Cultural Conceptualisations of Animal Names: A Semantics Perspective
Keywords:
Animal word, Concept; Culture, ThoughtAbstract
Animal words have gradually and unconsciously become part of everyday language especially in describing people’s characteristics, attitudes and behaviours, and this has got an established connotative meaning in all human languages. Several animals are conceptualised in the minds of language users as a result of their linguistic and cultural experiences and these created schemas are linguistically translated through sense reference thus, producing language which is metaphorically structured. Animal names do not mean the same to all cultures; some share a meaning, while others vary in the meanings they give to a given animal. This study has revealed that the connotative meaning of some animal names are shared by some languages, whereas the conceptual meaning some of the animal names vary among languages because of the differences in their culture, geographical environment, convention, occupation and religion. This difference in conceptual meaning raises a linguistic problem among users of English who come from different linguistic background. Using Sapir-Whorf’s (1956) Linguistic Relativity as the framework, this study has discovered that although some animal names share similar meanings among various languages in Nigeria, the meanings some animals connote in one Nigerian language differ from that of other Nigerian languages. This study used questionnaires, interviews as well as oral and written texts to examine the different connotative meanings of animals.
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