinguists and cognitive linguists now pay more attention to individual cognitive differences (e.g. working memory capacity), personality differences (e.g. introvert vs. extrovert), variation in the exact types of metaphors studied (e.g. aptness differences, frequency of use), and different tasks (e.g. full phrase reading time, eye movements, lexical priming studies, brain scanning) in the ways that verbal metaphors are interpreted (see Gibbs and Colston 2012, for a review of many of these studies). Gibbs and Colston (2012) argue that it is highly unlikely that all these mediating factors can be controlled for in order to create a neutral, normative account of verbal meaning understanding. Even understanding conventional metaphorical expressions may differ depending on a host of personal and contextual differences (e.g. the conventionality of a metaphor differs in its relations to varying discourse contexts). To give one example, the manner in which conceptual metaphors are recruited and applied to understand verbal metaphors (e.g. “Our marriage is moving along in a good direction”) varies from one person to another and from one context to another (Gibbs 2017).

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2.3 A dynamical view of metaphor stability and variation Most of the scholars working within the metaphor in World Englishes collective, similarly to the very recent developments on individual differences in psycholinguistic experiments on metaphor, offer a stark contrast by trying to directly infer the distinct variations in metaphorical language and meaning. In this same spirit, I want to advance an even broader conception of how best to explain both the regularities and variations in metaphor use, one that explicitly acknowledges both cognitive/embodied and social/cultural forces underlying the production and understanding of metaphorical language. Recall the excerpt from The Serial featuring several examples of metaphorical talk in the style of 1970s coastal California (e.g. “It sent Kate into the pits when she learned from her ‘friend’ Martha, who seemed to get off on laying bad trips on people, that Harvey was getting it on with Carol . . .”). What explains the emergence and meanings of these metaphors in the time and place in which they were employed? My argument is that there are a variety of forces working in close interaction which give rise to the specifics of metaphor use in any discourse situation. These different forces operate along different time scales and include the following: (1) Evolutionary forces to maintain cooperation with in-group individuals enhance individual and group welfare, including survival (e.g. speaking in a way that signals one’s affiliation with some specific community). (2) Culturally specific forces regarding the appropriate forms of discourse, such as the use of “bad trips” which emerged within California drug culture in the 1960s. Historical forces related to specific speakers’ past use of particular forms of talk, such as Harvey’s earlier use of “Innerspace” as a metaphor for describing his own mental states/consciousness mentioned earlier in the novel. (3) Social forces related to beliefs about when it is appropriate for a speaker, or narrator, to refer to others in particular ways, such as the use of “getting it on” when referring to sex. (4) Linguistic factors related to conventions of use. When the narrator uses the specific grammatical construction “get off on”, this is seen as appropriate and meaningful in context despite the seeming contradictory adjacent prepositions off and on. (5) Immediate communicative motivations such as the narrator’s, and author’s, use of satire to mock Harvey, and other characters in the novel, for his language (i.e. the use of certain metaphorical phrases) and lifestyle.

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(6) Brain and neural activity including that which emerges as brain systems become coupled during particular interpersonal interactions between characters in the novel, and more importantly, between the presumed author and readers. These are just a few of the forces that constrain the narrator’s choice of words and her use of metaphor in so doing. Linguistic theory often distinguishes between diachronic and synchronic processes in language evolution and use, but the dynamical theory properly recognizes the influence that both evolution and history play in the contemporary, even online, use of language. These forces act as interacting constraints to shape what speakers do in the moment when creating, using, or revising linguistic metaphors. Each force operates on a different time-scale, with some of these crawling along at very slow speeds, such as evolutionary and cultural forces, while others zip along at very fast speeds, such as immediate linguistic processes and the firing of neurons in the human brain. The various time scales are not independent, but are hierarchically organized, and nested within one another so that different forces affecting language experience are coupled in complex, non-linear ways. At the same time, little of what unfolds in the minds of speakers and listeners when using metaphor, or any other aspect of language, emerges from people’s slow conscious awareness of a desire to use metaphor, or any specific metaphorical word or phrase. As with all discourse, the narrator’s talk in The Serial stems from a hierarchy of constraints, not just from the intentional mental states of each speaker. Take, for example, the phrase “in the pits”. A cognitive linguistic analysis would suggest that this utterance was motivated by a single conceptual metaphor, namely depression is down . However, a dynamical view maintains that the specific words uttered are affected by multiple constraints. Thus, the narrator’s “in the pits” comment is related to her previous remark about her marriage being “hell,” which places the discourse focus on a particular embodied, conceptual metaphor (i.e. bad is down ), but one that is imbued with cultural meaning (e.g. cultural beliefs and imagery about the “pits” of hell in the Bible). The phrase “He made his water-bed and could lie” is also motivated through embodied understandings of making one’s bed and feeling comfort in laying in it, but also the more general cultural idea that one has to accept the consequences in life for our past actions (e.g. one has to deal with the specific location that one chooses to be at, which in this case is within the abstract bed space). Overall, the narrator’s choice of different metaphors reflected her exact brain, body, and world

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contingencies at the very moment of her speaking about different, abstract topics. Most generally, a dynamical approach sees the context for metaphor performance as a whole system activity and, again, as emerging from the dynamic interaction of forces operating along many different time scales. These forces are tightly coupled so that it makes no sense to focus exclusively on one time-scale (e.g. cultural or historical forces) and ignore others (e.g. faster-acting cognitive/ embodied and neural forces) in a theory of what causes metaphor variation. Metaphor scholars may focus on particular time-scales in their studies, but they should always be aware that these do not function autonomously in the production and interpretation of particular metaphorical expressions. Acknowledging the multiple constraints that shape any one moment of metaphorical language use provides a way of embracing the interdependence of generality and variability in verbal metaphor use. Quite simply, generality and variation are not different, but reflect alternative sides of the same coin, and are always mutually interdependent. Let me now return to briefly talk about a few concrete areas in which the study of metaphor in World Englishes offers significant, concrete, contributions to metaphor theory and research.

2.4 The interaction of embodiment and culture The question of how embodiment and culture interact with one another is, as noted earlier, one of the most important issues within contemporary metaphor studies. Research on metaphor in World Englishes reveals some of the complexities in cultural embodiment. My proposal on the dynamics of metaphor performance is that embodiment and culture, among other forces, interact in the unfolding of metaphor in discourse. I do not believe it imperative for scholars working on metaphor in World Englishes to fully adopt the above theoretical perspectives. Still, my strong sense is that the types of empirical evidence amassed in the study of metaphor in World Englishes can, at the very least, offer important insights into the ways metaphorical cognition depends upon cultural knowledge and values. One requirement, however, is that all scholars must do more than argue that some factor (e.g. embodiment or culture) is critical to metaphorical language use. Each scholar must also seek out the possible multiple forces operating in any moment of metaphorical performance and look to see

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how these various constraints work together to give rise to both the broad generalizations and specific variations in the ways people use metaphor around the world. My challenge, then, is for research on metaphor in World Englishes, embracing either the cognitive or the cultural linguistics perspective, to explicitly seek how what is embodied in metaphor is cultural, and how what is cultural is also shaped by embodied, cognitive considerations. Doing so will provide for deeper, and likely more complex, understandings of how both generalities and variations emerge in metaphors across World Englishes.

2.5 Mixing metaphors and metaphor variation Mixing metaphors is a topic that has surprisingly not been a major focus of attention in the multidisciplinary world of metaphor scholarship until somewhat recently. A general consensus of some recent studies is that mixing metaphors is neither rare nor difficult to produce and interpret (see Gibbs 2016). In fact, the prominence of mixed metaphors in both discourse and in non-linguistic modes of expression (e.g. artworks, visual advertisements—see Forceville and UriosAparsi 2009) makes a great deal of sense given that people typically have multiple, and sometimes contradictory, metaphors by which they conceptualize abstract ideas and life events. The variation in metaphorical performances observed in World Englishes scholarship is, in my view, very applicable to understanding the mixing of metaphors of English speakers around the world. For example, some of the variations noted in different idiomatic phrases across World Englishes, variation in personification talk, and in matrimonial and herbalist ads surely highlight the flexible nature of metaphorical thinking (see chapters by Callies; Peters and Polzenhagen; and Degani and Onysko, this volume). One key to future progress in this area is for scholars to not focus exclusively on individual instances of verbal metaphor within some linguistic corpus, but to more fully explore the relationships between different metaphors within a single conversational turn, narrative, or larger thematic type of discourse (e.g. matrimonial ads). Metaphors do not exist one-by-one but act as rhetorical tools for agreeing with other people, extending or elaborating on certain metaphorical themes, contradicting other recently voiced metaphorical notions, or, once more, exhibit the diverse ways that an individual speaker or writer approaches some topic using conventional schemes of metaphorical thought.

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2.6 Mixed-method approaches One of the lingering difficulties with metaphor research, and the attempt to find common ground in various theories of metaphor, is the fact that scholars typically embrace different methods when conducting their empirical studies. For example, cognitive linguists have historically relied on their own intuitions, even if these are seen as trained intuitions, when making determinations about what aspects of language express metaphorical meanings and what conceptual metaphors presume to motivate the use of specific verbal metaphors in discourse. However, scholars using corpus linguistic methods insist on looking at metaphor in naturalistic discourse contexts, both spoken and written, and argue that their source of evidence, and particular research tools, provide more accurate insights into the complex realities of metaphorical thought and language. Furthermore, psycholinguists and cognitive neuroscientists employ indirect experimental methods (e.g. behavioral and brain imagining studies) that presumably allow scholars to draw more accurate conclusions about online metaphorical language and thinking performances. The difficulty here is that these various kinds of empirical data may not complement each other in being able to offer “converging evidence” for or against some hypothesis or larger theory of metaphor use. This problem is especially salient when one tries to combine studies from different scholars employing varying methodologies on slightly different forms of metaphor language. One attractive solution to the problem of evaluating various empirical findings on metaphor in which scholars employ different research methods is for individual scholars to conduct studies using a mixed- or multi-method approach. Rather than employing a single research paradigm across a set of studies, as is typically done in Cognitive Linguistics and psycholinguistics, a mixed-method approach embraces various qualitative and quantitative methodologies to better investigate different aspects of some metaphor phenomena from varying analytic points of view. A positive feature of studies of metaphor in World Englishes is the frequent use of mixed methods. For example, Callies’ (this volume) study of idiomatic phrases in West African Englishes reports on both an elicitation and a questionnaire phase in which participants were queried about their use of various words and idioms, as well as a corpus study based on an examination of online and printed materials. Most notably, many of the idiomatic phrases obtained from the interviews with participants are not frequently seen in the corpus analysis. This difference in the data from elicitation techniques and

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electronic corpora may be due to a variety of factors, both personal (i.e. not wanting to use certain idioms in public settings) and historical (i.e. idioms from the interviews have just not yet made it into established corpora, as well as the possibility that the conceptual metaphor a bribe is a food gift may be less relevant than even a few years ago). These variations in the results obtained through behavioral and corpus methods are not unusual and it is really important to address and explain these differences, as was convincingly done by Callies. Other chapters in the present volume also adopt mixed methods in various small and large ways. Colston and Rasse examine people’s understanding of the metaphors in the lyrics of a rock song, from three different English-speaking communities, using both ratings and open-ended questionnaires. These two methods tap into different aspects of people’s intuitions about what certain metaphors may mean. Although the ratings provide quantitative data to test certain experimental predictions, the open-ended questionnaires enable people to speak more expansively about their understanding of the metaphors in the song lyrics. Mendes de Oliveria explores the transfer of cultural conceptualizations from L1 Portuguese to other expanding-circle varieties of English (the English spoken in Germany). She examines the metaphors in the transcript of an interview with a famous Brazilian actor, but also looks at the “visual plane” (e.g. gestures, facial expressions, gaze), and then compares these two modalities for metaphor. This mixed-method approach of simultaneously investigating metaphor in both the linguistic and non-linguistic modalities is becoming increasingly important in multimodal metaphor scholarship (see Finzel and Wolf 2017, for a discussion of some of the methodological problems associated with studying metaphor in multimodal situations). Lucek’s (2017) study of variation in conceptual metaphors in Irish English employs a mixed-method design in which sociolinguistic interviews are combined with cross-linguistic spatial methods and a cognitive mapping task. Participants that resided in or close to the Irish town of Navan showed variation in their use of spatial prepositions when describing the positions of objects and structures “in/on a road.” Close analysis of the participants’ responses also showed variation in basic conceptual metaphors of containment (in) and support (on), which can be related to the sociodemographic variables of the speakers. Finally, corpus analyses are a frequent part of many studies of metaphor in World Englishes, but, as shown in this volume, not all corpora are the same (e.g. in size, diversity, and functionality). Corpus linguistic studies have begun to address some of these technical concerns, but the present chapters openly acknowledge

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some of the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications associated with making choices as to what corpus to use and discuss the benefits and limitations of these (see Baş Keškić, this volume; Güldenring 2017). In a related manner, Onysko (2017) discusses what research methods may be most amenable to empirically study different forms of metaphor variation, ranging from differences in the use of underlying primary metaphors up to more local surface variations in the particular wording of metaphors from one English to another. These discussions are really critical for scholars to understand as they seek to form tight links between the data they observe and the specific theories of metaphor they advance. An important highlight of mixed-method publications on metaphor in World Englishes is the degree to which individual authors explicitly discuss some of the limitations, as well as the benefits, of different methodologies, including problems associated with blending together research findings obtained under different conditions. This openness to methodological problems is much needed in the multidisciplinary world of metaphor scholarship. The more scholars learn to present their findings in the context of the methods they use, the better.

2.7 Conclusion The research community associated with the study of metaphor in World Englishes provides several innovative and important insights into our understanding of metaphor generalities and variations. By explicitly focusing on variation in metaphor across World Englishes, scholars have, in a sense, discovered an ideal research universe for exploring some of the critical issues in the study of metaphorical thought, language, and action. I have described some ways of possibly integrating different explanations of variation in metaphor use, one that does not simply emphasize one level of analysis (e.g. cognition, embodiment, or culture) over the other. Dynamic forces shape the unfolding of metaphorical performances. Metaphor scholars may find it instructive to seek explanations for why metaphors vary across World Englishes in terms of the diverse dynamical forces, ranging from evolution and history, through culture, and to cognition and embodiment, which constrain metaphorical performances. One lesson from viewing metaphorical performances as emerging from a multitude of interacting forces is that every individual instance of metaphor is, in some sense, unique. Even the use of highly conventional metaphors in some

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context will often express nuanced metaphorical meanings given the very specific constraints from which these metaphorical expressions arise in the moment of speaking, writing, and bodily action. This wide view of variation can still, at the same time, illustrate larger generalities in terms of the types of forces operating when human beings use metaphors and act in metaphorical ways. Research on metaphor in World Englishes also offers insights into facets of metaphorical language not widely studied, such as mixed metaphors, as well as some of the benefits of embracing mixed methods when conducting empirical research on different topics. The scholarly inquiries into metaphors across World Englishes offer new sources of data on variation in metaphorical language use within a single language and demonstrate how novel and mixed methods can uncover novel insights into the ways metaphor shapes a variety of human cognitive/cultural conceptualizations.

References Ahrens, K., M. Jiang and W. Zeng (this volume), ‘building Metaphors in Hong Kong Policy Addresses’. Baş Keškić, K. (this volume), ‘Variation of Animal Metaphors in African Varieties of English’. Callies, M. (2017), ‘ “Idioms in the Making” and Variation in Conceptual Metaphor’, Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 4: 63–81. Callies, M. (this volume), ‘Comparing Large Electronic Corpora and Elicitation Techniques in Research on Conceptual Metaphor and Idioms in World Englishes: Validating the “Lexicon of Corruption” in West African Englishes’. Callies, M. and A. Onysko, eds (2017), Metaphor Variation in Englishes Around the World, Thematic issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 4 (1), Amsterdam: Benjamins. Colston, H. and C. Rasse (this volume), ‘Embodiment Across Englishes: Comprehension of Popular Song Lyric Metaphors in Canadian, Austrian and American English’. Degani, M. and A. Onysko (this volume), ‘Cultural Metaphors of Personification in Aotearoa English’. Finzel, A. (this volume), ‘Conceptualisations of Gender in Indian and Nigerian English: Segregation vs. Procreation?’ Finzel, A. and H.-G. Wolf (2017), ‘Cultural Conceptualizations of Gender and Homosexuality in BrE, IndE, and NigE’, Cognitive Linguistics Studies, 4: 110–30. Forceville, C. and E. Urios-Aparisi, eds (2009), Multimodal Metaphor, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Gibbs, R. (1994), The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Gibbs, R. (2006), Embodiment and Cognitive Science, New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R., ed. (2016), Mixing Metaphor, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gibbs, R. (2017), Metaphor Wars: Conceptual Metaphor in Human Life, New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. and H. Colston (2012), Interpreting Figurative Meaning, New York: Cambridge University Press. Güldenring, B. (2017), ‘Emotion Metaphors in New Englishes: A Corpus-based Study of Anger’, Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 4: 82–109. Kövecses, Z. (2005), Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, New York: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2010), Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, New York: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh, New York: Basic Books. Lucek, S. (2017), ‘Metaphor Variation of Spatial Conceptualizations in Irish English: A Methodological Design’, Cognitive Linguistics Studies, 4: 36–62. McFadden, C. (1973), The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County, New York: New American Libraries. McGlone, M. (2007), ‘What is the Explanatory Value of a Conceptual Metaphor?’, Language & Communication, 27: 109–26. Mendes de Oliveira, M. (this volume), ‘Transfer of Metaphorical Conceptualizations from the L1 into English: Notes on an Emerging Project’. Murphy, G. (1996), ‘On Metaphoric Representations’, Cognition, 60: 173–204. Onysko, A. (2017), ‘Conceptual Metaphor Variation in Meaning Interpretation’, Cognitive Linguistics Studies, 4: 7–35. Peters, A. and F. Polzenhagen (this volume), ‘Text-types from a Cross-Varietal and Cognitive-Cultural Perspective: A Case Study on the Contextualisation of Classified Adverts’. Pinker, S. (2007), The Stuff of Thought, New York: Basic Books. Sharifian, F. (2017), Cultural Linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Spencer-Oatley, H. and W. Jiang (2003), ‘Explaining Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Findings: Moving from Politeness Maxims to Sociopragmatic Interactional Principles (SIPs)’, Journal of Pragmatics, 35: 1633–50. Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (2008), ‘A Deflationary Account of Metaphors’, in R. Gibbs (ed), Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, 84–105, New York: Cambridge University Press. Steen, G. (2008), ‘The Paradox of Metaphor: Why We Need a Three-dimensional Model of Metaphor’, Metaphor and Symbol, 23: 213–41. Yu, N. (2008), The Chinese Heart in a Cognitive Perspective: Culture, Body, and Language, Berlin: Mouton.

