George Mavunga

Linguistic innovation during a national crisis: An analysis of selected Shona metaphors created during the Zimbabwe crisis

This article discusses the nature of metaphors that were created by Shona speakers in order to capture various aspects of the Zimbabwean political and socio-economic crisis. The data for this study were collected from August to December of 2008 and their analysis is mainly couched within the Cognitive Grammar theory, 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. In this regard, this study adopts the cognitive view that sees metaphor as one of the basic human strategies for dealing with our environment in which we make use of concrete phenomena such as moto lit: ‘fire’, kudhakwa lit: ‘drunkenness’ and kurova lit: ‘beating’, to conceptualize more abstract concepts such as the pain, difficulties and confusion that people experience during a crisis. In addition, this article recommends similar studies on other local languages such as Ndebele, Nambya and Kalanga, to find out whether the same processes that are responsible for linguistic change in the Shona language are also evident in these languages since they are spoken by a considerable percentage of the Zimbabwean populace.

Combatting the pandemic: An analysis of selected adverts on HIV/AIDS on Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation Television (September 2008 to May 2011)

This article seeks to establish the communicative strategies employed in selected Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television (ZBC-TV) advertisements about HIV/AIDS between September 2008 and May 2011. Most of the adverts thematically address the following issues: destigmatisation; protection against HIV/AIDS; prevention of mother-to-child transmission; HIV transmission modes; and abstinence from premarital sex. Branches of discourse analysis such as conversational and textual analysis, pragmatics and semiotics, as well as politeness theory were used as research tools to analyse the adverts. It was concluded that the adverts also persuasively employ a variety of communicative strategies to combat the transmission of HIV and to destigmatise HIV/AIDS. Examples of these strategies include the use of metaphors, euphemism, code-mixing, indigenous languages, dramatisation, testimonials, and visuals. With the advent of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the article recommends their use in combination with the traditional media such as television and radio in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The themes which the advertisements focus on could also be widened to include healthy living strategies for the infected. Furthermore, there is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of the adverts in terms of the themes which they focus on.

‘Iwe’ or ‘imi’? An analysis of terms of address used by police officers at Mbare Police Station

Abstract Using Faircloughs (1989) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Giles’ (1971) Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), this article analyses the terms of address used by police officers at Mbare Police Station in Harare in conversational interaction either with suspects or with people visiting their relatives in custody at the police station. The data analysed in this research was collected through participant observation where the researchers posed as members of the public in need of assistance while they listened in to the discourse between participants. The researchers also interviewed police officers on their use of the various terms of address they employed in dealing with different categories of members of the public who visited the police station. It was established that the police officers used linguistic terms, which included pronouns (both singular and plural), friendship terms, kinship terms and metaphors to address the people who visited the police station for a variety of reasons. These included soliciting for information and demonstrating institutionalised power.

The Zimbabwe crisis as captured in Shona metaphor

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 semi-structured 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.