The Zimbabwe crisis as captured in Shona metaphor

Abstract

This article examines the metaphors that the Zimbabwean Shona speakers created to communicate various messages concerning the socio-economic and political crisis that has been occurring in their country since the year 2000. The data for this study came from two sources, namely, field notes from participant observations taken of naturally occurring interactions in the public and private spheres from August to December of 2008 and semistructured interviews conducted with Shona speakers of varying age groups, educational status, religious and political affiliation, and gender. This article considerably draws analytical insights from the Cognitive Grammar (CG) framework which looks at metaphor as a conceptual and linguistic phenomenon that involves a mapping relation between two domains, namely, the source domain and the target domain. This theory argues that metaphor, as a cognitive tool enabling us to draw on our previous experience of the world with familiar issues and mapping them on less familiar ones, occupies a prominent place in our thought process.

Discourse markers so and well in Zimbabwean English: A corpus‐based comparative analysis

“…No differences were observed in the frequency of so in public dialogues, popular writing, editorials, and newspaper reportage. This may be due to the influence of BrE on ZE since BrE is mainly the norm‐providing variety in teaching and learning and in print media (Kadenge, 2009).…”

“…Comparisons were made between ZE and British English (BrE) because English was introduced in Zimbabwe through British colonialism and has subsequently played a vital role in language use in Zimbabwe. Although there may be influences from other English varieties on ZE, BrE mostly provides for the norms, being used in teaching and learning as well as in print media, because newspapers and publishing houses follow the BrE conventions (Kadenge, 2009). The discourse marker (DM) so was chosen because it was the most frequent DM in the ZE corpus whilst well was chosen because it is among the most frequently studied DMs in second language (L2) Englishes.…”

“…Following a pluricentric approach to world Englishes, the term ‘Zimbabwean English’ is used to refer to the English that is spoken by Shona mother tongue speakers in Zimbabwe (Kadenge, 2009; Marungudzi, 2016). English is one of the 16 official languages of Zimbabwe and is used as a language of teaching and learning, and in most government departments (Kadenge, 2009).…”

“…Following a pluricentric approach to world Englishes, the term ‘Zimbabwean English’ is used to refer to the English that is spoken by Shona mother tongue speakers in Zimbabwe (Kadenge, 2009; Marungudzi, 2016). English is one of the 16 official languages of Zimbabwe and is used as a language of teaching and learning, and in most government departments (Kadenge, 2009). The other official languages, namely, Barwe, Chewa, Kalanga, Khoisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zimbabwean Sign Language are rarely used in high‐status and formal domains of society such as education, industry, government, and parliamentary business (Kadenge, 2010).…”

“…print media, because newspapers and publishing houses follow the BrE conventions (Kadenge, 2009). The discourse marker (DM) so was chosen because it was the most frequent DM in the ZE corpus whilst well was chosen because it is among the most frequently studied DMs in second language (L2) Englishes.…”