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Comparing Large Electronic Corpora and Elicitation Techniques in Research on Conceptual Metaphor and Idioms in World Englishes: Validating the ‘Lexicon of Corruption’ in West African Englishes Marcus Callies

The various linguistic surface forms used to refer to the social phenomenon of corruption in West African Englishes are often metaphorically motivated and have gained increasing attention in the last few years. Several recent studies aim at identifying what could be summarized as a ‘lexicon of corruption’ comprising expressions for veiled bribes in these language varieties. However, the data presented in these studies were largely obtained through elicitation techniques and introspection. Thus, information about the actual extent of use of the relevant expressions is unavailable. In this chapter, I aim to validate the (often anecdotal) evidence for a ‘lexicon of corruption’ in West African Englishes reported in published research by presenting the findings of a corpus study based on the GloWbE and NOW corpora. The findings show that many of the expressions listed in previous studies do not frequently occur in the corpus data. This is discussed with a view to three potential explanations.

3.1 Introduction This chapter aims to contribute to the emerging research paradigm at the interface of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and World Englishes which explores the culturespecific nature and within-language variation of conceptual metaphors and their surface metaphorical expressions. This kind of research is typically grounded and 33

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framed in the fields of Cognitive (Socio-)Linguistics (e.g. Wolf and Polzenhagen 2009; Callies and Onysko 2017) or Cultural Linguistics (e.g. Wolf, Polzenhagen and Peters 2017; Sharifian 2017) and assumes that cultural background knowledge and the cultural conceptualizations that underlie conceptual metaphors and their linguistic expressions are essential for the interpretation of lexis, phraseology and figurative language use in varieties of English around the world that have developed in culturally diverse settings (see, e.g. Wolf and Polzenhagen 2007; Wolf and Chan 2016). Phraseology and idioms are also promising starting points for the identification of possible conceptual, structurally nativized linguistic markers of World Englishes (Schneider 2007: 46, 86). For example, Bamgbose even claims that ‘most differences between Nigerian English and other forms of English are to be found in the innovations in lexical items and idioms and their meanings’ (Bamgbose 1992: 155–6). In this spirit, recent studies have been devoted to West African varieties of English (e.g. Fiedler 2016; Callies 2017; Baş Keškić, this volume). In this chapter, I present a case study with a primarily methodological focus that zooms in on the various linguistic surface forms used to express veiled bribes in West African Englishes. These are often grounded in cultural conceptualizations and reflect salient cultural practices like gift-giving, negotiating and favouritism. These metaphors are euphemistic and hide the illicit nature of corrupt practices (Polzenhagen and Wolf 2007: 125). The manifold expressions used to refer to giving and taking bribes have gained increasing attention in the last few years with several recent studies aiming at identifying a ‘lexicon of corruption’. However, the data presented in previous research were largely obtained through elicitation techniques and introspection, which means that reliable information about the actual frequency of use of the relevant expressions is not available (see Section 2). In this chapter, the (often anecdotal) evidence reported in published research is validated against large electronic corpora that contain naturally occurring usage data from a diverse set of World Englishes. I discuss the rationale and advantages of using electronic corpora in research on conceptual metaphor and figurative language in World Englishes and describe the aims, data, methodology and general findings of the validation study (Section 3). A discussion of the findings and a brief conclusion (Section 4) rounds off the chapter.

3.2 The ‘lexicon of corruption’ in West African Englishes Polzenhagen (2007) and Polzenhagen and Wolf (2007) in their pioneering work on cultural conceptualizations of corruption in African Englishes highlight the

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omnipresence of eating metaphors in discourse of political leadership, witchcraft and wealth in West African Englishes. They identify several culture-specific conceptual networks, among them enrichment is eating which, they argue, can be interpreted as a reflection of the eating-and-feeding pattern at the heart of the African community model (Wolf and Polzenhagen 2007: 141). This network features the conceptual mapping a bribe is a food gift as a special instantiation of the more general mapping money is food. The mapping a bribe is a food gift and related ones form the conceptual basis for a number of (lexicalized) expressions that mean ‘bribe’ in the appropriate contexts, see Figure 3.1 and the examples in (1) (Polzenhagen and Wolf 2007: 143; Wolf and Polzenhagen 2007: 414).

Figure 3.1 Cognitive processes involved in a bribe is a food gift (Polzenhagen and Wolf 2007: 153).

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(1)

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kola ‘cola nut’ (a traditional food gift presented to guests, common throughout West Africa) soya ‘fried beef skewers’ (a Cameroon meal offered to a person invited to a restaurant; also used in to have eaten soya ‘to have accepted a bribe’) mimbo (Cameroon alcoholic beverage, see also Safotso 2017: 21) gombo (alternatively spelled ngombo, gambo) ‘okra,’ ‘okra sauce,’ which additionally means ‘funds’ (also mentioned by Skjerdal 2010: 375 and Safotso 2015: 21) chop (money) ‘acquire money quickly and easily; misappropriate, extort, or embezzle funds’ (chop is the Pidgin English word for eat; used in Nigeria and Ghana, see Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 150) beer money ‘a bribe paid to traffic policemen’ (the word refers to the 20 Naira banknote and is apparently primarily used in Nigeria, but also in Ghana, see Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 151)

All these words can also be used in idiomatic expressions with the verbs give and take as in take kola/mimbo/gombo ‘to accept a bribe.’ Assuming that the presence of a varied set of vocabulary from a certain domain can serve as an indicator of the salience of that specific domain/topic in a society and culture, it appears that the stock of lexical items and expressions from the domain of food and drink that denote corrupt practices in African varieties of English points to the significance of this social phenomenon and makes the expressions cultural keywords. The cultural significance of money is food and the widespread use of linguistic expressions that are motivated by this metaphor has even prompted their inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary (Salazar 2020). The dictionary now features (draft) additions/entries for both the Pidgin-derived items chop (money) ‘acquire (money) quickly and easily; misappropriate, extort, or embezzle (funds)’ and chop-chop ‘bribery and corruption in public life; misappropriation or embezzlement of funds’ (both used in Ghanaian and Nigerian English), as well as eat money (with basically the same meaning as chop money) which has also been attested in East African, more precisely Ugandan English, apparently through calquing from various Ugandan indigenous languages (Insingoma 2016: 165f.). In addition, several recent studies aim at identifying what could be collectively referred to as a ‘lexicon of corruption’ used to express veiled bribes in African Englishes, especially those spoken in Cameroon and Nigeria (Skjerdal 2010; Ekpenyong and Bassey 2014; Adegoju and Raheem 2015; Safotso 2015, 2017; Meutem Kamtchueng 2015, 2016, 2017). For Ghana, some older studies mention in passing only single expressions that are said to be used there (such as Bamiro

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1994, 1997). Only one recent, questionnaire-based study that examines Ghanaian English could be found (Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015). The studies referred to above list a number of additional expressions, a selection of which is given in (2).1 (2)

wet/water the ground ‘provide prior gratification or bribe that makes a later course of action or conduct smooth’ (Adeyanju 2009: 13, 15; Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 150) oil somebody’s hands/lips ‘bribe somebody’ (Skjerdal 2010: 377; Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 149) cash and carry ‘spend money to obtain something or influence decisions and results, bribe/bribery, rightly or wrongly’ (Skjerdal 2010: 377) fuel, fuel money ‘money to buy gas/petrol, a bribe’ (Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 152; Safotso 2017) Ghana must go [bag] (red and blue woven plastic bag stuffed with cash; see Skjerdal 2010: 375 and Adegojou and Raheem 2015: 161)2 soli (short for solidarity; used especially in Ghana in the context of journalism, see Polzenhagen and Wolf 2007: 156, Skjerdal 2010: 375 and Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 153) brown envelope ‘money put inside a paper envelope offered as a bribe or gratification’ (used in both Nigeria and Ghana; see Jowitt 2019: 112, Skjerdal 2010: 374 and Agbota, Sandaker and Ree 2015: 149; cf. Bamiro 1994: 14 and Bamiro 1997: 110)

Table 3.1 gives an overview of the data collection instruments used in the abovementioned studies. Importantly, the large majority of the expressions referring to veiled bribes listed there were obtained either by means of elicitation through questionnaires or interviews, sourced from participant observation and interaction with potential informants, or collected from online and printed materials, sometimes from works of literature. The study by Ekpenyong and Bassey (2014) examined popular and creative works of literature, while Adegoju and Raheem (2015) collected their data through interaction with different groups of informants (students of tertiary institutions, civil society members, human rights activists, civil servants, journalists and highly placed officials of corporations in the private sector) in informal settings (pubs, relaxation centers). Additionally, they drew on published cartoons in national newspapers and magazines, live programs on radio and television addressing the issue of corruption and home video clips where the issue of corruption is raised mostly in a humorous manner. Moreover, data were gathered randomly through participant observation at different settings in the academic community, business world, in government circles and everyday normal interaction.

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Agbota, Sandaker and Ree (2015) employed questionnaires to collect data on their informants’ personal experiences, views and experiences of friends and relatives on unofficial payments. The questionnaires contained explicit openended questions targeting the use of metaphoric language in soliciting or offering informal payments. Informants were recruited randomly from offices, markets, households, schools, universities and voluntary organizations in the Accra-Tema metropolitan area in Ghana. Meutem Kamtchueng’s studies (2015, 2016, 2017) are based on a broader set of data collection techniques such as participant observation, interviews, online sources (social media and newspapers), printed materials, novels and lists of target expressions found in previous studies. Safotso (2015) randomly had talks with civil servants and service seekers of various ministries in Cameroon, as well as their regional and divisional delegations, especially the ministries of finance, secondary education, basic education and territorial administration. A further data source were informal interviews with students and agents on university campuses, as well as with passengers and drivers during journeys. In his followup study, Safotso (2017) used questionnaires administered to staff in the ministries of justice, health and finance (N=150). In sum, these studies have relied on relatively small data samples gathered through elicitation techniques and introspection, sometimes through (apparently unsystematic and possibly anecdotal) observation. It has to be conceded that it is a great challenge for any researcher to directly observe verbal behavior in corrupt practices so that the elicitation of reported behavior seems a natural choice. However, this also means that reliable information about the actual frequency and extent of use of the reported expressions is not readily available. Because of the known limitations of small, elicited data samples, in particular with a view to novel and infrequent linguistic phenomena, a validation study based on largescale naturally occurring data is needed. Section 3 reports on the design and findings of this study but first provides the rationale for the study by discussing the necessity and advantages of a corpus approach to linguistic metaphor.

Table 3.1 Data collection methods used in previous studies of coded language used to give and/or ask for bribes in English spoken in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria Ekpenyong Adegoju and Bassey and (2014) Raheem (2015) Country Participant observation/ interaction (Informal) Interviews, talks Questionnaires Live radio & TV programs Newspaper cartoons, video clips Printed material Literary texts Online material

Nigeria

Nigeria

Agbota, Sandaker & Ree (2015) Ghana

X

Meutem Safotso Kamtchueng (2015) (2015) Cameroon

Cameroon

X X

Meutem Safotso Kamtchueng (2017) (2016) Cameroon

Cameroon Cameroon, Nigeria

X X

X

X

X

Meutem Kamtchueng (2017)

X X

X X X X X

X X

X X

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3.3 Corpus study: Aims, data, results 3.1 Corpora for research on linguistic metaphor Since the early days of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), researchers have worked with relatively small data sets, often relying on introspection by constructing examples for illustration or by gathering data in a relatively random fashion. The lack of large-scale systematic research based on authentic, naturally occurring data has often been leveled against CMT as a major point of methodological criticism in that “analysts who carry out qualitative analyses on small samples of data can be accused of ‘cherry picking’ examples to fit ‘armchair’ analyses” (Lederer 2016: 528). Deignan (2008) discusses some of the major problems with the traditional, introspective approach. She points out that “when we try to access our knowledge of word use without using concordance data, metaphorical uses may not occur to us, or we may think of ones which are memorable because they are innovative, and disregard conventional but vastly more frequent uses” (Deignan 2008: 284). As mentioned above, researchers often invent the (con)texts, which may contain examples of language that are rare, or even non-existent, in large corpora but appear salient to the researcher. Corpus linguists have also observed mismatches between patterns observed in corpus data and those found in intuitively-derived linguistic data. There is wide agreement now that adopting reproducible and quantifiable corpus methodologies has the potential to put research on conceptual and linguistic metaphor on a sounder empirical footing (Semino 2008: 199; see also Deignan 2008, Gibbs 2010: 6–7 and Gibbs, this volume). Stefanowitsch (2006) discusses several strategies to identify metaphorical expressions in and retrieve them from linguistic corpora.3 First, what he calls the “textual approach,” i.e. manual search and annotation, is highly accurate in terms of precision and recall but also very time-consuming, which puts constraints on the size and scope of the study that can be carried out. Second, “searching for source-domain vocabulary” involves searches for individual lexical items that constitute potential source domain triggers (e.g. rusty and well-oiled as lexical triggers of the metaphor the mind is a machine ). This approach often uses whole sets of such items which were selected based on a priori decisions, word lists or prior collocation/keyword analyses of text corpora dealing with targetdomain topics. Examples of this strategy are the study by Lederer (2016) or Charteris-Black’s (2004) chapter on the conflict lexicon in sports reporting. Third, Stefanowitsch discusses “searching for target-domain vocabulary,” i.e. searches for individual lexical items (e.g. mind, anger, happiness, fear) to uncover

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metaphorical patterns. An example of this approach is Güldenring’s (2019) large study of emotion metaphors in selected World Englishes. Finally, another strategy suggested is searching for metaphors based on “markers of metaphor,” i.e. expressions such as metaphorically/figuratively speaking, so to speak, in more than one sense, image, likeness or picture, literally, actually and veritable. Some of these approaches will obviously not identify all potential metaphorical expressions exhaustively, but rather a subset of those that contain the lexical material from the targeted domain-specific vocabulary. The present study aims at examining the actual frequency of occurrence of a set of lexical expressions grounded in conceptual metaphorical mappings that often involve words that come from the domains of food/drink and body parts, or socio-historically salient words (see the examples in (1) and (2) presented earlier). The fact that we are dealing with a selection of set expressions (that are, however, lexico-grammatically variable) makes the retrieval of the target structures a relatively straightforward task.

3.2 Aims, methodology and data of corpus study The case study presented here validates the (anecdotal) evidence for a ‘lexicon of corruption,’ i.e. coded language used to give and/or ask for bribes, as reported in recent studies on West African Englishes, in particular English spoken in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. One limitation of the study is that while there are a number of studies describing the language of corruption used in Cameroon (in the spirit of Polzenhagen and Wolf 2007) there is no large and recent corpus of English in Cameroon. Thus, the analysis had to be restricted to the Nigerian and Ghanaian English data that are available through large electronic corpora of World Englishes. The following research questions are addressed: ●

●

Does the corpus material provide evidence for the hypothesis that selected expressions from the lexicon of corruption are in actual use in the varieties under study (as measured in terms of frequencies and contexts of use in the corpora)? If not, what could be possible reasons for the observed mismatches?

Two large corpora were used. First, the well-known Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013; Davies and Fuchs 2015), a web-derived corpus composed of 1.9 billion words from 1.8 million web pages in twenty different countries where English is used either as the first language or a second language variety (mostly African and Asian countries). The texts for the corpus were

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collected in December 2012 and consist of informal blogs (about 60%) and other written texts harvested from the internet, such as newspapers, magazines and company websites (Davies and Fuchs 2015: 3). Second, the News on the Web corpus (NOW; Davies 2016–) is a monitor corpus of web-based newspapers and magazines from twenty English-speaking countries (the same as in the GloWbE). The corpus is updated on a monthly basis and contained over eight billion words at the time of writing (early September 2019). The obvious advantages, but also the manifold limitations and challenges when working with these web-derived corpora, especially when it comes to confirmation of authorship in the GloWbE, have been discussed elsewhere in detail (see, e.g., Callies 2017: 70–1 or the recent highly methodologically aware study by Güldenring 2019: chapter 4 for discussion). For the present study, the relative infrequency of the expressions under investigation allowed careful manual post-processing and discarding of false positives (mostly literal, nonfigurative and metalinguistic uses). The target words and phrases were retrieved from the corpora exhaustively by including spelling variants (e.g. caused by hyphenation as in Ghana-must-go vs. Ghana must go) and lexico-grammatical variants through searches for collocational patterns. For instance, to find variants of the idiom oil somebody’s hands I searched for the lemma OIL with the lemma HAND co-occurring in a span of 5L/5R to the node.

