A comparative study of Kikuyu Proverbs and its English equivalents on the role and position of women: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage perspective

Abstract

Proverbs are part of any culture. They are symbolic as they carry the cultural wisdom and heritage of any community. Studies in the past have shown that proverbs just like other oral traditions help in the construction of identities and ideologies. Such identities and ideologies are as in gender, the roles of those genders and stereotypes alike. Kikuyu proverbs, particularly those on the role and position of women are no different. They are carriers of meaning. Kikuyu proverbs, just like many other proverbs, can be translated to other languages and their equivalents are provided as well. This paper studies selected Kikuyu proverbs about women and their English equivalent. The aim is to investigate whether the Kikuyu and their English equivalent proverbs have a similar semantic structure. The study also makes a comparison of the cultural themes. This study was premised on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach by Anna Wierzbicka (1996) and Cliff Goddard (2002). Data for the analysis were collected from both oral and written sources. From the collected proverbs, 10 were selected for analysis. The analysis involved semantic explication of proverb texts using the five-part semantic template for proverbs analysis: ‘traditionality’, ‘recurrent situation’, ‘advice’, ‘analogy’, and ‘status as folk wisdom’ as proposed by Goddard. The finding was that the selected Kikuyu proverbs did not have a similar semantic structure to their English equivalent. The proverbs lacked elements such as ‘advice’ or ‘analogy’ when compared alongside. There was also a difference in their cultural themes.