Asking for a ‘Water Calabash’: Metaphor and Gender in ‘Patlo’ Marriage Ceremonies in Botswan

Abstract

This paper explores the use of metaphors in the Patlo (the seeking of a woman’s hand in marriage) in traditional Setswana marriage ceremonies. Following up on Schapera’s (1940 and later) work on the culture of Bakgatla ba-ga- Kgafela in particular, this paper develops this idea (from a linguistics perspective) and examines the use of metaphor in Patlo ceremonies (marriage negotiation) in traditional Tswana weddings and how such metaphors construct gendered subject positions for the brides and grooms. The paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis, as an overarching framework, and specifically identifies gendered discourses and their linguistic manifestations in the ‘Patlo’ ceremonies. The data consists of three wedding ceremonies transcribed into a corpus of 10 thousand words. The paper argues that the ‘Patlo’ ceremony, through metaphor, proffers differential subject positions for brides and grooms, and constructs them as belonging to separate social spheres, and emphasizes female domesticity whereby new brides are constructed variously as nurturers, nurses, cooks and drawers of water.

Keywords: metaphor, gender, marriage, Tswana