3.3 Results Table 3.2 summarizes the frequencies of occurrence of the expressions searched for in the Nigerian and Ghanaian components of the GloWbE and NOW corpora. The findings suggest that while several of the expressions listed in previous studies also occur in the corpus data, not all of them do. Actually, most of the expressions are rather infrequent, in particular the ‘money words’ (kola/ beer/chop/fuel/petrol money) and the verbal idioms wet/water the ground and oil somebody’s hands/lips. Surprisingly, and despite the reported widespread use of kola nuts as gifts/ bribes in West Africa, the expressions kola and kola money occur only infrequently in the corpus data. Examples are given in (3) and (4). (3)

The passport office is said to represent the very epitome of inefficiency in public service. People have to give “kola” to officials there to avoid the long queues and months of waiting that characterize applying for a passport in Accra. (NOW GH 17-02-03)

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Table 3.2 Frequencies of occurrence of target expressions in the Nigerian and Ghanaian components of the GloWbE and NOW corpora (normalized frequencies per ten million words given in brackets) Corpus No. of words in subcorpus kola, kola money soya mimbo gombo [ngombo, gambo] beer money chop money fuel money / petrol money Ghana must go cash and carry soli brown envelope wet/water the ground oil somebody’s hands/lips

(4)

GloWbE Nigeria

Ghana

42,646,098

38,768,231

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25 (5.88) 13 (3.06) 0 7 (1.65) 0 2 (0.47)

1 (0.26) 0 0 0 0 2 (0.51) 0 1 (0.26) 4 (1.03) 10 (2.56) 8 (2.05) 0 0

NOW4 Nigeria

Ghana

374,634,580 102,994,276 16 (0.43) 0 0 0 0 12 (0.32) 6 (0.16) 89 (2.38) 187 (4.99) 0 83 (2.22) 4 (0.11) 4 (0.11)

3 (0.29) 0 0 0 0 1 (0.1) 0 1 (0.1) 5 (0.49) 65 (6.31) 8 (0.78) 2 (0.19) 0

Here, no agricultural lands are sold, hired or leased for, at least, peasant farming. All that is required is to approach the landowner with “kola money” and a plot is offered. (GloWbE Ghana: General)

The three other food items mentioned in the literature (soya, mimbo and gombo + variants) are not at all attested, most probably because they are specific to the Cameroonian context for which corpus data were not available. Beer money is not attested either, but chop money and fuel/petrol money do occur, though rather infrequently (most hits were recorded in the Nigerian section of the NOW corpus), see examples (5)–(7). (5)

(6)

We make promises to the taxpayer, because we know that come the next 4-year cycle, gullible instrumentalist voters will rally round the small political chop money being spread and wait for the next consignment of new promises. (GloWbE Ghana: Blog) According to Banjos, the Police in the area also asked for “fuel money” before carrying out required action on the decomposing body. (NOW NG 16-10-10)

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(7)

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Call the POLICE on 112 It is intriguing and somewhat disappointing that the majority of people do not even realise that in Nigeria we are able to call the police and trust that they will come (without asking for petrol money. . . .). (NOW NG 17-01-06)

For chop money, an interesting varietal difference can be observed. In Ghana, chop money is predominantly used to refer to housekeeping money as in example (8). There is only one single instance in the corpus where it is used in the context of bribing, see example (9). (8)

(9)

Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament (MPs) have cautioned that they will resist any attempt by the government to impose tax on house-keeping money, known in the local parlance as “chop money”, if it is introduced in the 2018 budget. (NOW GH 17-11-14) If that were the case, what moral authority does Rawlings think he has in 2010 to be talking about President Mills not having the moral authority to fight corruption? How could he when he himself had people he knew to be “thieves” in his government? Or is Rawlings saying that probably Mr. PV Obeng became a thief during the NPP period? How could that have been? I know that in 1979–1982, it was Mr. PV Obeng, (then General Manager of Mankoadze Fisheries, Tema) who used to give chop-money to Mr. Rawlings. (NOW GH 10-06-15)

In Nigerian English, however, the use of chop money to refer to bribes is more common, see example (10). The meaning of ‘housekeeping money’ is also attested in Nigerian English, but only rarely when compared to the first meaning, see example (11). (10) If he is not giving two Toyota Prado jeeps to Tuface Idibia, he is doling out “N1 million “chop money” to party men who pay him visits”. (NOW NG 13-07-10) (11) He regularly sent home some money. Not that his mother needed it, but he liked to give his Mama some “chop money”. (NOW NG 16-03-22) Unsurprisingly, given the historical background (a large number of undocumented Ghanaian immigrants who stayed in Nigeria were forced to return to their home country in 1983, an incident that has come to be known as “Ghana must go”), the expression Ghana must go (bag) is used almost exclusively in Nigerian English, see example (12). It frequently occurs as a noun phrase

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(NP) modifier to characterize the relevant actors or practices as corrupt (as in Ghana must go syndrome/method/politicians/judges/editors/legislators), exemplified in example (13). (12) Speaking further, the Actress and mother of two said, “I am not one of those who shout in the morning and then at night I go behind the public and accept “Ghana must go” from those who are causing these problems”. (NOW NG 14-06-09) (13) But senior lawyers have now developed the illegal practice of subjecting witnesses to unending cross-examinations lasting several days. Clearly, the trouble with our judiciary does not end with “Ghana must go” judges. It entails a total systemic overhaul which is a political action. (NOW NG 1702-18) There is also a variety-specific difference in the use of cash and carry. In Nigerian English, it typically occurs in the context of politics and, similar to Ghana must go, as an NP modifier to mark the identified actors/practices as corrupt, e.g. politicians, journalists or judges, see examples (14) and (15). (14) It must be said that our democracy faces formidable obstacles ahead if our politics continues to be driven by “cash-and-carry” politicians. (NOW NG 18-09-11) (15) We have to bring an end to this cash and carry democracy which perpetuates our corruption ridden politics culture. (GloWbE Nigeria: General) In Ghana, however, the expression is almost exclusively used in reference to the healthcare policy introduced by the Hospital Fees Regulation in 1985, which came to be known as the “cash and carry” system. This system required Ghanaians to pay “out of pocket fees” at each point of service with the aim to finance the drugs and resources the healthcare system needed. However, the system ultimately led to the exclusion of many individuals from public healthcare who could not afford to pay the fees (Healthcare in Ghana n.d.). This difference in meaning and use can also be seen in the most frequently occurring noun collocates of cash and carry as shown in Table 3.3.5 The expression soli (short for solidarity) is attested in the Ghanaian corpus data exclusively and, in accordance with what has been suggested in previous studies, it is indeed typically used in the context of journalism, again as an NP modifier (soli practice/journalism/controversy), see examples (16) and (17).

46 Table 3.3 Top ten noun collocates (lemmas) of cash and carry in the Nigerian and Ghanaian components of the NOW corpus in a span of +4 to the right of the node Rank

Lemma in NOW_Ng

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

[BUSINESS] [POLITICS] [POLITICIAN] [PEOPLE] [JUSTICE] [JUDGE] [AFFAIR] [MANNER] [AWARD] [STYLE]

Tokens in NOW_Ng

Tokens in NOW_Gh

ratio

Lemma in NOW_Gh

15 13 9 6 6 5 5 4 4 4

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

5.1 4.4 3.1 2 2 1.7 1.7 1.4 1.4 1.4

[HEALTH] [SYSTEM] [CARE] [REGIME] [DELIVERY] [SERVICE] [HOSPITAL] [FACILITY] [POLICY] [PRESIDENT]

Tokens in NOW_Gh

Tokens in NOW_Ng

ratio

16 74 3 8 6 2 3 3 2 1

1 20 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 1

54.3 12.6 10.2 9.2 6.9 6.8 3.5 3.5 3.4 3.4

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(16) It is this same thinking with which the police take bribes cus their salary is not enough, teachers charge students extra to teach what they are supposed to teach, journalist take “soli” to do their jobs and politicians take 10% of all contracts! (GloWbE Ghana: Blog) (17) CASH FOR COVERAGE – “SOLI” JOURNALISM IN GHANA. (NOW GH 11-08-03) Similarly, the expression brown envelope is typically found in the context of journalism and is also often used as an NP modifier to characterize the relevant actors or domains as corrupt (journalists/reporters/journalism/media/syndrome/ culture), see examples (18) and (19). (18) The implication is that politicians can now write as many petitions alleging that they saw a judge taking brown envelope – which will warrant the judge to be asked to step aside. (NOW NG 2016 16-11-05) (19) This is a clear case of brown envelope reporting by a hungry journalist that wants to be known and be compensated being the likes of Joe Igbokwes. (NOW NG 2013 13-12-03) Finally, the two verbal idioms wet/water the ground and oil somebody’s hands/lips are attested but occur very infrequently in the data. The latter idiom is only attested in the Nigerian data, see examples (20)–(23). (20) Following the triumph of the APC in the 2015 general election, the godfathers in the party began wetting ground for their anointed candidates to assume “command” of the 8th National Assembly. (NOW NG 16-06-03) (21) We have every right to be cautious in opening our doors to such an economic giant, especially when it begins watering the ground with this kind of largesse that President Mahama is enthusing over and passing on to the people of Cape Coast (Ghanaians, generally). (GloWbE Ghana: General) (22) She even had the guts to show him a heap of files that have been gathering dust on her desk simply because the landowners refused to “oil her hands”. (NOW NG 12-12-03) (23) As long as people that have no jobs are found in the corridors of power, there will be no progress. You will continue to use the state revenue to oil their dry lips. (NOW NG 10-12-19)

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3.4 Discussion and conclusion Several explanations can be put forward to interpret the findings. First of all, as mentioned above, the study faces the difficulty that more recent large-scale data are not available for English in Cameroon. Hence, some of the expressions’ actual extent of use (e.g. food items) that are reported to be used in English in Cameroon (or Cameroon Pidgin English, see Safotso 2015: 21) could not be checked. All that can be said is that they are not attested for English in Nigeria and Ghana, possibly because they are specific to the (linguistic) context of Cameroon. Another explanation for the low frequencies of kola and other food items could be that the metaphor a bribe is a food gift may have become less salient in the recent past, e.g. as suggested by the title of Adegoju and Raheem’s (2015) paper “Gone are the days of ‘kola(nut)’ ” on which, unfortunately, the authors do not follow up in their paper. In a similar vein, Polzenhagen and Wolf (2007: 152) hint at possible cultural changes in bribing practices. While cultural practices are traditionally linked to specific gifts such as food items like kola, this may have changed: “Nowadays gift-giving is usually a question of money. The general monetarization of everyday life has transformed the giving of kola into the giving of money” (Olivier de Sardan 1999: 39). Some terms may have thus undergone change. For example, chop money is predominantly used in Ghana to refer to housekeeping money, not bribes (see the discussion above). Despite the fact that corruption is a pervasive and widely-spread social practice, it is illegal and entails prosecution and social embarrassment. It is thus likely that many people do not want to publicly talk about corruption which may act as a filter on the occurrence of the respective phraseology in the corpus data (which are mostly written data). It is a great challenge for researchers to directly observe speakers engaged in corrupt practices so that most previous studies have relied on the elicitation of reported behavior. Data from fictional contexts, e.g. corpora compiled from popular novels or movies, may be valuable data sources to examine the coded language of corruption in future studies. Finally, a general challenge for the corpus-based approach to conceptual metaphor and metaphorical expressions remains and is also a limitation of the present study: Words and phrases that are potentially used by speakers of the target varieties but have not yet been documented in published research cannot easily be identified in corpus data. It is through inspecting the concordances for known expressions and close reading of the context that corpus data have the potential to help the researcher to discover further relevant and valuable

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expressions when they occur in the co-text, see examples (24) and (25) that use the verb oil in what could tentatively be interpreted as metaphorical expressions motivated by the metaphor a bribe is oil to a machine . (24) He oiled the wheel of parliamentary endorsement with the legendary Ghana-Must-Go. (NOW NG 2017 17-12-23) (25) There is also the issue of our current harsh economic weather that tends to further oil the proverbial brown envelope which silences those who get it. (NOW NG 16-08-13) In conclusion, the corpus data attest to the relative infrequency of many of the expressions, but they have also unveiled several interesting patterns of use and varietal differences between Nigerian and Ghanaian English.

Notes 1 The expressions listed in (2) were compiled from the lists published in the mentioned studies. Only those expressions with a discernible grounding in conceptual mappings, i.e. those containing a source-domain relevant keyword (e.g. from the domains of food or drink, body parts or containers), were considered. Thus, forms such as Do something, Talk fine or See me after class (Safotso 2015: 50–2) were excluded and did not feature in the case study reported in Section 3.3. 2 The sturdy, blue or red checked jute travel bags are referred to as Ghana Must Go in parts of West Africa. This use apparently relates back to 1983 when a large number of Ghanaian immigrants in Nigeria without proper immigration documents were forced to return to their home country, packing their belongings into that type of bag (see Lawal 2019 for more information about the historical background). 3 Stefanowitsch (2006) discusses further, more sophisticated possibilities which have since become more readily available and accessible, e.g. working with corpus resources annotated for semantic fields/domains (such as Wmatrix; Rayson 2009; http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/) or corpora annotated for conceptual mappings. I will, however, not go into these for the sake of brevity. 4 At the time of writing (early September 2019), information about the holdings of the NOW corpus was accessible only up until the year 2018, while figures for 2019 were not yet available (see www.english-corpora.org/now/help/sources.xlsx). 5 The collocates in Table 3.3 are sorted according to the concept of relevance which operates on the basis of the Mutual Information (MI) score (see www.englishcorpora.org/mutualInformation.asp for more information). MI has been criticised because it gives too much weight to rare events, i.e. infrequent items. It is, however, the only score provided by the corpus interface.

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References Adegoju, A. and S. O. Raheem (2015), ‘Gone are the Days of “Kola(nut)”: New Trends in Language Habits and Coding of Corrupt Practices in Nigeria’, Journal of Language and Literature, 26: 155–71. Adeyanju, D. (2009), ‘Idiomatic Variation in Nigerian English: Implications for Standardization in the Context of Globalization’, Journal of English Studies, 7: 7–22. Agbota, T. K., I. Sandaker and G. Ree (2015), ‘Verbal Operants of Corruption: A Study of Avoidance in Corruption Behavior’, Behavior and Social Issues, 24: 141–63. Bamiro, E. (1994), ‘Innovation in Nigerian English’, English Today, 39: 13–15. Bamiro, E. (1997), ‘Lexical Innovation in Ghanaian English: Some Examples from Recent Fiction’, American Speech, 72 (1): 105–12. Bamgbose, A. (1992), ‘Standard Nigerian English: Issues of Identification’, in B. B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue. English Across Cultures, 2nd edn, 148–61, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Callies, M. (2017), ‘ “Idioms in the Making” and Variation in Conceptual Metaphor’, Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 4 (1): 63–81. Callies. M. and A. Onysko, eds (2017), Metaphor Variation in Englishes Around the World, Special issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 4 (1), Amsterdam: Benjamins. Charteris-Black, J. (2004), Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Davies, M. (2013), Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. Available online: www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/. Davies, M. (2016-), News on the Web corpus: 3 billion words of data from web-based newspapers and magazines from 2010 to the present time. Available online: wwww. english-corpora.org/now/. Deignan, A. H. (2008), ‘Corpus linguistics and metaphor’, in R. W. Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, 280–94, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ekpenyong, B. and V. Bassey (2014), ‘Language of Corruption and Anticorruption in Nigeria’, Journal of Contemporary Research, 1(2): 45–59. Fiedler, A. (2016), ‘Fixed Expressions and Culture. The Idiomatic Monkey in Common Core and West African Varieties of English’, International Journal of Language and Culture, 3(2): 189–215. Gibbs, R. W. (2010), ‘The Wonderful, Chaotic, Creative, Heroic, Challenging World of Researching and Applying Metaphor’, in G. Low, A. Deignan, L. Cameron and Z. Todd (eds), Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World, 1–18, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Güldenring, B. (2019), ‘Emotion Metaphors in New Englishes. A Corpus-based Study of Emotion Concepts in Institutionalized Second-Language Varieties of English’, PhD diss., University of Marburg, Germany. Healthcare in Ghana (n.d.), Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Healthcare_in_Ghana (accessed 6 September 2019).

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Insingoma, B. (2016), ‘Lexical Borrowings and Calques in Ugandan English’, in C. Meierkord, B. Isingoma and S. Namyalo (eds), Ugandan English. Its Sociolinguistics, Structure and Uses in a Globalising Post-protectorate, 149–72, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jowitt, D. (2019), Nigerian English, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lawal, S. (2019), ‘GHANA MUST GO: The ugly history of Africa’s most famous bag’, The Mail & Guardian. Available online at http://atavist.mg.co.za/ghana-must-go-theugly-history-of-africas-most-famous-bag. Lederer, J. (2016), ‘Finding Source Domain Triggers. How Corpus Methodologies Aid in the Analysis of Conceptual Metaphor’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21 (4): 527–58. Meutem Kamtchueng, L. M. (2015), ‘C’est ça que je mange?/ Is that what I eat? Examining the Language of Corruption in Cameroon’, International Journal of Language Studies, 10 (1): 125–48. Meutem Kamtchueng, L. M. (2016), ‘Explicating the Semantics of Metaphors in the Language of Corruption in Cameroon’, in J. Schmied and D. Nkemleke (eds), Academic Writing Across Disciplines in Africa: From Students to Experts, REAL Studies, 10, 165–82, Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag. Meutem Kamtchueng, L. M. (2017), ‘Give an Envelope for the Boss/Give a Brown Envelope for the Boss – On the Semantics and Characteristics of the Metaphors for Bribe across Cultures: Focus on Cameroon and Nigeria’, Journal of Language and Education, 3 (1): 45–57. Olivier de Sardan, J. P. (1999), ‘A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 37 (1): 25–52. Polzenhagen, F. (2007), Cultural Conceptualisations in West African English, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Polzenhagen, F. and H.-G. Wolf (2007), ‘Culture-specific Conceptualisations of Corruption in African English: Linguistic Analyses and Pragmatic Applications’ in F. Sharifian and G. B. Palmer (eds), Applied Cultural Linguistics, 125–68, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Rayson, P. (2009), Wmatrix: A web-based corpus processing environment, Computing Department, Lancaster University. Available online: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/. Safotso, T. G. (2015), ‘The Metalanguage of Corruption in Cameroon—Part I: The Registers of General Administration, Transport and Education’, International Journal of English Linguistics, 5 (2): 47–54. Safotso, T. G. (2017), ‘The Metalanguage of Corruption in Cameroon—Part II: The Registers of Health, Judiciary and Finance’, International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research, 5 (5): 15–28. Salazar, D. (2020), ‘Release Notes: Nigerian English’, Oxford English Dictionary, 13 January. Available online: https://public.oed.com/blog/nigerian-english-releasenotes/. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Semino, E. (2008), Metaphor in Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharifian, F., ed. (2017), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, Singapore: Springer. Skjerdal, T. S. (2010), ‘Research on Brown Envelope Journalism in the African Media’, African Communication Research, 3 (3): 367–406. Stefanowitsch, A. (2006), ‘Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy’, in A. Stefanowitsch and S. Th. Gries (eds), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy, 1–16, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolf, H.-G. and T. Chan (2016), ‘Understanding Asia by Means of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics. The Example of GHOSTS in Hong Kong English’, in G. Leitner, A. Hashim and H.-G. Wolf (eds), Communicating with Asia: The Future of English as a Global Language, 249–66, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf, H.-G. and F. Polzenhagen (2007), ‘Fixed Expressions as Manifestations of Cultural Conceptualizations: Examples from African Varieties of English’, in P. Skandera (ed.), Phraseology and Culture in English, 399–435, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolf, H.-G. and F. Polzenhagen (2009), World Englishes. A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolf, H.-G., F. Polzenhagen and A. Peters, eds (2017), Cultural Linguistic Contributions to World Englishes, Thematic issue of International Journal of Language and Culture 4 (2), Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Part Two

Aspects of Variation and Culture-Specificity in the Use of Metaphor

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4

Animal-Based Metaphors of Womanhood in English Literary Works Set in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Regions of India Atula Ahuja and Jiranthara Srioutai

The conceptual metaphor women are animals is ubiquitous in nearly all cultures of the world. However, its specific instantiations vary depending on the attitudes and beliefs of a cultural community towards an animal in a given culture. This chapter examines animal metaphors conceptualizing womanhood in the Indo-Aryan linguistic region in northern India and the Dravidian linguistic region in southern India. The chapter focuses on identifying specific instantiations of this metaphor and comparing and contrasting them across the two regions. The study is theoretically grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and uses the Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University (MIPVU) for metaphor identification and Kövecses’ Cognitive Dimension of Socio-Cultural Variation to situate the metaphors in their cultural environment. The findings reveal that (i) the specific instantiations of this generic-level metaphor vary across the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian literary works, (ii) they are more derogatory than negative in conceptualizing women in both regions, and (iii) the derogation and negativity are higher for Dravidian women. The study is significant in that it provides new insights into how animal metaphors construct the biological and social identity of women in the two regions.

