Metaphors on emotions, character traits and virtues in Tshivenda

Abstract

Traditional scholars in Tshivenda take metaphor as a concept in which one entity is taken as the other in such a way that the two can  replace each other in any given context without any difference. For the past three decades, various scholars started to have an interest on  the concept due to the influence Conceptual Metaphor Theory initiated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987). Some  scholars such as Croft and Cruse (2004) contrast metaphor and metonymy as two figures of speech which somehow overlap or interact  with one another. It is in this discussion where they demonstrated that figurative language is used as a means of understanding  something better than in a literal way. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the elements or properties of metaphoric frames and  the cultural nature of conceptual metaphors in Tshivenda involving emotions, character traits and virtues. The nature of conceptual  metaphor in Tshivenda as cultural constructs and products is scrutinized through the analysis of basic frame mappings and entailments  of a range of metaphors with a noun denoting emotions, character traits and virtues as source domain and as target, respectively.