An Ethnopragmatic Analysis of Death-Prevention Names in the Karanga Society of Zimbabwe

Mamvura, Zvinashe

doi:10.1080/00020184.2021.1886580

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…While the former is chiefly a structural study of the morphological and syntactic features of the names and the social meanings they encode, the latter is an ethnographic and ethnopragmatic investigation of how situational and cultural contexts shape the meaning potential of death-prevention names among the Ibibio of South-eastern Nigeria. Other studies on death-prevention names include Obeng (1998) among Akan speakers of Ghana, Mamvura (2021) among the Karanga people of Zimbabwe and Imoh et al (2022) among the Igala of Nigeria. Musonda et al (2019) examined death-daring/challenging names among the Tumbuka ethno-linguistic group of Zambia.…”

Section: Review Of Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural–Cognitive Study of Selected Death-Oriented Personal Names in Igbo

Kamalu,

Onumonu,

Udisi

2024

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Working chiefly within the tenets of Cultural Linguistics (CL), this study examines the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie selected death-oriented personal names among the Igbo of South-eastern Nigeria. Based on the cultural linguistic perspective, the analytical tool for the study is shaped by insights from cultural schemas, cultural categories and cultural metaphors as signifiers of ideation and social meaning. The cultural frames enable the language user to have a better understanding of the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie the conceptualization of names and naming among the Igbo. Much has been done on the structure and sociological forms of Igbo personal names and their meanings, but only a few studies have been undertaken on the names that express the notions of death and dying in Igbo. More importantly, no previous study has used insights from Cultural Linguistics (CL) or the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to explain the motivations for the preponderance of death-oriented names among the Igbo people. Thus, this study specifically aims to address the lacuna. The study reveals that the Igbo, like most African and other human societies, recognize and accept the inevitability of death. Consequently, they use language in diverse forms and contexts to express their perceptions of the horrors and pains associated with the inevitability of death. Songs, proverbs and ritual practices are some of the verbal and social semiotic forms through which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitude toward death and dying. However, names and naming are the most vivid cultural cognitive patterns by which the Igbo show their understanding of the nature of death and dying and their psychological effects on the living. Constrained by space and scope, this study identified and classified six major death-oriented names among the Igbo, as follows: names that depict the overwhelming power of death; names that make an appeal to death; names that depict death as wicked/evil/terror; names that depict death as no respecter of wealth/social class; names that challenge/mock the assumed power of death; and names that depict death as an insensitive entity. Thus, the above frames constitute the major paradigms by which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitudes toward death and dying.

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Section: Review Of Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural–Cognitive Study of Selected Death-Oriented Personal Names in Igbo

Kamalu,

Onumonu,

Udisi

2024

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“…Some cultures in Nigeria, example Efik, Ibibio (South-east) and Tiv (Northcentral) appropriate animal names as personal names in their onomastic traditions. Certain salient features of some animals, example, bravery (lion), invincible strength (eagle), aggression (hawk), toughness (crocodile), and endurance (frog) are admired, personified and gendered [35,30]. In these cultures, male members bear animal-related names who also share features of masculinity that fit into the standard model of traditional patriarchy.…”

Section: Naming and Gender Relations In Nigeriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Husband is a Priority: Gender Roles, Patriarchy and the Naming of Female Children in Nigeria

Mensah

2022

Gend. Issues

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In onomastic practices of some traditional societies in Nigeria, stereotyped gender roles and patriarchy are deliberately perpetuated in the naming of female children, thus using naming traditions as weapons against girl-children. In these cultures, names are bestowed on female children to align with existing sexist norms and gender ideology in which the namer is dominant and the named is subservient. This article explores, from an ethnographic qualitative approach, the politics of this naming regime, and highlights the centrality of naming in the social construction of gender in two cultural traditions in Nigeria: Bette (South-east), and Owe (North-central), which entrench inequality and illuminate power and dominance against the girl-child. It considers the implications of this regime of names on the girl-child from the perspective of “doing gender” (West and Zimmermann in Gender Soc 1:125–151, 1987), which simultaneously recreates and reinforces the cultural meaning of gender and the systems of power and oppression on which it rests. I demonstrate how personal names are overtly used to enact conformism and/or resistance to patriarchy and the results, based on linguistic evidence, reveal that participants who conform to traditional gender norms or ideologies tended to reify inequality and oppressive gender regime through the choice of their names. Participants who resisted normative conception of gender opened up space for agency and autonomy, and thus expanded the frontiers of their gender expression.

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“…(Mensah 2015, p. 121) Inferring from Mensah's postulate, one could realise the close connection between African names and the African Traditional belief system. Cross-culturally, death-prevention names, for instance, are believed to link the name-bearer to his/her past, ancestors, and spirituality (see Obeng 1998;Agyekum 2006;Mensah and Offong 2013;Mensah 2015;Akung and Abang 2019;Mamvura 2021;Jindayu 2022;Abubakari et al 2023, among others). African societies recognise the tension between underworld forces and humans.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The author describes Yoruba names as linguistic forms with a deep indexical relationship to sociocultural significations. In another study, Mamvura (2021) investigates death-prevention names among the Karanga people in Zimbabwe within the purview of ethno-pragmatics. In line with Mensah's (2015) observation, Mamvura indicates that death-prevention names serve as a weapon to fight the power of supernatural forces, which are believed to be responsible for the death of children.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Refuse Dump, Hurry Up!’: A Cognitive Onomastic and Cultural Metaphor Perspective of Nzema Death-Prevention Names

Yakub

2024

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African personal names have communicative contents that reflect the experiences and expectations of the name-giver as well as the bearer. Death-prevention names, for instance, provide some assurance and security that are vital for a child’s survival, given the implicit assumption that certain spiritual forces are at work. The bestowal of despicable and ‘ugly’ names on children whose preceding siblings died shortly after birth is also a common practice among the Nzema, aiming at preventing succeeding children from death. This study examines cultural conceptions and metaphorical correlations in Nzema death-prevention names. Using 42 death-prevention names obtained through interviews, the study discusses the implications of the names and their metaphoric connections with the objects used to identify this category of people. The study reveals that features of entities such as ɛkpɔtɛ ‘vulture’, nrɛzenra ‘housefly’, kɛndɛne ‘basket’, and fovolɛ ‘refuse dump’ are attributed to these children to make them seem ‘unpleasant’ to the ancestral spirits who are believed to have been snatching them after birth. Other ‘long-lasting’ entities like nyevile ‘sea’, bolɛ ‘rock’, and kpɔma ‘walking stick’ are used metaphorically to refer to a child with the belief that they would survive right from birth and live long on the earth.

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An Ethnopragmatic Analysis of Death-Prevention Names in the Karanga Society of Zimbabwe

Cited by 9 publications

References 15 publications

Cultural–Cognitive Study of Selected Death-Oriented Personal Names in Igbo

Cultural–Cognitive Study of Selected Death-Oriented Personal Names in Igbo

Husband is a Priority: Gender Roles, Patriarchy and the Naming of Female Children in Nigeria

‘Refuse Dump, Hurry Up!’: A Cognitive Onomastic and Cultural Metaphor Perspective of Nzema Death-Prevention Names

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