4.1 Introduction Animal metaphors serve as a productive resource for conceptualizing human beings in nearly all cultures of the world since many aspects of human characteristics and behavior can be metaphorically understood in terms of 55

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animal characteristics and behavior (Kövecses 2006). Languages and cultures worldwide frequently link negative attributes of animals to negative attributes of human beings making animal metaphors “suitable candidates for verbal abuse” (Rodriguez 2009: 88). Recent psychological research has indicated that equating marginal groups with animals is a subtle way of denying them those attributes that distinguish humans from animals (Haslam, Loughnan and Sun 2011). Also, the great chain of being metaphor assigns a hierarchical order to natural entities, where animal metaphors are located below human beings (Lakoff and Turner 1989). This could be one reason why animal metaphors tend to socially subjugate women and other marginal groups such as homosexuals and immigrants (Rodriguez 2009: 79). Hines (1999) reported high instances of sexual abuse in animal terms representing women as mute preys, to be hunted and possessed. Frequently equating women to the negative abstractions of animals tantamounts to depriving them of their rightful place in society (Goatly 2007; Chin 2009). Deignan (2003) further notes that the specific instantiations of this metaphor may vary across cultures since the choice of features of the animal used in the mapping process usually depends on the culturally motivated attitudes towards that animal. India’s rich cultural diversity is well established. It is also reflected in its oral and literary discourse which is infused with culturally oriented metaphors. Despite this, cognitive linguistic studies in this area are surprisingly scant. To the best of our knowledge, Ahuja (2020) is the only large-scale comprehensive study which investigates the pervasiveness of metaphors in the literary works set in India’s three culturally diverse linguistic regions. More specifically, it examines conceptual metaphors of womanhood. The current chapter is a part of this larger study and focuses specifically on animal metaphors of womanhood. Previous research, as described in the literature review section, has indicated that animal metaphors used for women tend to sexually derogate, verbally abuse, and socially subjugate them. Since animals are venerated in Indian culture, it is hypothesized that animal metaphors may not be used so emphatically for the abuse and derogation of women but may act as a more positive force when conceptualizing womanhood. In view of the above discussion, this chapter has two main objectives: (1) To uncover the specific instantiations of the generic-level metaphor women are animals in literary works set in the Indo-Aryan linguistic region in northern, and Dravidian linguistic region in southern India. (2) To compare and contrast the specific instantiations of this metaphor across the two cultural regions.

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4.2 Review of the literature In the absence of studies on metaphors used for Indian women in the Indian context, a review of cross-cultural studies on metaphors used for women in different parts of the world was conducted. The purpose was to enable an overall understanding of the conceptualization of womanhood across the world. In most studies, animals have been metaphorically used to derogate women through reference to their behavioral traits, social roles, and physical attributes. In conceptualizing temperament and behavior, Esmeralda (2014) found that animal metaphors are often used to derogate and discriminate women, homosexuals, and immigrants with reference to their intellectual capacity. Words, such as donkey, goose, or beast when used to talk about women, allude to them as being dumb. Fontecha and Catalan (2003) carried out a contrastive analysis of the animal pairs in Spanish and English and concluded that the pair zorro/zorra (‘fox’/‘vixen’) metaphorically expresses craftiness, spitefulness, shrewishness, and ill-temper for both genders. The pair toro/vaca (‘bull’/‘cow’) is also considered derogatory since these cultures associate cattle with ugliness due to their largeness and coarseness. Halupka-Rešetar and Radić (2003) surveyed 100 university students for their opinion on forty animal names and found that in Serbian, a woman is typically addressed as an ovca (‘sheep’), curka (‘turkey’), kokoska (‘hen’), koza (‘she-goat’), and guska (‘goose’) to indicate stupidity and naivety. According to Kilyeni and Silaski (2015), bird -metaphors usually imply naivety, carelessness, ignorance, and indifference in women. With respect to social roles, Nilsen (1994) and Rodriguez (2009) found that animal metaphors used for women are mainly based on domestic animals such as a hen, and restricts them to the domestic sphere. Hsieh (2006) studied gender stereotypes through an examination of animal metaphors in Mandarin Chinese (MCh) and German and found them to be terms of endearment and/or approval, blessing, and harmonious living. In German, terms of endearment for women originate from domestic animals such as lamb, cat, rabbit, swallow, or dove. In MCh, male–female phoenix pair flying together indicate benedictions and marital bliss. In addition, there are high instances of animal metaphors describing women’s physical and sexual attributes. They are highly offensive and brazenly express sexual derogation towards women. Hines (1999) studied the conceptual metaphor (CM) a desired woman is a small animal and found that this metaphor exists due to man’s preoccupation with the woman’s sexuality as a thing for his consumption. Nicosia and Padua (2003) tested the validity of Hines’

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findings by studying animal metaphors for women in Italian and French. They found many French animal terms for women to be offensive since they allude to their genitals. The terms cavalla (‘female horse’), capra (‘female goat’), chatte (‘female cat’), and minou (‘kitten’) all refer to women’s genitals. In Italian a farfalla (‘butterfly’) refers to a woman’s vagina and terms such as vache (‘cow’), giovenca (‘heifer’), troia (‘sow’), pecora (‘sheep’), chienne (‘bitch’), gattina (‘cat’), and cagnetta (‘dog’) conceptualize women as sexual objects. Chin (2009) observed that animal metaphors in Mandarin deny women other human traits by focusing on physical characteristics only. She cited the example of བྷң⢋ (‘milk cow’), which metaphorically refers to a “large busted woman.” Barasa and Opande investigated animal proverbs for men and women in Bukusu language of Kenya and found that the Bukusu proverb Ekhafu yabene okhama nololelela musilibwa means “You milk someone’s cow while watching the gate” (2017: 94). “Milking a cow that does not belong to you” connotes “having illicit sex with a woman” and “watching the gate” means “ensuring the owner of the cow is not around” (ibid.). This proverb suggests that women are objects of male sexual desire. Kilyeni and Silašk (2015) found that a majority of animal terms in Romanian and Serbian are used to refer to women’s physical characteristics in a negative way. Characteristics of farm animals are used to refer to fatness, ugliness, and untidiness and characteristics of wild animals are used to conceive women as lustful and sexually active. Lixia and Eng (2012) compared the conceptual metaphor human beings are snakes in Mandarin Chinese and English and concluded that the conceptual metaphors a slim-waisted woman is a snake, a greedy woman is a snake, being hugged by a woman is being squeezed by a snake , and a beautiful woman is a poisonous snake in Chinese and a treacherous woman is a snake in English show women as sexually deviant, vulgar, and promiscuous. In most studies discussed above, the associations of women with animals convey more negative than positive attitudes. This is an indication that, despite the emergence of a global discourse on gender equality which has challenged gender stereotypes, the use of animal metaphors does not seem to show a concomitant corresponding shift. Stereotypes against women are culturally entrenched and continue to shape mental processes in the construction of their social and individual identities. Moreover, the studies described above have used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) as the main theoretical framework. The CMT relates to the principle idea which postulates that the human conceptual system relies on the mechanism of metaphorical extrapolation from concrete knowledge or a source domain (SD) to abstract

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knowledge or a target domain (TD) through the systematic use of cross-domain mappings: “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5). Further, the CMT framework enables the identification of the qualities and functions of the source and target domains that can be mapped between the two (Ahrens 2002). This is called the Ground. In the conceptual metaphor love is a plant, the Mapping Principle (MP) of love is understood as a plant because the Ground is “growth”. Plants involve physical growth and love involves emotional growth. Moreover, Johnson (1987) states that conceptual metaphors are based not only on our physical experience but they also have a substantially large social and cultural basis which plays an important role in conceptualizing and conditioning our minds.

4.3 Methodology The sample literary works were selected using the following procedure. First, a list of fifty literary works from each of the two regions was prepared as the sampling frame. From this, a shorter list of thirty-two literary works (eighteen from the Indo-Aryan and fourteen from the Dravidian region) with womanhood as the theme and female characters as primary protagonists was prepared. Next, the first 100 pages of each literary work were browsed to ascertain the presence of potential linguistic metaphors of womanhood. If the number was found to be less than five, that work was excluded. Using this method, fourteen literary works, seven each from the two regions, were selected for this study (Table 4.1). To obtain a list of potential linguistic metaphors, the literary works were read and screened manually. If the researcher came across lexical units that seemed to convey figurative meanings, these were recorded in a spreadsheet. Thereafter, each of them was systematically tested for metaphoricity using the Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University (MIPVU; Steen et al. 2010), wherein first, the contextual meaning and then a more basic contemporary meaning was established. In case of sufficient contrast between the two meanings, it was decided whether the contextual meaning was related to its basic meaning by some form of similarity and can be understood in comparison to it. The lexical units for which this was true, were assessed as metaphorical. The theoretical framework of the CMT was utilized to understand the target domain of womanhood in terms of the source domain of animals by setting up mappings between the two domains. In order to identify the conceptual

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Table 4.1 List of literary works selected for the study Indo Aryan literary works 1. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai (1980) 2. The Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta (1992) 3. Sister of my Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1999) 4. Book of Esther by Esther David (2003) 5. Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (2005) 6. The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri (2007) 7. Custody by Manju Kapur (2011)

Dravidian literary works Thousand Faces of the Night by Githa Hariharan (1992) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair (2001) The House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar (2002) Mistress by Anita Nair (2006) In the Country of Deceit by Shashi Deshpande (2008) When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy (2017)

source domains that underlie the linguistic metaphors, the ground for each linguistic metaphor was ascertained. Subsequently, the cross-domain mappings were drawn such that the meaning was projected from the more concrete source domain of bodily and cultural experience to the abstract target domain. This exercise helped uncover the conceptual metaphors. Under the broad umbrella of CMT, the source domain usage was analyzed using Kövecses’ (2005) framework of Cognitive Dimension of Socio-cultural Variation. This proposes that both the source and the target domains should first be analyzed within their respective cultural contexts to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the similarities and variations across the regions. Kövecses proposes four dimensions from which to assess variation. The first type of variation manifests when a genericlevel metaphor is instantiated with specific metaphorical content. The second manifests when a culture uses one source domain to explain different targets and vice versa. The third is a case of preference for one source domain over other source domains, and lastly, there are certain source domains that are unique to a particular culture. In the current study, the first dimension, described above, is used to look at similarity and variation in metaphors. The Great Chain of Being metaphor (GCB) model, that arranges all forms of entities or beings in the universe in a hierarchical order, has guided the understanding of the negative and positive conceptualization of the metaphors of womanhood.

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4.4 Results and discussion Regarding the relationship between animals and Indian culture, Doniger (2009) notes that a large number of animals in India are central to the cultural ideal of non-violence. However, anthropological studies reveal that the veneration of animals, especially of the cow, was a later feature in the Vedic period1 in northern India (Brown 1964; Shanklin 1985), but not in the Dravidian culture. Evidence from the archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley Civilization, which was built by the Dravidians, suggests that cattle were an important agricultural and economic asset of that period. The bull and cow engravings on the Harappan seals emphasize their power and strength, but there is nothing to suggest that either animal was held as sacred or in reverence (Shanklin 1985). In the Vedic tradition of the Indo-Aryans, animal sacrifice was the cornerstone of religion and animals such as the horse, goat, and cow were the main sacrificial animals. They were used for religious sacrifice not because they were held sacred but because they were considered superior, hence worthy of being offered to the Gods. A sense of veneration was inculcated at a later stage through the doctrine of ahimsa2 to discourage the growing practice of animal sacrifice (Stewart 2014). This sense gradually diffused into the psyche of the people of northern India but may not have been a major factor in nurturing animal-centric sensitivities in southern India. According to Brown (1964), the diffusion of the doctrine of cow sanctity in the followers of Hinduism is not clearly discernible. But it became conspicuous during Muslim invasions of northern India when the indiscriminate slaughter of cows became rampant. In this context, modern Hinduism covers, along with mankind, the complete animal kingdom, giving special significance to the cow. It is very likely that animal worship, especially of the cow, became widely popular in northern India in the later Vedic period. Animal veneration, which is actively performed and promulgated by women, is a common feature in the daily life in this part of the country. The results of this study are presented in the following sections.

4.4.1 Frequency and distribution of ANIMALS source domains across the literary works This section focuses on animal metaphors and is part of Ahuja (2020) that analyzed conceptual metaphors of womanhood, reflected in thirty source domains in English literary works set in India’s three linguistic regions. The study found that in literary works set in the Indo-Aryan region, womanhood is

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Table 4.2 Distribution of source domains in the two sets of literary works Sl No.

Source Domains

Number of occurrences (%) Indo-Aryan

1 2 3 4 5 6–27

animals objects supernatural entities plants elements of nature Others Total

89 (27.8) 57 (17.8) 24 (7.30) 31 (9.70) 25 (7.80) 94 (29.3) 320 (100)

Dravidian 40 (15.1) 85 (32.1) 22 (8.30) 8 (3.01) 15 (5.66) 95 (35.8) 265 (100)

Total 129 (22.0) 142 (24.3) 46 (7.87) 39 (6.67) 40 (6.84) 189 (32.3) 585 (100)

Source: A. Ahuja, Conceptual Metaphors of Womanhood (PhD diss., 2020)

conceptualized through the use of 21 source domains as manifest in 320 tokens. In the Dravidian literary works, it is conceptualized through the use of 27 source domains in 265 tokens (Table 4.2). Note that the “Others” category comprises a total of 16 source domains (SDs) for Indo-Aryan and 22 SDs for Dravidian works. The figures in parentheses are percentages of the total. The data from the Tibeto-Burmese works are not mentioned here. In the Indo-Aryan works, the source domain animals is the most frequently used, accounting for approximately 28% of the total metaphorical occurrences. In the Dravidian works, it is the second most frequently used source domain, accounting for 15% of the total metaphorical occurrences.

4.4.2 Mappings or instantiations at the specific level The specific aspects of animals such as species, physical attributes, mental state, and behavioral characteristics are mapped onto the specific characteristics of women which include their physical–mental state and appearance, their behavioral and personality traits, and social roles. Table 4.3 shows 89 specific instantiations of the women are animals metaphor in the Indo-Aryan literary works. Note that figures in the parentheses identify the number of metaphors found. For example, (3) in row 10 shows three occurrences of this CM. Of the 89 occurrences, 78 are unique, and 11 are similar in two or more literary works, as specified against the source domains. The underlying conceptual metaphor for each set of mappings can be uncovered as follows. In line 15, the source domain hawk occurs in Divakaruni (1999: 223) and Kapur

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(2011: 66). In both instances, the hawk’s characteristic “keen vision” is mapped on to the “penetrating alert, eyes” of the mother-in-law, and “strong sharp claws” are mapped on to her “strong hold” over the daughter-in-law, revealing the conceptual metaphor a mother-in-law is a hawk . Similarly, in lines 38 and 39, the animal’s “ferociousness” is mapped on to the behavior of two different women. In Divakaruni (1999), Sudha sees a man leering at her at the railway station but she wards him off: “He turns to say something nasty but his mouth falls open at the ferocious scowl on my face” (Divakaruni 1999: 264). Later in the story, Sudha narrates how, after being widowed, her mother had assumed a ferocious stance to guard against any unwanted male attention: “To guard herself, she developed a stinging tongue and a reputation of a witch woman . . . She was ferocious in her protection of me, making sure I was clothed and fed and sent to school” (Divakaruni 1999: 332). The conceptual metaphors underlying these two linguistic metaphors are similar, a defensive woman is a ferocious animal and a protective mother is a ferocious animal . Table 4.4 shows the cross-domain mappings for 40 instantiations of animal metaphors in the Dravidian literary works. Figures in parentheses identify common metaphors. For example, (2) in row 6 implies two occurrences of this CM in two different contexts. Of these, 35 are unique and 5 conceptualize women in nearly the same way. The underlying conceptual metaphor for each set of mappings can be uncovered as follows. In line 8, the source-domain butterfly conceptualizes women as free in two literary works. A young girl in Hariharan (1992) and a woman in Nair (2001) are equated with a butterfly. In Hariharan (1992: 43), we find: “She set out, an eager young butterfly, her pink armor glittering like rainbow colored wings.” Nair (2001: 4), includes: “Yet, this morning, Akhila was a butterfly with magical hues and gay abandon.” The underlying conceptual metaphor is the same—a happy girl/woman is a colorful butterfly.

4.4.3 Similarities and variations in metaphors across the literary works of the two regions As can be seen in Tables 4.3 and 4.4, the animals sub-domains common across the literary works in the two regions are bird, bitch/dog, butterfly, hen, moth, snake, and shellfish . Furthermore, the Indo-Aryan writers also make use of the sub-domains, alligator, bee/hornet, dog/ hound, cattle (bullock or cow), goat, sheep, deer, elephant, fish, kitten,

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Table 4.3 Cross-domain mappings between the elements of source and target domains in the Indo-Aryan works No.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Source Domain: animals

Target Domain: womanhood

Animal species & type

Animals’ physical attributes & state

Animal behavior & characteristics

alligator work- animal beehive bird bird bird bird bird bird bird (3) bird bird bird fledgling hawk (2) hen peacock sparrow

thick hide – – small soft dying caged clipped wings – old, decrepit elderly caged – – – – plumage –

– – – – – – – – incubating – hoarse nestling – sharp vision, grip pecking – –

Women’s physical-mental state & appearance domestic thick hair – – – insecure, abused restricted pregnant ailing, old & frail elderly lonely – – – – beautiful –

Women’s behavioral & personality traits

Women’s social roles & status

tenacious – – vulnerable – cheated – – – – hoarse – secure amateurish alert, controlling nagging

mother-in-law wife – – – wife

domestic

daughter – – – – wife female student mother-in-law wife – –

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

swan bitch bitch blood hound butterfly (2) black sheep caterpillar animal cow cow cattle (2) prize cow bullock animal deer deer dog (2) dog elephant animal animal fish

– – – – – – – caged – – – – – clawed eyes fearful eyes – stray – – – on bait

– – aggressive – – – – – – sluggish dumb and stupid – – – – – faithful gait ferocious ferocious –

graceful – – – – – – – – – – – – – large-eyed – – neglected – sexually abused – –

– suspicious defensive vigilant flirtatious, free rebellious Inexperienced/novice domestic – – dumb, oafish – – moody – timid loyal – gait protective desirable

– wife woman nanny woman daughter – housewife nurturer – – daughter wife wife – – maidservant – – – mother –

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(Continued)

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Table 4.3 Continued No.

Source Domain: animals

Target Domain: womanhood

Animal species & type

Animals’ physical attributes & state

Animal behavior & characteristics

Women’s physical-mental state & appearance

Women’s behavioral & personality traits

Women’s social roles & status

41 42

fish fish

– –

– –

reactive disgruntled

– –

43

fish

–

–

recovering from abuse

wife

44

game (3)

on bait stirring in muddy water swimming in warm water –

–

–

–

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

goat goat animal honeybee honeybee (2) kittens queen bee hornet nest animal lynx mare mare

– – hunted – – – – – impure – bridled bad tempered

nimble – – stinging toiling – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – menstruating – – –

vulnerable, without male supervision agile timid reluctant protective toiling

agitated alert, spying confined cantankerous

– – bride mother widow young girls matriarch mother-in-law – mother-in-law wife

67

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

moth metamorphic animal pet predator predator (2) polymorphic animal rhinoceros snake snake (2) shellfish – scorpion animal animal animal animal tigress

76 77 78

animal animal animal

– – maimed abandoned – – – – – venomous empty sacrificial animal venomous trapped trapped trapped trapped –

hovering – – – – – – prowling – – hissing – – – – – – – –

assaulted menstruating –

wild, skittery wild zoo

– – –

ill-dying – female body

The total number of mappings or CMs is 89.

