Metaphorical conceptualization of Happiness and Anger in the Amharic azmari Lyrics

Abstract

This paper examines the Metaphorical Conceptualizations of Happiness and Anger in the Amharic minstrels (the Amharic equivalent is azmari, hereafter I will use azmari for singular and azmariwotʃ for plural) Lyrics. In order to carry out this research, descriptive qualitative research methodology has been employed. A total of 48 songs and 16 printed documents (from all over the Amharic speech community and available sources) have been collected. In sum, more than 2000 stanzas were collected from both audio cassettes and written documents, and of these 1180 stanzas were used as corpus for the analysis. Lyrics that have been found to contain metaphorical conceptualization of happiness and anger were selected from the corpus and were transcribed using IPA. The transcriptions were presented in interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glossing followed by a free translation as per the Leipzig Glossing Conventions. The results show that the azmari metaphorically conceptualize Happiness as UP, as A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, as INTOXICATION, as INSANITY, and as A REACTIONS IN TEETH. On the other hand, the azmari metaphorically conceptualize Anger as HEAT, as A CONTAINER, as INSANITY, as AN OPPONENT, as A DANGEROUS ANIMAL, and as A BURDEN.

Keywords

• Amharic
• anger
• azmari
• happiness
• metaphor
• Cultural Studies