Title: Women writers' use of metaphor as gender rhetoric in discourse on HIV/AIDS and sex-related issues: The case of "Totanga patsva" (We start afresh) by Zimbabwe Women Writers.
Abstract: This article analyses the metaphors that women writers use to communicate various messages about HIV/AIDS and sex. We argue that the writers use metaphors in their discourse mainly because the Shona culture places restrictions on words and expressions which directly refer to HIV/AIDS and sex-related issues. Such direct words and expressions are considered taboo, hence the communicators have to use metaphors which make the tabooed words and expressions mentionable indirectly. This study focuses on metaphors since other forms of figures such as similes and euphemisms are used sparingly in the anthology under examination. The metaphors that are discussed are found in seventeen stories out of twenty-five stories that make up the anthology. The remaining stories do not Jairos Kangira has a PhD in Rhetoric Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication at the Polytechnic of Namibia where he teaches Professional Communication and Media Studies. Kangira taught Linguistics at the University of Zimbabwe for several years. He became Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts, a post he left when he joined the Polytechnic of Namibia in 2006. Kangira is a freelance journalist and author. His latest book is Creatures Great and Small published by Mambo Press in Zimbabwe. Pedzisai Mashiri is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. Pedzisai is also a senior lecturer in sociolinguistics and onomastics at the same institution, and a former visiting Professor of Folklore at the University of California Santa Cruz (2003). His research interests include communicative discourse, onomastics, language and HIV/AIDS, sociolinguistic aspects of multilingualism and language planning and practice and language in urban contexts. More recently he turned his interest to visual linguistics and narratives. Recent publications include the monograph on Colonial and postcolonial language planning and practices in Zimbabwe published by Multilingual Matters.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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