– – – abandoned – – – – – – angry unhappy – – disgruntled

protective moody woman – husband hunter adaptable vigilant nervous, timid foul-mouthed – – – – – – – – potent – angry

mother daughter wife mother wife mother – mother-in-law – – daughter mother-in-law wife daughter woman woman expectant mother woman mother

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Table 4.4 Cross-domain mappings between the elements of source and target domains in the Dravidian works Source Domain: animals

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Target Domain: womanhood

Animal species

Animals’ physical attributes & state

Animal behavior & characteristics

Women’s physical-mental state & appearance

Women’s behavioral & personality traits

Women’s social roles & status

bird pigeon bitch bitch bitch bitch (2) bitch butterfly (2) butterfly cocoon buffalo cow goat (mother) hen horse insect insect insect

light, lively – – – – – – – trapped – – – headless – – – – –

– – – hovering around uncaring belligerent – – – – docile – – – – squirming flying around following chemical trail

– – – – – – – happy, free unhappy – – – raped – copulating woman – – –

quiet, unnoticeable peace-giving sexless protective uncaring belligerent bourgeois – – protective – lazy – motherly – rebellious instinct restless aroused (estrus)

– lover wife mother mother – – – – mother – – – – – – – –

19 20

lizard moth

– –

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

moth (2) mouse (2) pet rat shellfish shellfish shellfish snake (2) snake spider – – – vixen vulture

folded wings – – – – – – – hibernating tame untamed wounded – –

darting tongue buzzing around flame – gnawing wounded scurrying – – – venomous – – – – – – picking flesh from bones

– –

sexually active self-sacrificing

– –

– – – – – distressed reticent – – – – – rape victim – –

subdued relentless hurt – self-sufficient – – malicious withdrawn, reticent affectionate docile fearless – bad-tempered suspicious

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

69

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lynx, mare, rhinoceros, scorpion , and tiger . The Dravidian writers, on the other hand, make use of buffalo, horse, insect, lizard, mouse/rat, spider, vixen, and vulture , in addition to the ones shared with Indo-Aryan works. Among all the specific instantiations, the use of women are birds, women are butterflies, women are bitches , and women are cattle is more conspicuous in either of the two or both regions. Therefore, these metaphors deserve closer analysis.

4.4.3.1 women are bitches Bitch is a highly derogatory gendered term directed at women as a dehumanising insult. Table 4.5 shows that its use and impact is similar in the works of both regions. The usage attempts to control, through verbal aggression, women’s agency and behavior, and condition them to become complying, self-effacing women. The mapping varies in terms of frequency and the specific source-target mappings. Different characteristics of a bitch are mapped on to the woman which gives rise to variation. This metaphor occurs more frequently in the Dravidian literary works, where all except one CM (row 6) are highly pejorative. In the examples below, the specific instantiations of this metaphor are used for the women by their husbands and acquaintances, whereas, in the Indo-Aryan works, there are only two specific instantiations of this metaphor, and these may not be considered pejorative. In the Dravidian literary work, When I Hit You (Kandaswamy 2017: 164, 132), the husband reckons his wife to be a nymphomaniac and directs a slur at her to keep her strong-willed personality in check: “If you wanted to be fucked like a bitch, you could have asked me. . . . bitch.” The conceptual metaphor here

Table 4.5 women are bitches Indo-Aryan literary works

Dravidian literary works

1

a suspicious wife is a bitch

2 3 4 5 6

a belligerent woman is a bitch – – – –

a wife perceived as a nymphomaniac is a bitch a bourgeois wife is a bitch unconsenting wife is a bitch an uncaring mother is a bitch a malicious woman is a bitch a protective mother is a bitch guarding her puppies

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is a wife perceived as a nymphomaniac is a bitch (line 1). He also calls her a “petit-bourgeois bitch” (row 2) on account of her middle-class birth. In Thousand Faces of the Night (Hariharan 1992: 74), the husband abuses the wife by calling her a bitch when she refuses him sex: “He calls me a teasing bitch because I refuse him my body when his hand reaches out” (row 3). Other usages include both caring and uncaring mothers (Thousand Faces of the Night; Hariharan 1992: 77; The God of Small Things; Roy 1997: 211), an alleged adulteress (Ladies Coupe; Nair 2001: 71) and a malicious woman (Mistress; Nair 2006: 60). In the Indo-Aryan work, Sister of my Heart (Divakaruni 1999: 209), Sudha grows suspicious of her husband and calls herself a bitch: “I hate myself for what he has reduced me to, sniffing at him when he returns, like a suspicious bitch” (row 1). In Clear Light of Day (Desai 1980: 152), Tara, Bim’s younger sister, compares Bim’s behavior to that of a bitch on account of her frustrated aggression towards their mentally challenged brother: “Tara recalled his narrow, underprivileged face, his cautious way of holding his bag close to him as he came up the drive as if afraid that Bim would bark at him or even bite” (row 2). Among these two instances, one is used as self-criticism by the woman herself (row 1) and the second is used more as a gentle criticism by a younger sister for her elder sister whom she otherwise respects. Therefore none are evaluated as pejorative.

4.4.3.2 women are birds This metaphor is used to conceptualize women as harmless and homebound, in the two regions. Table 4.6 shows instances of the bird metaphor occurring more frequently in the Indo-Aryan works, with seven metaphors (rows 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13) conceptualizing women as happy and satisfied. In Sister of my Heart (Divakaruni 1999, 91), for example, Sudha wonders if after marriage: “... will I be like a tootame house-bird who prefers her cage to the vast frightening blue sky?” (row 2). In Custody (2011: 408), beautiful Shagun is compared to a peacock: “She was immediately recognizable, a peacock among the hens” (row 4). Six metaphors (rows 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15) conceptualize women as weak and two (rows 1 and 6) conceptualize them as negative people who are controlling and petulant. In the Dravidian works, on the other hand, there are only three instances of this metaphor, two out of which (rows 1 and 2) conceptualize women as homebound people absorbed in their caretaking responsibilities. The pigeon metaphor in row 3 is used by a man for his lover: “My love, the little bird of my heart, my pigeon” (Mistress; Nair 2006: 142).

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Table 4.6 women are birds Indo-Aryan Literary Works 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

Dravidian literary works

a nagging wife is a pecking hen a protective daughter is a mother hen a prospective bride is a house a housewife is a house sparrow bird a happy woman is an early man’s love interest is his morning bird pigeon a beautiful woman is a peacock – a beautiful woman is a swan – mother-in-law is a hawk – a pregnant woman is an – incubating bird wife is a nestling bird – a defeated woman is a small – bird who has run into a mountain elderly woman is an old bird – an incapacitated woman is a – bird with clipped wings an ailing, old woman is a – fragile, decrepit bird talkative woman is a chirping – sparrow a cheated wife is a soft bird – a wronged wife is a dying bird – fluttering is husband’s palms

The two bird metaphors that are similar across the two regions are those describing women as “hens” (row 1) and “house-birds” (row 2). As “house-birds,” women are perceived similarly in both regions—happy, simple housewives devoted to their households. The “hen” metaphor varies greatly. In the IndoAryan literary work, it shows women as bickering, nagging wives, whereas in a Dravidian work, a caring daughter is conceptualized as a protective mother, just like the hen that may be seen huddling around her chicks protectively.

4.4.3.3 women are butterflies Butterflies are considered powerful representations of life. In the literary works of the two regions, the specific instantiations of this metaphor show women as delicate, beautiful, free-minded, and ethereal, as shown in Table 4.7.

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Table 4.7 women are butterflies

1 2 3 4 5

Indo-Aryan literary works

Dravidian literary works

a happy, frolicking woman is a butterfly flirtatious women are butterflies a young girl is a caterpillar

a happy girl is a butterfly a free woman is a butterfly

a protective mother is a butterfly inexperienced, sheltered girls a sheltered daughter is a are caterpillars caterpillar an unhappy woman is a butterfly clipped to a board

The Indo-Aryan authors have used this metaphor to conceptualize women as happy and flirtatious. In The Age of Shiva (Suri 2007: 174), for example, the author describes college girls as flitting butterflies: “Like a swirl of butterflies taking to the air simultaneously, Freddy and her friend left him behind in search of next bush to alight” (row 2). In Sister of my Heart (Divakaruni 1999: 66), frolicking teenagers are described as colorful butterflies by the author: “Groups of teenagers, gay as butterflies, summoned the ice-cream man, bought orange ices, giggling and wiping their bright mouths when they were done” (row 1). In the Dravidian works, this metaphor is used to conceptualize women as happy and free personalities, as well as protective mothers. In Thousand Faces of the Night (Hariharan 1992: 43), Devi imagines her daughter to be a free and happy butterfly: “She set out, an eager young butterfly, her pink armor glittering like rainbow colored wings” (row 2). The Indo-Aryan and Dravidian authors have also conceptualized young girls and daughters as caterpillars which shows that girls are considered weak and inexperienced in both cultures, needing protection. Following is an example from an Indo-Aryan literary work, Clear Light of Day (Desai 1980: 172): “They seemed not quite out of their cocoons yet . . .” (row 4). The protagonist, Bim, thinks her nieces are over-protected and are not ready to face the world independently. For the Dravidian literary works, an example is presented from Thousand Faces of the Night (Hariharan 1992: 13): “In this fortress that shuts out the rest of the world, I grope towards her, and she weaves a cocoon, a secure womb that sucks me in and holds me fast to its thick sticky walls” (row 4). Overall, the conceptualization of women in terms of butterflies is positive in a similar way in the literary works of both regions. However, there is one

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metaphor in the Dravidian literary work, Mistress (Nair 2006: 54) which conceptualizes an unhappy wife as a trapped butterfly: “I think of the butterfly I caught and pinned to the board when it was still alive, its wings spread so as to display the markings, obviously that somewhere within, a little heart beat yearning to fly. I am that butterfly now” (row 5). Such a conceptualization is not present in the current selection of the Indo-Aryan literary works.

4.4.3.4 women are cattle Table 4.8 presents the specific instantiations of this metaphor. What surfaces prominently in the Indo-Aryan literary works, occurring six times, is that women are portrayed as dumb, stupid, sluggish, housebound, and subservient. Only one metaphor describes a woman in terms of a nurturing woman. This is an interesting and surprising finding given the importance given the veneration of cows in India. One would expect this metaphor to conspicuously show women as a positive force, a source of benediction. Instead, it is used to belittle them in the Indo-Aryan works and is absent in Dravidian works, with just a fleeting metaphor of a buffalo. The reason for this could be that cow worship began towards the end of the Vedic period in northern India, and only then did it start to be attached to sacredness due to its economic role as a farm and fuel animal (Brown 1964). For the Dravidian people, it always remained a farm animal, a source of food, and economic activity for which it was well appreciated but not revered. The doctrine of Ahimsa, which refers to non-injury to living creatures, surfaced in the Indo-Aryan religion in the later Vedic period and became an integral part of their daily lives. Examples from the data are as follows: “Akhila realized with shame that while she had in the manner of a docile water buffalo wallowed in a pond of self-pity Table 4.8 women are cattle Indo-Aryan literary works 1 2 3 4 5 6

a dumb woman is a cow

Dravidian literary works

a docile woman is a water buffalo wallowing in a pond a nurturing woman is a cow – housewife is a bovine animal – a housewife is a bullock going – round the mill docile women are cattle – a daughter is a prize cow –

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. . . Karpagam had gone ahead and learnt to survive (Ladies Coupe; Nair 2000: 202). Following are two examples of linguistic metaphors from the Indo-Aryan literary works. In Sister of my Heart (Divakaruni, 1999: 87), Sudha’s sister feels apprehensive that after Sudha marries she will be reduced to a life of a bullock: “You might as well put on blinkers over your eyes and join the bullocks that go round and round the mustard mill” (row 4). In The Age of Shiva (Suri 2007: 100), the father does not want the daughter to become sluggish after marriage: “I’ve decided that you are going to college, Meera . . . That you are not going to sit at home and become fat like some bovine wife” (row 3).

4.4.4 Positive and negative conceptualizations Human emotions can be classified as positive or benign, negative or derogatory, and neutral, representing the positive, negative, or neutral attitudes that persist towards a thing or an idea in a given culture. The conceptual metaphors are further analyzed and classified according to the attitudes they convey towards the various sub-paradigms of womanhood. Depending on whether the authors use the positive, negative, or neutral elements of a given animal to draw the mappings, the state of the woman or the status of womanhood may be ascertained as negative, positive, or neutral, revealing the deeply embedded perceptions. Table 4.9 comprises a list of words that express these emotions, attitude, or perceptions about womanhood. If a metaphor conceptualizes the target in terms of the characteristics presented in the “Positive” column, it is categorized as positive. An example from the current data is: “She was ferocious in her protection of me, making sure I was clothed and fed and sent to school . . .” (Sister of my Heart; Divakaruni 1999: 332). The underlying CM is a protective mother is a ferocious animal . Here, a daughter is referring to her mother as being “protective,” which she considers a positive quality in her mother, who developed a fierce stance after being widowed to protect both of them from unsolicited advances of men. If a metaphor perceives the target in terms of any of the characteristics in the “Negative” column, it is categorized as negative. An example from the current data is: “His family and mine were like pythons – they had taken a firm grip on my life and existence” (Book of Esther; David 2003: 319). The CM entails a reluctant bride is a victim gripped by a python . Here, reference is made to a daughter who is being pressurized to marry someone she doesn’t love. Her feeling of being trapped is what makes this metaphor negative. Some metaphors can have both a positive and a negative connotation, depending on

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Table 4.9 List of words expressing positive, negative, or neutral conceptualizations Positive (+)

Negative (−)

Positive and Negative (−, +)

Neutral (*)

affectionate, agile, beautiful, carefree, caring, defensive, desirable, fearless, flirtatious, graceful, happy, independent, loyal, motherly, peace-giving, pregnant, potent, protective, rebellious, recovering, secure, tenacious, vigilant

abused, abandoned, belligerent, angry, elderly, quiet, ill, amateurish, flirtatious, recuperating, burdened, cheated, pampered, sheltered reticent, talkative, captive, weak on account of cantankerous, old age. controlling, distressed, disgruntled, docile, dumb, foulmouthed, housebound/ domestic, insecure, malicious, menstruating, moody, nagging, neglected, novice, restless, relentless, sacrificial, selfsufficient, subdued, suspicious, toiling, timid, trapped, uncaring, unhappy, victimized, vulnerable, withdrawn

the context. The conceptualization of a woman as “belligerent” or even “pampered” may be considered positive on some counts but negative on some others. An example from the current data is: “In this fortress that shuts out the rest of the world, I grope towards her, and she weaves a cocoon, a secure womb that sucks me in and holds me fast to its thick, sticky walls” (Thousand Faces of the Night; Hariharan 1992: 13). The underlying CM is a daughter is a caterpillar in a cocoon . In the book, Devi describes how on her return from America, her mother, Sita, makes sure that everything is comfortable and convenient for her at home, just like she had done since Devi’s childhood. A girl child in India is usually not pampered, in fact they are expected to take on the responsibilities of helping out in taking care of the household. So while on the one hand, in receiving motherly care, Devi feels loved and cherished, which is positive, on the other hand, such a love over-protects or cocoons her, restricting her freedom and agency, which is negative. Later in the story, Devi complains

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that her mother tends to often control her life’s decisions. If the conceptualization cannot be ascertained as either negative or positive, it is considered neutral. An example from the data is as follows: “Sometimes I imagined myself to be an ant in a cosmic experiment, designed to test my ability to make sense of things” (The Age of Shiva; Suri 2007: 428). Here, the protagonist simply states that she felt as though she was an ant in the infinite universe. This description does not lend any negative or positive meaning, hence the metaphor is adjudged as neutral. Table 4.10 provides the number of conceptual metaphors in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian literary works categorized according to the negative or positive sense they convey towards the various sub-paradigms of womanhood. The analysis reveals that the writers have used negative characteristics of animals more frequently to conceptualize womanhood. However, the scale of negativity or positivity varies. Table 4.10 shows that proportionately, the frequency of negative associations is higher in the Dravidian works with 75% of the total metaphors, as compared to 42% in the Indo-Aryan literary works. Additionally, it is to be noted that the Indo-Aryan works also have metaphors with more positive associations to womanhood. Living in close proximity to animals due to the practice of animal worship is more likely to be the reason that animal metaphors are used less frequently to belittle and subjugate women than used in the Dravidian literary works.

4.5 Conclusion Gendered social biases and the treatment of women in the northern and southern parts of India is the central theme of this chapter and is presented through the specific instantiations of the conceptual metaphor women are animals . The analysis showed how this source domain is motivated to conceptualize womanhood in the literary works. Cross-domain mappings between the elements of animals and target concepts of womanhood are shown in Tables 4.3 and 4.4. The results of the larger study show that this metaphor occurs most frequently in Indo-Aryan literary works, accounting for 28% of the 320 occurrences of 21 source domains. It is the second most frequently occurring metaphor in the Dravidian literary works, accounting for 15% of the 265 occurrences of 27 source domains used to conceptualize womanhood. In terms of similarities, the women are birds, women are butterflies, women are bitches, and women are cows/cattle are common across the literary works of the two regions and similar until the first level of specificity. Within

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Table 4.10 Distribution of mappings with positive, negative, and neutral metaphors of womanhood Linguistic region

Literary works

Positive (+)

Negative (−)

Positive and Negative (− , +)

Neutral (*)

Positive (+)

Indo-Aryan

Clear Light of Day (1980) The Memories of Rain (1992) Sister of my Heart (1999) Book of Esther (2003) Space Between Us (2005) The Age of Shiva (2007) Custody (2011)

Dravidian

Thousand Faces of the Night (1992) The God of Small Things (1997) Ladies Coupe (2001) The House of Blue Mangoes (2002)

4 3 7 2 3 3 7 29 (32.5%) 4 0 1 0

2 0 11 11 6 4 8 42 (47%) 2 5 6 3

2 0 3 0 1 1 1 8 (9%) 1 0 0 0

7 0 1 0 0 2 0 10 (11.2%) 0 0 0 0

15 3 22 13 10 10 16 89 7 5 7 3

Mistress (2006) In the Country of Deceit (2008) When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017)

2 0 0 7 (17.5%)

9 0 5 30 (75%)

0 0 1

0 1 0

2 (5%)

1 (2.5%)

11 1 6 40

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these, there are some variations in the cross-domain mappings between the elements of the source and target domains. Also, the use of women are animals metaphor portrays women negatively in both regions by mapping the negative qualities of animals onto them. Hence, the hypothesis that animal metaphors may become a source of benediction when conceptualizing womanhood stands falsified. One reason for this outcome could be that not all animals are venerated in the Indian culture, and not every aspect of an animal is respected, even in those that are venerated. A cow, for example, is worshiped because it provides sustenance. It may, in fact, be ill-treated once it is past its productive age. Moreover, some animals, e.g. snakes are worshiped out of fear. But if it poses a danger, it is promptly killed. And lastly, worship of animals is a Hindu phenomenon and is more conspicuous in the Indo-Aryan region. This may be the reason why approximately 32% of metaphors are positive in the Indo-Aryan literary works as opposed to just about 18% in the Dravidian literary works. Also, given that the great chain of being metaphor assigns animals a lower status than human beings, the negative conceptualization of womanhood through animal metaphors should have been anticipated. The review of the literature on metaphors used to describe womanhood in other parts of the world reveals that female subordination through the use of animal metaphors is a universal phenomenon. The overall situation of women across the world is disturbing. One observation that stands out when comparing metaphors of womanhood in the current study with studies across the world is that, in non-Indian cultures, these metaphors have mostly focused on the objectification of their bodies, providing the imagery of the woman’s body as a sexual object to be consumed. The imagery created is often indecent, conceptualizing a woman’s bust as “a missile” and large-breasted women as “milk cows” and perceiving women as seductresses or “fox-goblins.” In the current data, the negativity in the CMs is not sexually offensive. Sexual derogation, if any, is often euphemistic. Women’s status and social roles, their virtues and weaknesses are the focus of animal metaphors in both regions. Considering the highly complex social mosaic of India, characterized by a vast spread of cultural diversity and heterogeneity, it would not be unrealistic to claim that the metaphors portray a largely genuine picture of the overall situation of Indian women. Nevertheless, the study is significant in that it provides new insights into how the source domain animals is used to construct the biological and social identity of Indian women as inferior beings. That said, with the opening up of markets and easier access to social media, a general disillusionment is growing in Indian women with their traditional roles and place in the society.

