HiÉ› ‘face' Metaphorical Extensions in Gí£

Abstract

The paper addresses the semantic shifts, extensions and metaphorical use of hiÉ›‘face' in Gí£ (a Ghanaian language). It focuses attention on the semantic patterns and pragmatic nature of the metaphor and its usage in a variety of contextual features. In Gí£, the body part expressions and bodily functions have extended meanings that still have some relationship with the original words.  The body parts thus act as the productive lexical items for the semantic and metaphoric derivation. I will consider the body part hiÉ›from its physical and cognitive representations.  The paper also looks at the positive and negative domains of hiÉ›, ‘face' expressions. The data are taken from the Gí£ Bible and personal conversations with Gí£ scholars. The paper illustrates that there is a strong relation between a people's conceptual, environmental and their linguistics systems.