Metaphor in the Construction of Immortality: The Case of Funeral Performances among the Bukusu of Western Kenya

by Open Science Repository Language and Linguistics
(May 2013)

Abstract

Since Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) groundbreaking characterization of metaphor as vehicles of knowledge, studies in metaphors have taken two paths: the focus on metaphor as a tool of prefabricated conceptualizations and a consideration of metaphor as a tool of emerging, even evolving cultural realities. Following the latter view of metaphor, this study examines the role of metaphor as a resource in the organisation of the performance of traditional public comforting and the cosmologies underlying the Bukusu understanding of death. Traditional public comforting is one of the performances that dramatize the transition of the deceased to the world yonder and the incorporation of the bereaved in the day to day activities. The study analyzes data collected from Western Kenya where the Bukusu people live. The study adopts analytic and methodological principles from genre analysis (Guenthner and Knoblauch, 1995), interactional sociolinguistics and the emergentist approach to metaphor (Cameron and Deignan, 2006). Thus, this study seeks to contribute to the discussions on the role of metaphors in funeral genres.

Keywords: metaphor, contextualisation, genre, ritual, death.

Full text

Metaphor in the Construction of Immortality: The Case of Funeral Performances among the Bukusu of Western Kenya