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The narrative that emerges from these metaphors can be a powerful stimulus in shaping the social and political discourse towards the creation of a society that treats its men and women equally.

Notes 1 The Vedic Period is the period between 1750–500 BCE when the Indo-Aryans settled in Northern India. They wrote the Vedas, considered India’s oldest scriptures, and formalized Hinduism. 2 Non-violence: Originally, towards animals. Ahimsa refers to “the absence of the desire to injure or kill” (Doniger 2009: 9).

References Ahrens, K. (2002), Proceedings of the First Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Taipei: Cheng-Chi University. Ahuja, A. (2020), ‘Conceptual Metaphors of Womanhood in English Literary Works by Indian Authors’, PhD diss., English as an International Language, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. Barasa, M. and I. N. Opande (2017), ‘The Use of Animal Metaphors in the Representation of Women in Bukusu and Gusii Proverbs in Kenya’, Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 10 (2): 82–108. Brown, W.N. (1964), ‘The Sanctity of the Cow in Hinduism’, The Economic Weekly, Annual Number February: 245–55. Chin, J. S. K. (2009), ‘Are Women Nothing More than Their Body Parts? Obscene and Indecent Metaphors Used to Describe Women in a Hong Kong Magazine’, LCOM Papers, 2: 17–30. David, E. (2003), Book of Esther, New York: Viking Press. Davidar, D. (2002), The House of Blue Mangoes, New York: Harper Collins. Deignan, A. (2003), ‘Metaphorical Expressions and Culture: An Indirect Link’, Metaphor and Symbol, 18 (4): 255–71. Desai, A. (1980), Clear Light of Day, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Deshpande, S. (2008), In the Country of Deceit, New York: Viking Penguin. Divakaruni, C.B. (1999), Sister of My Heart, London: Transworld. Doniger, W. (2009), The Hindus: An Alternative History, London: Penguin Press. Esmeralda, T. (2014), ‘A Critical Study of the Women are Animals Conceptual Metaphor’, Conference Paper, Spain: University of Murcia. Available online: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/267151007_A_CRITICAL_STUDY_OF_THE_ WOMEN_ARE_ANIMALS_CONCEPTUAL_METAPHOR

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Fontecha, A. F. and R. M. J. Catalan (2003), ‘Semantic Derogation in Animal Metaphor: A Contrastive-Cognitive Analysis of Two Male/Female Examples in English and Spanish’, Journal of pragmatics, 35 (5): 771–97. Goatly, A. (2007), Washing the Brain Metaphor and Hidden Ideology, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gupta, S. (1992), The Memories of Rain, New York: Grove Press. Haslam, N., S. Loughnan and P. Sun (2011), ‘Beastly: What Makes Animal Metaphors Offensive?’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30 (3): 311–25. Halupka-Rešetar, S. and B. Radić (2003), ‘Animal Names Used in Addressing People in Serbian’, Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (12): 1891–902. Hariharan, G. (1992), The Thousand Faces of Night, New Delhi: Penguin Books India. Hines, C. (1999), ‘Rebaking the Pie: the woman as dessert Metaphor’, in M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang and L.A. Sutton (eds), Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse, 145–62, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hsieh, S. C. Y. (2006), ‘A Corpus-Based Study on Animal Expressions in Mandarin Chinese and German’, Journal of Pragmatics, 38 (12): 2206–22. Johnson, M. (1987), The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kapur, M. (2011), Custody, Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India Private Limited. Kandaswamy, M. (2017), When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, London: Atlantic Books. Kilyeni, A. and N. Silaški (2015), ‘Beauty and the Beast from a Cognitive Linguistic Perspective: Animal Metaphors for Women in Serbian and Romanian’, Gender Studies, 13 (1): 163–78. Kövecses, Z. (2005), Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2006), Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction, New York: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner (1989), More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lixia, W. and B.W. Eng (2012), ‘A Corpus-based Study on Snake Metaphors in Mandarin Chinese and British English’, GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 12 (1): 311–24. Nair, A. (2001), Ladies Coupe, Gurgaon: Penguin India. Nair, A. (2006), Mistress, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Nicosia, B. F. and S. Padua (2003), ‘Masculinist Metaphors, Feminist Research’, The Online Journal Metaphorik.de, 5: 6–25. Nilsen, A. P. (1994): ‘Sexism in English: A 1990s Update’ in A. Rosa, V. Clark and P. Eschulz (eds), Essays on Sexism, 355–75, New York: St Martin’s Press.

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Rodriguez, I. L. (2009), ‘Of Women, Bitches, Chickens and Vixens: Animal Metaphors for Women in English and Spanish’, Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación: Revista de Estudios Culturales de la Universitat Jaume, 7 (7): 77–100. Roy, A. (1997), The God of Small Things, New York: Random House. Shanklin, E. (1985), ‘Sustenance and Symbol: Anthropological Studies of Domesticated Animals’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 14: 375–403. Steen, G. J., A. G. Dorst, B. J. Herrmann, A. Kaal, T. Krennmayr and T. Pasma (2010), A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU , Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Stewart, J. (2014), ‘Violence and Nonviolence in Buddhist Animal Ethics’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 21: 623–55. Suri, M. (2007), The Age of Shiva, New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Umrigar, T. (2005), Space Between Us, New York: Harper Collins.

5

Conceptualizations of eagle in Varieties of English: The Case of Nigerian English Kader Baş Keškić

English in Africa has been the subject of a book-length investigation into conceptual metaphors and cultural models from a cognitive-sociolinguistic point of view in Wolf and Polzenhagen (2009). The complex multilingual situation, as well as distinct cultural differences to “westernized” Englishes, are expected to provide a sound basis for exploring conceptual metaphors and cultural conceptualizations (see Sharifian 2003, 2015, 2017). Accordingly, this chapter aims to explore the cultural conceptualizations of eagle with a focus on Nigerian English (NigE). In order to be able to present a well-grounded framework for the potential culture-specificity of the expressions discussed in this chapter, a comparison to other varieties will be made. Therefore, the current dataset includes the Nigerian and British components of the corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davis 2003) as well as the Nigerian, British, and East African components of the International Corpus of English (ICE, Greenbaum 1996). The results show that the majority of the expressions retrieved from the data reveal more similarities than differences. However, particular uses are found to be motivated by differences in the mappings available to the speakers of different varieties for the same conceptual metaphor. Accordingly, variation is more likely to occur at a more specific level rather than the generic level, which is realized via differences in their linguistic formations.

1. Introduction One of the fundamental claims of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is that metaphor is pervasive not only in language but also in thought and action. 83

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Therefore, our conceptual system is, to a large part, metaphorical in nature (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). This means that metaphor is more ordinary than extraordinary, as it is often unconsciously used in everyday language. Based on these claims, early metaphor research mainly focused on conventional metaphors and their universality. Even though CMT does not inherently overlook the effect of culture on the use of metaphor, it was not until recently that the issue of cultural variation was taken into consideration in researching metaphor (see Kövecses 2005, 2015). This cultural turn has motivated the study of metaphor in relation to other areas of linguistics such as Corpus Linguistics, Discourse Studies, World Englishes, etc. Moreover, more recent advancements in the field encourage the study of variation among the varieties of the same language with the aim of investigating how different cultural contexts, in which these varieties have emerged, influence the use of metaphor. One such advancement is the application of the framework of Cognitive Sociolinguistics (see Kristiansen and Dirven 2008) to World Englishes (see Wolf and Polzenhagen 2009). This line of research, in a general sense, aims at converging the methods developed within Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics to the study of language variation. For the study of metaphor, the framework provides new insights into the question of how metaphors are used by different regional and social groups of speakers. Another strand of linguistics that emphasizes the effect of culture on the use of metaphors is Cultural Linguistics. Within the scope of this chapter, Cultural Linguistics refers to the recent area of research that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations which refer to the ways in which members of different cultures construe their worldviews, thoughts, feelings, and experiences (Sharifian 2015, 2017). In this regard, both Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics highlight the significance of culture for the study of variation in conceptual and linguistic metaphor. The application of these perspectives to the field of World Englishes provides a deeper understanding of varieties of English in terms of their metaphorical language use and culturally grounded meanings. In view of these new perspectives, both in the field of Cognitive Linguistics and World Englishes, this chapter aims to investigate the extent to which speakers of different varieties of English share their metaphors and to explore the dimensions in which these metaphors vary. In connection with the focus of this case study, it can be stated that the significance of eagles is deeply rooted in Nigerian folk tradition. A Nigerian folktale The Election of the King Bird narrates how the eagle is elected as the chief of all the birds (Dayrell 1910: 11–13). This tale also explains why men, who go to fight, wear black and white feathers, as

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they are believed to bring courage and strength to the wearer. Similarly, an Igbo folk song Ode to an Eagle emphasizes the title of the eagle as the king of all birds as well as its magnificence (Mama Lisa’s World online). Accordingly, this chapter focuses on a particular metaphor, namely a human is an eagle , as a large part of the expressions identified in the data are the realizations of this mapping. In this way, this case study aims to contribute to the growing body of research on the effect of regional and cultural background on the use of metaphor in varieties of English. In line with the purpose of the present study, the following questions will be at the centre of attention: (a) What are the similarities and/or differences in the linguistic realization of the metaphorical mapping a human is an eagle in NigE and British English (BrE)? (b) Do these similarities and/or differences reflect culture-specific conceptualizations of eagle in NigE and BrE? In order to provide well-grounded answers to these questions, we must first take a look at the a human is an animal metaphor.

2. Variation of a universal: The a human is an animal metaphor In its larger context, this study explores the a human is an animal metaphor. The productivity of this conceptual mapping across languages and cultures, as illustrated in earlier research in the field, is considered to arise from the fact that it is easily accessible, as it is grounded in the great chain of being metaphor. Lakoff and Turner (1989) discuss the four components that form this metaphor: the cultural model of the Great Chain of Being, the theory of the Nature of Things, the generic is specific metaphor, and the Maxim of Quantity. The Great Chain is a shared notion that places humans, animals, plants, and minerals in a hierarchical order on a vertical scale. The commonplace theory of the Nature of Things describes the forms of beings and their essences which lead them to behave or function in a certain way. The generic is specific metaphor is what makes this conceptual complex metaphoric. It allows us to understand human characteristics in terms of non-human attributes and vice versa. The Maxim of Quantity, however, limits what can be understood in terms of what and develops it as a pragmatic principle of communication (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 170–81).

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The existence of the great chain of being metaphor in different varieties of English as well as in different languages and cultures has been documented in several case studies such as the cross-cultural study of animal metaphors in English and Persian (Talebinejad and Dastjerdi 2005), the conceptualization of monkey in West African Englishes (Fiedler 2016), the entailments of the people are animals metaphor in Zulu (Hermanson and Plessis 1997), and the linguistic realizations of a man is a lion metaphor in Mandarin Chinese and BrE (Lixia 2011), to name but a few. Central to these studies is that the generic metaphor a human is an animal can be observed in several languages such as Persian, Mandarin Chinese, and Zulu and also in varieties of English such as British and West African Englishes. This suggests that the notion of conceptualizing human beings in terms of animals occurs across languages and cultures. However, one can observe great differences concerning the specific conceptual mappings and linguistic realizations of this metaphor. In this chapter, I will focus on the linguistic realizations of the a human is an eagle metaphor and its metaphorical entailments in NigE as well as the underlying cultural conceptualizations.

3. Data and methodology The study reported on in this chapter is a part of larger research which aims to investigate the use and variation of animal metaphors in NigE. In order to provide a sound basis for the aspect of cross-cultural variation, a comparison will be made between NigE and BrE, in which BrE serves as a reference point. This comparison can be deemed fruitful considering the historical development of NigE. Being a part of the larger research, this case study aims to explore the conceptualizations of eagle in NigE through the use of metaphors. In an earlier analysis conducted as a pilot study, the Nigerian, East African, and British components of the International Corpus of English (ICE; Greenbaum 1996) were analyzed. Each component of the ICE is composed of approximately 1 million words including both written and spoken data, which is rather limited to examine comparatively low-frequency items such as metaphorical expressions. Therefore, the results of the pilot study suggested that a larger dataset was required. Accordingly, within the framework of this case study, the Nigerian and British components of the Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davis 2003) were included. The Nigerian component examined in this study comprises approximately 41 million words including both general and blog data. On the other hand, the British component analyzed comprises of approximately 126

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million words of blog data. The general section of the GloWbE-GB was not investigated for this case study; therefore, all the examples to be presented in the GloWbE-GB belong to the blog component. Moreover, the relevant results obtained from the pilot study will also be discussed in this chapter. The advantage of having a large corpus becomes a disadvantage at times. Working with the GloWbE, one needs to keep in mind some issues that one might face, such as the issue of duplicates and the need for authenticity. As the corpus is web-derived, it is possible that certain webpages appear in more than one variety simultaneously. Even though they are working on improving this situation, it continues to be an issue. Another issue that is harder to tackle is to make sure that the webpages belong to the respective countries in the corpus. In an attempt to avoid this problem, the creators provide the users with hyperlinks to the original sources of the articles (Davies and Fuchs 2015). It is overwhelming and timeconsuming to manually check every source for authenticity. Moreover, some of these links have already disappeared. The issue of broken links also prevents one from accessing the full context of a text which is crucial to establishing the contextual meaning of a lexical item. This problem does not occur while using the full-text data. Moreover, even though the websites are associated with the respective variety, there is still a possibility of the authors not being a speaker of the said variety. Therefore, verification of authorship requires further processes, adding to the time spent on verification of authenticity as a whole. Furthermore, these measures can only be taken while using the online data. At the moment, there are no links provided for the full-text data, which means that sources for the texts cannot be verified. Despite these limitations, the GloWbE provides rich data for the study of metaphor use and variation in varieties of English, as it provides very useful and interesting data. The types of variation such as variation in meaning, discourse, and culture that can be investigated by using the GloWbE strengthen the suitability of the corpus for researching cultural conceptualizations in different cultures. The latest version of the WordSmith Tools version 7.0 was utilized (Scott 2016) for the analysis of the ICE Nigeria, ICE East Africa, the GloWbE Nigeria and the GloWbE Britain. In order to be able to transfer the GloWbE data to the WordSmith Tools, the downloaded (full-text) versions of the GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GB were used. These tools allow the compilation of word and keyword lists and to conduct concordance analyses. There are also a number of utility programs embedded in the tool for further analyses. The British component of the ICE comes with its own software, the ICE Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP); therefore, frequency analysis and metaphor identification were conducted using the tools provided by this software.

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The first step of data analysis included a frequency analysis for the item eagle and its lemmas such as eagles, eagle´s, eagled, eagling as well as eaglet and eaglets that are investigated within the source domain of eagle . With WordSmith Tools, this analysis can be performed by creating a word list, which presents the frequency of each lexical unit in a corpus. This step is followed by searching for the above-mentioned items. For the ICE-GB, this step included searching for the same items by using the tools provided by the ICECUP. The second step of the analysis was to conduct a concordance analysis for the items in question in order to access each text in which they appeared. The ICECUP provides each text line that includes the searched item together with its frequency. Therefore, it requires careful reading through those lines in order to determine the words that potentially carry metaphorical meaning. As a next step, the sections reserved for metaphor identification were analyzed. This procedure followed the guidelines proposed by the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrje University (MIPVU; Steen et al. 2010), which is an improved version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP; Pragglejaz Group 2007) developed to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. In the following section, I will discuss some of the examples that were deemed to be important in the conceptualization of eagle in NigE.

4. Analysis and results: The conceptualization of eagle in Nigerian English As stated earlier in this chapter, this case study is a part of a larger research project. In this section, some of the results obtained from the initial analysis conducted within the framework of the larger project are presented. Accordingly, the initial analysis seeks to determine the frequency of the items that are categorized under the source domain of animal ; in an attempt to identify those that appear most relevant to Nigerian culture. For this analysis, the Nigerian, East African, and British components of the ICE were examined. The most frequent items in ICE-NG are then further analyzed with regard to their occurrences in the ICE-EA and ICE-GB using the software and methods detailed in the previous section. The results show that the most frequent item in the ICE-NG was eagles with 166 tokens followed by 21 hits for the item eagle. There were two tokens each for eaglet and eaglets while there were no hits for the lemmas eagled, eagling, and eagle´s. In the ICE-EA and ICE-GB, these items were some of the least frequent ones.

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Table 5.1 Frequency of the search items in the ICE corpora word

ICE-NG

ICE-EA

ICE-GB

eagle

21

2

7

Eagles

166

0

1

eagle´s Eagled eagling Eaglet Eaglets Total

0 0 0 2 2 191

1 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 8

A closer look at Table 5.1 shows that 166 of 191 tokens correspond to the lemma eagles in the ICE-NG which is almost absent in the other two corpora. The items eaglet and eaglets are completely absent in the ICE-EA and ICE-GB. A closer look at the reason for the high frequency of eagles in the ICE-NG revealed that it was mainly used to refer to the Nigerian national football team, also known as the “Super Eagles.” Examples of such uses will be provided in the following section. For the reason of data sparsity, the results called for the inclusion of a larger dataset. Accordingly, further frequency analyses were conducted by using the GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GB. Similar to the results obtained from the ICE-NG, Table 5.2 shows that the lemma eagles has the highest frequency in the GloWbE-NG. 1005 of all the instances of eagles in the corpus referred to football teams, either Nigerian or otherwise. When compared to the four tokens of eaglet in the ICE-NG, 19 instances of eaglet and 66 instances of eaglets were encountered in the GloWbENG. What is to be noted here is that all 66 instances of the lemma eaglets referred to the Nigerian youth football team which is officially known as the “Golden Eaglets” and sometimes shortened to the “Eaglets”. Even though the use of eagles referring to sports teams was not observed in the ICE-EA and ICE-GB, 258 of all instances of eagles referred to various sports teams around the world in the GloWbE-GB such as “Philadelphia Eagles”, “Sheffield Eagles”, “The White Eagles”, or simply “The Eagles” for Crystal Palace Football Club. The remaining instances, on the other hand, showed a variety of figurative conceptualizations of the items in question. As this chapter is primarily concerned with the figurative conceptualizations of eagle , each instance was further analyzed in order to determine the extent to which these items actually

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Table 5.2 Frequency of the search items in the GloWbE word

GloWbE-NG

Eagle

374

Eagles eagle’s

per million words GloWbE-GB

per million words

9

803

6.5

1054

26

625

5

2

0.05

0

0

Eagled

3

0.07

7

0.05

Eagling

0

0

3

0.02

Eaglet

19

0.5

0

0

66

1.6

0

0

1518

37

1439

11.5

Eaglets Total

carried figurative meaning. Within the framework of this chapter, references to sports teams as “eagles” and “eaglets” as well as references to team members as an “eagle” and an “eaglet” were deemed to be figurative, as they create both metaphorical understanding of sports teams and team members in terms of eagles and eaglets and metonymic relations in the sense that the nicknames for the teams stand for the sports clubs. Even though the dominant usage of eagle vocabulary relates to sports teams, further conceptualizations do occur. The following subsections present various figurative uses of eagle expressions together with the examples from the corpora.

