The ethno-pragmatics of yi and ti ‘head’ metaphors in Dangme and Nzema

This paper focuses on head-related expressions in Nzema and Dangme, two Kwa languages of Ghana. We examine how ti and yi ‘the human head’ is conceptualised physically and metaphorically in Nzema and Dangme, highlighting the similarities and differences based on socio-cultural experiences and conceptualisation patterns of the Nzema and Dangme people. In this paper, we position our scholarship on metaphors of ‘head’ among the Nzema and the Dangme as culturally constructed. The analysis is based on data obtained from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data comprise examples that were hand-recorded from spontaneous natural speech contexts in both Nzema and Dangme communities, including other examples generated based on the researchers’ native speakers’ intuitions. Supplementary secondary data were extracted from Nzema and Dangme literary texts. The paper shows that both Nzema and Dangme have a rich variety of expressions related to the head; which serves as container for conceptualisations of intelligence and wickedness. Other phenomena such as fortune, prosperity, disgrace and death are construed in terms of cognitive representation of the head. The paper further reveals that virtues like hard-work, unity, trust and transparency are communicated through head-related expressions in Nzema and Dangme. We note that Nzema and Dangme speakers use ‘colour metaphors’; both white and black in relation to the internal part of the head to describe ‘positive thinking’ and ‘cruelty’ respectively. The paper employs Cultural Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Sharifian, 2011; 2017; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) to guide the analysis.