To Dance or Not to Dance Masculinities in Akan Proverbs and Their Implications for Contemporary Societies

This paper looks at how men are represented in Akan proverbs and the implications of such representations for contemporary Ghanaian men. It assesses the traditional views on what it means to be ‘a man’ among the Akan and how Ghanaian men perceive these in contemporary times. This is particularly relevant in an age when the demands of the modern world (high living standards, economic hardships, high unemployment rates etc.) put undue pressure on both men and women. More so, it is an age when women are increasingly being empowered to take up traditionally masculine roles. Such an enterprise aligns with the call on feminist and gender researchers to consider studying how men experience and enact gender. Thus, we explore the dilemmas of the contemporary Ghanaian man as he negotiates the expectations of traditional Ghanaian societies and the demands of contemporary families. We analyse 44 Akan proverbs on men, collected from texts and oral sources, as well as responses from focus group discussions on these proverbs. The results show that men are expected to be brave, providers, protectors, and action or results-oriented. Men who are unable to live up to expectation are considered not men enough; they are often perceived as women’s puppets. Reponses from our focus group discussions suggest that such representations put undue pressure on men to fulfil societal expectations; and as research has shown (for example, Ratele 2008), failure to fulfil such expectations can find expression in violence

Language socialisation practices of children in multilingual Accra, Ghana

This paper examines the language socialisation experiences of children in the extensive multilingual and culturally hybrid ‘compound houses’ located in three suburbs of Accra. It seeks to unravel the infl uence socialising agents’ practices and attitudes have on children’s language choices and usage patterns. Blending the practice view of Community of Practice with the Ethnography of Communication model, it analyses the children’s language socialisation practices within the various communities, focusing on how the socialising agents’ practices shape children’s language choice, use and practices. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, data were gathered on language choice, use and attitudes from fi fty purposively selected participants who reside in six compound houses. The data reveal that the children’s experiences at home are overshadowed by the language(s) used in the macro- environment. As a result, individual bilingualism does not necessarily show the presence of the parents’ ethnic language. The findings further show that socialising agents’ perceptions and attitudes motivate language shift and reinforcement among children

Lexicalization of Akan Diminutives:: Form, Meaning and Motivation

This paper examines transparent and non-transparent diminutive forms in Akan and the range of meanings associated with each group, as presented in Appah/Amfo (2011). It takes the discussion of Akan diminutives a step further by showing that some of the meanings communicated by transparent diminutive forms are dependent on the context, including the semantic properties of the base to which the diminutive morpheme is attached. In addition, it demonstrates that even though the non-transparent diminutive forms communicate diminu-tive meanings and contain what appears to be the Akan diminutive morpheme, synchronical-ly they are formally unanalyzable since the putative diminutive morpheme cannot be deline-ated from the base. Also, it is argued that these forms have come from a lexicalization pro-cess that resulted in the reanalysis of the base+diminutive morpheme as a single unanalyza-ble unit. It is observed that the process of lexicalization could have been facilitated by a number of factors, including the loss of the bases from the language, which meant that the putative base could only be found in the context of their diminutive use. Finally, the lexical-ization process is schematized using formalism from Construction Morphology.This paper examines transparent and non-transparent diminutive forms in Akan and the range of meanings associated with each group, as presented in Appah/Amfo (2011). It takes the discussion of Akan diminutives a step further by showing that some of the meanings communicated by transparent diminutive forms are dependent on the context, including the semantic properties of the base to which the diminutive morpheme is attached. In addition, it demonstrates that even though the non-transparent diminutive forms communicate diminu-tive meanings and contain what appears to be the Akan diminutive morpheme, synchronical-ly they are formally unanalyzable since the putative diminutive morpheme cannot be deline-ated from the base. Also, it is argued that these forms have come from a lexicalization pro-cess that resulted in the reanalysis of the base+diminutive morpheme as a single unanalyza-ble unit. It is observed that the process of lexicalization could have been facilitated by a number of factors, including the loss of the bases from the language, which meant that the putative base could only be found in the context of their diminutive use. Finally, the lexical-ization process is schematized using formalism from Construction Morphology

The Morphopragmatics of the Diminutive Morpheme (-ba/-wa) in Akan

The present paper is concerned with the diminutive morpheme -wa/-ba in Akan. It examines the form, the origin and the various meanings associated with diminutive forms in the language. We attribute the origin of the diminutive to the lexical word for ‘child/offspring’ ɔba, basing our argument on language internal evidence as well as cross-linguistic generalizations. The identified meanings of the Akan diminutive are as follows: small, young/offspring, feminine, member, insignificant/nonserious, affection/admiration and contempt/disdain. Having identified the basic meaning of the diminutive as ‘small’, Jurafsky’s [1996] Radial Category theory provides us with a basis to adequately account for the various meanings; drawing a link, through metaphors and inferences, between the diachronic and the synchronic meanings