4.1 From “Golden Eaglets” to “Super Eagles” As stated earlier, the majority of the eagle expressions in the data refers to sports teams and players, and this section takes a closer look at some of the examples. Even though using animal names in order to refer to sports teams is quite common, it is still interesting to see how such expressions impact our understanding of how sports clubs and teams are perceived and how this perception shapes the ways that sports games and players are talked about. The most common usage of the lemma eagles in both the ICE-NG and GloWbE-NG is “Super Eagles”. One of such examples is as follows: (1)

Rwanda coach Milutin ‘Micho‘ Sredojovic told JOHNNY EDWARD his team will not be intimidated when they face the Super Eagles1 in a Nations Cup qualifier in Calabar on Saturday, insisting that it is the Nigerians who need to win more. (GloWbE_NG 2)

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In this example, the fear of eagles as birds of prey is expected to be transferred to the fear of a certain football club. In terms of common usage, the Nigerian national football team is sometimes simply referred to as “The Eagles.” (2)

The Eagles were expected to fly out to Liberia from Abuja by 6 am today on a chartered flight and return immediately after the game. (GloWbE_NG)

In addition to these uses, the Nigerian national football team is also known as the “Green Eagles”. As Aloy Agu, a former goalkeeper of the team, explains in an interview, the team was officially called “Green Eagles” until 1988 (Vanguard Nigeria online), meaning that at one point, there was not only one nickname for the team. (3)

The ex-international revealed this amidst sobbing while delivering a lecture in the 3rd Best Ogedegbe Memorial Lecture, an event organized in memory of late former Green Eagles goalkeeper in Ibadan on Tuesday. (GloWbE_NG)

Similar results were obtained for eaglets in the data. All the tokens indicated the Nigerian national football team for males under seventeen years old, also known as the “Golden Eaglets.”. (4)

National Under-17 male football team, Golden Eaglets, will today begin its final race for a slot at the 2013 African Youth Championship (AYC) with a qualifying encounter against its Malian counterparts in the last round of matches. (GloWbE_NG)

Similar to the usage of “The Eagles”, the “Golden Eaglets” are shortened to the “Eaglets”. (5)

Nigerians will be happy to see the Eaglets back in the African U-17 Championship and the Nigeria Football Federation is doing everything possible to ensure the team gets there. (GloWbE_NG)

There is another national football team in Nigeria for males under twenty which is called the “Flying Eagles”. (6)

The Flying Eagles of Nigeria ruled Africa but fell short of expectation at global arena. (GloWbE_NG)

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Occasionally, there were references to other football teams that are also referred to as “Eagles” in the GloWbE-NG such as “Mali’s Eagles” or the “Philadelphia Eagles,” whose players are also called an “eagle.” Such uses include “Super Eagle,” “Green Eagle,” “former Super Eagle,” or “former Green Eagle.” Interestingly, the development of the players from seventeen years old onwards is reflected in the names of the teams they play in. They start as the “Golden Eaglets,” denoting football players with no or little experience, and once they gain enough experience, they become “Flying Eagles.” Players over twenty years old then become “Super Eagles” or simply “Eagles,” as evidenced in both the ICE-NG and GloWbE-NG in different contexts and presented in the examples above. Another example denoting the existence of different stages of a football player´s career in terms of the life of an eaglet is as follows: (7)

Michael Eneramo has a goal to his name but not a very great game but then it is the young Eaglet who is now becoming a full Eaglet. (ICE_NG_com_51.txt)

In example (7), the expressions “young Eaglet” and “full Eaglet” are used to denote the professional growth of the players. Michael Eneramo is a new player for the “Golden Eagles” who is growing to be “a full Eaglet” as he scores for his team. This idea of an eaglet becoming a “full Eaglet,” in order to emphasize becoming more experienced, is not just used in the context of sports. The following three examples, identified in a text which integrated a speech at a graduation ceremony, show that the idea is used in other areas of life outside of the domain of sports. (8)

Our convocation is indeed part of our commitment to facilitate the continuous release of Eagles by providing a graduate the opportunity without undue delay to undergo the rite of passage which a convocation ceremony offers to formally release and announce to the world the emergence of a new set of Eagles. (ICE_ NG_btal_27.txt)

In (8), the speaker conceptualizes the graduates as eagles, and the reasons are explained in what follows in example (9): (9)

In the process we reaffirm our commitment to our long-term objes-objectives to raise a new generation of leaders to effect the changes our world so desperately needs it is for this reason that we refer to our graduates as Eagles recognising the splendour of that magnificent bird which represents the growth of an innate capacity to soar in the skies and reign in life. (ICE_NG_btal27.txt)

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After honoring the graduating students as eagles who have developed inner growth and are ready to enter into the real world, the prospective students are referred to as eaglets. (10) As I stand here on this most auspicious occasion an occasion which is worthy by every respect and where worthy children are admitted as Eaglets. (ICE_NG_ btal_27.txt)

Based on these examples, Nigerian football players begin their career as “Golden Eaglets” and become “Super Eagles” as they gain experience, while university students begin their education as eaglets and graduate as eagles. This conceptualization juxtaposes the journey of an eaglet from birth to learning how to fly and then becoming a bird of prey that “soars in the sky,” a conceptualization of education and career life. Hence, the examples previously presented bear witness of the existence of the metaphorical mappings (nigerian) football players are eagles/eaglets , (nigerian) students are eagles/ eaglets, experienced people are eagles, and inexperienced people are eaglets . In the GloWbE-GB, the term eagles is also used to refer to various sports clubs. However, the use of eaglet and eaglets was absent in the corpus. Thus, the mapping of early career sports players onto eaglets was also not observed. However, nicknaming sports clubs and players as “eagles” seems to influence the way that we talk about these clubs, their members, and the games that they play in British culture as well. (11) Derby County can’t ground high-flying Eagles

DERBY County fell to a 3-0 defeat at Championship leaders Crystal Palace this afternoon. (GloWbE_GB_ blogs)

As stated earlier, the London-based football team Crystal Palace is also known as the “Eagles”. Attributing eagle-like characteristics to the team hopefully makes it harder for their opponents to score against them. (12) Where would the Eagles make their nest? It seemed there was only one Holloway forward. (GloWbE_GB_blogs)

In (12), another behavior associated with eagles is used to refer to a new transfer to Crystal Palace, namely Ian Holloway. Consequently, based on the results obtained from the GloWbE-GB, the conceptual metaphor sports clubs/

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players are eagles is also commonly used in BrE. Nevertheless, a wider range of mappings seems to be available to the speakers of NigE which lead to the distinction between experienced and inexperienced/early career players as eagles and eaglets respectively.

4.2 The Eagle Saint Another area in which eagle metaphors commonly occur is religion. In the GloWbE-NG, 40 eagle expressions used in religious contexts were identified. In this context, eagle metaphors appear to be used as a guideline for what makes a good Christian in Nigeria, appearing in preachers, prayers, psalms, and others. (13) PRAYER POINTS

[. . .] 5. O Lord, give unto me power to mount up with wings like eagle, in the name of Jesus. (GloWbE_NG) (14) MY PRAYER REQUEST. (1) I want the Almighty God to use me for His Glory this year 2012 mightly. (2) I want God to make me a prayer Eagle throughout my Christian race. (GloWbE_NG)

In examples (13) and (14), two different eagle expressions are used. The idiomatic expression “mount up with wings like (an) eagle” is widely used throughout the corpus and only observed to be employed in religious contexts. As a general expression,“being an eagle of something and/or in doing something” is also a commonly used formation in order to emphasize how good a person is in what they do, in this case, in praying to be a good Christian. (15) Christians are supposed to mount up with wings as eagles. Anything that wants to convert an eagle to a hen must be pointed out so that you can deal with it. (GloWbE_NG)

In the first sentence of example (15), the same expression is used as in example (13), followed by a reference to an eagle and a hen. In several other examples, especially with reference to religion, this takes the form of a comparison between an eagle and a chicken. Example (16) illustrates this by further explaining the difference between an “eagle Christian” and a “chicken Christian.” (16) They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. It is those ones who will mount up with wings as eagle, you are either the eagle Christian or chicken

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Christian. [. . .] Chickens have their heads down, their peaks are always busy in the rubbish or something, they scratch among the debris, and they scratch among the filthy, to look for worms and for food. [. . .] But look at the other bird, the Eagle, the appearance of the eagle bird may look strange, these actions too may look very strange, you will see it not on the ground, the lowest it will go to the ground is probably on the fence and it is with his head lifted up to the skies. And its sharp eyes searching the cloud. [. . .] it mounts up. (GloWbE_NG)

Example (16) gives evidence of the perceived characteristics of the two birds and how these characteristics are mapped onto “good” and “bad” Christians. Animal metaphors, in general, are not uncommon in religious contexts. In Nigerian culture, particularly faithful Christians are conceptualized as sheep who will be separated by Jesus from the unfaithful goats on Doomsday. The analogy of an eaglet becoming an eagle explained earlier can as well be observed in the religious context. (17) A Christian is like that eaglet that has found itself where it does not belong. Stolen away by the devil, put under the wrong hen, but now he hears the cry of the master, the cry of mother eagle, which is the kind of cry I am giving to you this morning. (GloWbE_NG)

This example adds more information about the source domains eagle and hen for instance that the eaglet was “stolen by the devil” to be raised as a chicken. In the larger context of example (17), one day, the mother eagle finds the eaglet and teaches it how to fly like an eagle. As can be understood from the example, the mother eagle represents a religious leader who guides those who have deviated from Christianity to find their true selves in order to become “eagle Christians” as the first step to becoming “eagle saints.” (18) The eagle is noted for very great vision. It is the same thing with eagle saint. Those, whose eyes are glued to the things of the eyes, they cannot see heavenly things. They need to try and break through into the realm of the spirit. So, one way you can know whether you are a chicken or eagle in your spiritual vision. (GloWbE_NG)

This example reveals another characteristic of an “eagle Christian” that is important for the spiritual growth, namely spiritual vision which sees beyond the earthly things. It is also a gift that “eagle saints” possess. In the corpus, there are a few names that are listed as “eagle saints.”

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(19) Enoch was an eagle saint. (GloWbE_NG) (20) Elisha was another Eagle saint. (GloWbE_NG) (21) Noah too was an eagle Saint. (GloWbE_NG)

They are presented as “eagle saints” to whom “God will always reveal his secret” (GloWbE_NG). (22) How do we become an eagle saint? It is very simple, if you are prepared to pay the price.

The first thing is submission. Submit yourself completely to the Lord. (GloWbE_NG)

Example (22) mentions the first requirement to become an “eagle saint” which is complete submission to the Lord. The remaining examples in this section all come from Psalm 103 whose lyrics are cited repeatedly in the corpus. (23) Psalm 103: “He forgives all our sins, heals all our diseases, redeems our [. . .] tender mercies, and He satisfies our desires with good things so that our youth is renewed as the eagles.” (GloWbE_NG) (24) Psalm 103:5: Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. As a Christian you should be looking younger not older. (GloWbE_NG)

Even though the lyrics show variation in their different instances, the expression “our/thy youth is renewed as/like the eagles” is featured in every mention of Psalm 103. This expression is, in turn, also used without explicit reference to its source, which indicates that Psalm 103 is possibly well-known among Nigerians. In summary, the examples discussed in this subsection with regard to the GloWbE-NG were found to be based on the metaphors faithful christians are eagles and unfaithful christians/non-christians are chickens . Even though these mappings are based on the teachings of Christianity, they were non-existent in the GloWbE-GB. The fixed expression “mount up wings like the eagles” was identified one time in the GloWbE-GB but was not used with reference to religion even though the expression can be traced back to the Bible (Isaiah 40:31, King James version). The fact remains that

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the conceptualization of (good) christians in terms of eagles is not specific to Nigeria; however, the use of their linguistic realizations is more salient in NigE-based on the results obtained from the data analyzed.

4.3 Fixed expressions In addition to the fixed expressions that have already been introduced in the previous sections such as “mount up wings like an eagle” and “youth being renewed like an eagle”, this section presents some more frequently used fixed expressions found in the corpora. The most frequently used fixed expression both in the GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GB is “eagle-eyed”. This expression occurs 36 times in the GloWbE-NG while 100 instances were found in the GloWbE-GB. Altogether, there are 112 instances of 6 different fixed expressions in the GloWbE-GB while the number of all the instances of 8 different fixed expressions in the GloWbE-NG is 53. A closer look at the tables shows that the majority of the expressions are shared. The expression “youth being renewed like the eagles” was observed only in the GloWbE-NG although it was one of the expressions used with reference to Christianity. This may result from the differences in the kinds of texts included in the two corpora. It may also mean that religion, especially Christianity, is a more widely discussed topic in Nigerian culture with regard to eagle expressions. The expression that was identified only in the GloWbE-GB was

Table 5.3 Fixed expressions identified in the GloWbE-NG Fixed expression

Meaning

Being eagle-eyed/having eagle eyes

Observant, perceptive, sharp-eyed, keen-eyed Observing something very closely, with keen and/or sharp eye Having a keen or sharp eye Being very good at something to raise to a higher level to excel in something, gain excellence and completeness Gaining a spiritual vision Giving everyone a fair chance in life

Keeping an eagle eye on something Having an eagle eye for something Being an eagle of/at something to soar like an eagle to mount up wings like an eagle youth being renewed like the eagles Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch. If one says no to other, let his wing break.

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Table 5.4 Fixed expressions identified in the GloWbE-GB Fixed expression

Meaning

Being eagle-eyed/having eagle eyes

Observant, perceptive, sharp-eyed, keen-eyed Observing something very closely, with keen and/or sharp eye Having a keen or sharp eye Being very good at something to raise to a higher level to excel at something, gain excellence and completeness to stand or move with arms and legs stretched out

Keeping an eagle eye on something Having an eagle eye for something Being an eagle of/at something to soar like an eagle to mount up wings like eagles spread-eagle

“spread-eagle”. This expression was observed six times in the GloWbE-GB; all of them referred to a specific position of a human body or an object that resembled an eagle with its wings spread. (25) The warden was not going to be satisfied with that however and had her lie face down in the dirt with in a spread-eagle. (GloWbE_GB_blogs) (26) Now, strips of torn upholstery dangled towards her, and a porn magazine lay spread-eagled, upside down in the luggage rack, a breast and one ginormous nipple all Sonia could see. (GloWbE_GB_blogs)

In the GloWbE-GB, the expression “youth being renewed like the eagles” is absent, as already stated earlier, even though it is rooted in Christian belief, which was brought to Nigeria by British missionaries. Nevertheless, the absence of these two expressions in the data does not mean that they are absent in these varieties or unavailable to their speakers. Moreover, the expressions presented in examples (25) and (26) are used in very general contexts and do not refer to any specific values. The only proverb identified in the data was “Let the kite perch let the eagle perch. If one says no to other, let his wing break.” This proverb appears to be translated from the Igbo language to English. The original proverb reads as egbe bere ugo bere, nke si ibeya ebela, nku kwaa ya (Ndukaihe 2006: 319) which dictates that equal chances should be given to everyone in life, and that bad luck will follow the people who act in superior ways (Kansas 2015).

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(27) Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch. If one rejects the perching of the other, may his wings be broken. (GloWbE_NG) (28) I affirm that the hawk should perch, the eagle should perch, and the one that says the other should not perch, let his wing break. (GloWbE_NG)

Although in example (27) the original proverb includes kite and eagle, a variation of the proverb is observed in example (28) in which kite is replaced by hawk. The proverb points to the notions of unity and equality by emphasizing the importance of the sense of community. As this proverb has its root in the Igbo language and culture, it is safe to say that the expressions derived from the proverb are specific to Nigerian culture. Nevertheless, similarities found both in the GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GB seem to govern the use of fixed eagle expressions in the rest of the results. As stated earlier, the idiomatic expression “eagle-eyed” was the most frequently used expression in the two corpora. (29) The probe panels should continue by the National Assembly as part of its oversight responsibilities, however, under the microscope of the eagle eyes of Nigerians. (GloWbE_NG)

Throughout the GloWbE-NG, Nigerians, and sometimes Africans in general, are referred to as “having eagle eyes” or “being eagle-eyed”. This expression emphasizes the observant and/or perceptive characters of the people in Africa in general and in Nigeria in particular, as in example (30). (30) Emeagwali´s final fraudulent claim is that of being a “doctor” and “professor”. Several years ago, before eagle-eyed Nigerians and Africans decided to scrutinize his eye-popping claims, his website audaciously referred to him as “doctor” and “Professor”. Because of recent exposures of his scam, he no longer refers to himself on his website as “Dr. Emeagwali” or “Professor Emeagwali.” (GloWbE_NG)

The examples identified in the GloWbE-GB did not specifically mention British people as having eagle eyes, but the expression is used in a very general sense in order to point out to certain people who are likely to be more perceptive to things happening around them than others. (31) Eagle-eyed Bond fans spotted numerous guests from the world of 007, including (among others) Sir Christopher Lee, Eunice Gayson, Shirley Eaton, Carole Ashby, and stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong. (GloWbE_GB_blogs)

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(32) The eagle-eyed among you will notice cars parked all over town. (GloWbE-GB_ blogs)

Such general uses, without specifying the nation of the speaker, were also present in the GloWbE-NG, making this a mutually common eagle expression both in NigE and BrE. The phrase “eagle-eyed” is also encountered in the form of “having an eagle eye for something” and “keeping an eagle eye on something/someone” in both corpora. (33) A 1986 graduate of computer science from the University of Lagos, Okere is a young man with eagle eyes for business. (GloWbE_NG) (34) A security source told our correspondent that security agents have been mandated to keep an eagle eye on both camps. (GloWbE_NG) (35) Dis player always made me scared wen ever he holds the ball and he has a superb Eagle eye for goals. (GloWbE_GB_blogs) (36) So you had to keep an eagle eye on the hot cabinet and dash over to grab a croissant. (GloWbE_GB_blogs)

The additional “eagle eye” in the expressions “have an eye for something” and “keep an eye on something” emphasizes the ability of a person having a special interest for something and paying extra attention to it. The following examples employ an expression similar to “eagle saint”, “prayer eagle” and “eagle Christian” discussed before. This example shows that the expression “being an eagle of/in something” is not only used in religious contexts. In a general sense, this usage refers to the people who are very good at what they do. (37) Where are the Desmond Tutu´s of our nation, not the so-called corrupt and thieving Men of God? Where are the Gani Fawehinmis, the legal eagles of Nigeria? (GloWbE_NG) (38) If you would like to Draft a really good letter that everyone can use please feel free to post it up and let other use yours save a lot of hassle for other people, we could do with a good legal eagle to draft something up. (GloWbE_GB_blogs)

Other similar uses such as “marketing eagle Maureen” and “marketing eagle Joel” in the GloWbE-NG and “entrepreneurial eagle” in the GloWbE-GB.

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Another fixed expression that is found in the data is “soar like the eagle”, which expresses the idea of achieving a higher level in doing something. This expression was employed five times in the GloWbE-GB while it was identified 14 times in the GloWbE-NG. (39) They surmount all obstacles and soar like the eagle. (GloWbE_NG) (40) So, will it be a majestic and glorious success in sinking a major policy of a government which now finds itself with an albatross around its neck. Will Justine soar like an eagle to new heights or seek the shelter? (GloWbE_GB_ blogs)

Examples (39) and (40) portray the image of people who have overcome or who are trying to overcome the obstacles that prevent them from achieving eagle-like excellence and thus, becoming an eagle. The examples presented in this section were used in a wide range of contexts ranging from politics to business. Most of such expressions are deemed to refer to the concept of excellence . Moreover, the majority of those discussed here revolved around the fixed expression eagle-eyed which are classified under the conceptual metaphor observant/preceptive people are eagles .

5. Discussion and conclusion The main objective of this chapter was to uncover the cultural conceptualizations of eagle by identifying the figurative uses of eagle expressions in NigE and the extent to which these metaphors are shared by other varieties such as BrE. Accordingly, the main dataset included 41-million-word corpus data of NigE and 126-million-word corpus data of BrE taken from the GloWbE. The results demonstrated more similarities than differences in the use of eagle expressions, which alludes to parallel conceptualizations of eagles in both cultures to a large degree. The quantitative results obtained from the GloWbE-NG showed extensive use of football-related expressions, especially with regard to the item eagles. Similar references were also found in the GloWbE-GB; however, they were not as common and were only limited to the item eagles. In the GloWbE-NG, the items eagle, eaglet, and eaglets were also used in the context of sports and widened to the conceptualizations of inexperienced and experienced people in terms of

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eaglets and eagles respectively. The mapping identified in the GloWbE-GB was limited to the conceptualization of sports clubs. Further analysis of the expressions focused on the use of eagle metaphors in religious contexts. Many examples presented in this section were taken from the Bible. Therefore, the eagle expressions used in religious contexts stem from a Christian background. Their usage in other religions practiced in Nigeria was not observed in the current dataset even though eagle expressions date back to the oral tradition in Africa, appearing in several folktales (see Radin 1964; Berry and Spears 1991). The fact that many of these examples derive from the Bible shows that most of them are not culture specific. However, one of such uses, the “eagle saint” has the potential to be variety-specific, as there been no reference to its biblical use in the data, even though it made reference to Christian saints. This aspect was cross-checked in all the fifty-nine online versions of the Bible available on BibleGateway, and the search yielded to no results. Moreover, a string search in the online version of the GloWbE produced fourteen instances of “eagle saint” in NigE but only one in Hong Kong English among all the varieties available in the GloWbE. Therefore, even though this expression is used to refer to the Christian belief system, it is specific to NigE and culture. The perception of eagles as a symbol of excellence in Nigerian culture, as presented earlier, may have contributed to the use of “eagle saint” as a reference to the Christians who achieved the ultimate level of a believer. Moreover, the fixed expressions obtained from the data were mutually present in the GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GB. The only proverb identified within the framework of this study was encountered in the GloWbE-NG, which proves the culture-specificity, as it is directly translated from the Igbo language into English. The proverb “Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch. If one says no to other, let his wing break” stresses the importance of giving everyone a fair chance in life, thus refers to the concept of equality and unity in a community. In its general context, this complies with the African community model, which has already been discussed with regard to cultural conceptualizations (see Wolf and Polzenhagen 2009). Based on the general results of this case study, one of the main conclusions to be drawn is that eagle expressions are, to a large part, not specific to NigE. However, they are used to refer to different areas of life such as religion, or different concepts such as experience and inexperience and unity and equality, when compared to the BrE and culture. The research on animal metaphors, in general, is limited. To the best of my knowledge, there are no studies conducted focusing on figurative eagle expressions and underlying

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cultural conceptualizations. In this regard, this study serves as a reference point for future research in the field. In its wider context, it also brings us a step closer to understanding the effect of culture on the use and variation of metaphor and the ways different cultures expressed in different varieties of English. Moreover, the results of this case study call for further research and the inclusion of larger data by integrating other varieties of English.

Notes 1 Italicized lexical items in examples illustrate metaphorical usage unless otherwise is indicated. 2 The full-text data of the GloWbE-NG does not differentiate between general and blogs components; therefore, this distinction could not be presented in the examples.

References Davies, M. (2013), Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. Available online: http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe (accessed 7 August 2019). Davies, M. and R. Fuchs (2015), ‘Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9-billion-word Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE)’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 1–28. Dayrell, E. (1910), Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa, London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Fiedler, A. (2016), ‘Fixed Expressions and Culture: The Idiomatic monkey in Common Core and West African Varieties of English’, International Journal of Language and Culture, 3 (2): 189–215. Greenbaum, S., ed. (1996), Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hermanson, E. A. and J. A. du Plessis (1997), ‘The Conceptual Metaphor “People are Animals” in Zulu’, South African Journal of African Languages, 17 (2): 49–56. ‘How Green Eagles changed to Super Eagles – Aloy Agu’, (2013), Vanguard Nigeria, 17 May. Available online: www.vanguardngr.com/2013/05/how-green-eagleschanged-to-super-eagles-aloy-agu/. Kansas, A. (2015), ‘TFA Proverbs’, Quizlet, January. Available online: https://quizlet. com/65702046/tfa-proverbs-flash-cards/. Kövecses, Z. (2005), Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Kövecses, Z. (2015), Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Kristiansen, G. and R. Dirven, eds (2008), Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner (1989), More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lixia, W. (2011), ‘A Corpus-based Study on a man is a lion in Mandarin Chinese and British English’, 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 17 (2): 1–10. Ndukaihe, V. E. (2006), Achievement as Value in the Igbo/African Identity: The Ethics, Berlin: LIT Verlag. Pragglejaz Group (2007), ‘A Practical and Flexible Method for Identifying Metaphorically-used Words in Discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol, 22: 1–39. Scott, M. (2016), WordSmith Tools version 7, Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software. Sharifian, F. (2003), ‘On Cultural Conceptualizations’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3 (3): 187–207. Sharifian, F. (2015), ‘Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes’, World Englishes, 34(4): 515–32. Sharifian, F. (2017), Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ‘Songs & Rhymes from Nigeria, Ode to an Eagle’, (2019), Mama Lisa’s World. Available online: www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=3213/ (accessed 29 August 2019). Steen, G. J., A. G. Dorst, J. B. Herrmann, A. A. Kaal, T. Krennmayr and T. Pasma (2010), A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU , Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Talebinejad, M. R. and H. V. Dastjerdi (2005), ‘A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls are not Wise!’, Metaphor and Symbol, 20 (2): 133–50. Wolf, H. and F. Polzenhagen (2009), World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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building Metaphors in Hong Kong Policy Addresses Kathleen Ahrens, Menghan Jiang and Winnie Huiheng Zeng

Conceptual metaphors invoking the source domain of building are often found in political speeches to promote long-term commitment to social goals (Charteris-Black 2004). In this chapter, we look for evidence that use of metaphors relying on the source domain of building may vary between two groups of political leaders in Hong Kong: the British Governors who ruled Hong Kong prior to mid-1997 and the Chief Executives who have been selected to lead the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China since mid-1997. We find that these two groups of leaders use the building source domain differently, with the Chief Executives using it comparatively more frequently. In addition, Chief Executives also use it more often to focus on future goals, as well as to reference Mainland China and the Chinese government. Lastly, we also find differences in the priority of the mappings between the source domain and associated target domains for a subset of keywords. These findings indicate that even within one variety of English, there are key differences in how the source domain of building is used to support and sustain a particular political stance.

1. Introduction Conceptual metaphors, in which more abstract concepts are understood in terms of more concrete concepts (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff [1979], 1993), are quite common in everyday language (Steen et al. 2010). The building source domain is an example of a concrete conceptual domain which is frequently invoked, not only in casual conversation,1 but also in political language to 105

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promote long-term commitment to social goals (Charteris-Black 2004). The building source domain lends itself well to this type of mapping, as the source domain invokes the idea of creating a completed edifice as the target domain seeks some ultimate societal goal. In addition, the construction of a building cannot be rushed without possible disastrous results at some point in the future, unlike the rhetorical constraints on another favored source domain of political leaders, journey.2 However, not all politicians necessarily use building metaphors in the same way. Lu and Ahrens (2008) found that political leaders in Taiwan varied in how they used building metaphors, with one political party not using them very much at all, and another using them to focus on the conceptual metaphor past history is a foundation . Additional evidence for cross-linguistic differences in metaphor usage in non-political language also lends credence to the idea that conceptual metaphors are both cognitively and culturally motivated. In terms of evidence for cognitive motivation, Kövesces (2003) demonstrated that two languages may share a conceptual metaphor and similarly prioritize how they use the source domain. Ahrens (2010) made a related argument when she postulated that there are frequent, prevalent source-target domain pairings (i.e. Mapping Principles) that can be identified as a way to understand why a target domain selects a particular source domain. For example, in Chinese, the target domain of idea uses the source domain of building to get across the notion of ideas being structured (e.g. nide lundian genji shi sheme [What is the foundation of your argument?]) and uses the source domain of commodity to get across the notion that ideas have commercial value. Evidence for cultural motivation of conceptual metaphor use comes from a variety of regions. Simó (2011), for example, noted that there were large differences in connotation, frequency, and usage patterns for the metaphorical use of blood in English and Hungarian. In addition, Callies (2017), in a special volume on metaphor variation in World Englishes (Callies and Onysko 2017), points out the patterns of variation and innovation of idioms in food and foodrelated source domains in (West) African Englishes. Furthermore, recent studies in Hong Kong political discourse show that even within a single variety of English, metaphor use might be influenced by multiple social or linguistic factors (Zeng, Tay and Ahrens, 2020). Ahrens and Zeng (2017) also found stark differences in Hong Kong political leaders’ uses of source domains in the conceptualization of education in Hong Kong Policy Addresses between British Governors (1984–1996) and Hong Kong Chief Executives (1997–2014).

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Ahrens and Zeng (in press) also extended Schneider’s (2018) proposal for locating evidence of culture in a uni-modal, text-based corpus to include metaphor analysis within the lexical-conceptual dimension that Schneider postulates to be one of the three ways of using corpus-driven and corpus-based approaches to uncover aspects of cultures in different English varieties. They found that editorials written in Hong Kong prefer to objectify concepts associated with the target domain of democracy, while editorials in Taipei prefer to personify these concepts, with editorials in Beijing both personifying and objectifying to a similar degree. In this chapter, we further argue that even within a single variety of English, there may be, as in the case of Hong Kong, salient historical–cultural events that shift metaphor usage. In order to examine this issue, this chapter explores how building metaphors are used in Hong Kong Policy Addresses in English over a thirty-year period from 1984 to 2014. Hong Kong is a particularly useful variety of English to analyze for metaphor use as it was ruled as a British colony until 1997 before being returned to China as a Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The Governors of Hong Kong were all British public servants, while the HKSAR Chief Executives are all local to China and Hong Kong (although some received higher education abroad) and were, while not directly appointed as in the case of the Governors, selected through an indirect and complex process that allows the Chinese government to have a great deal of say in the eventual outcome.3 Thus, by using a diachronic corpus of speeches by political leaders in Hong Kong during two different periods of rule, this chapter may be seen as an investigation of conceptual metaphors within the variety of Hong Kong English in political discourse. With this historical situation in mind, we look at the following set of questions to examine how metaphor use may vary between these two groups of political leaders. First, does the frequency of building metaphor usage vary by political group (Section 3.1)? Second, what issues and time frames are being discussed and who is being referenced when these two political groups use the building source domain (Section 3.2)? Third, do the two political groups differ in their preferences for the metaphorical keywords used in the building source domain (Section 3.3)? The null hypothesis, of course, is that both sets of political leaders would use the building source domains in relatively similar ways. But given that they are two sets of leaders beholden to different countries and with a different set of issues in mind, it may be the case that this source domain is used for different purposes.

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2. Methodology 2.1 Corpus of political speeches The Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) Corpus of Political Speeches is an online resource for all those interested in the study of political rhetoric (Ahrens 2015). In this chapter, we use the online version of this corpus which can be found at http://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/corpus/index.php. The English Corpus of Hong Kong political speeches on the website were utilized for this study, and we divided it into two sub-corpora: (1) the policy addresses of Hong Kong Governors (1984–1996), as the last policy address by a Governor was given in this year, and (2) Hong Kong Chief Executives (1997–2015). Hong Kong was ruled as a British colony until 1997 and was then returned to China as a Special Administrative region. Thus, the Governors of Hong Kong were all British public servants, while the HKSAR Chief Executives are all local to Mainland China and Hong Kong. Hence, the Hong Kong corpus, which spans from 1984–2014, is comprised of Hong Kong Policy Address delivered annually by the Governor (prior to the handover) or Chief Executive of Hong Kong to the Hong Kong Legislative Council. The address always includes a summary of the past work of the Hong Kong government and an introduction of its policy for the coming year. This report is released through various media outlets and most people see it as a useful way of predicting what the Hong Kong politicians will focus on. There are six speakers in our corpus, including three Hong Kong Governors, Sir Edward Youde, Sir David Wilson, Sir Chris Patten, as well as three Chief Executives, Tung Chee-hwa, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, and Leung Chungying. Table 6.1 presents the details of the two Hong Kong Corpora. Table 6.1 Hong Kong Governors’ Corpus and Hong Kong Chief Executives’ Corpus Hong Kong Governors: Pre-97 Speakers (Year) Sir Edward Youde (Pre-1997: 1984–1986) Sir David Wilson (Pre-1997: 1987–1991) Sir Christopher Patten (Pre-1997: 1992–1996) Subtotal Total

Word count 28,989 63,259 80,713 172,961

Hong Kong Chief Executives: Post-97 Speakers (Year) Tung Chee-hwa (Post-1997: 1997–2005) Donald Tsang Yam-kuen (Post-1997: 2006–2012) Leung Chun-ying (Post-1997: 2013–2014) Subtotal

Word count 108,589 95,496 36,155 240,240 413,201

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2.2 Data extraction Using the English Corpus of Hong Kong political speeches, we extracted twentysix keywords related to the source domain of building . One linguist trained in metaphorical analysis read through the first and the last political speech for each of the three Hong Kong politicians and identified these twenty-six metaphorical expressions (including all lemmas of that expression) as potentially belonging in the source domain of building , as presented in Table 6.2. We included static features and specific parts of buildings (e.g. nouns such as base, door, wall, Table 6.2 Keywords in the source domain of building Keyword base bedrock build building buttress collapse construct construction door doorstep erect façade foundation framework hammer pillar repair ruin stability stable structural stable support underpin wall window

Part-of-Speech N N V N N V V N N N V N N N N N V V N ADJ ADJ N V/N V N N

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window, pillar), as well as keywords discussing an event or action related to building (e.g. verbs such as build, ruin, repair) in our list. In order to determine whether these keywords belong to the source domain of building , we first checked the definition of the keyword that was provided on WordNet (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn) to see whether the most concrete sense of this word is related to building or not (Ahrens and Jiang 2020; Chung, Huang and Ahrens 2003; Chung, Ahrens and Huang 2005). We then checked the ontological nodes of these keywords in the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) to see whether the ontological class of this word sense relates to building or not (Chung and Ahrens 2006).4 For example, the keyword pillar is defined as “(architecture) a tall vertical cylindrical structure standing upright and used to support a structure” in the WordNet. Its corresponding SUMO node is stationary artifact. SUMO defines a stationary artifact as: “an Artifact that has a fixed spatial location”.5 Most instances of this class are architectural works (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramids, office towers, single-family houses, etc.). This evidence allows us to confirm the suggested source domain – building . Two linguists who received systematic training in metaphor analysis analyzed the proposed keywords using the above criteria to determine that the twenty-six keywords in Table 6.2 all belonged to the source domain of building .

2.3 Metaphor Identification Procedure Next, key-word-in-context (KWIC) searches were run in both corpora using tools on the HKBU Corpus of Political Speeches. Overall, we collected 2,464 tokens from the corpora, including 690 tokens for Hong Kong Governors Corpus and 1,774 tokens for Hong Kong Chief Executives Corpus. Two steps were involved in manual word sense disambiguation. First, one trained linguist determined if the word was used as a literal or metaphorical sense in a specific context (Pragglejaz Group 2007; Steen et al. 2010). Metaphor identification followed the general approach used by Pragglejaz Group (2007) by ascertaining if a word had a more basic sense in the dictionary as compared to how it is used in the current sentential context. To determine if the keyword build indicates metaphor or not, we checked to see if there is a contrast between the more basic contemporary sense in WordNet than its contextual meaning in a given context. For example, building in example (1) is an example of a concrete usage (i.e. “building a tunnel”), while building in example (2) involves an abstract meaning (i.e. “building a family-friendly society”).

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(1)

We will seek this Council’s agreement to fund other major projects to improve sewage collection and treatment, such as - building more deep tunnels to collect sewage from Hong Kong Island for treatment at Stonecutters Island. (Tung Chee-hwa 1998)

(2)

Building a family-friendly society is an undertaking of the whole community and requires the concerted efforts of the Government and various parties, including the community, neighbourhoods, schools, the business sector, the media, religious organizations and NGOs. (Donald Tsang Yam-kuen 2007)

The steps undertaken here are similar to step 3 in the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) (Praggeljaz Group 2007) and steps 2 to 4 in the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) (Steen et al. 2010) in which they checked for the possibility of a cross-domain mapping. Next, to check the reliability of our identification, inter-rater agreement was calculated following Wimmer and Dominick (2013: 175) who suggest that a subset of 10–25% of the data should be used for inter-rater reliability analysis. In total, 250 instances (about 10% of data) were randomly selected and coded by a different trained rater. Cohen’s Kappa showed that the reliability for metaphor annotation was almost perfect: k=0.832, p